ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a conception of ecological inquiry that will help to reorient universities in the direction of the world. It would help to redirect universities away from a preoccupation with their own fortunes. The ecological university evinces a care towards knowledge, in all of its creative, humanitarian, professional, artistic, embodied and scientific forms. Institutional self-scrutiny is triply desirable for the ecological university. First, self-scrutiny is desirable especially here because it would help to unite theory and practice. Second, institutional self-scrutiny on the part of the ecological university would open a space for a continuing working through what it means to be ecological. A knowledge ecosystem is irredeemably intertwined in the wider knowledge society. In such a society, knowledge and indeed inquiry are ubiquitous; they are not dependent on any particular institution – such as the university – for its epistemological resources.
