Transformation of the University: Hopeful Futures for Higher Education 0367610264, 9780367610265

Citation preview

Transformation of the University

Transformation of the University imagines preferable futures for the university, building hope for the institution’s necessary transformation. It transcends old criticisms and presents fresh ideas on how the institution might be conceived, organised and put into practice while safeguarding that which makes it a university – the pursuit of knowledge. This book is divided into three main parts: Part One – ‘Knowledge’ assumes the role of the university in generating knowledge for the benefit of society; Part Two – ‘Cultural Growth’ expands on how the university might contribute to and benefit from the cultural growth of society, with both explicit and implicit connections to social and epistemic (in)justice; and Part Three – ‘Institutions’ focuses on imaginative processes for enacting the university as an institution that meets the unforeseen future challenges facing societies around the world. With contributions from scholars across the world, Transformation of the University is an essential read for all academics, practitioners, institutional leaders and broad social thinkers who are concerned with the future of the university and its contributions to society. Søren S. E. Bengtsen is Associate Professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is the Co-Director of the research centre ‘Centre for Higher Education Futures’ and is also a founding member and Chair of the international academic association ‘Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society’. Ryan Evely Gildersleeve is Professor of Higher Education and Associate Dean for the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver, USA.

World Issues in the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Series Series Editors: Professor Ronald Barnett, University College London, Institute of Education, UK Associate Professor Søren S. E. Bengtsen, Aarhus University, Denmark Professor Nuraan Davids, Stellenbosch University, South Africa This series addresses key themes within the area of philosophy and social theory of higher education. International in both appeal and scope, it uses cutting-edge research to inform an understanding of both the place of higher education in the world and the many challenges that the world is facing. Volumes examine policy and practical issues including, for example, internationalisation, institutional leadership, and learning in the digital era as well as more conceptual and theoretical issues such as ethics, wellbeing, the societal value and impact of research, higher education as a set of ‘public goods’ and what it is to design a university in a globalised world. Written by leading experts in the field, the books within this series have four key aims: • • • •

to encourage and influence discussions around higher education futures, and to engage with political, social, and cultural differences and tensions to provide a platform for new work in the developing field of the philosophy and social theory of higher education to reach out widely - to all those in and around higher education, at all levels in the system and beyond (for example in policy networks) to encourage the growth of the field

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/World-Issues-In-The-Philosophy-and-theory-of-higher-education/ book-series/WPTHE Transformation of the University Hopeful Futures for Higher Education Søren S.E. Bengtsen and Ryan Evely Gildersleeve

Transformation of the University Hopeful Futures for Higher Education

Edited by Søren S. E. Bengtsen and Ryan Evely Gildersleeve

Cover image: © Getty Images First published 2022 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Søren S. E. Bengtsen and Ryan Evely Gildersleeve; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Søren S. E. Bengtsen and Ryan Evely Gildersleeve to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-55810-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-61026-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-10292-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922 Typeset in Bembo by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

List of contributorsvii Introduction: Understanding the transformation of the university1 Søren S. E. Bengtsen & Ryan Evely Gildersleeve Part I

Knowledge11 1 The university as honest broker Sharon Rider

13

2 Trust, critical hope and the contemporary university James Arvanitakis & David J. Hornsby

27

3 Transcending a single reality: Transdisciplinarity, the emerging forces of spirituality and a pedagogy of self-cultivation Paul Gibbs

44

Part II

Cultural Growth

59

4 Decolonial reparation as re-humanisation in higher education Nuraan Davids

61

vi  Contents

5 Unfixing the university: Higher education and the ontology of travel Søren Bengtsen & Ryan Evely Gildersleeve 6 Towards decolonisation and transformation in universities: Foregrounding Indigenous and transcultural knowledge systems and communities Catherine Manathunga, Jennifer Carter & Maria Raciti

78

92

Part III

Institutions109 7 University challenge: Realising utopias in the twenty-first century Ronald Barnett

111

8 Looking for hope abroad: The new global university beyond neoliberalism125 Gerardo L. Blanco & Abdulghani Muthanna 9 Programme ‘Future-se’: Brazilian higher education meets neoliberalism Alexandre Guilherme & Fernanda Felix de Oliveira

139

10 What comes after the ruin?: Designing for the arrival of preferable futures for the university156 Rikke Toft Nørgård Coda: Trust and vision175 Søren Bengtsen & Ryan E. Gildersleeve Index179

List of contributors

Professor James Arvanitakis is the Executive Director of the Australian

American Fulbright Commission and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society (Western Sydney University), having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as the Milward L Simpson Fulbright Fellow. James is internationally recognised for his innovative teaching, receiving the Prime Minister’s University Teacher of the Year Award (2012) and named an Eminent Researcher by the Australia India Education Council (2015). In 2021, he was appointed the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia and is an academic fellow of the Australia India Institute. Ronald Barnett is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at University College

London Institute of Education. He is a past Chair of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE), was awarded the inaugural prize by the European Association for Educational Research for his ‘outstanding contribution to Higher Education Research, Policy and Practice’ and is the inaugural President of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the SRHE and the Higher Education Academy, has produced around 35 books and 200 papers, given 150 keynote talks across the world and is a consultant in the university sector. Søren S. E. Bengtsen is an Associate Professor in Higher Education at the

Department of Educational Philosophy and General Education, Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, Denmark. Also, at Aarhus University, he is the Co-Director of the research centre ‘Centre for Higher Education Futures’ (CHEF). Bengtsen is a founding member and Chair of the international academic association ‘Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society’ (PaTHES). His main research areas include the philosophy of higher education, educational philosophy, higher education policy and practice, and doctoral education and supervision.

viii  List of contributors

Gerardo L. Blanco is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and

Higher Education, and associate director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College. He is also a Fulbright Specialist and a former Erasmus+ Teaching Fellow. His research explores the intersections of quality and internationalisation in higher education and is motivated by a commitment to global social justice and a deep curiosity for the ways higher education institutions define, improve and communicate their value to different stakeholder groups. His teaching, research and consulting have taken place in 15 countries and 5 continents. An interdisciplinary scholar, theoretically informed by Postcolonial Theory and Poststructuralism, his research has been published in Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, the Comparative Education Review and the Review of Higher Education. Gerardo has held leadership roles in the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), and the Association for the Study of Higher Education Council for International Higher Education. He serves on several editorial boards. In 2017, he received the ‘Best Research Article Award’ from the Comparative & International Education Society’s Higher Education SIG. In 2014 and 2020, his work received honourable mentions from the same organisation. Gerardo has been a visiting faculty member at Shaanxi Normal University (China), visiting expert at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel (Germany) and teaching fellow at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland). Professor Jennifer Carter is Geography Discipline Leader at USC. Jennifer

has over 20 years of experience in geographical research, including in Indigenous geography, which her research, teaching and PhD student supervision has contributed to decolonising higher education and environmental management structures and processes to be more inclusive of Aboriginal Australians and Indigenous peoples elsewhere. Jennifer is Vice-President (President Elect) of the Institute of Australian Geographers, an elected Member of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and an Editorial Board Member of Geographical Research. Nuraan Davids is a Professor of Philosophy of Education in the Faculty of

Education at Stellenbosch University. Her research interests include democratic citizenship education, Islamic philosophy of education and philosophy of higher education. She is a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2020–2021). Her recent books include Academic activism in higher education: A living philosophy for social justice (Springer, 2021; with Y. Waghid), Teaching, friendship & humanity (Springer, 2020; with Y. Waghid) and Teachers matter: Educational philosophy and authentic learning (Rowman & Littlefield – Lexington Series, 2020; with Y. Waghid).

List of contributors ix

Paul Gibbs is Emeritus Professor of Middlesex University and founder of

the Centre for Education Research and Scholarship and has held visiting professor status at UTS Sydney and Azerbaijan and East European Universities. His is a fellow of ATLAS (Texas University) and of the Centre for Higher Education Policy, New College Oxford. He has published extensively on higher education including the marketing of higher education, Heidegger, transdisciplinarity, quality assurance and values and duties. He is also the series editor of SpringerBriefs. Ryan Evely Gildersleeve is an Associate Dean and Professor in the

Morgridge College of Education at University of Denver, United States. His research investigates the relationship between postsecondary education and democracy, working across the philosophical foundations of tertiary education and social research, and the cultural analysis of educational opportunity. His work takes form as philosophy, critical ethnography and critical policy studies. Gildersleeve’s current empirical research investigates the role of income-share agreements in postsecondary education affordability in the United States. His philosophical work focuses on the future of the University and a new social contract for higher education globally. In 2019, he was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Spencer Foundation. Previously, he received honours and awards from the National Academy of Education, American Educational Research Association, National Association for College Admission Counseling and the Association for the Study of Higher Education. Gildersleeve received his PhD in Education and his MA in Higher Education and Organizational Change from UCLA. He is a graduate of Occidental College. Alexandre Guilherme is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities at

the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul, PUCRS, Brazil. He is the Coordinator of the Research Group on Education and Violence (CNPq, Brazilian Ministry of Education), Reader at the UNESCO Chair of Youth, Education and Society (Brasilia) and National Coordinator of Teacher Education at the Brazilian Ministry of Education. Dr David J. Hornsby is a Professor in the Norman Paterson School of International

Affairs and the Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning) Carleton University, Ottawa. Prior, David held faculty positions at University College London and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg South Africa. David’s research interests pertain to the politics of science and risk in international governance, Canadian foreign policy in Sub-Saharan Africa, South African foreign policy, middle power cooperation and pedagogy in higher education. David has published in both the biological and social sciences and is a recognised lecturer and researcher.

x  List of contributors

Professor Catherine Manathunga is the Deputy Head of School (Research) of

the School of Education and Tertiary Access, Professor of Education Research and Co-Director of the Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre at the University of Sunshine Coast, Australia. She is an historian with 30 years of experience in historical, sociological and cultural studies research, which has focused on decolonisation and transcultural and First Nations doctoral education. She is the Chair of the Australian Community of Associate Deans Research in Education Network and had lengthy experience in engaging with and consulting for culturally diverse and Indigenous peoples in Australia and internationally. Abdulghani Muthanna, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of

Teacher Education, Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. He has a considerable teaching experience at national and international basic and higher education institutions. He has won several teaching and research awards. His research has been published in international journals and books. With interdisciplinary research interests, the focus is on teacher education policy and implementation, research ethics and supervision, qualitative inquiry, teaching philosophy and pedagogy, teacher agency, professional identity development, conflict and education, and lifelong collaboration. Rikke Toft Nørgård is an Associate Professor in Educational Design &

Technology at The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, where she is also Coordinator of the MA in ICT-Based Educational Design and Steering group member of Centre for Higher Education Futures (CHEF). She is board member of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (PaTHES) and Co-leader of the national DUN-SIG on Digital Pedagogy & Learning in Higher Education. Dr Nørgård’s research focuses on the complexities, challenges and potentials of education, design, technology and philosophy in relation to the future of higher education and the university. Fernanda Felix de Oliveira holds a master’s degree in philosophy and is currently

a PhD student in the Department of Education at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul, PUCRS, Brazil. Maria Raciti is a Professor of Marketing at the University of the Sunshine

Coast, Australia. Maria is passionate about social justice, particularly redressing educational inequality. Professor Raciti is a Co-Director of the Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre, an Adjunct Fellow with the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education and was part of an Australian Government departmental task force that led to sector-wide reform to tertiary education. Maria is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), is regularly engaged as an expert advisor and has undertaken several large-scale research projects that have produced meaningful and impactful outcomes.

List of contributors xi

Sharon Rider is a Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Uppsala University, and

former vice-dean of the Faculty of Arts. In 2015, she was the first recipient of the national HumTank award for ‘having “with acuity and courage” defended education and academic activity from external controls, short-sighted demands for utility and quality assessment exercises that fail to capture their real value’. She is currently Deputy Director of Engaging Vulnerability, a decade-long interdisciplinary research program hosted by Uppsala University with funding from the Swedish Research Council that examines vulnerability as a productive set of relations. Rider’s work belongs broadly to philosophical anthropology, with an emphasis on how epistemic issues are connected to forms of life.

Introduction Understanding the transformation of the university Søren S. E. Bengtsen & Ryan Evely Gildersleeve

Is there a need for transformation? The university as a social and political institution has always been an arena of, and for, institutional and curricular change. As Rüegg (2003) and his team of experts in university history have described, the university has moved from a peripheral social and political role to, over the centuries, assume a still increasingly central role and becoming still more inextricably linked to societal powers being it the church, the prince, the king or, more recently, the state. Student segments have changed as have the variation of academic disciplines, the focus and diversity of educational programmes, together with institutional infrastructure and educational policy. As Barnett (2011) argues, even the very of the idea of the university has changed – or perhaps more precisely, various different ideas of the university have been added to the growing range of roles, purposes and expectations of the institution and higher education. However, change and transformation are not the same thing. The university has changed significantly over the centuries (even recent decades) but has it ever transformed? Despite the institutional and curricular changes, many of the teaching and learning practices have stayed much the same (or very similar). The format of the lecture is as old as the institution itself, and the use of the seminar as teaching format (smaller classroom sessions) goes at least several centuries back. Colleges, libraries, auditoriums, aulas, study halls, and cantinas and recreation areas have always been a central part of the institutional design and physical and social framing of the university. As Bengtsen and Barnett (2020) argue, we may even identify deeper academic virtues connecting universities into a common culture despite their national and institutional differences. So, despite the changes of the university and higher education, have they ever transformed – and should they? In the present volume, we argue that we need to understand what kind of DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-1

2  Søren S. E. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

transformation the university and higher education should aim for – which does not ‘simply’ include more changes organisationally and educationally to fit predominant policies of globalisation and professionalisation. We argue that where change repeats a logic of ‘sameness’, transformation of the university is connected with otherness and a truly open and inclusive institutional project. ‘Neoliberal Higher Education’ is a common moniker for describing the contemporary condition of higher education. It means to demarcate the pervasiveness of neoliberal socioeconomic concepts that currently organise and drive higher education institutions. These concepts are often summarised as the ‘four C’s’ of neoliberalism: competition, commodification, consumerism and corporatisation. Scholars from all disciplines, different institutional types and across international contexts have decried the effects of neoliberalism on higher education, as well as the affective consequences on its faculty and students (Sims, 2020; Smyth, 2018). Some scholars have called for resistance strategies, while others advocate a wholesale overthrow and revolution to dismantle the neoliberal regime and its stranglehold on academe. Such calls, unintentionally perhaps, often harken back to a ‘golden age’ of higher education wherein institutions were well-resourced with public support, the Faculty were the locus of control in shared governance arrangements and academic freedom was revered as an absolute good that ought never be challenged. The golden age of higher education defined the institution by its public good mission, rather than its private good outcomes. Or so, the lore now goes. In fact, higher education had problems before the neoliberal regime took hold. • • •

The public support of institutions seemed ok with the systematic exclusion of vast swaths of the population. The faculty that controlled institutions was by and large white, male and from wealthy, highly-educated families. The concept of academic freedom did not have to contend with identity politics and social media, nor globalisation.

