Category: Challenges

AI Challenges Commentary Contemporary Issues

AI & The Privatization of Thought

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 18 February 2026
No Comments on AI & The Privatization of Thought

The Structure of Enclosure The enclosure of the English commons in the eighteenth century followed a predictable pattern. Land that had been worked collectively—grazed, gleaned, gathered—was reclassified through legal mechanism […]

AI Challenges Commentary Contemporary Issues

AI & The New Faculty of Divinity

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 4 February 2026
No Comments on AI & The New Faculty of Divinity

It was premature to declare the world disenchanted. Max Weber announced the death of magic a century ago, and for a time it seemed he was right. The gods retreated […]

AI Challenges Commentary Contemporary Issues Core Theory University World News Contributions

Digital tools are not the problem; it’s their governance

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 24 January 2026
No Comments on Digital tools are not the problem; it’s their governance

This article first appeared on University World News on 21 January 2026. If the university had a ‘Like’ button, it would be a small confession of defeat. A button is […]

Challenges Commentary Contemporary Issues

The University as Booster Rocket: How Higher Education Is Engineering Its Future

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 20 January 2026
No Comments on The University as Booster Rocket: How Higher Education Is Engineering Its Future

A different kind of silence is settling over contemporary universities. It is not the contemplative quiet of libraries, nor the productive hush of laboratories. It is the silence of a […]

Challenges Commentary Contemporary Issues

Twelve Observations on the End of the University

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 13 January 2026
No Comments on Twelve Observations on the End of the University

A Prologue A particular kind of silence descends upon a lecture hall after the last student has left. It is not empty—it hums with the residue of attention, the ghost […]

Challenges Contemporary Issues Core Theory University World News Contributions

The gap between theory and practice: A bridge to nowhere

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 18 December 2025
No Comments on The gap between theory and practice: A bridge to nowhere

This article first appeared on University World News We have built the theoretical half of a bridge. It is elegant in places, diligently maintained in others, and inspected with great […]

Challenges Commentary Contemporary Issues University World News Contributions

About the digital divide: Bandwidth is a right to research

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 4 December 2025
No Comments on About the digital divide: Bandwidth is a right to research

This article first appeared on University World News We used to imagine isolation through geography: a university at the end of a long road, a library without the book you […]

Challenges Commentary Contemporary Issues University World News Contributions

On limited research grants: The economics of borrowed answers

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 20 November 2025
No Comments on On limited research grants: The economics of borrowed answers

This article first appeared on University World News There is a comforting fable about research in Africa. It begins with a noble problem and ends with a grant. On the […]

Challenges Key Insights

How five blind spots have trapped higher education in a fog of its own making

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 8 November 2025
No Comments on How five blind spots have trapped higher education in a fog of its own making

There is a powerful sense of déjà vu that haunts the halls of higher education. We are, by any measure, in a state of perpetual, frantic activity. Our calendars are […]

Challenges University World News Contributions

On overcrowding and infrastructure: The ‘great unlearning’

Post author By K Kefale
Post date 23 October 2025
No Comments on On overcrowding and infrastructure: The ‘great unlearning’

This article first appeared on University World News Massification has a triumphant sound. It suggests inclusion, a democratic widening of gates that were, for too long, kept narrow. Photographs cooperate: […]