[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-116716-en":3,"doc-seo-116716-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},116716,13056703019662,"Evangeline","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/be000253a8e92610077?_k=1778726343310543188",8,"Research & Report","Making Sense of the University - Debaditya Bhattacharya","Making Sense of the University interrogates the public university by asking why higher education is attacked and how “publicness” has come to be treated with distrust and disdain. Grounded in an Indian case yet positioned as a manifesto for democratic authoritarian times, it develops four concepts of publicness—community, secularity, solidarity, and freedom—and traces the university’s historical negotiations with each. The book offers an alternative, radical democratic vision that challenges institutional histories, defends higher education as a public good, and calls for an end to repression and incursion.","ADVANCE PRAISE  \nMaking Sense of the University is a daring and indispensable adventure in critical thought and historical inquiry. With enormous theoretical power and acute historical analysis, Debaditya Bhattacharya guides us through the history of contradictions that define the university and holds public universities in India accountable for decisive failures of justice and vision. With remarkable acuity, Bhattacharya gives us a way to think about institutional histories and radical democratic theory. This book compels us to understand the university as the institutional support for the desire for what has been unknown, insisting on an affirmative vision that calls for an end to repression and incursion. This book is unprecedented, brilliant and indispensable.  \nJudith Butler, author of Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity  \nThe university is commonly thought of as the place where ‘sense’ – that is, things like knowledge and understanding – is produced. This provocative and intensely argued book invites us, instead, to ‘make sense of the university’ itself at a time when universities are under attack in much of the world. Structuredas an interrogation of the idea of the public university and its relationships with community, secularity, solidarity and freedom, this book will not only intrigue and challenge but also inform and inspire anyone who has thought seriously about higher education and its institutional frames.  \nSatish Deshpande, author of Contemporary India: A Sociological View  \nWhy are universities being destroyed everywhere? This relentlessly thoughtful and innovative volume offers answers. Political and historical analyses are artfully combined to identify ways in which the university (and the idea of public good on which it depends) can be revalued, defended and salvaged. The argument exemplifies a strategic view of knowledge and knowing to which it points. This is a major intervention that deserves to be influential.  \nPaul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness  \nThis brilliant critique of the Indian university is informed by an alternative vision of what higher education might be. It is indeed ‘a manifesto for our times’ that is a vital read for anyone, anywhere concerned about the future of the university.  \nJoan W. Scott, author of Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom  \nMAKING SENSE OF THE UNIVERSITY  \nWhy are public universities across the world being decried and attacked as a waste of public money? How, in the history of the university, has ‘publicness’come to be treated with such distrust and disdain? Importantly, what accounts for the ‘publicness’ of the public university? This book digs into four different concepts of ‘publicness’, and the university’s relationship with each of them. These four concepts are: community, secularity, solidarity and freedom. Does looking at the university’s historical negotiations with each of these concepts give us a possible way of realizing its ‘will to publicness’?  \nThe Indian case, and its contemporary university sector, ground this ‘manifesto’for a ‘public’ university. But the case only serves as a demonstrative example for how the very ‘idea’ of the university is under attack across different continents and historical contexts. The manifesto is therefore – as the title says – for our times of democratic authoritarianism.  \nDebaditya Bhattacharya is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. He has worked on a historical sociology of Indian universities, and the place of ‘critical humanities’in building alliances between institutions and their outsides. He is the author of The Indian University: A Critical History (2025). Two of his edited anthologies on critical university studies include The Idea of the University: Histories and Contexts (2019) and The University Unthought: Notes for a Future (2019) . He is also co-editor of the anthology of essays Sen","cbCaibtZ9NjIrSQd","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaibtZ9NjIrSQd","pdf",26859957,1,322,"English","en",105,"# Making Sense of the University\n## Why public universities are under attack\n## Four concepts of publicness: community, secularity, solidarity, freedom\n## The Indian case and global implications\n## Author background","[{\"question\":\"What does the book ask about public universities?\",\"answer\":\"It questions why public universities are attacked worldwide and how “publicness” has come to be viewed with distrust and disdain.\"},{\"question\":\"Which four concepts of “publicness” does the book focus on?\",\"answer\":\"The book develops four concepts—community, secularity, solidarity, and freedom—and examines the university’s historical relationship with each.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the book position its argument for a wider audience?\",\"answer\":\"It uses the Indian case as a demonstrative example while arguing that the broader idea of the university is under attack across different continents and historical contexts.\"}]","Making Sense of the University - 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