Neoliberalism has actually contributed to the amelioration of some of these concerns, while exacerbating others. At many universities around the world, there are inspiring examples of academic practices and pedagogies, which actually have seemed to become more inclusive and able to embrace differences in gender, social background, age and ethnicity. Beyond responding to the past, neoliberalism continues to transform the institution in some unseen and perhaps unforeseen ways that create newly destructive (and perhaps generative?) social concerns, particularly of the academic kind (Bengtsen & Barnett, 2019). Our aim is not to re-vilify or valorise neoliberalism but instead to challenge current attempts to deconstruct the understanding of universities and higher education without really reconstructing them and offering any credible alternative

Introduction 3

institutional realities and academic practices. Also, we do not wish to return to a lurid vision of the past, neither do we want to presume a determined academic future. It is undeniable that the contemporary condition of higher education in the West, including its neoliberal markings, needs something different. The contemporary condition has arrested the knowledge imperative of academe (Gildersleeve, 2016). Academic knowledge is truncated in ways that endanger the academy’s ability to contribute to the most pressing problems of the planet today. Academics themselves, and perhaps students too, are made alien from the social contexts that our institutions are meant to reflect and produce. That is, we have become too far removed from the practicalities of daily life while simultaneously we have removed the provocations afforded by our abstracted theorisation and philosophy. We see in the increasing volume and scope of discussions on academic freedom, that the feeling of alienation and the experience of being enslaved by policy regimes, grows in students of higher education and in their teachers and leaders too (Rider, 2018; Wright & Shore, 2018). The feeling of being caught up in a deterministic and fatebound mechanic wheel is for some overwhelming, and we rarely hear the institution being celebrated by its most loyal members and most important stakeholders. We need a new kind of institution, a new discursive pivot and a new movement for academe. And that is where we hope this volume can carve some space to help begin thinking through. Around the world, we start to see the rise of new student protest movements, and we see a new wave of activism pushing through on the political and societal scene (Davids & Waghid, 2021; Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021). However, in spite of the honesty and realness of such frustrations and feelings of disempowerment, there are, by these movements themselves, offered very few alternatives. If a more sustainable and responsible transformation of our universities is called for, we need also to work in the depths – and be able to offer sound and informed alternative higher education futures. In a broad sense, we argue that the neoliberal regime might very well be a symptom, rather than the disease itself. Treating the symptom (e.g., resistance) might not necessarily cure that which ails our institution. It might indeed simply mask a more menacing virus. Yet, we have not yet identified a more perfect disease to attack. Neoliberalism, like the skin of a snake, might be something we need to work through to shed, emerging with new scales and heightened senses once we’ve slipped through its confines. In fact, we do not yet know how permanent the neoliberal regime might be. It could productively be a moment in higher education’s history that passes with a new revelation brought on by the digital age. It could be an inflection or tipping point, which might be painful, but necessary for an abundant vitality to come. Our emphasis in challenging neoliberalism’s determinacy for higher education is to bring focus to the potential for transformation that is our contemporary condition.

4  Søren S. E. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

Aims of the volume Our aim with the volume is three-fold, as we focus on academic transformation in relation to: (a) knowledge, (b) cultural growth and (c) institutions. First, we wish to cultivate a new vision for academic knowledge. Here, the goal is to clarify the importance of linking students (and teachers) of higher education to the knowledge for which they study. Academic knowledge creation should respond to contemporary identity crises of refugees and unvoluntary cultural nomadicism, just as it should relate to discussions of radical nationalism and cultural exclusion. Of course, academic knowledge should not be reduced to current, fluctuating, debates and discourses in our socio-political or sociocultural surroundings, but it should be related and connected to such debates, identities, and personal and societal concerns – so that knowledge creation becomes engaged, felt and lived. Second, we wish to seize the opportunity to catalyse cultural growth. Here, the goal is to sculpt out the language and mindset we need when speaking directly to external organisations, companies, institutions, social, cultural and political stakeholders, bodies and civil societies. We argue that we need to focus even more specifically on how to build the architecture of an academic language and mindset for cultural growth, which may lie in a blind angle to our traditional academic discourse. This does not mean that we need a business-like sales-rhetoric. Rather, we need – and very much so – an academic language and mindset that speaks not only to social domains and civic groups, also from and with those that our institutions see as allies, co-members and fellow citizens. And this language must be fashioned in in an honest, credible and convincing way. This is in itself a daunting and challenging task, but one that must be tackled, and immediately so. Finally, we wish to articulate a new terminology for voicing our institutions. Here, the goal is to re-invigorate the idea of institutional leadership and explore the vision and academic responsibilities of presidents, provosts, vice-chancellors, deans and professors. Whereas the research into future learning and teaching practices has continued to grow over the years, the research into, and conceptualisation of, academic and institutional leadership seems to have vaned. We seem to have lost the feeling with our, often remote and distant, leaders and rectors. Academic leaders rarely engage with students and even most faculty members. Here, we aim to give voice and thought to wherein the most important responsibilities, competences, but also opportunities for change lie for the academic leaders spearheading our colleges and universities. Scholars, administrators and policymakers have debated neoliberalism’s influence over the university for decades. Scholars, in particular, have fixated critique on the evils or negative consequences of neoliberalism, but without much to offer in how to design the university for tomorrow. A succession of major events since the financial crisis in 2008 has demonstrated how globalisation has moved beyond supply-chain economics, but rather infiltrates all aspects of modern life. These events include intersections of climate-human-energy, such as the

Introduction 5

Tsunami-Fukushima Nuclear Disaster as well as war-human-government, such as the migration crisis stemming from Syria into Europe. Multiple sectors of social life now recognise the global nature of social institutions, such as the university – even when established by provincial communities. The problems that institutions, such as universities, are called upon to help address are global in scale and need require radical re-thinking of how we imagine the institution. Further, universities worldwide are confronting populist regulatory regimes that continue to reify particular organisations of knowledge as pre-eminent or most desirable, without much international attention nor thoughtful philosophical debate. Our volume seizes on the opportunity to wrestle with the needed transformation of the university without romanticising the institution and without falling prey to nostalgia for an institution that no longer exists (i.e., the old guard). In order to transform, the university need to go off-road and explore institutional, educational and curricular spaces of otherness and, to the current societal and political norms, knowledge forms and learning trajectories, in liminal spaces (Bengtsen, 2018). For higher education to be truly transformative, there has to be dimensions of strangeness, surprise, and epistemic and educational risk and crises that will enable the students to develop cognitive, social, and academic competences and project values bordering what we already know and understand (Shumar & Bengtsen, 2021). Sometime, transformative spaces are found “in dark and unsettling forms of learning and existing, places that are askew, dislocated, and other” (Arndt et al., 2020, p. 260). As Arndt and her colleagues argue (Arndt et al, 2020, pp. 260–261): Such places [for learning], new and strange, widen the polyvocality of higher education and expand the spaces for life in ways in which experiences of doubt, frustration, and perhaps even anger become part of learning as revolt. Spaces for life in the university are not only redeeming and releasing, but may be spaces where our thought and very being becomes ‘unhinged’ (…). Even though such alien spaces for life may make us feel uncertain, vulnerable, and dislocated from previous knowledge, literacies or forms of behaviour in the university (and beyond), they are central for deep and advanced learning. As the university, as an institution, has always occupied liminal spaces within society, as both belonging and not belonging, as being seen as a contributor to increased societal health and wealth – and at the same time politically as being seen as “objects of suspicion; culturally, they are accused of being unduly liberal; economically, they are felt to be insufficiently supportive of a country’s economy; and socially, they are critiqued for being insufficiently open to those from certain socio-economic classes” (Barnett, 2021, p. 24). The university, as an institution, is itself migrant and nomadic moving in the interstices between societal and political norms of approval and scepticism and hostility (Gildersleeve, 2021). The university is an institution existing everywhere and nowhere, being at the centre

6  Søren S. E. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

of educational policy and, at the same time, speaking from the societal and political margins (Sørensen, 2019). Occupying a societally and politically unfixed position may prove fruitful for institutional and educational transformation – but transforming into what, why and how. The present volume provides ten different perspectives on the potential and necessity of institutional transformation of the university by leading researchers from within the field of philosophy and social theory of higher education. As higher education is continually called upon to help address major social challenges, scholars, leaders, policymakers and the public continue to call for new forms of the university to emerge. Yet, there are too few examples to follow. This book presents affirmative transformations of the university in order to help imagine the future of what the university might become. An international collection of authors move beyond old criticisms and present fresh ideas about how the institution might be conceived, organised and put into practice while safeguarding that which makes it a university – the pursuit of knowledge. Without nostalgia or romance, the volume takes stock of the present social, political and cultural contexts of the university while offering the opportunity to make historic change for it to best serve society.

The structure of the volume Each chapter in the volume gives its own view on how we should understand current and potential transformations of the university and higher education, with a hopeful tone for what the university might become. Together, the chapters form a canopy of various forms of current transformation ongoing and glimpsed in the near future. The contributing scholars and, thus, the contexts for understanding the university and higher education come from across a wide international span including five continents (Africa, Australia, Europe, North America and South America) and nine country contexts including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Some of the chapters speak directly into current national and institutional changes, while others speaks across contexts and provide a more general (and even universal) outlook. The book has been divided into three parts, each with chapter-clusters that speak into similar aspects of transformation and the university, expanding hope for its preferable futures. The editors have provided this introductory chapter and a concluding coda. Part I is titled ‘Knowledge’ and focuses on some of the most important current tendencies of change and transformation in universities around the world. In the discussion of the transformation of the university, the chapters discuss the importance of new understandings of knowledge, culture, globalism and transdisciplinarity. In Chapter 1, titled ‘The university as “honest broker”’, Sharon Rider discusses the role of academic knowledge and its implications for the university as connecting, and mediating between, different societal, cultural and political

Introduction 7

contexts. Rider argues that the university holds a unique position as an honest broker between such contexts, while maintaining its own autonomy, due to the particular critical openness and vulnerability of academic knowledge pursuits. Rider links the need for a transformation of the university closely to issues of self-control and autonomy and the need to earn the trust and confidence of the public. In Chapter 2, titled ‘Trust, critical hope and the contemporary university’, James Arvanitakis and David Hornsby argue that while earlier transformations of the university rested on structural changes and government policy decisions, today’s core challenge is driven by a cultural and social re-alignment resulting in a loss of trust and a fracturing of our ‘social license’. The authors argue that the call for transformation today rests on the need to embrace hope and pursue a ‘trust project’ involving redefining the social contract between the university and its communities. In Chapter 3, titled ‘Transcending a single reality: Transdisciplinarity, the emerging forces of spirituality and a pedagogy of self-cultivation’, Paul Gibbs discusses the need for transdisciplinary universities when engaging with the solving of major societal challenges such as poverty, climate change, freedom and war. The author argues that transdisciplinarity will aid a fusion of ideas that is emergent and spiritual, revealing truth, beliefs and knowledges that are culturally centred and indigenously co-created. The chapter offers insights through these ideas, building a pedagogy of self-cultivation as an ecology within the future university. Part II is titled ‘Cultural Growth’ and focuses on new potentials for transformation for universities in the future. In the discussion of the transformation of the university, the chapters discuss the importance of societal embeddedness of higher education, new understandings of mobility and academic travel, transcultural knowledge communities and decolonisation of the higher education. In Chapter 4, titled ‘Decolonial reparation as re-humanisation in higher education’, Nuraan Davids critically discusses the (de)colonisation and marginalisation of students and academics in South Africa, who have been historically excluded and continue to struggle in finding points of belonging and resonance with university curricula, as well as institutional spaces and cultures. The author argues that transformative initiatives have to rest on practices of trust embedded in a recognition of multiple understandings and a preparedness to locate humanity at the core of engagements and disagreements between members of the future university. In Chapter 5, titled ‘Unfixing the university: Higher education and the ontology of travel’, Søren Bengtsen and Ryan Evely Gildersleeve critically discuss academic movement and mobility. They point out that higher education policies paradoxically favour academic mobility and internationalisation of staff and students – while such global branding takes place in a highly competitive way, with the wealthiest universities harnessing their own protectionist agendas and forming ‘university clubs’ with other institutional members of the (hidden) academic

8  Søren S. E. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

elite. To attain sustainable policies and practices of academic travel, an unfixing of the university is needed – allowing for a more vulnerable and ethical form of academic travel. In Chapter 6, titled ‘Towards decolonisation and transformation in universities: Foregrounding Indigenous and transcultural knowledge systems and communities’, Catherine Manathunga, Maria Raciti and Jennifer Carter critique the increasing neoliberal competition, commodification, consumerism and corporatisation in contemporary universities and the ways such agendas diminish the work in universities towards social justice, equity, and social and cultural inclusion. The authors present and discuss an institutional alternative that sparks cultural growth and nurtures strong and respectful links with Indigenous and transcultural communities. Part III is titled ‘Institutions’ and focuses on both versions of the university’s future that we might see right now as well as methods for how to design for the future university. In their discussions of possible transformations for preferable futures, authors take up ideas such as utopia, hope, internationalisation, decolonisation and design. In Chapter 7, titled ‘University challenge: Realizing utopias in the twenty-first century’, Ronald Barnett analyses the various meanings of transformation in the university including intended and unintended transformations, together with transformations of the idea of the university and the university as an institution. Barnett discusses the transformation of the university in relation to current issues of globalism, cognitive capitalism, and societal and cultural value. The key is to grasp forms of transformation that are, at the same time, real and imaginary, opening up the understanding of transformation as a feasible utopia. In Chapter 8, titled ‘Looking for hope abroad: The new global university beyond neoliberalism’, Gerardo L. Blanco and Abdulghani Muthanna analyse the state-of-play of internationalisation agendas in universities today and question the benevolence and beneficence of internationalisation in higher education by exploring its connection with neoliberalism over the past several decades. The authors argue that if internationalisation can be disentangled from neoliberalism, it also holds a potential for transformation through radical hospitality, which involves a true embracing of diversity, difference and otherness. In Chapter 9, titled ‘Programme ‘Future-se’: Brazilian higher education meets neoliberalism’, Alexandre Guilherme and Fernanda Felix de Oliveira critically discuss a national ministerial programme aiming at reforming the Brazilian Higher Education system – with focus on more effective management practices of universities, an increased entrepreneurial dimension, stronger links between universities and society, and the expansion of international connections. As a critical contestation, the authors underline the importance of social equality as the main justification to reform the educational system. In Chapter 10, titled ‘What comes after the ruin? Designing for the arrival of preferable futures for the university’, Rikke Toft Nørgård critically discusses the increased rise of rankings and managerialism in the neoliberal university.

Introduction 9

As a response, the author presents a possible framework imagining and manifesting more preferable future institutions, systems and forms of governance. This is done through the use of concepts of hopepunk and imagination by which design fictions and design probes are described as concrete future-making strategies and techniques for moving the future university into the present in the form of materialised ‘mini-unitopias’.

