Philosophy of Free Speech and its Boundaries in User-Generated Content on The Hub/Le Noyau.

When we speak of removing barriers to knowledge, we are not speaking of those types of knowledge that are meant to be private in order to protect the security of persons. Privacy constitutes an equally important right and we are not talking about accessing private knowledge. We may say that where knowledge in question has both public and private interest, there exists a margin and a tension. The margin is established over the long-term by societies and individuals, civil society and institutions negotiate tensions that arise in the short term. Generally, however, we are talking about knowledge that is in the public sphere and is part of a global body of knowledge in which everyone has a right to be able to access for their development and for its inherent worth.

As Castells (2006) points out, knowledge and information have always been central in all historically known societies and this is not new. Castells argues that what is new is the technology and its capacity to transform the capabilities of an old form of social organization, networks. Technological change introduces new debates on issues such as access to information and freedom of speech. The term ‘access to knowledge’ has now become common in a world now committed to universal primary education and literacy of all people, and the acknowledgment of the ‘knowledge society’ even where societal development has always been knowledge-based. These issues are debated at the highest international fora often in the context of ICT’s within the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) as well as the World Summit on the Information Society and advocated by the Communication Rights in the Information Society campaign and the projects of the Open Society Initiative (Patel, 2006, Padovani, 2002). An access to knowledge treaty is proposed and supported by a broad coalition of southern governments and NGO’s (Patel, 2006). In a recent article in the Ottawa Citizen, Michael Geist (University of Ottawa Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law) recommends government legislation for open access, that all taxpayer funded research be made available to the public at no charge within six months of initial publication (Geist, 2006). He also recommends dealing with non-controversial copyright issues, making orphan works available and broadening fair use. All of the recommendations are aimed towards increasing the availability of quality works on the internet and in the public domain. Access to knowledge was and still is a primary issue concerning equity in education, but the internet presents access to knowledge as an issue of technology in a way far more centrally and directly than with previous technological changes which carried more implicit consequences by nature of the eras and of the technologies themselves. We must remember how recently access to knowledge was tacitly elitist, at least in the ‘civilized’ world. One of the ways to increase pluralistic contributions to knowledge is to make internet publishing more accessible, but making it more accessible raises questions around control over information and speech. The internet in general, and increasingly user-generated content, are introducing new dimensions to the debates around producing and receiving speech.

Three concerns need to be addressed in this initiative regarding user-generated content; a) the principle of non-malificence as it regards to legal and ethical speech boundaries, in harmful speech and with regards to rights of privacy b) the issue of representation, and contexts where speech may either represent the speaker alone, or may represent the voice of a group or institution as well, and may do so clearly or may do so ambiguously c) the issues of defining purposes and environments of particular spaces of limited speech and spaces of free speech and d) the issue of reliability and validity of information.

In matters pertaining to control, on the one hand we are dealing with control of information which relates to facts about the world, and on the other we are concerned with limits of interactive speech, of opinion, of discussion, of rhetorical and influencing kind of speech.

Information

The boundaries to the flow of information have been influenced from challenges arising from technologies that increase the ability to communicate information, and it should be added that technologies are also developed to secure information to varying degrees and within varying contexts and prevent the public from accessing it. Information may be commercialized and released only through payment. The control of information is often sought for the reasons that exposure to the information would be harmful (non-malificence). In Canada, a legal framework is in place to regulate the way the government is allowed to restrict information. This is because the government may abuse its power to restrict information, and that in a democracy people have a right to information about a government that represents them. When people have access to information, they need to share it in order to influence democracy. Seeking and imparting information in society is crucial to healthy democracy. Thus non-malificence exists in tension with beneficience, and control over information is meant to achieve a balance between privacy and the public interest in a healthy civic democracy with healthy institutions of jurisprudence. Those who hold intellectual property rights and exercise these in the marketplace argue that the proceeds are both related to property rights in general in the free market, and necessary to purchase the resources, human and material, to gather and present the information. Thus, a tension results here between the economic activity of the commercial publishers, and the resultant inequity in access to knowledge. In addition, what is made visible on the web by a corporation becomes part of its management of consumer behavior and this is true of the University of Ottawa. To quote from the first line of the first objective of the marketing and communications policy of the University - “the purpose of this policy is to ensure that the University's corporate image is projected in a positive, coherent and consistent manner, whether by traditional methods or by new media such as the Web” (University of Ottawa, 2006). University of Ottawa lecturer and internet guru Michael Strangelove cites the active, create and even subversive audience reduces the control of the commercial media and its ability to manage consumer behaviour (Strangelove, 1998.)

