Abstract
University partnerships with surrounding communities are considered by many to be a good idea, and we agree.¹ But partnerships also bring to light borders that exist between universities and communities that may need to be acknowledged in order for universities to do their best work. In this chapter, we locate this volume’s desire to improve conditions for inclusive deliberative democracy at the border between communities and universities. We are concerned with the tendency of the community-university boundary to limit local public imagination—to limit what constitutes engagement, what public life is good for, and how to relate to one another