Session 6: Training, Access and Self-Potential
Chair: Carole Doyle

Doorkeepers-in-Training? Kafka, the Law Faculty and Access to Justice
Aisha Topsakal
Lawyer and Project Coordinator, Éducaloi, Montréal, Canada

As a corporate presence is increasingly felt in North American law faculties, there is an ever-growing danger that the law student’s world (both academically and, later, professionally) will slide inexorably toward the ‘Kafkaesque’. Increasingly, law faculties will support the proliferation of stern doorkeepers barring access to the Law, unquestioning functionaries who are unaware of the ‘big picture’, and unknowable bureaucratic structures. Such elements are the polar opposite of the notions of access to justice and democracy, which are often heralded as the legal community’s guiding principles. The paper examines the urgent need to identify and forcefully resist the ‘Kafkaesque’ in law faculties, as these institutions have the potential to be the ultimate “door” between the public at large and the Law (indeed, just as all university faculties are the ideal link between the public and society’s institutions of power).
Drawing on Milan Kundera’s analysis of the work of Franz Kafka as a reflection of one possibility of the human condition – one that exhibits itself not only in totalitarian political regimes, but also in the far more personal arenas of family and work – the author explores what can be done to move away from the ‘Kafkaesque’ law faculty, in order to ensure a “door to the Law” that is open to all. Reflecting on her own legal education, the author outlines a number of specific steps that should be implemented throughout the law school stages of entry, study and exit: actively encouraging student diversity (culture, income, political leanings, viewpoints, etc.), minimizing on-campus private sector presence while maximizing opportunities for community outreach, and introducing post-graduation support for “non-traditional” and public interest careers. Just as ‘Kafkaesque’ elements have a tendency to become a vicious circle, there exists the parallel likelihood that the author's proposed action plan will become a self-reinforcing cycle that promotes increased access to justice.

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The Analysis of Innovative Potential of the Czech Universities: The Real (Im)Possibility
Anna Vitaskova
Department of Sociology of Education and Stratification, The New Anglo-American College in Prague, Czech Republic

A successful knowledge-driven society is based on its ability to produce knowledge and innovation through a maximal utilization of disembodied human capital (i.e., research). In this sense, all public institutions of higher education are expected to play a key role. Yet, when we examine the extent in which the Czech system of higher education develops and supports a high level of disembodied forms of human capital, several issues raises immediately. First, despite many governmental efforts, the Czech system of higher education still belongs among the so-called post-Soviet model of higher education (i.e., separation of teaching and research) that tends to be a hindrance to the effective production of economically and/or socially useful knowledge. Second, a little evidence is available on the correlation between university research production and its impact on innovation potential of the Czech Republic . Therefore, the purpose of this research project is to examine, theoretically as well as empirically, the effects of university research on the overall innovation potential of the Czech Republic . More specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: What type of research the Czech system of higher education predominantly produces? Is there any collaboration with other knowledge producing entities? And if so, how effective is this collaboration? What are the overall effects of university knowledge production on competitiveness of the Czech Republic ?

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What would Hegel do? Desire and Recognition in the Pedagogical Relation
Amy Swiffen
Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

This is a paper about anxiety and recognition in the pedagogical encounter. This paper is also about the anxiety and recognition in dialogue between the ego and the object. I explore this anxiety and dialogue in the context of the pedagogical relation in higher education. Student silence becomes a symptom in the pedagogy literature, in critical pedagogy it is taken as something that blocks learning and simultaneously the point on which emphasis on dialogue is potentiated. In Lacanese, dialogue, and its conditions of possibility, signifies the turn into the symbolic away from the anxiety-producing real of silence. Through Hegel and Freud, I argue that student silence is uncanny in the pedagogical relation because it makes manifest a desire for recognition through its refusal. Pedagogical techniques which attempt to overcome student silence too frequently position themselves to be recognised as eliciting those students voices, instead of being dependent upon them. Through Lacan, I explore the inevitability of this anxiety and the implications for pedagogical practices.

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