References Arndt, S., Bengtsen, S., Mika, C., & Nørgård, R. (2020). Spaces of life. Transgressions in conceptualising the world class university. In S. Rider, M.A. Peters, M. Hyvönen, & T. Besley (Eds.). World Class Universities. A Contested Concept (pp. 251–267). Singapore: Springer. Barnett, R. (2011). Being a University. London and New York: Routledge. Barnett, R. (2021). The philosophy of higher education: Forks, branches and openings. In S. Bengtsen, S. Robinson, & W. Shumar (Eds.). The University Becoming. Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (pp. 15–28). Cham: Springer. Bengtsen, S. (2018). The alien university. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(14), 1554–1555. DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2018.1462452 Bengtsen, S., & Barnett, R. (2019). Higher education and alien ecologies: Exploring the dark ontology of the university. In R. Gildersleeve & K. Kleinhesselink (Eds.). Special Issue on the Anthropocene in the Study of Higher Education. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, 1(1), 17–40. Bengtsen, S., & Barnett, R. (2020). The four pillars of philosophy of higher education. In N. Davids (Ed.). Oxford Research Encyclopedia. Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1467 Davids, N., & Waghid, Y. (2021). Academic Activism in Higher Education: A Living Philosophy for Social Justice. Singapore: Springer. Gildersleeve, R.E. (2016). The neoliberal academy of the Anthropocene and the retaliation of the lazy academic. Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies, 17(3), 286–293. Gildersleeve, R.E. (2021). The migrant university. In S. Bengtsen, S. Robinson, & W. Shumar (Eds.). The University Becoming. Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (pp. 157–171). Cham: Springer. Nørgård, R.T., & Bengtsen, S. (Eds.) (2021). The activist university. Between practice and policy. Special Issue, Policy Futures in Education, 19(5), 507–625. Rider, S. (2018). Truth, democracy, and the mission of the university. In S. Bengtsen & R. Barnett (Eds.). The Thinking University. A Philosophical Examination of Thought and Higher Education. Cham: Springer. Rüegg, W. (Ed.) (2003). A History of the University in Europe (Vol. 1–4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shumar, W., & Bengtsen, S. (2021). An entrepreneurial ecology for higher education. A new approach to student formation. In S. Bengtsen, S. Robinson, & W. Shumar (Eds.). The University Becoming. Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (pp. 125– 138). Cham: Springer. Sims, M. (2020). Bullshit Towers. Neoliberalism and Managerialism in Universities in Australia. Oxford: Peter Lang. Smyth, J. (2018) The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars, and Neoliberal Ideology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

10  Søren S. E. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

Sørensen, A. (2019). Social ethos and political mission. University on the margins. In S. Bengtsen & A. Sørensen (Eds.). Danish Yearbook of Philosophy (pp. 104–138), Special issue, “Revising the Idea of the University,” Spring 2020. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Wright, S., & Shore, C. (Eds.) (2018). Death of the Public University?: Uncertain Futures for Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy. New York: Berghahn Book.

Part I

Knowledge

1 The university as honest broker Sharon Rider

Introduction One of the reasons often given for opening up the university to commercial and political agendas is that the university should be useful. Rather than the disinterested pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, it is argued, the academy should serve the public interest by itself actively taking interest in, and finding solutions for, matters of importance to society. At the same time, the legitimacy of the university as an institution, especially one served up as the bread and butter of a welfare society and for that reason baked with taxpayer dough, rests upon the combination of the ideal of impartiality with respect to the preferred consequences of a given program of study or research and the proven capacity to provide explanations, answers and new knowledge that can be useful to anyone and, in the best case scenario (say, developing cures for cancer), of interest for everyone. Maintaining the trust and confidence of those who have never stepped into a college classroom, especially if they’re footing the bill, is essential. But this cannot be accomplished with website platitudes such as “inspiring innovation for a better world” or “for a sustainable democratic society,” nor by behaving like a mädchen für alles. Universities must demonstrate good faith and reliability in their assurances that they are working for the potential good of all by doing so. To earn public confidence, I argue, the university as an institution and the faculty themselves must exercise agency and self-control (autonomy) in the service of the interests of properly public knowledge (Rider 2020). The framework for the present discussion is the need to reconceive the role of higher education and research in the humanities and social sciences in an era when the very idea that there can be such a thing as a “public interest” is sorely tested. Is it possible, or even desirable, to formulate a demarcation principle separating academic activity, strictly speaking, and the propagation of a worldview? DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-3

14  S. Rider

And, if it is, what is the status of such a principle? Does it, in itself, constitute a piece of ideology? After all, science as a whole, and higher education in particular, is and has always been positioned at the intersection of social and economic conditions that structure the field of academic activity. Were this not the case, there would not have arisen attempts over the course of the centuries to articulate ideals of objectivity, impartiality, universality, value-neutrality and so forth. But how are we to make sense of this kind of ideal as a genuine possibility in the real world? In what follows, I contend that we must acknowledge that the principle is formulated as a moral stance in relation to an intrinsic epistemic vulnerability that makes it terribly difficult to realise in practice but, for that very reason, of immeasurable value in giving the university its meaning as a living institution. In what follows, I articulate ways in which the vulnerability plays out in terms of (i) evaluation and expertise; (ii) academic identity formation; and (iii) the essentially moral character of the notion of impartiality. I then discuss this ideal of impartiality as a potential or potency generated by epistemic uncertainty. Finally, I conclude an historical example of how the ideal can be implemented under conditions that in important respects resemble our own in the ideal type of the “honest broker.”

Epistemic vulnerability, inconvenient facts and the virtue of being inconsiderate One of our foremost jurists once explained, in discussing his opposition to the exclusion of socialists from university posts, that he too would not be willing to accept an “anarchist” as a teacher of law since anarchists deny the validity of law in general – and he regarded his argument as conclusive. My own opinion is exactly the opposite. An anarchist can surely be a good legal scholar. And if he is such, then indeed the Archimedean point of his convictions, which is outside the conventions and presuppositions which are so self-evident to us, can equip him to perceive problems in the fundamental postulates of legal theory which escape those who take them for granted. Fundamental doubt is the father of knowledge. The jurist is no more responsible for “proving” the value of those cultural objects which are relevant to “law” than the physician is responsible for demonstrating that the prolongation of life is desirable under all conditions. Neither of them is in a position to do this with the means at their disposal. If, however, one wishes to turn the university into a forum for the discussion of values, then it obviously becomes a duty to permit the most unrestrained freedom of discussion of fundamental questions from all value-positions. Is this possible? (Weber 1949, pp. 7–8, emphasis added ) One might think it rather speculative even to attempt to formulate the distinguishing features of “the problem of social knowledge.” But what I offer here is not to be taken as some kind of exhaustive exploration of the material or

The university as “honest broker” 15

conceptual conditions for conducting science and scholarship (including, or perhaps even especially, insofar as we initiate coming generations into their practice through teaching); rather, one might read what follows as a kind of confession of my own hesitation, arising out of what I consider to be simplifications on both sides in current debates about the politicisation, commodification and bureaucratisation of knowledge. More specifically, these doubts concern (i) the relationship between expertise and evaluative principles when the object of study is human action, artefacts and institutions (in a word, the stuff of the humanities and social sciences); (ii) the professional identity of the academic teacher or researcher in these fields, that is, her relationship to the norms and values of her discipline, department or scholarly domain; and (iii) the moral character of what one could call “the attitude of impartiality.” I want to stress here especially the enormous challenge that the much-vaunted ideal of academic autonomy, active and attentive self-legislation in fact entails. To set the stage, I will borrow a term coined by one of the most respected figures in Swedish journalism, Erik Fichtelius: “konsekvensneutralitet” (“consequence neutrality”). Fichtelius formulates his principle thus “anyone covering the news must hold a neutral position with regard to who or what is advantaged or disadvantaged by the news report if it is true and relevant” (Fichtelius 2008, p. 159).1 His argument is that the ultimate purpose of a free press is to provide the general public with well-documented and reliable information that concerns them as citizens, whatever the consequences for the interests of any particular group, organisation or person. If that principle is compromised in light of political or economic considerations, for instance, if what is reported or not reported hangs on a value judgement about the foreseeable effects if the news item is made public, then in fact the reporter or publisher has reconceived his task, for now he is not simply editing, but editorialising. The editor or publisher might have the best of intentions in so doing; indeed, the reason for pursuing a certain line and avoiding another is very often concern for the common good. But that is precisely the move that Fichtelius wants to thematise. He contends that this inclination to “take into consideration” (“ta hänsyn till”) potentially unhappy or destructive consequences is the greatest challenge faced by the media, insofar as it undermines their legitimacy as a potential resource for anybody at all who wants or needs to know something. His first rule for rebuilding trust in “the news” is that the media should strive to be as “inconsiderate” (“hänsynslös”) as they can with regard to consequences. Fichtelius stresses that the evaluation of the relevance and accuracy of a piece of news is no easy task; to the contrary, it requires an almost fastidious soul-searching self-criticism; the failure to make a sound judgement is something that anyone serious about journalism must acknowledge as an ever-present risk. And that reaches to the heart of the matter: consequence neutrality is not some high-minded golden rule, but the essential dilemma of journalism in a liberal democratic society. The point is not that reporting of the news is, or has ever been, untainted by ideology or political influence, but that in order to fill the function implicit in the protections given it under the laws

16  S. Rider

securing a free press in liberal societies, this should be the ultimate, if in practice unachievable, aim. It is a matter of an attitude, stance or spirit, rather than a policy or set of standardised procedures. For this reason, Fichtelius says, the goal of impartiality or neutrality is perhaps the singularly most difficult part of journalism (Fichtelius 2008, p. 164). Notice here that Fichtelius is not denying that his consequence neutrality principle is itself normative. Rather, as I understand it, his thesis is that the idea of journalism, as it has come to be understood and practiced for the last hundred years alongside the development of other vital institutions in liberal democracies, is defined by this self-assigned mission, which has justified its continued existence as a discrete domain, separate from advertising, entertainment and pamphleteering. In short, consequence neutrality is a kind of ideal type that gives sense to the distinction between gossip, rumour, PR or propaganda, on the one hand, and responsible news reporting, on the other. What we have seen in recent years, however, is a trajectory in the opposite direction, back to the days of broadsheets and chapbooks. The subjective values or interests of individuals or factions are taken to be a legitimate norm for professional journalism as much as for its consumers. Opinions about right and wrong, good and evil, and helpful and harmful are not separated from reporting proper but are increasingly integrated into the very process of selecting, investigating and depicting events and occurrences. In this way, the media take upon themselves the obligation to determine what is true, correct and relevant based on specific ideas of what is valuable and desirable. Governed by such a norm, the ultimate purpose of journalism is not to describe the world in such a way as to empower the reader, whoever she may be and whatever she may value, to understand and perhaps change it, but to nudge her in the direction of change that the corps of journalists and publicists deem preferable, prudent or necessary. But if everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and to seek, receive, impart or exchange information as he or she sees fit, why should this particular form of the freedom of expression have any special status? It is difficult to see the unique value of a free press at the same time as one insists that the dissemination of certain ideas and information is dangerous when “consideration” is not taken of its possible deleterious effects for some specific interest. The reason why protections are thought to be necessary is, of course, that certain ideas and facts are indeed dangerous – especially to political and economic power. That is why the right to publicise them needs to be guaranteed by law. Liberalism in this regard means, in a sense, choosing to live dangerously. What does all of this have to do with higher education? Equipped with Fichtelius’ principle of consequence neutrality, the requirement to be ruthlessly inconsiderate of anyone or anything but investigation of the subject matter, and the liberal attitude that since any thought can be dangerous – or rather that, as Arendt (1971) noted, thinking is dangerous – we must learn to deal with the insecurity, or risk losing or diminishing the capacity to think at all. Higher education can be a way of coping with the ever-present unpredictability that an open

The university as “honest broker” 17

and free discussion and opinion formation invites. But universities are inclined to make the same false move as the newsrooms, that is, to assess the nature of the values thought to be in peril and give oneself over to despotic risk-management of the thinking of those exposed to the dangerous thoughts, or what Max Weber (2004) called “inconvenient facts.”

Evaluation, expertise and the crisis of epistemic authority Against the backdrop of the foregoing considerations, we can now begin to discuss the three epistemic vulnerabilities concerning human things that I said at the outset need to be acknowledged. The first of these, it will be recalled, was the relation between expertise (knowledge claims) and evaluation (norms and values). One problem in many disputes is a shared assumption that we are faced here with a simple dichotomy: either there are facts or states of affairs “out there” that are what they are entirely independent of the inquirer’s values, norms and interests or all claims to knowledge are at bottom an expression of her own subjective values, social norms, political affiliations or special interests. I do not want to say that the dichotomy is a false one; rather, one should ask why we are inclined to think that the matter is so straightforward. On closer inspection, I would suggest that what we really believe, assume or value shows itself less in stance-taking, stated opinions, theoretical frameworks and intellectual postures than in what we do and how we act when nobody, perhaps least of all ourselves, is looking or is likely to take notice. Our value judgements appear where we least expect to find them and therefore do not bother to look; indeed, they show up among the judgements that we are least inclined to consider value judgements in the first place. They are to be sought and discovered among the most selfevident and least problematic presuppositions, the judgements that nobody discusses because everyone implicitly agrees. We find out what we really think, how we actually reason and on what we do in fact rely, between the lines, in the unspoken and unstated. And, if we look closely and honestly, we will find that most of these things aren’t judgements at all, but rather secondhand opinions, ingrained habits and learned instincts – in short, prejudices, preferences and predilections (Stenlund 1980, p. 51). For Weber, as we shall see, higher education can fill the vital function of making the student aware of her own predispositions of thought and helping her take control over them, or at least responsibility for them. In short, higher education can be an education in autonomy. There can be no doubt that the professional role of the academic teacher and researcher is being renegotiated in the wake of over three decades of globalisation, digitalisation and the hegemony of New Public Management. The ultimate consequences of this transformation cannot be seen distinctly so long as we are in the midst of it, but its contours are beginning to take form. The trajectory is clearly toward greater efficiency, which means increased production (if not genuine productivity) at lower costs, and therewith more accountancy (if not more accountability) (Fuller 2016). Everything that can be measured will

18  S. Rider

be measured: student recruitment and retention, degrees conferred and credits completed, in the case of teaching, and publications, patents and citations, in the case of research. Departments, regardless of the discipline in question, have to see to it that their courses are attractive and their students are satisfied; at the same time, they are to obtain external research funding and their faculty encouraged or bullied to publish in venues with high journal impact factor ( JIF). Notice that these are general demands that make no reference whatsoever to the content of the activities concerned. Rather, they have to do with the quantifiable direct effects of those activities. In other words, the academic defines her own professional aims in teaching and research in terms of an external perspective on the attainment of goals and achievement of desired consequences as dictated by the quality assessment instruments themselves. To assume that such a conception of the end point of an activity will have no effect on what the individual does is to disregard the connection between thought and action (Nixon 2021). For even if the teacher-researcher or university manager explicitly rejects an instrumentalist view of the value of academic work, perhaps even shouts slogans publicly in defence of academic freedom, the extent to which the subjective meaning of academic work is de facto determined by these heteronomously formulated aims will show itself in what she does or doesn’t do, not in what she says. The point here is that the principles guiding what is measured and quantified are derived from a model for performance management in which the content and sense of the activities performed are per definition irrelevant. What is actually taught and learned in the classroom and the relevance, accuracy or insight of what is claimed in an article are not part of the assessment and, indeed, are not even germane. If the journal where the article is published has a high JIF, and if the course has good credit throughput, then all is well, from the point of view of efficiency. But notice that this decoupling of the meaning of an activity (teaching or research) from what is assessed is itself normative: what cannot be ascribed a definite value is deemed as, well, lacking value. And this is no mere by-product of the norm but belongs intrinsically to instrumental reason. It is through the measurement that we as professionals are socialised into science and scholarship; it is through the measure that graduate students learn what academically exemplary, worthwhile and commendable achievement is. But is it not right and just that academic work be assessed in terms of value for money? And how are we to know if society is getting returns on its sizable investment, if we do not make universities account for themselves in a transparent and easily comprehensible way such as quality-assessment exercises offer? Should not the public interest be taken into account? Any plausible response to that question must have something to say about what that “public” is, and how specifically the university as such can serve its interests. One classical answer to that challenge has been the notion that the university can best serve the public by not taking into account anyone in particular; and doing that entails protection from pressures to take into consideration the results desired from various economic and political interests. In this way, the potential

