A Public Lecture by Hrishikesh Joshi

The professoriate wields enormous power over society in the long run. They shape the future elites, especially because a university degree is essential for social advancement. But the academy is not democratically accountable: who is hired and what is taught is determined by the professoriate, not the public. What’s more, the academy is politically homogeneous. Do universities then undermine democratic legitimacy? In other words, do we live in a true democracy, given the unchecked power of the professoriate? This talk will explore the uneasy relationship between democratic ideals and the modern university system as it stands.

Join the Washington Center of Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship for a public lecture exploring the relationship between democracy and higher education. Hrishikesh Joshi is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Arizona and a core faculty member at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. He previously taught at Bowling Green State University and held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on normative issues at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics, with recent work on epistemological questions in this area, as well as meta-ethics and ethical theory.

Joshi is the author of Why It's OK to Speak Your Mind (Routledge, 2021), which makes the case that individuals have a duty to share honest opinions even when unpopular, and that doing so is essential to a flourishing life and healthy public discourse.