At this stage, there has been one meeting to talk about the mutual education projects. I'm busy typing the minutes, but I should mention now that one thing that came out of it was the need for a robust communications network capable of reaching people who don't like email (or phone, or website etc). The more methods of communication you have, the more different sorts of people you can meet. So, this website is only a small part of an intended network of thinkers and doers. It was originally conceived as a bulletin-board, but obviously it provides a good archive too and more possibilities can always be explored.
To clarify what's going on, until the full minutes are posted, here's the email that got everyone together for the meeting.
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The basic idea is to break down the silence that exists between the university and the rest of the community, and within the academic body between different disciplines. There are so many very clever people doing very important work on poverty, war, oppression and exploitation and all the rest of it, and the only people who read their work are a small circle of people in their department. I would like to get a group of progressive students together, not just activists but certainly including them. The idea would be for us to educate each other on the progressive stuff we learn in our disciplines, and steadily widen the circle of people involved and teach in more and more varied ways. The first meeting is going to be introducing ourselves, our interests, and figuring out how this whole mutual education thing might work. If you let me know you're interested, I'll give you place and time details.
Getting a bit more speculative, I think that mutual education can work in as many different ways as people have learning and teaching styles. We can work through lectures, discussions, summary notes, whatever. Public lectures, study groups, pamphlets, articles and so on can all be built quite naturally out of the work we do in the first few months of activity. Anyone can call a meeting through the network, say what topic they're calling a meeting on, ideas on format etc.
Simply informing each other and the rest of society about the issues of the day is not the only thing this group will achieve. We will also steadily build up our own skills as educaters and thinkers. I intend this group to start off as slowly as it needs to and just constantly build, and every step of the way think how that step can contribute to the next.
Purely as a hypothetical example, one person might deliver a talk to the group about the relationship between third-world debt and the opening of economies. A few listeners decide to get together with her, do some research and get together again in a week for a study session. They pool their notes, do a few meetings' worth of polishing and voila, the mutual education network has a new improved version of the original talk, probably with links to the other peoples' interests blended in. It is probably of high enough quality for someone to base a public talk on.
And so on. Every step positions them for another (as do all the steps people are taking on other projects).
Perhaps get some lecturers interested. As I said, this is all speculative.
I'd also like to think that in the long run, it'll inform our more physical activism and give us some guidance in the serious task of winning this thing.