The university as “honest broker” 19

utility of academic teaching and research retains its character of potentiality or potency. If Fichtelius’ idea of consequence neutrality is understood as a defining trait of what we want or expect from the reporting of the news, then his answer to the question why the freedom of the press must enjoy legal protections is that it is a necessary condition for seeking, finding and disseminating information that each citizen qua citizen has an interest in, even if most citizens as human beings may not find the information the least bit interesting. The information provided should not presume any particular interest or aim other than that of potential relevance for anyone, for which reason the principle of neutrality must reign in the selection and reporting of the news. By analogy, academic freedom must be safeguarded due to the mission of the university to offer anyone at all access to ideas and information that she might put to use in order to arrive at her own judgements of what is good or valuable. It might be objected that universities do more than teach and conduct research. Indeed, the functions of the university have expanded exponentially since World War II in the Global North, as neatly expressed in Clark Kerr’s coinage “the multiversity” to describe the heterogeneity and complexity involved (Kerr 1963; cf., Marginson 2016). Still and all, universities don’t exist in order to offer swimming facilities or provide pharmaceutical companies with relatively cheap labour so that they can cut costs and increase profits by outsourcing their R & D and technical training to the public purse. But neither do they exist to support the party agendas of whatever regime happens to be in power or the ideological aims of a specific group. This is not to say that it is everywhere and always a bad thing that universities offer amenities for students, or partner with industry in designing educational programs, or provide training in vital professions where there is a dearth of qualified personnel. Yet we must be aware that these other functions can become detrimental to teaching and research when success is measured solely in terms of commercial collaborations, employment statistics or student customer satisfaction. Because in that case, the means for assessing quality become the ends, and what one hopes might result from good research and teaching (a highly competent workforce and beneficial practical applications of research, for instance) becomes their raison d´être. If the ends justify the means, that is, as long as political and economic actors and interests get the results that they want, what is the justification of university autonomy? Why should academic freedom enjoy legal protections? Why should there be universities at all? To begin with, it cannot be knowledge for its own sake. Nietzsche (1997) famously argued that all historical research and teaching of any value must serve a living interest that justifies its existence. The discipline of history should serve the purposes of the human being who devotes himself to its study, and human beings have different needs at different times and under different conditions. If we take this characterisation to apply to the humanities and social sciences generally, we are faced with a conundrum. On the one hand, it would seem to suggest that functionality for present purposes should guide teaching and research. Yet in the essay cited, Nietzsche is extremely critical of references to the economy,

20  S. Rider

supply and demand, utilisation, and the like. His position seems to have been that this kind of jargon suggests that studying history has no intrinsic value, whereas his point is rather that its value lay in what I have called its unique potentiality or potency for the individual. If there were no such potential, then study and scholarship would be meaningless in themselves and at best means to achieve predetermined ends. In light of our present predicament, notably, the impending global climate catastrophe and the shaky grounds on which the liberal democratic order stands, one would think that the order of the day would be to unleash the potential of creative thinking and release it from the bonds of what, due to the successes of yesterday, happens to be considered “excellent,” “evidence-based” or “best practice” today. This is what distinguishes professional training from science and scholarship; the professions take over where the need for predictability assumes that the basis for the predictions has been more or less sorted out for the time being (Ortega y Gasset 1946). Established norms and conventions are crucial to the practice of law and medicine but have an anaesthetising effect on teaching and research, especially in the humanities and social sciences. This is not to say that universities are the place for original thinking across the board, or that the faculty and students should all be encouraged to consider themselves revolutionary iconoclasts, each and every one. Quite the opposite: the point is that anyone who commits herself to membership in this guild should, as an academic, shoulder the responsibility for academic thinking, which means to the best of her ability distinguishing between her political commitments, personal loyalties and private ambitions, on the one hand, and her activities qua student or scholar, on the other hand. Her professional goals and ideological convictions do not magically disappear when she enters the classroom or archive, but if academic autonomy is to be justified, they should not determine what is taught or the results of the research conducted. In short, we must distinguish between responsible self-governance and the freedom to do whatever. To argue for academic autonomy is to demand the right and responsibility to be “inconsiderate” with respect to consequences, which is to say, to strive to be impartial with regard to conflicting interests and aims. This means that the first tension in the guiding principles of academic teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences that we have problematised, concerning the connection between expertise and evaluation, cannot be separated from the second, the professional self-understanding of the faculty.

The value of disinterestedness In “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber posed the question of the value of the existence of academic teaching and research for human life in its totality. His own answer is that it is not to be found in the first instance in a theoretical apparatus, results, techniques, models or practical applications. Its primary value is as an intellectual comportment toward a problem. Like Nietzsche, Weber sees the

The university as “honest broker” 21

value of the humanities and social sciences in the way they approach questions that arise under prevailing conditions in a society, namely, through the effort to disregard the consequences that may emerge from the investigation of states of affairs relevant to a given question or problem. It is common that practical matters and concerns are what instigate someone to conduct research in the first instance, just as personal projects, political commitments and private interests are the starting points for much of what people think and do. Moreover, they often involve the same sorts of questions (What are the causes of criminal behaviour and how can it be reduced? What are the limits on the exercise of political power in liberal democratic government in states of emergency, such as pandemics? Is society more polarised today than it was 50 years ago, and if so, what are the risks and opportunities?) But in her activities as an academic, she has implicitly committed herself to the cause of increasing our shared store of knowledge, which means that the results of her inquiry and the adequacy of her teaching cannot be dependent assuming a worldview of the Good, the Beautiful and the Just. It should suffice to understand the question in order to judge if the answer is apposite. The utility of scholarship and instruction lay in its capacity to serve humanity by contributing what she can add to this common store, and making it available to coming generations, primarily through teaching. She may also want to serve her society by promoting socialism or libertarianism, but she does so then in her role as citizen, not as scholar. She may be interested in school-voucher programs as an object of study because of her desire to work toward what she regards as a better society and to help understand which economic systems engender it. But in the seminar room, this should not steer the discussion of what can or ought to be taught and learnt about the object of study. The layman, on the other hand, is not held accountable to such a norm. He can shop around for the arguments and facts that he finds most suitable for his needs, allegiances and projects, even if, one hopes, years of academic study make him open to hearing counterarguments and examining novel ideas. In real life, of course, academics can be as parochial and interest-driven as laymen, but to the extent that we give free reign to our ideological impulses in teaching, we undermine the idea of the autonomy of science and scholarship. But by the same token, we also compromise it when we internalise external interests and expectations. In both cases, higher education is reduced to techniques and instruments for achieving goals that are external to scientific and scholarly inquiry, and the potency of research and education to solve problems that may still await formulation. It is essential to the meaning of academic work that we can distinguish, as least in principle, between the economic, organisational, social and political conditions for academic thinking and humanity’s need to understand itself and its circumstances. And for this distinction to have purchase, we must radically call into question one of the most basic and endemic assumptions of our way of life, namely, that the worth of an action, idea, artefact or institution can and should be assessed on the basis of its immediate effects or direct consequences.

22  S. Rider

The foregoing reflections on the relation between expertise and evaluation, which lead to a consideration of the implications for the self-understanding of academic faculty, brings us to the issue that I have described as the moral character of impartiality. In his memoirs of the failure of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism in Germany, journalist and author Raimund Pretzel (under the pseudonym Sebastian Haffner) recounts his experience of the camps to which he and his colleagues in law at the Kammargericht in Berlin were sent for training in and acclimatisation to the New Order (Haffner 2003). He describes how a collective “we” eventually emerged, characterised by intellectual dishonesty and cowardice, expressing itself in contempt for and minimisation of anything that could disturb the camaraderie of smug thoughtlessness, complacent instinctual response and mob mentality, and this among Berlin’s educated bourgeois bureaucrats. Admittedly, what Haffner describes is an exceptional situation. Nonetheless, his story of the how social bonds can be used as an intellectual tourniquet tells us something about the vulnerability of human thought, from everyday talk to serious scholarship, to the pressures of social structure and circumstance. On the face of it, the contemporary university stands in stark contrast to the camp described by Haffner. In today’s liberal democracies, universities are paragons of openness. There are few formal inhibitions on what avenues can be pursued in the interests of research or teaching in the social sciences and humanities. Nonetheless, the activities in which we engage require that certain material requirements are met, and resources are allocated according to both academic and nonacademic criteria and on the basis of political, economic and organisational considerations and commitments. Moreover, there are implicit expectations regarding the value-sphere that the university’s denizens should inhabit (Goodhart 2017, pp. 33–38 and 154–166). On Weber’s view, cited above, such expectations are detrimental to science and higher education, since the heart and soul of academic activity is the right and responsibility not to accept appearances at face value, but to investigate phenomena, which means not to take for granted that which everyone else takes for granted. What does it mean to take such an ideal seriously? This is not a problem of knowledge, but of epistemic morality. Given the crisis of legitimacy of epistemic institutions in general, and the humanities and social sciences in particular, it is tempting to look for ways to enhance the impression of relevance and value of disciplines such as philosophy or sociology by jumping on the bandwagon of “grand challenges” (globalisation, digitalisation, environmental disaster, postindustrial economics, etc.) and offering courses and modelling research projects that ride on the coattails of more profitable and prestigious fields. The impression such eagerness to please makes is that the professoriate cannot see any value in what they do if it is not conceived in terms of “humanist perspectives on X” (“X” being whatever is experienced as pressing or provocative at the moment: gene therapy, climate change, the economic causes and consequences of mass emigration

The university as “honest broker” 23

and immigration, etc.) It would seem as if they don’t see any potentiality or potency in humanist knowledge as such, but only as a means of realising various shifting agendas. What I have suggested is that there is another way of conceiving the humanities and social sciences as worthwhile in their own right. A proposal in the spirit of Nietzsche and Weber is to see their task as examining and analysing problems that are often the object of political, economic and social interest and intervention, but conducting the study without taking those interests and agendas into consideration. The claim to legitimacy would hang on the autonomous choice to strive for impartiality and disinterestedness, to be an honest broker, with regard to the consequences for any given set of interests or actors. But it also rests on a certain degree of intellectual humility with respect to the standard categories, concepts, distinctions, practices, routines and techniques of the discipline, that is, a preparedness to revise our starting assumptions and, if necessary, to think in an entirely different way (Popper 1963). 2 None of this is to claim that science occurs in a vacuum. To the contrary, we must begin somewhere, which means that there must be an established praxis that begs to be questioned or modified due to new discoveries or unforeseen difficulties. But if we could never question status quo, science would stagnate. This is what I meant by saying that the scientific attitude is essentially a moral stance, one of demanding the right to doubt, and taking on the responsibility of posing questions and seeking answers regardless of the consequences. Nietzsche’s and Weber’s admonitions to keep the critical potential of the social sciences and humanities alive should not be taken to mean that their relevance can be established by positioning canonical works or ideas in a new context of contemporary but conventional questions, currently standard solutions, and the latest terminology. To the contrary, the idea is that they are relevant in themselves to the extent that they are of potentially general public interest, even if the public, in general, is not at all interested. If, on the other hand, the general public has good reason to suspect that what is taught or studied is integrated into a political or economic agenda and not at all of “general interest,” then the problem of legitimacy is one that we ourselves have been complicit in creating. But it should be noticed that such doubts implicitly assume the possibility, even confidence, that there can be a more satisfactory answer, a hope that more clarity or more knowledge or another perspective can be attained that will lead the inquirer in the right direction (which in turns assumes that there is a right direction). The doubts as to the collective wisdom of the professoriate and its institutions is not in itself a condemnation of the very idea of genuine expertise, but rather of the notion that the recognised, formalised and institutionalised forms of knowledge are authoritative as such, that the expertise of today is the truth of tomorrow. In this respect, the crisis of legitimacy can be seen as a challenge and, as such, an opportunity for the renewal of the humanities and social sciences, rather than as a threat to them.

24  S. Rider

Concluding reflections: Bismarck and self-interested impartiality One might read the foregoing as an expression of stodgy liberalism that fails to take into consideration white privilege, the colonial heritage of the humanities and social sciences, gender hierarchy and the like. But that would be a misreading, if “failing to take into consideration” is understood as lack of awareness or understanding. In this case, the “not taking into consideration” is not due to ignorance, but to design. In fact, such theoretical orientations often implicitly evoke the ideal of impartial inquiry that I have sketched above as justification for their necessity. The principle here is not that the university should refrain from taking an interest in the political or economic sphere, but rather that the justification for its support is that it doesn’t take sides. Its claim is that it is in the interest of the university as an institution to be neutral in the uses to which its teaching and research are put. That is just what makes it of (potential) interest to anybody and everybody. Its only allegiance is to the production, maintenance, expansion and enhancement of the general store of knowledge and ideas. Otto von Bismarck’s status as an honest broker (a term he applied to himself in the 1878 Congress in Berlin) rested on two attributes. First, he claimed impartiality for Germany in the dispute between Russia and Austria, as his interest was in the conclusion of an amicable deal that preserved the tripartite alliance rather than in the substance of the dispute itself. This impartiality was in no way a matter of indifference or disinterest, as though von Bismarck were a neutral third party; to the contrary, in pursuit of its own national security, Germany had a significant stake in a resolution. Second, von Bismarck’s Germany was allied with both key parties. Since von Bismarck, the term “honest broker” in diplomacy is used for an individual, institution or agency that is accepted as impartial by all sides in a negotiation. Neutrality in this sense does not mean an absence of interest; rather, the interest of the honest broker lies in a solution, without preference for either party involved in the conflict or negotiations. Bismarck is generally credited with succeeding in securing peace and prosperity in Europe in the interests of Germany. Friedrich Althoff, the “Bismarck of the universities,” was the Prussian Minister of Culture from 1897 to 1907, having previously been a highly ranked civil servant within the Ministry’s Department for Science, Arts and Higher Education for 15 years. This period, from 1882 to 1907, marks the establishment of the so-called “Althoff System” of science and higher education policy. Although his official duties at the time concerned the public administration of professorial appointments at universities and research institutes, he early on began operating beyond the formal limits of the authority invested in him, extending his influence to other departments of the ministry so as to include the financial management and institutional reform of the Prussian academic system as a whole. While Althoff had regular contacts with politicians and Parliamentarians, as well as professors and university bureaucrats, he did not favour any particular university or discipline. His main objective throughout

The university as “honest broker” 25

was to enhance German science and scholarship, including teaching, the explicit political justification being that the latter was a sine qua non for uniting the country in common purpose, enabling a functional state bureaucracy by providing it with competent personnel, promoting technical innovation and, with it, economic prosperity. In order to do this, he ensured a high degree of academic autonomy for research and teaching and actively impeded nepotism, academic legacies and local coteries (Vereeck 1993). Before the last decades of the 19th century, the universities had a monopoly in science and scholarship. But since the advent of the second Industrial Revolution, scientific progress required increased specialisation, which meant a division of labour among researchers. The industrial and social demand for new knowledge thus coincided with the internal development of science, placing expectations on the universities to produce both research and teaching on a scale for which they were simply not equipped. Toward the end of the 19th century, most fields had become too complex to be covered by a single professor who would teach all there was to know within his discipline and also his own scientific discoveries. Moreover, a great deal of research could only be understood and advanced among experts, requiring substantial investments and cooperation. The tripartite mission of the prevailing system (scientific research, professional training and general higher education) was endangered. At the same time, for demographic reasons, including the democratisation of higher education, the teaching load increased. Thus, research costs were rising as resources were spread thin. Meeting the new demands called for an expansion as well as a restructuring. The universities themselves could not cope with the demands of the day, which required an integrated and systematic approach, which is to say, a bureaucracy characterised by the rational use of resources and the exercise of legitimate authority. While Althoff upheld the Humboldtian ideal of the mission of a university as the unity of research and teaching, he saw a need for a comprehensive and centralised reform of the organisation of science and the academic system as a whole. The Althoff system not only propelled Germany to the forefront of research and higher education but also inspired institutional renewal and modernised university policies throughout the world. The autocratic styles of Bismarck and Althoff without a doubt put too much power in the hands of the state, with disastrous consequences in years to come after they had left the scene. But there are nonetheless lessons to be learned from their achievements. In particular, they showed the power of self-interested impartiality for the general good. Second, Althoff showed that needed social reforms can go hand in hand with the advancement of science and scholarship. (His insistence on neutral ideals of meritocracy culminated in interference in local university politics, for instance, opening doors otherwise closed to Jews and women.) What made Bismarck’s and Althoff’s programs work was that they made clear what their agendas were and that their own aims required, recognising and balancing legitimate conflicting interests.

