Welcome to ‘the core curriculum’

This podcast is trying to give voice to thoughts that might have occurred to you since the pandemic or longer: what are the universities core tasks indeed? 

It’s an outgrowth of the ‘core tasks debate’ at Ghent University, in which the urgency of coming to a feasible budget kneecapped the opportunity to take time to come to terms with that question. The medium of a podcast provides an opportunity to create this much needed time for discussion. The aim of the podcast is to alternate interviews with random UGent’ers from all stripes and colors with interviews with critical friends. 

In the first episode I wanted to take some space to think about that big question myself: what really are my core beliefs about a university, an institution to which I have devoted all my adult life. Therefore, I was thrilled that fellow podcaster and academic Graham Culberson was willing to come on the podcast to bounce our hopes, doubts and aspirations off each other. Graham's own podcast is titled 'everyday anarchism' and I warmly recommend it to anyone interested in how practises of mutual aid define our daily life