Realizing the Ecological University is an ambitious statement about the university of the twenty-first century; an institution embedded in environments characterized by multiplicity and ‘total interconnectivity’ (p. 1). It adds to a growing literature that attempts to fundamentally reconfigure how we think about the university at a time when growing instrumentalism, managerialism and performativity have transformed its mission, contributing in its way to planetary crisis. Whilst not the first book to position the university in ecological terms, Barnett takes the bold step to understand it as nestled in multiple, entangled ecosystems: knowledge, learning, economy, culture, social institutions, the polity, individuals and nature. The central idea is that all eight ecosystems are damaged, and that the university is ‘partly culpable’ in those distortions and must work to ameliorate them (p. 2). Detailed analysis and deliberation run through a book that offers no quick fixes but many directions for action. These ideas and suggestions are weaved together in a tone of compassion, with the hope that something can be pulled from an institution that still carries the promise of contributing to the world at a critical juncture. It is a brave, insightful and hopeful text that demands to be read and debated at what feels like the eleventh-hour for one of our most resilient cultural forms.
Stephen Carney (Thu,) studied this question.