Interactive, reciprocal initiatives between colleges and their local communities are essential for higher education to continue to enrich society, guest speaker Nancy Cantor said in a Center for the Arts (CFA) lecture on Wednesday night in the Memorial Chapel.
“Momentum is growing to take public scholarship seriously, as a movement that will challenge and reshape the relationship between our colleges and universities and the society of which they are a part,” she said.
Cantor is the 11th chancellor and president of Syracuse University, in Syracuse, New York. She has gained national recognition for her strong advocacy in favor of public scholarship, a policy that she sees as fundamental if universities seek to benefit their communities.
“If universities are to continue to expand our essential role in our democracy, producing innovation that makes a difference and educating enthusiastic citizens as well as skilled technicians, we must learn to construct these local collaborations in shared third spaces,” she said.
In the practice of public scholarship, Cantor said, the outward-looking stance of the projects often cut across the boundaries of traditional disciplines, geographies and roles.
“The enterprise itself changes the relationship between expert and novice, between teaching, scholarship, and civic engagement—often rolling them all into one,” she said.
Cantor cited a number of Syracuse’s efforts to develop public scholarship, including the renovation of an old furniture warehouse in downtown Syracuse to house the university’s School of Architecture. “The Warehouse” also contains a public gallery, a café, and meeting rooms to be used by local artists and other community members.
“We are seeing the catalyzing effect of both the Warehouse itself and the concentration of design and entrepreneurial expertise downtown,” Cantor said.
At the moment, Syracuse’s most ambitious project is participation in constructing a “Connective Corridor,” a street that will run all the way across New York State in order to link suburbs with downtowns. In Syracuse’s case, this street will serve to connect the university with the city.
“This will be a cultural corridor,” said Cantor. “It will connect all of the city’s cultural institutions [like] the local historical society, museums, concert halls, theaters, and galleries.”
Cantor stressed that, if carried out successfully, public scholarship initiatives allow universities and communities to interact in three crucial ways.
“First, there is innovation that matters locally,” she said. “Public scholarship promotes discovery work outside of the ivory tower. Second, it promotes conversations that change the dialogue from seeing citizenship as a matter of stakeholder rights, to an act of community building among citizens with responsibilities to each other. Third, it brings new and diverse voices to the table, which has a strong democratizing effect.”
In the lengthy question-and-answer session that followed, Cantor addressed the audience’s queries about the finer points of public scholarship, and what stood in the way of such programs.
“Everyone thinks the question of money is the hardest,” she said, “But we have found that if projects are clearly seen as for, by, and with the community, they take on a lot of momentum very quickly, which galvanizes support. We don’t do projects within the community unless we have multiple partners.”
Cantor noted that one of the greatest challenges was promoting the idea of change at a local level.
“Sometimes people view local initiatives as parochial and narrow,” she said. “They ask, ‘What about the big picture?’ I don’t know about Middletown, but Syracuse has instances of every single global problem out there, especially in terms of immigration.”
One student questioned changes in perceptions of student safety, given a situation where so much community-student interaction was taking place.
“I don’t think that students are any more at risk downtown than they are on University Hill, but we took the issue very seriously because we knew that safety concerns would be a psychological barrier to students’ comfort,” Cantor said.
While the audience was relatively small and consisted primarily of faculty and administrators, Cantor was well received.
Lauren Tinkoff ’07, student coordinator for the Green Street Arts Center, enjoyed the talk and found Cantor’s ideas applicable to the University community.
“The lecture was especially relevant to me because Green Street is a practical application of the theory she discussed,” Tinkoff said. “Her talk was an inspiration to Wesleyan to expand its partnerships with Middletown and see the potential for positive change.”
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