This paper provides examples of activities that can be carried out by Spanish-speaking professors who are willing to step outside of the classroom walls with their students and participate in community projects--to help democratize the various forms of cultural capital as well as promote social justice and political awareness by working hand in hand with social activists. Professors and students can form an integral part of projects that in turn can assist in questioning, reevaluating, and redefining ways of understanding the university and its public role. Professors should coordinate their efforts in order to question national, disciplinary, and mental barriers which in practice operate as a form of censorship--including imaginary barriers that often separate academics and scientists from the rest of the population--in order to coordinate a counterhegemonic project committed to social and environmental justice. It is also up to them to begin to expand, improve, and redefine the general public perception of university professors by making themselves useful and visible to various local and global communities. Finally, it is up to professors to defend the university as one of the few public spheres in which it is still possible to promote critical thinking, political pedagogy, and the basic egalitarian values associated with citizenship, participation and democracy; values that are radically incompatible with the social and economic Darwinism promoted by today's neoliberal revolution.