Healthy democracy requires freedom of speech in order to allow all people to discuss, analyze, opine and make decisions about the meaning of information and what to do with it. Freedom of speech is generally a freedom not tied to institutions, but a basic freedom. Though it may include misinformation, in a healthy democracy with access to information, such misinformation can be corrected organically with a sufficiently independent media and that which is claimed as fact but is in fact disputable may be challenged. The new web technologies also offer a media that can easily be independent of commercial interests, one that is participatory and more accessible, presenting an active challenge to complement the critical challenges over the years from McLuhan to Chomsky on the false objectivity of the mass media. The question of equity then becomes both mere access to the internet still out of reach to the majority of the world, and the relative quality of the different media leading to an inequity in whether one can access all sources, or just those that are free. The civic consumer has an increasing number of judgments to make regarding the types of media, the reliability and validity of information, the legitimacy of sources and their ability to pay. It becomes increasingly important to rely on multiple sources and multiple sources are easier to come by even in the ‘free market’ as it were.

The legal limits of speech are when misinformation and opinion serve to harm others, and criminal laws governing hate speech, libel and slander and harassment reflect the ethic non-malificence in speech. Apart from this, the issues of the abuse of media by those who have the most power over it, either by association with expertise, by strategy, by money, power and influence cannot be ignored as the internet contains those potentials especially where civic action is less established and effective in countering these. By exploding the proliferation of speech, the internet magnifies both the beneficient and malificient opportunities of speech. It also gives us more awareness, however, of the tensions surrounding speech, information and knowledge as applied to all spheres of public activity and thus represents a vast progression in our understanding of communication. The world of the internet is moving even faster.

Institutions and Information

Information may also be controlled in order to ensure its reliability and validity. In this case, institutions set standards for releasing information in order not to misinform, such as peer review and editorial boards. This is not meant to limit speech, but to establish credibility of knowledge and information imparted.

Institutions also govern the speech of employees and members. The standards of individual speech are freer than those of institutional speech. Violations of rules governing speech in professional roles carry professional consequences, and where professional standards are tied to legal licenses, they carry legal consequences above the legal limitations of individual speech. Roles and responsibilities therefore establish boundaries based on representations in profession and institution because of powers and responsibilities inherent in those. Institutions regulate representations for such reasons as corporate responsibility and image, legal accountability, personnel management etc. Institutions often disclaim representation of information where it places itself as more of a facilitator for the platform of communication rather than the product of information. Authors also disclaim their representations of institutions as Stiglitz does in the article his article cited in this paper, his first footnote standing right next to his title at the World Bank stating “the views presented here are solely those of the author and not those of any institution with which he is or has been affiliated.” Establishing the context of representation becomes very important in a user-generated on-line environment within an institutional community. The presence of the logo presents the benefits of association and the risks of censure at the same time. There is also the stark reality that web content is visible, or at least potentially so, to any viewer and as such the audience is virtually unlimited and the potential is obviously increased when it comes to risk of causing offense. It becomes essential to tease apart representations, to establish the risks upfront and place them in contrast to the benefits, and to present the model as one which is legitimate and where there has been previous success. To dissociate from the institution completely would present a loss both for the institution and participants. The middle way requires clear establishment of representations and associations, it requires courage, and it requires reactive mechanisms to deal with problems.

It should be pointed out that uottawaglobe.ca is something like a public bulletin board, but with a much wider audience and a much wider scope of information and speech. At University of Ottawa, even though clubs and association represent themselves in public areas such as posting on bulletin boards, the marketing and communications service sees a role in filtering such information proactively. Posters must be approved. By contrast, the uottawaglobe.ca site presents a model of reactive moderation for pragmatic and philosophic reasons; therefore representations become exceedingly important along with mechanisms for dealing with problems, along with justifications of the benefits of the model.

