ABSTRACT
The idea of universities engaging with the world has been taken up quite a bit in the recent higher education literature. This chapter expresses that the idea of engagement is especially helpful in fleshing out the idea of the ecological university, but that differences between distinctive metaphors of engagement need to be observed. It briefly explores the idea of engagement. There is a difference between an instrumental way of engaging with the world and a hermeneutic way of engaging with the world; of imposition and of understanding. The concept of entanglement helps to bring out the interactive connotations of engagement that are connected with the idea of engagement. The matter of engagement raises issues about the way in which the university addresses the whole Earth, and uses its collective imagination to discern possibilities for transformation, both inwardly and outwardly.