26  S. Rider

We who work in the social sciences and humanities should similarly demonstrate good faith and reliability in our assurances that we are working for the common good by doing so. That will require that we exercise self-control (autonomy) if we want to genuinely earn and not just take for granted the confidence of the public we claim to serve. In so doing, we are also securing the interests of knowledge.

Notes 1 All translations from Swedish original into English are by the author of this chapter. 2 This ideal resonates with Popper’s view of the special character of scientific inquiry and what separates it from myth. According to Popper, the difference consists in that science, as opposed to myth, has two layers. Beyond the transmission of theories and facts about the world, science also transfers a critical attitude toward those theories. Whereas dogma makes certain questions and discussions taboo, science encourages challenging, revising and improving them. This propagation of this critical attitude constitutes its own tradition, that of rationality as self-criticism (Popper 1963, p. 50).

References Arendt, H. (1971). Thinking and Moral Considerations. Social Research, 38:3. Fichtelius, E. (2008). Nyhetsjournalistik. Tio gyllene regler. Version 2.0. Stockholm: Sveriges Utbildningsradio AB. Fuller, S. (2016). The Academic Caesar: University Leadership is Hard. London: Sage. Goodhart, D. (2017). The Road to Somewhere: The New Tribes Shaping British Politics. London: Penguin Random House. Haffner, S. (2003). Defying Hitler. London: Orion. Kerr, C. (1963). The Uses of the University. New York: Harper & Row. Marginson, S. (2016). The Dream Is Over: The Crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of Higher Education. Oakland: University of California Press. http://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.17 Nietzsche, F. (1997). On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. In F. Nietzsche (Ed.), Untimely Meditations (R.J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nixon, J. (2021). Disorderly Identities: University Rankings and the Re-ordering of the Academic Mind. In S. Rider et al. (Eds.), World Class Universities: A Contested Concept. Singapore: Springer. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1946). The Mission of the University. New York: Routledge. Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Routledge. Rider, S. (2020). Going Public: Higher Education and the Democratization of Knowledge. In M.A. Peters et al. (Eds.), Knowledge Socialism – The Rise of Peer Production: Collegiality, Collaboration and Collective Intelligence. Singapore: Springer. Stenlund, S. (1980). Det osägbara. Stockholm: Norstedts. Vereeck, L.M.C. (1993). The Economics of Science and Scholarship: An Analysis of the Althoff System (Diss.). Maastricht: Datawyse/Universitaire Pers Maastricht. Weber, M. (1949). The Methodology of the Social Sciences (E.A. Shils & H.A. Finch, Trans.). Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Weber, M. (2004). Science as a Vocation. In M. Weber (Ed.), The Vocation Lectures (R. Livingstone, Trans.). Indianapolis: Sage.

2 Trust, critical hope and the contemporary university James Arvanitakis & David J. Hornsby

Section I: Higher education in the contemporary world The year of 2020 has highlighted the brutal realities confronting our contemporary society: from the wildfires in Australia that reinforced the consequences of human-driven climate change, the continued violence in the Middle East including the assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, to the outbreak of the coronavirus and the growing awareness of structural inequalities and racism facing people of colour across the world. The challenges facing liberal democracies have never seemed more pronounced. These complex challenges cut across political, social, economic and cultural spheres, and are accompanied by an unprecedented loss of trust in expert institutions (Connaughton 2020). While declining levels of trust vary across locations and individual nations, social democracies across the world are experiencing declining levels of trust (Raine and Perrin 2019). While the public may be turning to high-profile experts to navigate the complexities of a global pandemic, it is unlikely that this will arrest long-term declines in the trust of expert institutions (Lavazza and Farina 2020; Funk 2017). It is difficult to know when this began but we can see it in expert systems across the world and is evidenced in denial of the overwhelming evidence that climate change is a human generated problem or the clear health benefits of a wide-scale vaccination programs (Callari 2021). Consequently, the contemporary university is under pressure to change. While reform and disruption in higher education is nothing new, it has previously been driven by structural changes and government policy decisions including funding constraints, competition pressures, technology, massification and employability demands. Today’s core challenge, however, is driven by a cultural and social re-alignment resulting in a loss of trust and a fracturing of our ‘social license’ (Gibbs 2019; Editorial 2020; Dodd 2020). DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-4

28  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

In exploring the central theme of this edited collection: new academic realities and new institutional hope, we argue that universities and the scholars that occupy them have the opportunity to revive their authority. This starts with re-establishing frameworks that our institutions were built on: cooperation, intellect, civic duty and stewardship, as well as prioritising the pedagogy of the citizen-scholar. It is from this perspective that universities have the potential to confront the grand challenges and promote a sense of hope and trust that stimulates engagement and empowerment rather than cynicism and distrust. For as Curzon-Hobson (2002) argues trust is a fundamental element in the pursuit of higher learning.

Embracing scepticism as a pathway to trust In many ways, we as scholars have sown the seeds of scepticism in expert systems. At the core of our intellectual mission is the questioning and challenging of authority and it is something we try to instil in the student body. In fact, scepticism, along with curiosity, ethical codes and discovery can be thought of as ‘graduate attributes’ that cross time and space in the pursuit of higher education. The academic fields that emerged in the 1960s such as post-structuralism, deconstruction and postmodernism questioned the ability of academic inquiry to determine truth. The ‘linguistic turn’ within this field had significant implications for key educational notions of truth, progress and emancipation. MacLure challenged any unproblematic match between language and reality when stating, “that all truths are contextual, that the way we see the world is ‘always already’ infected by language” (2003:4). Language is therefore a site of contestation as the meaning and implications of terms like democracy and freedom invite ongoing debate. Further, the academic field of history and philosophy of science led by scholars such as Brian Wynne (1992) have long tracked the way that expert systems are rightfully challenged by local and lay knowledge. Today, ‘truth’ and alternative facts have become the sites of similar contestations. While there is no simple link between post-structuralism’s founders and claims of ‘fake news’ as perpetuated by Donald Trump’s presidency, Andrew Calcutt (2016) reminds us that ‘post-truth’ is the latest step in a logic long established in the history of ideas, and previously expressed in the above debates. Calcutt’s point is that rather than blaming populism for enacting this concept, we must acknowledge its origins. However, it is not a conceptual or linguistic turn that has resulted in a loss of trust in expertise or expert institutions, like universities. A loss in trust has been growing over time due to four structural conditions. First, the way that neoliberalism has been embraced by mainstream political parties has left many communities vulnerable (Mair 2020) while at the same time side-lining ‘public good’ institutions including universities and the expertise they hold (Hassan 2003; Citrin and Stoker 2018). While the world is arguably richer, the distribution of that wealth has reached levels of inequality not seen since the Great

Trust, critical hope and the university 29

Depression (UN 2020, Horowitz, Igielnik and Kochhar 2020). Given that universities were important sites of neoliberal economic thinking, modelling and policy generation often simply described as ‘globalisation’, resentment extends into these spaces ( Jameson 2012). Second, the consequential rise of a rural/peri-urban and urban divide that has created the us v. them mentality (Love and Loh 2020). One way that this has manifested itself is through the description of ‘inner city elites’ who have capitalised on and benefited by globalisation (Arvanitakis 2020). These elites are not defined by income but rather status, residential location and level of education. Given the place of universities mainly within urban settings as well as a highly educated academic workforce, higher education is often perceived as a space primarily composed of elites with little understanding of the daily challenges faced by the rest of society. Third, the inability of scientists and other academics to communicate complex findings assuming that the ‘science speaks for itself ’ (Goldstein et al. 2020). As Australia’s former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel (2016) has argued, much of academic writing is indecipherable. Scientific inquiry is based on the contestation of evidence but there seems an inability to discuss uncertainty. Fourthly, the role of universities as sites of emancipation has come into question and conflict both through the lens of class and race. From a class perspective, the above highlight how universities are seen as being elitist and out of touch with the daily experiences of the average people. From a critical race perspective, we have seen how universities can be sites of exclusion and injustice towards racialised and Indigenous peoples, as opposed to sites of emancipation. This has been exemplified through social movements like Idle No More, #FeesMustFall, #RhodesMustFall and Black Lives Matter, which maintain strong critiques of universities. For those who can access and complete, a degree or diploma offers greater economic and social possibilities. However, better understanding is emerging around how university admissions policies and student success rates have been differentiated for racialised and Indigenous persons (Koch 2017; Koch and Gardner 2017). Spaces like Canada and Australia are only now just coming to grips with this reality, examining histories of racial and Indigenous exclusion from higher education (Glauser 2020; Coen-Sanchez 2020).

Section II: Trust and hope But what does it mean to lose trust and how can we, as educators and researchers, reverse this concerning trend? At the core of our chapter is the need for higher education institutions to offer a solution to the challenges facing societies through the lens of trust and hope: two concepts we unpack in detail below. While universities were not originally founded to address social inequalities, they were established as elite and expert institutions to generate new knowledge with the intent of developing understanding to resolve critical problems.

30  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

As expert institutions, they must both be trusted and reflect the hopes of the communities they represent, or the work undertake will be seen as irrelevant and ignored. Turning to understanding why trust matters, we begin by emphasising that trust is an essential condition for the functioning of democratic social and political systems (Weinert 2018). For influential British sociologist, Anthony Giddens (1990), ‘trust’ is at the core of modern societies. Giddens focus here is a contemporary reimagining of the social contract between citizens and governments, and draws on the concept of trust as being the thread that holds contemporary societies together. Giddens argues that trust is ‘bound with contingency’, or eventuality (1990:34). That is, it carries connotations of reliability that an event will occur or, just as likely, will not occur. Think of it this way: when you sit in your car and turn on the ignition, the ‘contingency’ that Giddens describes is that the car will start (and the brakes, steering wheel and so on will work). In fact, driving a car is imbued with countless relations of trust: we trust the expertise of the designers, engineers and factory workers; the knowledge and professionalism of the safety inspectors; the mechanics who service our car; the traffic light system; and, despite the stress of driving in cities like Sydney (or New York, or Delhi), other drivers know what they are doing and want to arrive safely at their destination. We can apply this to most, if not all, of our daily and mundane interactions, and we can see why Giddens argues for the importance of trust in the modern world: from those that produce the food we eat, to those that care for our children, there is a complex constellation of trust relationships relations with both systems and individuals that allow societies to function. In the same way, we trust our friends, politicians and other drivers on our roads, we also trust the stranger who is walking down the street or sitting on the train next to us. Here, our trust is that the stranger will simply ‘behave like a stranger’ by simply ignoring us. We see no reason not to trust the stranger unless they act aggressively.

Trust and dread What happens when the sense of trust decline in our communities? Writing two decades ago, both Eric Uslaner (2002) and Robert Putnam (1995) argued that community and civic involvement within our societies is directly related to levels of trust. If a community is to function – and function decently to protect the most vulnerable – then at least some basic level of trust must exist. Writing before terrorism became a defining word of our generation, Putnam traced the loss of civic life and portrayed a US society that was increasingly disconnected. This disconnection was witnessed between individuals as well as within social structures (such as religious organisations or political parties), resulting in a disintegration of contemporary communities. While some have challenged Putnam’s ultimate conclusions (see Brown 2019) – and the subsequent

Trust, critical hope and the university 31

debates are beyond the scope of this chapter – what is not questioned is that trust shapes our society. While declining levels of trust in personal relationships can be described as ‘mistrust’, how do we understand the loss of trust at a social or community level? This loss of trust challenges the core of our society: something that Giddens (1990) argues moves beyond ‘mistrust’ as it is more profound and piercing: a sense of ‘dread’. In such an environment, there is a tendency to want to be surrounded only by those we recognise as being ‘like us’: those who look like us or subscribe to the same religion or values (Arvanitakis 2016). The stranger or ‘other’ can become threatening. This loss of trust in the stranger is not just about an individual, however, but also relates to a loss of trust in expert systems. In this way, the current pandemic is seen as a failure in disease control systems, medical knowledge and the experts who promised to keep us safe – and it is from this perspective we can understand ‘vaccine scepticism’. This emerging sense of ‘dread’ removes the certainties of life and creates an ontological crisis. But how exactly do we respond? Our argument is found in the concept of ‘critical hope’.

On hope The concept of hope is one that is discussed in many different ways: from philosophy, psychology and religious studies. Our own interest in hope stems from a non-religious perspective, but it is important to acknowledge insights offered by figures such as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (2004). In defining hope, it is essential to understand that it exists on both a personal and societal level, although these are interrelated. One of Australia’s leading philosophers, Ghassan Hage (2001) sees hope as faith without certainties and allows individuals to create meaning in their lives. In secular societies, hope moves out of the religious sphere and is found in struggles for justice and political progress. Hope is not found in simply ‘thinking’ of alternative futures but created by the actions of individuals and groups (Arvanitakis 2016). We see hope found, developed and expanded in the actions of countless protestors involved in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ and other social justice solidarity movements. Hope can be drawn on to inspire us to act, and when we do, we create additional hope that can be further shared creating a sense of optimism and resilience. Such actions create a ‘surplus of hope’ that inspires us to pursue a more just society and respond to past injustices.