The levels of user functions create categories and levels of representation that are related to the spaces on the site. The two levels are group and individual. The categories run from student club to faculty to administration. Each is responsible for representation of themselves at the level of their representation. A student group carries the level of responsibility a student group should have in representing its body. A department would represent itself at that level, and an individual posting in a forum is just that. The distinctions for the audience between faculty group representation and student group representation are established through the menus, and student associations represent their bodies differently than clubs, so are also distinguished in the menu. The registration includes a contact directory survey whereby people indicate their background, status, affiliation with the university, interests and expertise. Though not compulsory, one who has stated their information related to their representation makes that known (such as Director of Centre of…) and just as any form of communication is responsible for their speech. The institution does not bear responsibility for the speech, but the speaker bears a responsibility in terms of their position, and towards the institutional community in a more ethical sense. Should the institution officially sanction the site, it can demonstrate its support for the model and its reactive mechanism while disclaiming responsibility for the content. The contact directory is also a networking mechanism for identifying people’s relational attributes, and they can also indicate whether they will speak on a topic or mentor students, their current projects and research etc. Finally, each group has only one or two accounts with the capability of posting information on that group. This ensures that the group speaks as a unitary voice, usually with a communications executive responsible for representing the group’s communication.

Apart from the responsibilities associated with representation, currently a team of law students is looking into legalities. Information regarding laws around speech will be posted and part of the agreement upon joining the site. The next level above law is rules. Rules governing the site will include content appropriate to the purpose of the site and respect the local community and a global audience. Beyond rules are self-governing standards. A group or individual with poor communication will not get far given the participatory nature of the site and opportunity for discussion and comment. The participatory nature of the site offers more checks and balances than are offered in the situation of a group operating its own site, which groups may do while also associating themselves with the institution without perhaps the disclaimer of representation. Forums shall have moderators, moderators encourage constructive discourse, enforce rules through warnings and can have the administrator suspend accounts, and immediately delete content felt to pose a risk of illegality. Moderation of organization-contributed content, found in different areas of the site than forums, is by committee which is open to representation by organizational members. Content is freely published and moderation is reactive by the community, administrators and the public who may object. The committee solves the issue by the level of offense, content that is illegal is deleted and accounts can be terminated, rule violations can result in temporary suspension of content and request of the offender to amend it or remove it voluntarily. If this doesn’t resolve the issue, the moderating committee may consider arguments from both sides and come to a decision by consensus, and failing this by majority vote. One of the principles of this site, however, is setting a tone and environment through the clear purposes of the site, building the site initially with known and trusted organizations, establishing rules and allowing for the community’s self moderation and members own enlightened self-interest in publishing responsibly. Within this framework, it is likely that the committee will place wide boundaries for freedom of speech while meetings to discuss offending content should be infrequent. Frequent deliberations of this kind would represent a deeper problem and the need to review the approach. The committee should be in place by fall 2007, when sufficient activity will justify it.

Similar to setting up a physical social space, depending on the tone of the establishment one can expect fewer or more problems, and one can deliberately set both the tone of the environment and the purpose of the space. The need of a ‘doorman’ or ‘security guard’ to watch over interactions is not necessary in an open space and detracts from the purpose and people’s sense of freedom and personal responsibility, but setting ground rules and establishing mechanisms for resolving conflict and ensuring legal activity helps keep the space open. Institutional sites control information through measures of security because content represents the institution as a whole and its corporate responsibility and image. The difference is between institutional management of information for the purposes of public relations with rigid organization; and free-flow of information with self-managing aspects and organic organization of information through planned routes. Both types of website have useful purposes, the latter’s advantages are vibrancy, participation, access, interaction, fluidity and one very important consideration which is low-costs of time and money in putting information on the internet. It is a true ‘civil society’ website of voluntary association, with the sum total of content nearly completely voluntarily produced.

