Universities,the Social Sciences,and Civil Society

Both the ambiguity of the term, civil society, and its protean meanings are presented as well as the ambiguous and contradictory links between higher education and civil society. For depending upon who is doing the defining, civil society can have a number of definitions, both positive and negative. The term can designate a market economy as distinct from a planned (socialist) economy, a democratic society as distinct from an undemocratic society. It can also designate a society that while “civil” at home is not so beyond its borders. Civil society should stand for participatory democracy and tolerance at personal, national, and international levels. Universities, however, as national entities have frequently contributed to lack of civility in society and to chauvinism, intolerance, racism, and to eventual ethnic cleansing. Examples, drawn from the post‐1990 history of Yugoslavia, are cited. Yet with a proper attitude towards teaching and learning based on three fundamental approaches, knowledge and understanding of the “other”, moral education in a broad sense, and what the author qualifies as “education sentimentale”, the university can develop as an engine for tolerance and peace, the true essence of a true civil society.