On trust and (critical) hope Hope and trust are mutually reinforcing: if openly shared and freely available, hope and trust spread and can become abundant. When diminishing, however, societies begin to ‘shrink’ (Hage 2001). A shrinking society has a number of key

32  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

characteristics, including that it is one that experiences dread, despair and a sense of scarcity (Arvanitakis 2016). It is an interesting lens in which to observe contemporary democracies and the universities that have worked to serve them. As the trust in our institutions is at an all-time low and they are not seen as offering hope (or solutions to the challenges that we confront), we have begun to lose the abovementioned ‘social license’. How do arrest this trend? It is here that we turn to the concept of critical hope. Given that much of the trend away from trust and hope relates to a belief that injustices cannot nor will not be rectified, finding ways to make resolving injustice and exclusion a central function of university education becomes necessary. We see critical hope as “an action-oriented response to contemporary despair” (Bozalek et al. 2014:1). In other words, it is about finding ways to ‘operationalise hope’ in direct response to those that feel excluded. As Zembylas (2014:14) argues, critical hope is “an act of ethical and political responsibility that has the potential to recover a lost sense of connectedness, relationality, and solidarity with others.” Above we argued that scepticism, along with curiosity, ethical codes and discovery should be considered universal ‘graduate attributes’. To this we add ‘critical hope’. As such, we as educators see critical hope as a pedagogical approach that creates spaces within our learning institutions to engage, accept and empower those who may despair, to find ways forward, to critically analyse power relations, to construct emotional ways of being in the world and to engage a sense of imagination around how things may be materially different (Zembylas 2014:13). It requires that the place and space of power within our disciplines and in our learning strategies, be exposed, problematised, critiqued and contested as part of the pursuit of knowledge including being open about our own biases (Gibbs and Barnett 2014). In this way, scepticism is embraced and analysed, not rejected. For the contemporary university, the space to reason must persist, but the method of reasoning can no longer be devoid of critical hope. In their work, Gibbs and Peterson (2019) see universities as places of ‘good’ and hope creation despite their limitations, biases and past mistakes. As such, we must acknowledge that our disciplines and institutions did not materialise out of a bias free condition. Structures, ideas and reasoning have all been imbued with particular politics, experiences and understandings of the world which are not universally experienced or understood. Indeed, inherent in disciplinary advancement and societal betterment is the notion that those reasoning around disciplinary questions or societal problems are capable of engaging in critical thinking. Critical hope as a conceptual orientation for the contemporary university ensures that critical thinking is not devoid of historical or political possibilities (Grain and Lund 2016), but rather as Zembylas (2014:13) puts it: “… means that the person is involved in a critical analysis of power relations and how they constitute one’s emotional ways of being in the world, while attempting to construct, imaginatively and materially, a different lifeworld.”

Trust, critical hope and the university 33

Consequently, we must reimagine the contemporary university as a space where the project of building trust and hope is clearly articulated and embedded throughout. An obvious space for this is through our pedagogy: not only what we teach but how we teach (Giroux 2020). In this sense, our pedagogy requires a relationship with our students that is premised on the development of a whole person – a citizen scholar – not just a disciplinary expert. It accepts that how we teach our disciplines is not an apolitical process. To achieve this, we suggest that in order for critical hope to be truly enacted, the contemporary university requires making explicit a new social contract with the societies they serve by utilising the concept of the citizen scholar.

Section III: A new social contract for universities There are a number of levels that a new social contract for universities could be manifested. Some have focused on the need for the university to renew its research imperative (Samarasekera 2009; Locke 2021), while others have called for one which requires greater accountability and metrics to chart progress (Maassen 2014). Ronald Barnett (2018) argues for an ‘ecological university’ which requires considering that the university accepts its role in shaping knowledge, social institutions, the economy, learning and culture with the natural environment. This chapter extends these perspectives by focussing on our pedagogy as a critical site where universities explicitly serve society by adopting a critical hope mindset to respond to the challenges facing society and, by doing so, re-establishing trust. By social contract we refer to the moral and political obligations universities, as institutions, maintain towards the societies which they are based and serve. As noted, universities have always sought to serve society through education and the pursuit of knowledge. While this remains relevant, we need to move beyond levels of abstractness. Embracing such a mindset requires we accept that our university spaces are more than just the transference of disciplinary knowledge and ideas masquerading as a universal truth, but rather spaces where the whole person is developed, where knowledge is created and contested, and where the link between the academy and society, more broadly, is made evident. This is the pedagogical vision of the citizen scholar where critical hope can be both better articulated and operationalised.

What we teach Engaging in education with critical hope requires us to rethink how we develop curricula across the disciplines. Historically, we treat disciplinary traditions as apolitical and an accepted representation of knowledge development. Rarely do we delve into how our disciplines developed, the conditions under which certain ideas became accepted and who was included (or excluded) in that process. Further, we often treat disciplines as distinct entities.

34  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

While this is a useful way to organise universities as it offers conceptual clarity, this is not how problems facing society operate. While research cultures within universities have, to some degree, accepted this offering through more interdisciplinary research clusters, pedagogy lags behind. Students still enrol in university to become among other things, a chemist, engineer and political scientist, as opposed to pursuing an education that helps prepare them to complex societal challenges or domains. While efforts have been made to integrate other disciplinary perspectives into standard Arts, Sciences or Engineering based degrees, these are often superficial, treated as necessary distractions, rather than an explicit effort to include different ways of thinking and knowing into disciplinary-based degrees. The obsession of transferring disciplinary content is often driven by an errant belief that a university degree is some form of bureaucratic certification rather than instilling a set of methods and processes for the pursuit of knowledge. Barriers to changing what we teach often include arguments around accreditation or return to old tropes associated with the building block approach to learning: students must learn the basics first. Such considerations are largely bureaucratic in origin and do not reflect the evolution that has taken place in the way that students learn and how they access information. Arguments against are also ahistorical as universities organised around disciplines was not a facet of higher education until after the scientific revolution in the late 19th century (Usher 2020). Accepting the need to foster critical hope requires that we approach what we teach differently. No longer can an engineer or scientist be disconnected from the social impact of the discipline or the social context it operates in. As such, we need to approach what we teach with a more interdisciplinary perspective rooted in unpacking the intellectual history of our disciplines. Usher (2020) captures this when writing: What if, for instance, instead of offering undergraduate degrees in biology, or history, or whatever, you just offer a degree in domains like, say, ‘Oceans’ … Or a degree in ‘Persuasion’ …. Not only would students likely be able to understand the link between the content of their degrees and their imagined working futures…but the specialists we get as a result would have a much broader perspective on the challenges they want to solve… Examples of this type of approach are emerging within universities. For example, the Engineering faculty at University College London has developed the Integrated Engineering Framework, which supposes that it is critical for engineers to understand problems they address taking into account social and political ramifications. It is a two-year experience that runs within the undergraduate curricula, teaching core skills like “creativity, communication, interdisciplinarity and teamwork by learning through projects and the social

Trust, critical hope and the university 35

context of engineering.” At Western Sydney University, the Bachelor of Applied Leadership and Critical Thinking approaches the domains of ‘leadership’, ‘creativity’ and ‘ethics’. Approaching our teaching with such a mindset requires we open the space for a broader set of ideas and considerations to enter into the classroom, and to find ways to recognise and value it.

How we teach Critical hope also requires that we examine how we teach and the traditions of how we engage our students. Teaching is imbued with power where the educator is often considered the interpreter and holder of knowledge. We must recognise that such a model is representative of a colonial way of thinking and dismisses the knowledge that our students bring into the classroom (Freire 1994; hooks 2003). This means we see our students move from the position of operating as users of knowledge, to emerging as creators and co-creators of knowledge (Dewey 1924; Vygotsky 1978; Moore 1990; Shor 1992). Placing critical hope at the centre of the university project requires that educators find ways to work with our students to engage with the discipline critically and draw out and apply their knowledge. It is a disposition rooted in humility, where we engage students in a meaningful dialogue to explore and understand a discipline, accepting that our own experiences and understandings are not absolute or even dominant. To achieve this, we must adopt an ethos of partnership with our students. Student partnerships are powerful and empowering for both faculty and students with tangible benefits for all parties involved as it creates a space where learning is multidirectional and mutual (Felten et al. 2019). Partnership, if we let it, can pervade every aspect of a university from teaching and learning, to research and governance: it is about a “way of doing things rather than an outcome itself ” (Healey et al. 2016:9). This is captured by Osman and Hornsby (2017) who argue that including students in pedagogical conversations is an act of social justice, particularly where particular racial or ethnic groups have been historically marginalised. This approach encourages participants to define and produce knowledge according to the social, historical and cultural contexts in which they find themselves (Tierney 1996). Partnership in university spaces requires that students not only play central roles in activities with faculty and staff but equitable roles across the different spaces and places within our institutions (Werder et al. 2016:5). This also is a commitment to disrupting traditional hierarchies and emphasise the student voice (Kehler et al. 2017; Bovill et al. 2011). To borrow a tweet in 2020 from Dilly Fung, Pro-Director of Education at LSE: “Teaching is a relationship, not a performance…” Partnership emphasises a set of pedagogical practices that are about building relationships between those in universities, where community is fostered as a means of enacting hope and building trust. For Felton and Lambert

36  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

(2020), this creates a sense of relentless welcome, where students are included, and their experiences valued from the moment they arrive and throughout their time on campus.

Reinvigorating the relationship between citizenship and scholarship In a previous publication, we argued that to confront the increasing number of global challenges and for universities to remain relevant, the aim is to graduate ‘citizen scholars’ (Arvanitakis and Hornsby 2016). That is, graduates who work to achieve the highest academic standards, as well as engaged, productive and active citizens who are morally connected to their communities and reflect the highest ethical standards. When discussing citizenship here, we are not simply referring to the formal acts of citizenship such as voting, but in having the ability to raise issues and have a sense of agency, as well as the ability to listen to and champion the causes of the most vulnerable. At a time when terms ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ come to dominate much of our political discourse, the importance of the citizen scholar model has never been more important as we should strive to produce graduates who are to be critical and evidenced-based leaders (Locke 2021). As the world faces a number of ongoing ‘wicked’ challenges – from climate change, increasing levels of inequality and generational-long conflicts – this critical thinking should be combined with creativity to find ways to overcome these challenges. And, as we come to grips with the structural inequalities and injustices laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, having graduates who can think creatively, in culturally sensitive and humble ways, who are committed to resolving injustice and open to different ways of knowing, being and doing becomes ever more critical. The citizen scholar model is shaped by this vision. But it is no longer enough that we focus simply on the graduates we produce. Under a condition of diminishing trust and hope in the role that universities play in society, this model now must be used to also frame us as educators and researchers: we as educators must also strive to be citizen scholars.

From student to academic ‘citizen scholars’ To begin this change, we need to enact critical hope and ensure it is instilled with a broad set of competencies not only for our students, but for ourselves as academics, researchers and educators. While there are many differences across higher education contexts, we would like to present eight dimensions of the ‘academic citizen scholar’. 1. We must be what we want our graduates to be In his highly entertaining TED Talk, late Sir Ken Robinson describes the amusing and somewhat ludicrous situation of schools demanding creativity

Trust, critical hope and the university 37

by placing signs such as ‘Be Creative’ throughout the institution. The best way to encourage creativity, entrepreneurship and critical engagement for our students is to display this behaviour: be it creative assessments, the ability to discuss controversial issues sensitively by creating brave not just safe spaces (Arvanitakis 2020) or working across disciplines. We cannot expect our students to behave in ways that we do not model including a sense of sincerity that we are acting responsibly and morally (Rider 2018), with a sense of the public good and in a trustworthy in our ‘truth telling’ (Gibbs 2019). 2. A holistic approach is required By extension, we must ensure we take a holistic approach to the curriculum. We have created far too many silos to be able to confront contemporary grand challenges. The best outcomes can be achieved when designing and developing our curriculum that confirms each of these challenges is part of a broader organism that must be considered holistically. For example, the importance of assessment structures cannot be considered without an innovative curriculum that is linked with support and success, which directly ties with employment and the role of universities within our community. 3. Cross-cultural learning Western democracies are highly multicultural and diverse, and we must leverage and learn from our many complex communities. The ties that link our communities and their respective locations within the broader international setting require cross-cultural understanding. We must be global citizens and prepared to work with diverse populations – even the ones we find challenging. This can be done by striving to understand to understand those we disagree with and not deceive ourselves about our own biases (Gibbs and Dean 2015). 4. The liberal arts and a balanced curriculum The importance of an educated and skilled workforce is fundamental in economic and social development as well as in navigating the challenges that we have described. The response that is required to confront these challenges is not only reflected in the way we approach the diverse student body and communities in which we function, but also within the curriculum. While much attention over the last decade has been focussed on the need to expand the so-called STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – this cannot be done at the expense of the liberal arts. In fact, in one of his final acts as Australia’s Chief Scientist before retiring, Professor Ian Chubb (2011) long argued that the STEM community could only reach its full potential by linking with the arts, as this requires creativity, critical thinking, people-centred thinking and other such dimensions that is at the core of a liberal arts education. This has been reflected in some of the world’s leading universities that have now moved to promote STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.

38  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

5. A more creative university To deal with this as well as the grand challenges of our time – the wicked problems discussed above – we must take an interdisciplinary approach, with our students standing at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. Such interdisciplinary and creative approaches are essential. This will require some rethinking, at an institutional level and at an individual level, about how we organise ourselves. Greater collaboration between universities, business, industry and the arts will be vital. But ultimately, how we relate to each other internally will fundamentally need to be different to what it is now. Most importantly, however, in our teaching, we should not neglect to encourage our students to be imaginative and creative. To achieve this, however, we must look at the way we structure ourselves. As Perry Rettig (2021) argues in The Quantum University, we need to restructure our institutions and pedagogical approach to reflect complex phenomenon such as quantum physics, ecology and chaos theory. Rettig’s argument is that these complex sciences are a much cleaner fit and metaphor for our institutional structures and leadership models. This will provide greater opportunities for us as educators and our students to think outside the silos of disciplines; and there should be room in our teaching and learning for experimentation where uncertainty (and even, failure) is acceptable. 6. Inclusive The university educator and researcher of tomorrow will need to embrace the university as a site for inclusion. By inclusion we mean more than simply adding diversity and stirring. Inclusion under a condition of structural exclusion requires that educators and researchers of tomorrow understand and dismantle the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, racism and sexism that exist within our institutions and across our societies. Critical to embedding this within ourselves will be to understand our role in how we approach learning and how our disciplines have been constructed and shaped by our own biases and ideological perspectives (Gibbs and Dean 2015). 7. Community embeddedness Much has been written about the need to move beyond the ivory tower logics that have pervaded universities since time immemorial. The educators of tomorrow will need to be connected to the communities they are serving and be able to translate their work for the public good. The challenge with the present university and those who occupy spaces within it is that our value and contribution to society is assumed. An intrinsic argument to justifying the existence of universities is no longer possible and we will need to be explicit about how our research and teaching contribute to societal betterment. The notion of university being embedded in a community and able to communicate the value of what they do is not contradictory to creating space for thought and reason and deep consideration. These can exist together but require explicit attention and effort.

Trust, critical hope and the university 39

8. Cooperation and Collaboration For too long has the notion of competition has pervaded higher education: pitting institutions and academics against each other (GuzmánValenzuela & Barnett 2013). These logics are tired and have limited utility, particularly when it comes to dealing with wicked and grand challenges facing societies across the world that do not differentiate between universities or geographic sites. The educator and researcher of tomorrow needs to reject the logic of competition and actively seek out cooperation and collaboration, internally and externally to their own institutions. Internally, this means greater cross-disciplinary collaborations, externally – more crossinstitutional cooperation on common issues.