The proliferation of all varieties of internet content, especially perhaps the user-generated variety should encourage educators to adapt to this new environment by teaching critical thinking in the new context. Civics, critical thinking, research all should be taught using both internet and non-internet sources, and students also ought to be encouraged to engage in their own user-generated content, and taught to think reflectively on their freedom, responsibility and inherent risks. It may be that the internet will contribute to our education in all areas relevant to healthy democratic and civil society as a consequence of both the beneficient and malificient realities of the digital age. It is a fundamental truth reflected in the literature, that the internet becomes useful only in the context of broader educational development. It does not represent a direct impact on development, but it can be argued that it is increasingly a determinant of health and development and that even when the extremely poor do not have access (and may not even be able to benefit from it) those who can benefit from it can be more effective partners. The benefits of their networks and access to knowledge can be transferred to communities themselves. It is also not at all adequate to address the digital divide by mere access. Access to the internet is not a goal in and of itself but a means towards achieving an inclusive society (Kostov, 2006). Knowledge inequity must begin with a preparation of those crossing the divide. Educators are already educated and more likely to already be on the fortunate side of the divide (or should be a key target for access if they aren’t), and the resources of the internet are at their disposal providing they too are aware of the risks and potentials.

It is well-advised for users of the site to consider the source of information and claims to knowledge. uOttawaglobe’s consumer of information has likely already witnessed, or has at their fingertips multiple sources to check the validity of information, or the balance of arguments around an issue represented. Information is taken as it is and the source for what it is, and all people when reading any type of information and attempting to gain knowledge from ought to consider the source and its motivations, the reliability and validity of its methods and presentation of facts, right up to the World Bank. The more people participating and viewing the site, the more checks and balances there are on information since both participants and visitors may comment or even complain and initiate the reactive mechanism. Still, much content is simply informational regarding activities and events, that which is controversial tends to occur in forums where both other posters and moderators balance the conversation.

Representations are key to understanding sources of information, and the advantage of this site is that people are representing themselves and are free to state their objectives, without obfuscating such behind a façade of objectivity or aligning with a an institutional communications plan. In essence, in this type of presentation, people are saying ‘this is what we do, what we believe and here are the reasons why – please consider these and take action with us if you agree.’ Institutions often say, ‘this is what we look like, what we represent and here is where you find our services’. Most commonly, positions in debate of actual issues are not the representational domain of the institutions. Institutions are platforms for diverse activity and represent themselves as such. They must represent a melting pot of general, positive and politically acceptable aspirations. This is good, because if the institution begins representing one or the other of the pluralistic views it will either be inconsistent or incomplete in its representation as a platform.

The institution can promote pluralism and the expression of individuals and groups representing themselves as part of the institutional community, and in keeping with the institution’s general values. In order to do so, it must provide spaces for the expression of collective and individual pluralism. Going further, if it wishes to encourage interdisciplinary and interfaculty collaboration, it must provide spaces in order for visibility to lead to communication to lead to networking to lead to collaboration. If it wishes vibrancy of community life, if it wishes people to feel involved and consulted, if it wishes the university society to progress in its productivity, contributions and happiness, it must provide space for inclusion. In the digital age, producing content on the web in a space shared by a common community is a piece of that inclusion that cannot be ignored.

The discussion of this website brings us to the key issues of the information age:

? access – both in imparting information, knowledge and speech and in receiving it,
? reliability and validity of information and knowledge,
? rights to knowledge
? knowledge as empowerment
? accessing and sharing information and knowledge in democracy
? the vibrancy of civil debate and structures supporting it
? the relationship of networks to pluralistic knowledge translation
? networks that bring vibrancy of civil society vs. isolation, duplication and limitation.
? that information and knowledge networking potentiate action for change, even when all actors are not on the same side of the divide.

One more issue that this discussion did not cover is the potential for protection of individual and collective rights that the internet and the ‘new participatory internet’ provide. The internet can be used to expose abuse, to warn of impending risks to persons etc. The author does not necessarily see this issue as likely to relate to this website, but does not rule it out.

