The quote, "need to restore fearlessness to higher education" is a refreshing call, one that I cannot ever recall hearing in North America or the Western hemisphere for that matter. It comes from President of the Campus Contact (network) of 1100 colleges and universities both in the USA and Internationally. It is one of the largest such coalitions of promotion of higher education in the world. The President who said these words in a blog in 2016 is Dr. Andrew Seligsohn.
Seligsohn, talks of interviewing casually many in higher education today. "More than anything I hear fear." He writes of all the kinds of fears he hears people concerned about as priority in their campus lives, from students to top administrators. "Everyone is afraid," he wrote. And then continues with words that are gold to my ears:
"... nothing is more destructive of the mission of higher education than fear....We need to restore fearlessness to higher education....We need to talk to each other [across our differences and conflicts and ideologies] about what would help us regain the fearlessness that makes higher education great."
I highly recommend the rest of this article...
FYI, as a resource (annotated bibliography), I have compiled most all of my publications since the mid-1990s on Education, Fear and Fearlessness in Tech Paper 77.doc, free for your download, and may this be used in educational institutions as well, because in the end we need to better understanding fear and fearlessness... not merely talk about them as words... as if we already knew everything there is to know about them.
