Towards Real Utopias in Higher Education

In this article we search for real utopias for higher education by first
introducing and describing a vital counter-hegemonic students movement of
the early 1960s – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and their Port
Huron Statement (1962). The movement maintained that universities are not
communities of equals but served the elite. In the statement they highlighted the
various socio-political problems within the United States that ought to be
solved and demanded that higher education needed to be something more than
a mere status and reproduction apparatus for the privileged. After describing
the Port Huron Statement, we ponder its lessons and legacy as well as its
implications for the present moment and for the future of higher education as a
public good. We urge a new statement as a real utopia and an era of
intellectual collectivism for today’s students and their teachers—an era that
would also cause them to embrace the greater world, to take a deep look at
their own position in society, and look uncomfortably but hopefully at the
world they will inherit.