Deliberative Beneficience

The success of international networks has relied on the limitless connectivity of the internet, a connectivity that has no spatial limitations. Having no spatial limitations means limitless distraction from local space. It is easier for me to get information from the internet on Ottawa than my hometown Carleton Place. It may be easier for me to get information on the situation of Sub-Saharan Africa than on northern communities in Canada. Yet, it is still easier for me to communicate with local people, to find information on our town than in the past, it is just that the way TCP/IP protocol works, it is just as easy to communicate with Nepal. Why forego one for the other? In this global age, it is truly wonderful that I can chat with my plumber or the local bookstore owner about all manner of global issues, and with the knowledge that ICT’s have aided in bringing greater global awareness.

Troublesome social impacts can be unintended consequences of technology. These may include fragmentation of local communities as a consequence of integration of global ones, they may include increasing the powers of political and commercial hegemony, they may include further inequities between those who can use them and those who can’t, and they may include an increase in the harm that communication can bring. There are those who wish to argue about the new technologies, whether they are good or bad for society. However, as is commonly the case with aspects of dark and light in our midst, the outcome is what we make of it for those who are fortunate to have access, and what we make of it ought to benefit the less fortunate. The best of any of our works are those that are based in the fundamental equality of people and substantive equity. Often the unintended consequences can be subject to deliberative action to counterbalance and correct them, and in the case of the internet the absolute weight of progress brought about by the technology gives us good reason to put pessimism to rest and attempt to deal deliberatively with the unintended consequences. In this case we can use the technology to enhance the environment by putting it to deliberative beneficient use while also dealing deliberatively with the unintended consequences.

In addition to advocating for physical space of interaction, the university ought to support virtual spaces of interaction. The institution ought to facilitate on-line space that allows for a local networking platform. In local networks, experts teach students, students share similar institutional concerns and moreover, in local networks experts are more of an asset to students and vice-versa than in international networks when it comes to direct communication. Local networks have more potential for leading to the real-time forms of communication and sharing knowledge, for communication across levels of status, expertise and discipline. International networks may be more amenable to people who are already on the same level, since it takes multiple mediums of interaction to create useful working relationships with multiple dimensions. An expert talking to a student in Ethiopia makes less sense that an expert talking to an expert in Ethiopia who can translate the knowledge throughout their institution reaching many other faculty and students. An expert working with students in a local network makes a great deal of sense because there is more relational time by which mutual benefits of students and teachers can be realized. This is not to say that distance learning is not useful. But distance learning is more self-learning where the program coordinators at a distance are a resource. It is not as relational. This is not to say that true relationships cannot be established internationally, but this usually requires a long period of correspondence or actual trips.

It is also not to say international networks cannot glean knowledge of persons and that these persons cannot translate knowledge across international networks. It is possible to create new and useful connections that are virtual alone given the prohibitive geographic distance for face-time. But it is often a question of ‘knowing of’ a person, rather than knowing a person. In local networks, we have the opportunity to move quickly from knowing of a person to knowing a person. It makes sense to exploit the geographic closeness of people to build strong local networks, networks of knowing of and of knowing people by which greater relational learning and action can take place. It makes paradoxical sense to use the tool that tends towards the ‘knowing of’ dimension over the ‘knowing dimension’ in so many aspects, because ‘knowing of’ can readily produce knowing relationships in local networks where it is more difficult to do so in international networks. In those areas of interest like international development that drawn on many disciplines, one makes limited work of developing knowledge without frequent face-to-face discussion, real-time seminars, meetings etc. and relying only on written sources, conferences, e-mails, conference calls etc. Further, the main purpose beyond the inherent value of networks for aboriginal peoples, for landmine activists, for environmentalists etc. is to bring more power and strength to their action for social justice in the local societies. The internet remains a means and not the end.

