Institutional Quixotism: An Ethic of Responsible Custodianship in Irresponsible Times

Institutional Quixotism advances a philosophy of academic life grounded in custodianship and ethical resistance.  Drawing inspiration from Don Quixote not as a parable of delusion but as an ethic of principled idealism, this paper argues that universities are not possessions to be managed but legacies to be tended.It proposes an aspirational code of conduct oriented toward stewardship, collegial self-governance, solidarity, and humane scholarship.

The work outlines a mode of academic practice that prioritises meaning over metrics, kindness over compliance, and duty over ambition. It frames quixotism not as a grand gesture but as a pattern of small, deliberate acts: defending imaginative spaces, naming harm where it occurs, absorbing institutional pressures that would otherwise fall on the vulnerable, and sustaining a commitment to the unfinished, the speculative, and the transgressive. It embraces the inevitability of failure not as justification for disengagement but as evidence of the necessity of continuing the fight—however unwinnable, however exhausting-for the kind of academic life in which we can still recognise ourselves when we look in the mirror.