The Good University Examined: A Response to Meenakshi Krishnaraj, Ren-Hao Xu, and Pat Norman

In her response to Meenakshi Krishnaraj, Ren-Hao Xu, and Pat Norman on The good university (2019), Raewyn Connell begins by offering some biographical background to her writing of the text. She then engages with each of the authors of the chapter on The good university, specifically the forces driving change in the work culture of higher education institutions as described by Norman, the alternative models of higher education and modes of teaching in India’s past and present raised by Krishnaraj, and the relationship between research and politics in Taiwanese history recounted by Xu. Along the way, Connell demonstrates two important points of about social theory. First, that while scholarly writing is valued for its tidiness and abstraction, social theories usually arise from authors’ and social groups’ lived and messy struggles. Second, that while the form of scholarly publications (e.g., books, journal articles) suggests a ‘finished’ quality to theories, as experiments in thought and imagination theories evolve and change, and do so through a continuing process of dialogue.