History.

On December 2, 2007, Pablo Barrera and Sol Jung participated in the Students for Human Rights and Democratic Education Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. The conference was in collaboration with the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy, organized by our two fellow students, Yu-Chi Kuo and Olivia Clement. During the final student panel discussion with Dr. Henry Teune, Dr. Ira Harkavy and Mr. Jerome J. Shestack, they addressed issues concerning the role of higher education in promoting democracy through its own bureaucracy. They came across the idea of “interchangeable leadership positions.” The basic premise behind this concept was that in a true democracy, every role and position should, in principle, be capable of being exchanged autonomously. In other words, the interchangeability of roles in education would result in an egalitarian academic experience, in which every single participant can have a say in the entire process.

They began to conceptualize this model of education. One of the suggestions that Dr. Teune introduced was a shift towards “canned lectures,” thus allowing more opportunities for the professor-student relationship to develop through interactive research. Higher education institutions, such as MIT, have already begun experimenting with this through their online lectures. The result is a student body having an active role in progressive research with professors acting as guides and contributors, and vice-versa.

After the Conference, they sought ways to implement this model of education and research to the humanities as well as the sciences. Inspired by the Penn Humanities Forum and their guest lectures through which they create an opportunity for the public to interact with the university, and contemporary technology, which allows greater access to information, they tried to find a way in which academic discourse on various subjects could be facilitated through
other mediums, to an interactive audience. As students, they focused on academic writing as one of our main outlets for engaging with professors and other members of academia. They hit upon the idea of students initiating a more aggressive approach to research.

They felt that the way in which academic writing is traditionally used in a university setting was too limited to accommodate this newer concept of interactive research between faculty and students. They acknowledge that higher education institutions are one of the best resources for innovative material, and one of the most conducive environments for interdisciplinary colloquy. Recognizing academic writing as the main resource for academic discourse, they sought to create another venue in which anyone can use academic writing to engage the scholarly community regardless of their academic standing.