Nova Southeastern University will be hosting universities across the country to explore how higher education might evolve over the next half century. The goal is to build a platform for discussion and planning for higher education institutions throughout the region and nationally.
Papers, panels and posters on the topic, “Higher Ed 2057 – Sweezy at 100,” will be presented at a conference, scheduled for March 24, 2017 at NSU’s main campus in Ft. Lauderdale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. NSU has issued a call for papers for the conference with an abstract deadline of December 1, 2016.
The event will be streamed and made available online for those unable to attend. Participants are invited to publish articles for the accompanying proceedings and publications or to participate in the symposium without a published paper.
Authors and presenters are invited to submit proposals on topics relating to the theme, which include a wide variety of topics that are listed on the conference web page: https://www.law.nova.edu/alumni/HigherEducation2057Conference.html.
The conference title refers to Supreme Court decision, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, which helped define the essential nature of higher education. This was the decision:
“In a university, knowledge is its own end, not merely a means to an end…. It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevails ‘the four essential freedoms’ of a university – to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”
“Sixty years after that decision was published, higher education again finds itself at a crossroads,” explained Jon Garon, dean of NSU’s Shepard Broad College of Law. “The four questions of teacher qualifications, curriculum, methodology and student body remain central to the inquiry regarding higher education itself.”
He added, “Moreover, these questions must be answered in the context of the university’s mission to create — as well as to disseminate — new knowledge.”