Philosophy, globalization and the future of the university: A conversation between Sharon Rider and Michael A. Peters

Sharon Rider is Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University. She is currently Vice Dean for the Faculty of Arts and Director for Higher Education Studies at the Center for Science and Technology Studies. She studied Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, the University of Louvain and Uppsala University, and has taught as Visiting Professor at Åbo Academy and Turku University (Finland) and Gävle University College (Sweden)

"Internet universality": Human rights and principles for the internet

This paper details proposals by UNESCO to manufacture and draft a concept of “Internet Universality” that adopts a human-rights framework as a basis for articulating a set of principles and rights for the Internet. The paper discusses various drafts of this concept before examining the Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet put forward by The Internet Rights & Principles Dynamic Coalition based at the UN Internet Governance Forum, and the working law Marco Civil da Internet introduced by Brazil

Managerialism and the neoliberal university: Prospects for new forms of "open management" in higher education

The restructuring of state education systems in many OECD countries during the last two decades has involved a significant shift away from an emphasis on administration and policy to an emphasis on management. The "new managerialism" has drawn theoretically, on the one hand, on the model of corporate managerialism and private sector management styles, and, on public choice theory and new institutional economics (NIE), most notably, agency theory and transaction cost analysis, on the other. A specific constellation of these theories is sometimes called "New Public Management," which has been very influential in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. These theories and models have been used both as the legitimation for policies that redesigning state educational bureaucracies, educational institutions and even the public policy process. Most importantly, there has been a decentralization of management control away from the center to the individual institution through a "new contractualism" - often referred to as the "doctrine of self-management" - coupled with new accountability and competitive funding regimes. This shift has often been accompanied by a disaggregation of large state bureaucracies into autonomous agencies, a clarification of organizational objectives, and a separation between policy advice and policy implementation functions, together with a privatization of service and support functions through "contracting out". The "new managerialism" has also involved a shift from input controls to quantifiable output measures and performance targets, along with an emphasis on short-term performance contracts, especially for CEOs and senior managers. In the interests of so-called "productive efficiency," the provision of educational serviceshas been made contestable; and, in the interests of so-called allocative efficiency state education has been progressively marketized and privatized. In this paper I analyze the main underlying elements of this theoretical development that led to the establishment of the neoliberal university in the 1980s and 1990s before entertaining and reviewing claims that new public management is dead. At the end of the paper I focus on proposals for new forms of "the public" in higher education as a means of promoting "radical openness" consonant with the development of Web 2.0 technologies and new research infrastructures in the global knowledge economy

Citizenship, democracy and social justice: A conversation with Maria Olson

Maria Olson is a researcher and lecturer in Education at Stockholm University and the University of Skövde, Sweden. Her areas of interest include democracy and citizenship in relation to education. Her major fields are educational theory and educational philosophy. Her current publications include most recently a series of papers that develop themes of citizenship, democracy and social justice, including: “Citizenship Education without Citizenship? The Migrant in EU Policy on Participatory Citizenship – Toward the Margin through ‘Strangification,’” in R. Hedke and T. Zimenkova (eds.), Education for Civic and Political Participation: A Critical Approach (pp. 155–170). London: Routledge, 2012; “Citizenship ‘in Between’: The Local and the Global Scope of European Citizenship in Swedish Educational Policy,” in S. Goncales and M. A. Carpenter (eds.), Intercultural Policies and Education (pp. 193–203). New York: Peter Lang, 2012; “The European ‘We’: From Citizenship Policy to the Role of Education,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 31(1), 77–89, 2012; “Opening Discourses of Citizenship Education: Theorizing with Foucault” (with Nicoll, K., Fejes, A., Dahlstedt, M. & Biesta, G. J. J.), Journal of Education Policy, 2013 (forthcoming); “Democracy Lessons in Market-oriented Schools: The Case of Swedish Upper Secondary Education,” Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, online first, Doi: 10.1177/17461979134836842013 (with Lundahl, Lisbeth), 2013; “What Counts as Young People’s Civic Engagement in Times of Accountability? On the Importance of Maintaining Openness about Young People’s Civic Engagement in Education,” in M. Olson (ed.), Theme: Citizenship Education under Liberal Democracy. Utbildning & Demokrati [Education & Democracy] 21(1), 29–55, 2012

