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‘Public scholarship’ uses academic research to help social groups respond to civic problems. Drawing on two distinct genealogies of public scholarship, I elaborate on an internal distinction between the ‘public intellectual’ and ‘engaged scholar’. Then, mapping this distinction onto my own research trajectory from theory to practice to engagement, I argue that scholarly focus on community practices can be as removed from public problem-solving as academic theory, whereas engaged scholarship is more accountable to the demands of justice. As ‘public scholarship’ and its various cognates increasingly become corporate-speak in higher education, the scholars and communities who are the progenitors of engaged scholarship should lead the development of the ‘engaged university’.

This article explores the concept of engaged scholarship, which involves conducting research in collaboration with communities and addressing social and political issues. The authors argue that scholarship should be politically engaged and take into account the perspectives and contexts of the communities being studied. They highlight the need for reflexivity, responsibility, and reciprocity in the research process, as well as the importance of challenging traditional disciplinary boundaries. The article provides examples of engaged scholarship and offers practical suggestions for incorporating this type of work in academia. It is supported by the Social Science Research Council's Religion and the Public Sphere Program and The Henry Luce Foundation, and encourages scholars to examine how their research can contribute to social change during a time of political strife and climate crisis, emphasizing the importance of critical reflection. [Extracted from the article]

The anthropocentrism debate, which centers on the place and status of environmental values, has been a core issue for environmental ethics since the field's beginning in the 1970s. Nonanthropocentrists attribute value to non-human nature directly, while anthropocentrists claim that humans hold a certain priority. While the debate has produced a wide variety of interesting philosophical positions, it has not achieved its implicit goal of cultural reform. This is not because philosophers fail to agree on a tenable position, but because the debate is misconceived. Both sides of the debate assume that agreement on common values, worldviews, and substantive positions is prerequisite to cultural reform. Pragmatic criticism of this assumption, however, displays its underlying faults, while pragmatic inquiry into the field's development displays how scholars are already generating methods more commensurate with the goal of cultural reform. Philosophers invested in changing public values should transition from debates in axiology (the study of values) to debating method, where axiology is just one method among others and not the one best suited to supporting cultural reform. A historical survey of the field suggests what scholars of environmental ethics are learning about methods that are both publicly engaged and culturally transformative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]