Conclusion: Towards a new institutional hope Throughout this chapter, we have argued that fundamental to the challenges confronting universities today is diminishing trust. The consequences of this loss of trust in institutions cannot be overemphasised. If we follow the logic of Anthony Giddens and others, this gives a rise to despair, dread and shrinking societies. A society that is shrinking cannot overcome the many challenges we are currently facing. Through embracing a critical hope within our teaching and learning environments, the opportunity to position institutions of higher education as sites of promise and hope within society becomes possible. This offers a trajectory towards affirming trust in universities as sites of expertise and honesty, where explicit effort is put into speaking and finding ways to resolving injustices, exclusion and inequities. By revisiting the relationship between citizenship and the scholarship we pursue and produce, it is possible to imagine a society that understands the value proposition offered by universities. While our instinct in a time of intellectual hostility is to withdraw and stay safely in our institutional environments, the need to embrace hope and pursue a ‘trust project’ has never been more important. Such a connection is what we would expect from our students and as such, is one that we as scholars should lead. This will redefine the social contract between the university and our communities and allows us to re-establish the social license we must regain.

References Arvanitakis, J. (2016) From Despair to Hope. Sydney: Penguin. Arvanitakis, J. (2020) Arvanitakis on American Politics: Understanding the Populist Pandemic, Open Forum, 18 April 2020, https://www.openforum.com.au/arvanitakison-american-politics-understanding-the-populist-pandemic/ Arvanitakis, J., & Hornsby, D. J. (eds.) (2016) Universities, Citizen Scholars, and the Future of Higher Education. Critical University Studies Series. London: Palgrave MacMillan Publishers. Barnett, R. (2018) The Ecological University: A Feasible Utopia. London: Routledge.

40  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

Bovill, C., et al. (2011) Changing participants in pedagogical planning: Students as co-creators of teaching approaches, course design, and curricula. International Journal for Academic Development, 16(2), 133–145. Bozalek, V., Carolissen, R., Leibowitz, B., & Boler, M. (2014). Introduction. In V. Bozalek, B. Leibowitz, R. Carolissen, & M. Boler (eds.), Discerning Critical Hope in Educational Practices (pp. 1–8). New York: Routledge. Brown, P.T. (2019) The Dark Side of Social Capital, Number 47, Spring-Summer, National Affairs, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-dark-sideof-social-capital Calcutt, A. (2016) The Truth About Post-Truth Politics, Newsweek, https://www. newsweek.com/truth-post-truth-politics-donald-trump-liberals-tony-blair-523198 Callari, M. (2021) COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy on the Rise, Cosmos, 23 April 2021, https:// cosmosmagazine.com/people/behaviour/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-on-the-rise/ Chubb, I. (2011) Professor Ian Chubb’s Address to the National Press Club, Wednesday, 01 June 2011, https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/2011/06/professor-ian-chubbs-addressto-the-national-press-club Citrin, J., & Stoker, L. (2018) Political trust in a cynical age, The Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 49–70, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050316-092550 Coen-Sanchez, K. (2020) I can’t breathe: Feeling suffocated by polite racism in Canada’s graduate schools. University Affairs, 10 November 2020, https://www. universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/i-cant-breathe-feeling-suffocatedby-the-polite-racism-in-canadas-graduate-schools/?utm_source=University+ A f fairs+e-newsletter&utm _campaig n=a5c86d075d-EM AIL _CA MPAIGN_ I N _ R E V I E W_ 2 0 19 _ C O P Y_ 0 1& u t m _ m e d i u m = e m a i l & u t m _ t e r m = 0 _ 314bc2ee29-a5c86d075d-426946805 Connaughton, A. (2020) Social trust in advanced economies is lower among young people and those with less education, Pew Research Centre, 3 December 2020, https://www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/12/03/social-trust-in-advanced-economies-islower-among-young-people-and-those-with-less-education/ Curzon-Hobson, A. (2002) A pedagogy of trust in higher learning, Teaching in Higher Education, 7(3), 265–276, doi:10.1080/13562510220144770 Dewey, J. (1924) School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dodd, T. (2020) In a world of colossal troubles, plucky ANU steps up, Australia Financial Review, 5 August 2020. Editorial (2020) How we lost trust in universities, The Australian, 6 August 2020. Felten, P., et al. (2019, April) Reimagining the place of students in academic development. International Journal of Academic Development, 24(2), 192–203, doi:10.1080/1360 144X.2019.1594235 Felton, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020) Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Finkel, A. (2016) Australian Science Communicators National Conference, Keynote address to win hearts and minds, https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/sites/default/files/ChiefScientist-Science-Communications-speech.pdf Freire, P. (2007/1994) Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Continuum. Funk, C. (2017) Mixed Messages about Public Trust in Science. Pew Research Center: Science and Society, 8 December 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2017/12/08/ mixed-messages-about-public-trust-in-science/ Gibbs, P. (2019) Why academics should have a duty of truth telling in an epoch of posttruth? Higher Education, 78(3), 501–510. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9773-3977

Trust, critical hope and the university 41

Gibbs, P., & Barnett, R. (eds.) (2014) Thinking about Higher Education. London/New York: Springer. Gibbs, P., & Dean (2015) Do higher education institutes communicate trust well? Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 25(2), 155–170. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9773-3977 Gibbs, P., & Peterson, A. (2019) Higher Education and Hope Institutional, Pedagogical and Personal Possibilities. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Giddens, A. (1990) Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Giroux, H. A. (2020) On Critical Pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury. Glauser, W. (2020) When Black medical students weren’t welcome at Queen’s. University Affairs, 19 February 2020, https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/featurearticle/when-black-medical-students-werent-welcome-at-queens/?utm_source= Un iver sit y +A f f a i r s + e -new s let ter& ut m _ ca mpa ig n = a 5c86 d 075d -E M A I L _ CA MPAIGN _ IN _ R EVIEW_ 2019_COPY_01&utm _ medium=emai l&utm _ term=0_314bc2ee29-a5c86d075d-426946805 Goldstein, C. M., Murray, E. J., Beard, J., Schnoes, A. M., & Wang, M. L. (2020, December) Science communication in the age of misinformation, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 54(12), 985–990. https://doi.org/10.1093/abm/kaaa088 Grain, K. M., & Lund, D. E. (2016) The social justice turn: Cultivating “Critical Hope” in an age of despair. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (Fall 2016), 45–59. https://doi.org/10.3998/mjcsloa.3239521.0023.104 Guzmán-Valenzuela, C., & Barnett, R. (2013) Marketing time: Evolving timescapes in academia. Studies in Higher Education, 38(8), 1120–1134. Hage, G. (2001) The incredible shrinking society, Weekend Review: Australian Financial Review, 7 September 2001, pp. 4–5. Hassan, R. (2003) The Chronoscopic Society: Globalization, Time and Knowledge in the Network Economy. London: Peter Lang Publishing. Healey, M., et al. (2016) Students as partners: Reflections on a conceptual model. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 4(2), 8–20, doi:10.20343/teachlearninqu.4.2.3. hooks, B. (2003) Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge. Horowitz, J. M., Igielnik, R., & Kochhar, R. (2020) Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality. London: Pew Research Centre. Jameson, J. (2012) Leadership values, trust and negative capability: Managing the uncertainties of future English higher education. Higher Education Quarterly, 66(4), 391–414. Kehler, A., et al. (2017, May) We are the process: Reflections on the underestimation of power in students as partners in practice. International Journal for Students as Partners, 1(1), 1–15, doi:10.15173/ijsap.v1i1.3176. Koch, A. K. (2017, May) Many thousands failed: A wakeup call to history educators. Perspectives on History, 55, 18–19. https://www.historians.org/publications-anddirectories/perspectives-on-history/may-2017/many-thousands-failed-a-wakeupcall-to-history-educators Koch, A. K., & Gardner, J. N. (2017) Transforming the “real first-year experience”: The case for and approaches to improving gateway courses. In R. Feldman (ed.), The First Year of College: Research, Theory, and Practice on Improving the Student Experience and Increasing Retention. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Lavazza, A., & Farina, M. (2020) The Role of Experts in the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Limits of Their Epistemic Authority in Democracy, Frontiers in Public Health, https:// doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00356 Locke, W. (2021) The future for universities should be evidence-based, University News, https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210115123736954

42  J. Arvanitakis & D. J. Hornsby

Love, H., & Loh. T. H. (2020) The ‘rural-urban divide’ furthers myths about race and poverty—concealing effective policy solutions, The Avenue, https:// w w w.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/12/08/the-rural-urban-dividefurthers-myths-about-race-and-poverty-concealing-effective-policy-solutions/ Maassen, P. (2014) A new social contract for higher education? In G. Goastellec & F. Picard (eds.), Higher Education in Societies: A Multi Scale Perspective (pp. 33–50). Rotterdam/Boston/Taipei: Sense Publishers. MacLure, M. (2003) Discourse in Educational and Social Research. London: Open University. Mair, S. (2020, December) Neoliberal economics, planetary health, and the COVID-19 pandemic: a Marxist ecofeminist analysis, The Lancet, 4(2), E588–E596, https://www. thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30252-7/fulltext Moore, D. T. (1990) Experiential discourse as critical education. In J. C. Kendall, (ed.). Combining Service and Learning: A Resource Guide for Community and Public Service (pp. 273–283). Raleigh, NC: NSIEE. Osman, R., & Hornsby, D. J. (eds.) (2017) Transforming higher education in a global context: Towards a socially just pedagogy. In Critical University Studies Series. London: Palgrave MacMillan Publishers. Putnam, R. D. (1995) Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78, doi:10.1353/jod.1995.0002 Raine, L., & Perrin, E. (2019) Key findings about Americans’ declining trust in government and each other, Pew Research Centre, 22 July 2019, https://www.pewresearch. org/fact-tank/2019/07/22/key-f indings-about-americans-declining-trust-ingovernment-and-each-other/ Rettig, P. R. (2021) The Quantum University: New Knowledge Requires New Thinking. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Rider, S. (2018) On knowing how to tell the truth, in post-truth. In Fake News Viral Modernity and Higher Education (pp. 27–42). Singapore: Springer. Sacks, J. (2004) From Optimism to Hope Paperback. London: Bloomsbury Continuum. Samarasekera, I. V. (2009, November 12) Universities need a new social contract. Nature, 462, 160–161. Shor, I. (1992) Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tierney, W. G. (1996) Academic freedom and the parameters of knowledge. In P. Leistyna, A. Woodrun, & A. S. Sherblom (eds.), Breaking Free. The Transformative Power of Critical Pedagogy (pp. 129–148). Cambridge: Harvard Educational Review. United Nation (2020) Inequality in a Rapidly Changing World, United Nations, New York. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/ 01/World-Social-Report-2020-FullReport.pdf Usher, A. (2020) Disciplines v. Domains. One Thought Blog. Higher Education Strategy Associates. 23 November 2020. https://higheredstrategy.com/disciplines-vs-domains/ Uslaner, E. (2002) The Moral Foundations of Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511614934 Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press. Weinert, F. (2018) The role of trust in political systems. A Philosophical Perspective, 1(28), 27–113. Werder, C., et al. (2016, September) Students as co-inquirers (special Section Guest editors’ Introduction). Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 4(2), 5–7.

Trust, critical hope and the university 43

Wynne, B. (1992) Misunderstood misunderstanding: Social identities and public uptake of science. Public Understanding of Science, 1(3), 281–304. https://doi.org/ 10.1088/0963-6625/1/3/004 Zembylas, M. (2014) Affective, political and ethical sensibilities in pedagogies of critical hope: Exploring the notion of ‘critical emotional praxis.’ In V. Bozalek, B. Leibowitz, R. Carolissen, & M. Boler (eds.), Discerning Critical Hope in Educational Practices (pp. 11–25). New York: Routledge.

3 Transcending a single reality Transdisciplinarity, the emerging forces of spirituality and a pedagogy of self-cultivation Paul Gibbs

There has only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus. Which gave being a single voice. (Deleuze 2014:45)

Introduction This chapter develops a notion of the university where its purpose is to solve pressing problems for society. It seeks to engage with poverty, climate change, freedom and war, and the consequences of these as the university’s core activity. It does this through a form of transdisciplinarity where the amelioration of these problems shapes the form of knowledge, not knowledge shaping our understanding of them. This is not a vague form of interdisciplinary and multi-­d isciplinary encounters with these problems grounded in the one reality epistemology so evident in the discourses of reactionaries but a form of being that transcends un-relativities to offer a different onto-epistemological stance. Building on Critical Realism and the transdisciplinarity theories of Nicolescu, the chapter develops an approach to praxis, which is based on the recognition of the unexplainable, harnessing its emerging forces to create radical paths for humanity’s survival. By utilising disciplinary knowledge but acknowledging the reality and limitations of its creation, a transcendent engagement with the rationally inexplicable offers a fusion of ideas that is emergent and spiritual, revealing truth, beliefs and knowledges that are culturally centred and indigenously co-created. The chapter will try to offer some insights through these ideas, building a pedagogy of self-cultivation as an ecology within the future university.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-5

Transcending a single reality 45

Revealing our own potential As Heidegger suggests, we are thrown into this world as we are taught it exists, yet we are able to free ourselves from the constraints of its structure by seeing the world as it might be for ourselves; not through the methodologies and calculative thinking of others, academic disciplines or professions, but through the oneness exemplified in the in the onto-theological nature of the transcendental. A way of realising the potential that resides within us to do this, as a capability to become, is to perceive the potential for action in the form of transdisciplinary realities. This potential capability is an ontological driver of the actuality of becoming what we can desire to be, (or may be genetically destined to be) cognizant of both the transdisciplinary subject and object as ways of becoming. It requires what Arendt calls activities, full of political, social and economic power to achieve, and we make our being feasible by questioning the reality of our everyday experience in the knowledge we have of ourselves, and with a preparedness and courage to create new knowledge of ourselves from the engagement. Becoming, then, is creating practical knowledge that is testable in the world of practice; it is the fusion of passive and active causal powers in what I call the transdisciplinary nexus. This requires space and time and implicitly, in this discussion, it is a central reason of why the university should exist and why those who attend should be respectful of the privilege thus conferred, but more of this later. So, what is this transdisciplinarity I speak of? It has a number of forms but the one which has greatest resonance with its use in this chapter is that developed by Nicolescu (2002) in his Charter for Transdisciplinarity. Its tenets are based on the complexity of being in the world which led him to propose an anti-reductionist, multi-referential and multi-reality onto-epistemology. Our being is framed and emergent for the flux of these realities which include both the immanent and the transcendental, the determinate and the indeterminate, the personal and the cosmological and the knowable and the unknowable. These dimensions emerge through the complexity of being and complexity is, for Nicolescu (2014), a fundamental feature of reality, where realities are stratified (and contain the logic of the included middle), destroying the traditional separation between subject and object. Transdisciplinarity is a way of being, and an attitude of orientation towards the knowledge of the self, through the recognition of the spiritual within the emergence of knowledge. It is resistant to the utilitarian idea that humanity has the right to use natural resources for their short term benefit leading to the detriment of the ecosystem. For Nicolescu, it is solving problems in the real world, which will force universities to interact with society, industry, banks and ecology. The resolution of these problems has not be found in disciplines and so requires knowledge and action which go beyond academic disciplines. As Nicolescu states, “[I]nstilling complex and transdisciplinary thought into the structures and programs of the university will permit its evolution toward its somewhat forgotten mission today: the study of the universal” (2018:75).

