The Kettering Foundation Press has just published a new book entitled Agent of Democracy: Higher Education and the HEX Journey. The editors are my friends David W. Brown and Deborah Witte. (The word HEX in the title refers to the High Education Exchange, a journal long published by Kettering.)

I have a chapter about how, after the academy moved away from sixties-style radicalism and social critique, a new generation of scholars developed ways of engaging with politics and social issues that were more “pragmatic, open-ended, and solicitous of institutions, of existing communities, of civic culture, and of public deliberation.” Mary Stanley responds with a strong critique, arguing that the shift I celebrate is really a retreat in the face of corporate domination.

Claire Snyder provides a chapter on the history of American colleges and universities in relation to democracy. Harry Boyte argues for “public work,” his conceptualization of the citizen’s central roles in democracy. Adam Weinberg, dean at Colgate, explains how public work was institutionalized at his college. Scott Peters focuses on the land-grant system and its powerful heritage of democratic work. Jeremy Cohen brings civil liberties and constitutional rights into the discussion. Noelle McAfee provides a somewhat different theoretical frame from Harry Boyte’s–more grounded in deliberation and the public sphere. And then Douglas Challenger describes how deliberative democracy has been institutionalized at Franklin Pierce College.

Since I’m in the book, it would be unseemly to plug it, but it is a nicely diverse conversation about the role of colleges and universities in our democracy.