The last post? Post-postmodernism and the linguistic u-turn

This paper adopts an autobiographical tone to review the linguistic turn and its demise at the hands Richard Rorty. Rorty, along with Continental philosophers like Lyotard rescued us from a philosophical delusion that we might achieve a neutral analysis resulting in linguistic and conceptual hygiene. This view became the basis of a highly influential doctrine in philosophy of education during the 1970s under R. S. Peters and the London school. I review the Wittgensteininspired movement and its conceptual affinities with postpositivism, postmodernism and postcoloniality as the dominating motifs of the age we have now passed beyond. © Michael A. Peters.This paper adopts an autobiographical tone to review the linguistic turn and its demise at the hands Richard Rorty. Rorty, along with Continental philosophers like Lyotard rescued us from a philosophical delusion that we might achieve a neutral analysis resulting in linguistic and conceptual hygiene. This view became the basis of a highly influential doctrine in philosophy of education during the 1970s under R. S. Peters and the London school. I review the Wittgenstein inspired movement and its conceptual affinities with postpositivism, postmodernism and postcoloniality as the dominating motifs of the age we have now passed beyond

Symmetry, regression design, and sampling distributions

When values of regressors are symmetrically disposed, many M-estimators in a wide class of models have a reflection property, namely, that as the signs of the coefficients on regressors are reversed, their estimators' sampling distribution is reflected about the origin. When the coefficients are zero, sign reversal can have no effect. So in this case, the sampling distribution of regression coefficient estimators is symmetric about zero, the estimators are median unbiased and, when moments exist, the estimators are exactly uncorrelated with estimators of other parameters. The result is unusual in that it does not require response variates to have symmetric conditional distributions. It demonstrates the potential importance of covariate design in determining the distributions of estimators, and it is useful in designing and interpreting Monte Carlo experiments. The result is illustrated by a Monte Carlo experiment in which maximum likelihood and symmetrically censored least-squares estimators are calculated for small samples from a censored normal linear regression, Tobit, model. © 1994, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved

Tertiary lymphoid organs in central nervous system autoimmunity

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease characterized by chronic inflammation in the central nervous system (CNS), which results in permanent neuronal damage and substantial disability in patients. Autoreactive T cells are important drivers of the disease; however, the efficacy of B cell depleting therapies uncovered an essential role for B cells in disease pathogenesis. They can contribute to inflammatory processes via presentation of autoantigen, secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and production of pathogenic antibodies. Recently, B cell aggregates reminiscent of tertiary lymphoid organs (TLOs) were discovered in the meninges of MS patients, leading to the hypothesis that differentiation and maturation of autopathogenic B and T cells may partly occur inside the CNS. Since these structures were associated with a more severe disease course, it is extremely important to gain insight into the mechanism of induction, their precise function, and clinical significance. Mechanistic studies in patients are limited. However, a few studies in the MS animal model experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) recapitulate TLO formation in the CNS and provide new insight into CNS TLO features, formation, and function. This review summarizes what we know so far about CNS TLOs in MS and what we have learned about them from EAE models. It also highlights the areas that are in need of further experimental work, as we are just beginning to understand and evaluate the phenomenon of CNS TLOs

Spectral functions for single- and multi-Impurity models using DMRG

This article focuses on the calculation of spectral functions for single- and multi-impurity models using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). To calculate spectral functions from DMRG, the correction vector method is presently the most widely used approach. One, however, always obtains Lorentzian convoluted spectral functions, which in applications like the dynamical mean-field theory can lead to wrong results. In order to overcome this restriction we show how to use the Lehmann formula to calculate a peak spectrum for the spectral function. We show that this peak spectrum is a very good approximation to a deconvolution of the correction vector spectral function. Calculating this deconvoluted spectrum directly from the DMRG basis set and operators is the most natural approach, because it uses only information from the system itself. Having calculated this excitation spectrum, one can use an arbitrary broadening to obtain a smooth spectral function, or directly analyze the excitations. As a nontrivial test we apply this method to obtain spectral functions for a model of three coupled Anderson impurities. Although, we are focusing in this article on impurity models, the proposed method for calculating the peak spectrum can be easily adapted to usual lattice models.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figure

Integration of dynamic, aerodynamic, and structural optimization of helicopter rotor blades

Summarized here is the first six years of research into the integration of structural, dynamic, and aerodynamic considerations in the design-optimization process for rotor blades. Specifically discussed here is the application of design optimization techniques for helicopter rotor blades. The reduction of vibratory shears and moments at the blade root, aeroelastic stability of the rotor, optimum airframe design, and an efficient procedure for calculating system sensitivities with respect to the design variables used are discussed