Trust, critical hope and the contemporary university

This chapter focuses on our pedagogy as a critical site where universities explicitly serve society by adopting a critical hope mindset to respond to the challenges facing society and, by doing so, re-establishing trust. Turning to understanding why trust matters, we begin by emphasising that trust is an essential condition for the functioning of democratic social and political systems. Consequently, we must reimagine the contemporary university as a space where the project of building trust and hope is clearly articulated and embedded throughout. Given the place of universities mainly within urban settings as well as a highly educated academic workforce, higher education is often perceived as a space primarily composed of elites with little understanding of the daily challenges faced by the rest of society. In many ways, we as scholars have sown the seeds of scepticism in expert systems. There are a number of levels that a new social contract for universities could be manifested.