The internet makes much more of life, people, ideas, and phenomena visible across a wide audience, making it ‘known of’ and thereby creating the virtual reality. It is people and societies responsibility to transform ‘knowing of’ to ‘knowing’ through local processes of knowing and engaging with reality itself. Accessing information does not beget nor teach the skills of reflexivity and critical thinking as Hassan (2001) points out, but accessing information more readily increases the number of sources that form the material for thought. Increasing the number of freely available sources of quality information, such as scientific articles, books, analyses, and position papers increases the power of the knower to increase their knowledge. There lie vast resources of information, of inspiration, of creativity that can become visible through the internet, which can be digested and then used. There are vast resources in local networks, such as that of University of Ottawa that can be made visible, be it people, organizations, events, research, projects, opportunities, information that answers the question of ‘what is happening locally, and who is doing what, and what could we accomplish together that we can’t accomplish alone?’

All the groups invited were introduced to the Hub and will be given accounts and homepages. In the feedback survey, all groups felt the site had great potential at the university and beyond. In the current environment, although the numbers of ‘civil society’ oriented student groups, particularly international ones, the cycle of activism has been intermittent, owing to student turnover and the large investment of time and energy in mobilizing people around particular campaigns. Carroll (2006) cites democratic media activism (DMA) as playing a crucial role in forming a permanently mobilized global society to replace the intermittent cycles of protest. The student movement has always played an important role in social movements, and the Hub is a platform for activism by providing democratic media. The Hub is not specifically a site for ‘media activism’, but it is a medium for any manner of activism. It is democratic because it lacks the institutional barriers to participation of the uottawa.ca website, any student organization can participate in the main areas of the site and anyone else can use the forums and create groups. Venturelli writes in ‘A Civil Society Approach to the Policies of the Information Society’ “The civil society model of the Information Society leads to a social horizon of broad participation, self-determination, knowledge empowerment and the outward expansion of knowledge capital. I would lay the foundations for the creation and incubation of social institutions from the ground up, initiated by communities themselves, rather than from the top-down initiated by arbitrary state power…Most important, the civil society approach to the Information Society would accelerate social participation in the construction of knowledge systems and self-regulatory structures.”

We have been distracted in the first era of the internet, in my estimation, away from what can be accomplished globally through local networks. We would do well to remember the physicality of the labor movement. There is one great example recalled by the wonderful storyteller Utah Phillips, where labor organizers were jailed in a hastily constructed new facility. They passed a note from cell to cell and at the appointed time began to jump up and down in unison - physically breaking the walls of the poorly constructed jail “thus proving what a union is for, to get things done together that we can’t get done alone” (Phillips, 1999).

Why on earth do we keep hoping to effect the global situation with communication, networks, partnerships, collaborations when we are so poor in these areas at home? We are spending that which we don’t have. Globalization, that grand new term, represents the supposed increasing integration of the world. All over the world, we see that nations are becoming more integrated and interdependent with each other. We come to understand a kind of shared karma in our actions and policies, in the environment, in trade, in the consequences of shared history, in international financial management. We understand, whether we accept the term in a sense of governance, in a sense of our responsibility towards human beings everywhere, we are global citizens. With this integration however, in many, many places, the local situations and communities are becoming more fractured and fragmented and dependent on external actors. Far from integrated is equity itself, with the massive fracture between the rich minority and poor majority. Yet the happiest are not the wealthiest or most powerful, but those with positive relations with their local environment, its geography and nature, its people and its real activities and those who are able maintain self-determination in the new world.

The hub’s great hope is to provide a platform for the local interest in civics and international affairs to vitalize life at the university, to build communities and not simply random groups under super-ordinate ethical goals. These are goals such as ‘health for all’, eradicating poverty, human rights, ending violent conflict, defending the status of women, of aboriginal peoples, protecting human rights. They derive from the ethic of binding our own liberation to that of all peoples. The Hub asks the people who make up the university to respond to the question of how a university can respond to the global situation. The global situation can be ignored, it can by thrown to apathy in deterministic cynicism, it can even be denied but lessons of life teach the wise to accept reality as it is. The paradox is that the more we know, the more we find that is unacceptable. Acceptance of the unacceptable is a call to action and as such acceptance to deal with reality calls one to get involved, to participate, to engage. To engage requires others, to find others requires knowledge of who they are. To engage fully is to recognize the interdependence of development issues while focusing action. To do so requires representations of pluralistic action. To be able to say that a university itself has an active society is to encourage activity and make it known. To do so in a way that makes sense in the digital age is to do so with web technologies that require virtually no expenditure and place few barriers to participation. In doing so, one is able to map one’s own territory, and to know oneself. In knowing oneself, one can deal more intelligently and effectively with the world.

