At first sight, the very term ‘the activist university’ may seem strange. Universities have to be active in all manner of ways – insofar as we can attribute actions to large complex institutions – but ‘activist’? An activist is someone who takes up the cudgels in a cause, who contends against an enemy and demonstrates for and even fights for a cause. Students may be activists in movements of radical politics and can be seen resisting and even attacking the forces of the state. But what might it mean for their university, indeed any university, to be an activist university? I argue that the term ‘the activist university’ opens to different meanings. The concept of the activist university is a space in which alternative interpretations jostle with each other. These different readings are expressive of competing senses of the responsibilities of the university and its place in society. Academic activism lends itself to a panoply of stances. Nevertheless, I argue that academic activism is a universal category that gains its fullest realization when it is exhibited in a situation of epistemic injustice and is an expression of epistemic agency.

乍一看，“激进大学”这个词似乎很奇怪。大学必须以各种方式活跃起来（就我们可以将行动归因于大型复杂机构而言），但是“活跃主义者”呢？激进主义者是在事业中担当重任的人，与敌人竞争并为事业而游行甚至为之奋斗。学生可能是激进政治运动中的激进主义者，可以看到他们抵抗甚至攻击国家力量。但是，对于他们的大学（实际上是任何一所大学）来说，成为激进主义大学意味着什么？我认为“激进大学”一词具有不同的含义。激进大学的概念是一个空间，不同的解释相互碰撞。这些不同的读物表达了对大学责任及其在社会中的地位的相互竞争的感觉。学术行动主义使人们拥护各种立场。不过，我认为，学术行动主义是一个普遍的范畴，当它在认识论不公正的情况下表现出来并成为认识论代理的一种表达时，它会得到最充分的认识。