The university as a community of dialogue

Abstract

The university is affected by the social crisis and issues such as identity, the mission and functions of the university have been discussed in all areas over the last decades. If we update the sense of mission of the university, we would need to highlight the potential community characteristics of university society. The Dialogic activity is essential for achieving this objective. We need to introduce some changes in university practice: to confer more value to dialogue, to give all conversational partners who know about a topic access to it, to want to learn from others, to introduce some topics of interest to illustrate possible solutions to current social issues. Specifically we propose some challenges: interdisciplinary dialogue, dialogue on moral issues, dialogue among believers, different believers and nonbelievers. To carry out this task, the university must ensure a space free from economic and political pressure, that comes from external and internal agents; external: the market and political power-state, political parties; internal: subjects with economic interests and power in the management of university life. At the same time, the university can not focus on free activity, independent of social life; there must be a balance between freedom, autonomy and social responsibility.