Knowing the world without knowing oneself is simply to be worldly, as such one’s way of working in the world is limited and superficial. Without knowing oneself, one brings weaknesses rather than strengths to partnership. One’s engagement with others tends to be voyeuristic , defensive, patronizing and biased. It is voyeuristic because when our capabilities to act are well beneath our capacity, all we can do is watch. It is defensive because we are coming from weakness where we are expected to have strength. It is patronizing because if we haven’t learnt to value those in our own environment as people, how can we practice humanistic values on those we feel deserve our charity? In other words, how can we practice community-building or participatory development if we don’t do it our selves? It is biased by the nature of people’s inherent centrism, yet biases can be reduced by engaging and involving the local diverse communities. Often, we cannot even answer the difficult questions such as what the privileged community we are coming from is doing beyond the immediate project.

As an example, take a town in Africa that is among the poorest, and so becomes a target for development work. Civil society groups from the north get involved including universities and expectations are raised. The north delivers hundreds of limited projects that bear no relation to one another. As soon as one group disappears another appears. Vast numbers of needs that could be met go unmet because projects rely on one set of expertise while missing the others. People become projects. Students from various universities waif through this town, observe the degradation and if they do will they do get their hands dirty, makes some deep bonds and their lives are changed. They at best provide small help, at worst get in the way. Poverty is a project. If they are wise enough to build relationships and learn experientially, they discover that those they serve have several dimensions of wealth amidst their poverty. One that stands out is community. The local people have greater sense of community, foreigners who get to know them sometimes discover that though they suffer more, they have more happiness than those who have come to help. The visiting worker discovers that he can do so little. At the same time, transnational corporations extract wealth from the countries with impressive effectiveness of networked and organized effort.

If we quote from “When the Wizards Stay Up Late”(Hafner and Lyon, 1996) about the history of computer networking, and interchange the relevant words and the 1965 date and we would have the perfect fit with the scenario here. The only words altered are those in italics “(As Jinha argued in his paper) in 2006, International development at had reached an unfortunate state of affairs, overseas projects were proliferating but there was ‘no common ground for exchange of programs, personnel, experience or ideas.’ His impression of the international development community was “of a number of essentially similar projects, each going off in its own direction with complete disregard for the others.’ Why waste resources?”

It may just be that we feel that the fact we are devoting this time and energy to good works is good enough. It may be that careers take precedence and projects are part of careers, careers of learning and doing things in international development. It may be that international development is thought of as overseas projects and research, is not thought of as part of the institutional fabric of our home nation and institution. It may be that international development comes from a personal inspiration and our personal interests so what we do is go after the best research or go on the best project for us. It may be that we are satisfied with the current relations of development, whose state of inequity affords us opportunities to do interesting and good work, and to document the problems with an impressive array of words and figures and admonitions. It may be that for some reason, “many large universities seemingly have bigger fish to fry and appear to be relatively uninterested in the community in which they happen to be physically located” (Schuler, 1996). It may be that there is not presently a better platform for coordinated university action.

My question for the university, and for academic institutions, is whether we need to know ourselves. Whether we shall continue with one-off projects, or whether we should to organize long-term, multi-faculty partnerships to contribute our research resources, our actionable resources and our networks. Shall we bother to have the discussion across faculties of the policies of the north and the policies of our university that may stand in the way of human rights, health and development? Shall we continue to gather pieces of the puzzle, duplicating our efforts, establishing all sorts of international networks only the department or group that has them knows about? Shall we continue to resist each other, and pursue the grandest of ideals while ignoring the simplest, most direct and most realizable ideal of a community? This is the one ideal that we are poor of in relation to the rest of the world. The world we attempt to help because they are poor in more tangible ways. The rest of the world we cannot effectively help because we are poor in this way.