screen-shot-2017-01-04-at-23-47-38Towards the end of last year the Times Higher Education magazine asked me what my new year’s resolution was (requires subscription for access), and this is what I told them:

I’m not usually one for new year’s resolutions (if it’s worth doing, do it now), but, this year, the new global politics has launched me into action. Although I do not have children, I have resolved to join the parents, teachers and friends association of my local state primary school. One of the big issues facing higher education is the gulf emerging between those who trust expertise and those who do not. Getting actively involved in my local state school is a way of strengthening the ties between the lowest and the highest levels of our education system. It is a way of building personal relationships with teachers and children and giving a human face to expertise. It is these public institutions that play such a big role in constituting the strength of our shared civil society.

I could equally have said the local public library or community organisation. What I wanted to emphasise was achievable ways to strengthen the ties between the highest level of our education system and those knowledge institutions that are freely accessible to the public. These are places where you don’t have to buy a coffee, or pay for an internet subscription, or be dressed a certain way, to sit down out of the elements and have access to the world of ideas and the human relationships that go with them. They are places with open thresholds and wide doors; places that, in the uncertain era of the new politics, we are desperately going to need.

(You can read Zadie’s Smith’s brilliant essay on the importance of the public library here.)

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