Giving Voice to the Peace and Justice Challenger Intellectuals: Counterpublic Development as Civic Engagement

Abstract

Abstract"Let knowledge serve the city" reads the golden letters on a pedestrian bridge just 200 feet from my faculty office in Neuberger Hall at Portland State University. Public peace scholarship might allow knowledge to help the polis by keeping it out of war via changing the national discourse toward a strong and informed peace analysis. Educators have an uneasy relationship to public scholarship and mainstream media have a nervous attitude toward public peace intellectuals. Institutions of higher learning are also often either unaware or uncomfortable with a public promotion of a positive peace platform.Academic writing and research is hard to translate into publicly accessible knowledge and time constraints mitigate professorial efforts at such civic engagements. This dissertation looks at the evolving nature of this intersectionality between and among factors and analyzes data derived from research interviews conducted with 12 academics/activists. The conclusion is a grounded theory generated by this process. Key findings include problematic lack of academic freedoms-especially in the promotion and tenure context, overwhelming faculty workloads, infrequent faculty development of public scholarship skills and a spotty distribution/connection system that often fails to facilitate competent and willing faculty to engage as public peace and justice scholars.Policy recommendations attempt to address all these obstacles.ii