The invisible obstacle to genuine partnerships between institutions of higher education and communities is a hierarchical “politics of knowledge” that limits our ability to act and to think. Technocracy is concentrated and horded knowledge power. It comes from the sort of knowledge-making and teaching which dominate in research universities. These have narrowed professional identities from “civic” to “disciplinary.” Dominant models of knowledge-making have also undercut the authority of forms of knowledge which are not academic – wisdom passed down by cultural elders, spiritual insight, local and craft knowledge, the common sense of a community about raising children. As former Occidental College president Ted Mitchell has observed, one percent of Americans or less produce the knowledge that “counts.”

Today, technocratic politics is confronted by an angry, aggrieved “Know-Nothing” politics that disparages academic knowledge, science, and professional practices of all kinds in the name of community and personal experience. This has been long developing. At the heart of “the Reagan Revolution,” it was on full display in the rallies of Sarah Palin.

If we are to build people’s civic agency – capacities to work across differences to meet our common challenges – we need to democratize the politics of knowledge. This means putting science and academic knowledge in the mix, “on tap, not on top.” And it means recognizing the power and also the limits of communal knowledge.

Civic politics of common work – the insight out of community organizing that people can work together even if they disagree or dislike each other -- is the way to democratize the politics of knowledge. Higher education, to realize its extraordinary potential as an agent and architect of a democratic society in the 21st century, will have to take leadership in spreading civic politics. This will entail becoming familiar with and incorporating elements of the organizing tradition which nourishes democratic communities and also claiming higher education’s potential role as a “cultural organizer” that broadens the public imagination about democratic possibilities.