Welcome to Transition Universities – a website inspired by - For people and planet: Not profit and self-destruction, Can universities make the move towards, or even lead, ‘transition’? – a national weekend conference, held in Winchester in February 2011.
We hope the site will grow and become a valuable resource – perhaps a hub for other university transition events, resources, ideas and conversation.
I have argued for nearly four decades that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that they come to put problems of living at the heart of the enterprise, and do not just acquire knowledge. We need a new kind of academic enterprise which seeks and promotes wisdom – wisdom being understood to be the capacity and active desire to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. A central task of academia ought to be to help us make progress towards as good a world as possible. See my website for more about my work: http://www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk . For an interview on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio about my work see http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2009/01/02/how-to-think-about-science-part-1—24-listen/#episode24 .
In 2003 I founded an international group of academics and educationalists concerned to get into the public arena the idea that we need a revolution in our universities so that they come to seek and promote wisdom, and not just knowledge. The group is called: Friends of Wisdom. Anyone interested is welcome to join. The group’s website is: http://www.knowledgetowisdom.org/ .