46  P. Gibbs

Transdisciplinarity differs fundamentally from mono-, inter- and multidisciplinary methodologies and practices, in that a qualitatively new knowledge is required that cannot be generated by the additive pooling of the knowledges of the various disciplines concerned but requires a whole integration, or genuine transdisciplinarity. Such an approach opens up closed systems to freedom of exploration and hold their closure to account. Closed systems and measured regularities are synonymous with causal mechanisms. A closed system operates through deterministic rules which govern its change processes. Closed and open systems can also be distinguished by the degree and type of determinism that each implies: closed systems are driven by discipline and open systems by the transdisciplinary nexus.

Spirituality In open systems there is room for the non-rational, for care, concern, love and spirituality, the sacred and religion. For the purposes of this chapter, I suggest that religion is a closed system understood as an object of study, while spirituality is an open system and has to do with the subject that is transformed, transmuted or awakened through spiritual practices like prayer, meditation, chanting, liturgy and visualisation. It is experienced in the univocity of the realities of the divine and the profane within the whole being. These two realities rest upon the influential analyses of Durkheim (2001) who, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, contrasted it with the profane: whereas the latter pertains to ordinary everyday life, the former concerns sacred things which are “things set apart and surrounded by prohibitions” (2001:46). Thus, the sacred describes phenomena regarded as other and non-ordinary. This can include divine beings and the places and objects connected to these. In a contemporary study, Lomas’ (2019) search of academic literature identified three key dimensions: the sacred, contemplative practice and self-transcendence. He merges these into a conceptualisation of spirituality that may be valid cross-culturally, namely, “engagement with the sacred, usually through contemplative practice, with the ultimate aim of self-transcendence” (2019:131). In other words, spirit is both transcendent and immanent in matter, which is why we can sense the otherworldly sacred in and through ordinary experience. It should be evident that studying religion as object, for instance, as socio-cultural phenomena, is epistemologically different from subjective, experiential, reflective or introspective self-knowledge. It is existence beyond domains of knowable causal laws. Religion may be understood as an object of study, while spirituality has to do with the subject that is transformed, transmuted or awakened through spiritual practices like prayer, meditation, chanting, liturgy, and visualisation. We can experience this in everyday life and it should be encouraged, as I suggest below, in time for silence in the curriculum. This absence of ‘doing’ offers an awakening much in the sense used by Kierkegaard as moment of vision where we more receptively perceive and hermeneutically interpret. We see a large

Transcending a single reality 47

picture and experience our understanding existentially. I have claimed elsewhere (Gibbs, 2011) that these moments of vision are themselves the causal power that reveals potentiality and turns it into practice, for this causal power might best be considered as a disposition to change or be changed. In the transdisciplinary conceptualisation of the multiple reality of Nicolescu, the spiritual is the “zone between two different levels and beyond all levels is a zone of non-resistance to our experiences, representations, descriptions, images, and mathematical formulations” (2010:17). This zone of non-resistance corresponds to the sacred – to that which does not submit to any rationalisation. In so proclaiming, Nicolescu introduces a third-level reality, bridging and incorporating the profane and the divine, which places the recognition of the spiritual level of Reality in the core of the knowledge process. Proclaiming that there is a single level of Reality eliminates the sacred and self-destruction is generated; whereas in the multi-levelled reality, this moves us from manifest phenomena to underlying generative mechanisms and structures and goes towards revealing the sacred. The clarity of this link with the fundamental experience of the world and to the intrinsically hierarchical thinking of onto-theology is most clearly seen in the medieval epoch to which I turn.

Historical perspective Divine and mortal, unknowable and absolute power, self-determination and divinely determined, knowable or not – these issues have been, and remain, central to any ontology. Whether humanity has the right to use others in the universe for its own benefit has become a question of critical importance to our survival. I have taken a stance on this and it emanates from the medieval philosophers both Christian and Islamic and at its core the principles of univocity, oneness and universals present in different levels of reality has a long philosophical tradition stretching into pre-Socratic texts. In this short section, I propose that the retrieval of the past will help prepare the way for an onto-theological understanding of our self-cultivation, presented at the end of the chapter. I do not intend to offer a comprehensive history of the univocity, rather to just touch on the merging of ideas in the medieval epoch but linger on the work of Duns Scotus, whose work in the late-middle ages had shown for Heidegger that “a striking individuality as a thinker characterizes him in general as having unmistakably modern traits” (2002:61). This became evident in Spinoza and, much more recently, in Deleuze who suggests that there “has only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus. Which gave being a single voice” (2014:45). Admittedly, the medieval period is not commonly associated with enlightenment-led education and, as with the curate’s egg, there is some truth to this claim. In a brief introduction to the problem of the doctrine of the univocity of being, I will begin with how it unfolds in the Aristotelian-scholastic in the late-middle ages. This is the period of the first blossoming of European universities signifying an educative change. It was during this period that European

48  P. Gibbs

learning owed a considerable debt to Islamic scholarship of ancient Greek texts. It is hard to overestimate the impact of the translations of ancient texts, first from Greek into Arabic (in Western Europe the use of Greek had atrophied in favour of Latin, undertaken no doubt under the influence of the Pope and the holy Roman Emperor) by Islamic scholars and then from the original Greek. This facilitated the recapture of Aristotle and Plato, but also and significantly the fusion by Avicenna of falsafa (Arabic Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy) and kal ām (Islamic doctrinal theology) into a truly Islamic philosophy. Indeed, Avicenna came to exert great influence on European scholastic thought; an influence that was overshadowed only by that of the Andalusian Aristotle commentator, Averroes.

Duns Scotus The influence of Duns Scotus on univocity and the development of the coexistent universals or transcendentals, and especially the notion of individuality, are critical to my argument here: our individuality is a singularity and we ought to cultivate it in order to realise our potentiality. All this as Heidegger found is in, or signalled in, the work of Duns Scotus. For Scotus, transcendentals are coexistent with being and in some way properties of it. The transcendentals are those attributes of a thing which transcend Aristotle’s ten categories of substance, with being as oneness as the most fundamental of these transcendentals. It is what is formally predicated in each being. Duns Scotus introduced a theory of actuality with the conception of a non-categorical individual difference to produce an account of the individuality of an individual as of our haecceitas1. The distinction between two forms of our species’ specific potential (to grow to six foot, grow hair and walk upright) and our individual potential is considered in what he refers to within a certain class of this and distinctive from all other things which share our commonality. Moreover, that which makes us individual cannot, by the nature of its singularity, be categorised at a higher order as in an Aristotelian system of categories while still being part of a species that can indeed so be. This creates an issue of description and we can only name the individuality by proper name or by indexical pronoun. This formal distinction is at the core of our educational desire to educate the whole person as an individual in ways which reveal to them their extended temporal potential to become. Succinctly, King’s Scotus position is “that in each individual there is a principle that accounts for its being the very thing it is and a formally distinct principle that accounts for its being the kind of thing it is. The former is its individual differentia, the latter its common nature” (1992:50). The levels of reality and the phenomenological logic applicable to each of these levels is to think transdisciplinarity. While as far as the natural, physical world is concerned, we talk about three levels of reality, in the spiritual realm of Christian thought we can talk about two levels of reality: the divine and the human. What Christian theology does is to try to explain the way in which the

Transcending a single reality 49

two levels of reality come into contact with each other, how they interact. These two concepts exhausted being, there could be no third notion distinct from finite being and infinite being that would be univocal to God and creature since univocity would collapse God’s transcendence. In opposition to this, Scotus argued that a univocal concept of being is necessary if any claim to natural knowledge of God is to be justified. Duns Scotus asserted, “I say that God is conceived not only in a concept analogous to the concept of a creature, that is, one which is wholly other than that which is predicated of creatures, but even in some concept univocal to Himself and to a creature” (1987:19). Thus, God’s being is different from, yet included in, both realities and thus univocal (ibid:20). Duns Scotus is therefore able to create a notion of univocity of being which transcends the bipolar opposites of divine and profane, or finite and infinite, etc. This idea settles well with Nicolescu’s ideas of spirituality (2008) sitting between levels, crafting a coexistent exploration on onto-theology. Our realities are in a flow with complexity and causation. This flow of Realities is conceived as an open system in which possible worlds emerge and Realities are (a) perceived and are indeterminate and (b) realised and dependent on the location of the becoming being. It is in this primary sense of becoming as potentiality, as energy and power, that the capacity to bring about change in another thing or in itself can and does occur. Effecting this change is paramount to creating new transdisciplinary knowledge. If knowledge is understood as transdisciplinary, then its mode of production and rationale is located outside discipline-based epistemic practices. The argument is that transdisciplinarity signifies a unity of knowledge and this unity is located outside and beyond the disciplines. Furthermore, if, in addition to an emergent level, a qualitatively new outcome is involved in the causal process, then the knowledge required can no longer be generated by the additive pooling of the knowledges of the various disciplines concerned, but requires a whole integration or genuine transdisciplinarity. The formal conditions for this depend on complexity and emergence and, since emergence is an important feature of human life, all knowledge development which is concerned with human beings and their activities in the world will necessarily be both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary. In this, Nicolescu’s transdisciplinarity has resonance with Emerson’s notion of Nature2. This notion of one transdisciplinary world is explored prior to Nicolescu in the writing of Emerson, which will lead us to a discussion of self-culturalisation within the community of others which can be found in Emerson’s Self-Reliance (2000) and in his Harvard address in 1837, The American Scholar (2020b), which addresses the central purpose of higher education. Emerson’s transcendentalism seeks to realise one’s potential for one’s own flourishing and sees this ontotheological approach to higher education as one where students think freely, questioning the norms attributed to others. Opening Self-Reliance Emerson writes: “To believe in your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, – that is genius. Speak your latent conviction,

50  P. Gibbs

and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the last judgment” (Emerson, 2000a:3). Here, he is contextualising in the wholeness of nature our being as part of a community but not as a collective of the ‘sameness’. This explanation of Emerson’s words (helped by the work of Forsberg, 2019) is not to disregard commonality or conformity but to seriously question it in order for us to act in-the-world. In higher education, Emerson talks of creating in place of the thinking person, “we have a bookworm” (2020:11). In Self-Reliance, Emerson writes, “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light that flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of beards and sages” (2000:3–4). Further, he suggests that “[A]ction is with the scholar …. Without it thought can never ripen into truth” (2020:17). Emerson’s transcendentalism influences the next discussion of this chapter in the sense of self-determination of thought, encouraging personal intuition and subsequent reflective action and, in being self-reliant, being self-trusting. Such networking with other elements of nature enables us to see and understand in wholeness, both physically and spiritually, and to be about to engage with it without deconstructing it to feel and see what is good, beautiful and true within it. Nature is not separate from our thinking of it. Moreover, such a revelation is valid through self-critical thinking, not just a view one might temporarily hold or are unable to support. Such self-critical thinking as the mode for self-cultivation and the teaching is, for Emerson, as Kovalainen states, “the ability to see beauty in everything and the everyday, and to show compassion toward everyone” (2019:515). As McMillin suggests, “Comparing Emersonian Transcendentalism with contemporary Transdisciplinarity is not just academic, not just for amusement nor for the satisfaction of a curiosity, but belongs to a search for responsible approaches to ecological, social, intellectual, and spiritual urgencies”2 (2013:122).

Imagining a pedagogy of self-cultivation Can we imagine an education for the understanding in, and realisation of, our potentiality through nurturing both desired commonness and individual distinctiveness where the will’s purpose is to make good decisions freely based on rational choices presented by the intellect? To do so, the student–teacher relationship is not conceived as a vehicle for the attainment of some authoritarian engagement, but as a genuinely creative encounter in which the lecturer senses the quality of the learning event, an event where learning to think is conceived as mystery and wonder. To seek to see beyond the familiar which itself may actually prevent seeing the deeper truth of a thing is a pedagogical aim. To do this, we need to focus less on the correspondence in terms of familiarity and develop processes where that which is unavailable to us through rationality can be become capable of being accessible in other ways. This strikes a sharp contrast to effective thinking in the calculative mode determined by standards of profession and

Transcending a single reality 51

proficiency, if not perfection. This may lead to distress and alienation as one learns to detach oneself from one’s existential realities and where one’s self can only be reclaimed and cultivated through a duty of dignity3 to self and other4. Allowing understanding to emerge, unshackled, from forms of abstract, logical and rational investigation opens up new realities and new truths. Moreover, it allows letting the nature of the being of things to come into the context of the present, as a responsible and liberated becoming. For Freire, when discussing higher education, this means that we “cannot separate technical training from political comprehension, because we cannot ignore what the purpose of this technical aspect is … The problem is really not whether we must train to fulfil momentary demands efficiently, but rather that we must consider what is implied by anticipating what is going to be done” (1994:93–93). This might be done in many ways but at its core is what Freire describes in Pedagogy of Freedom as the “commitment of the student, who is an adventurer in the art of learning, to the process of inventing, instigated by the teacher, [which] has nothing to do with the transfer of contents. It has to do with the challenge and the beauty of teaching and learning” (1998:105). The goal, then, is to generate foundational questions for deep inquiry into the value and nature of things, a sense of the intrinsic value of knowledge, and to elicit a sense of wonder. We can find this in everything we do; and by making it conspicuous, we make its presence at hand available to us. Specifically, Freire agrees that the “university environment should be pluralistic and dialogical, even though sometimes polemic, controversy and quarrels live together. Formation is a problem of curriculum and also of the understanding of what is curriculum” (Escobar et al., 1994:97). If awakening to how our being is shaped in ways that nurture the potential of individuality, then educationalists should enhance their powers in how our being is manifest in the phenomena of our becoming in the world. This calls forth threefold upon the academic: •

•

•

First, to reveal the importance of the balance of particularity, singularity and commonality in shaping our being and enabling our flourishment in our becoming. This requires facing the paradox of one and many in teaching that allows diverse voices to be heard without compromise to the group. Second, to show ways in which capabilities can be manifest in the presence of our being in the world with others and to realise, through this, the potential to develop ways of seeing and knowing that influence the ways in which all disciplines are taught, and Third, to enable the will to harness the students’ capabilities in ways that shape a stable will intent on actualising them in realities that work for the well-being of self and of others. This is formed in the dialectic of selfconsciousness.

Here, I do not want to concentrate on the created artefacts of works of art or the logic of any argument or even the unity of knowledge, but rather on how

52  P. Gibbs

we might cultivate our will through beauty, unity and truth5 in all we do in our everyday lives and how we might attune to this in our being. Such attunement is required, for the media all too often present the ugly and vile, not the beautiful, the good and the true and we might thus lose our capability to reflect in situ on the negative potential of our willed actualisation rather than the good that is present and unrealised. The third unfolding of the self-cultivating pedagogy is the managing of the self-development intuition of the will and that which is an affection for justice which, according to Duns Scotus, allows the freedom of the will to determine itself in an objective way towards good. This does require a level of particular sameness but at the universal level of dignity of the genus of humanity6. This is a task for education and one that is neglected. It is one, as Bohlin states, where the “emphasis is thus on freedom as a condition of self-cultivation” (2013:394). It is more Kantian than Aristotelian and, contextualised in the world of unfairness, can help nurture the stability of the will through goodness. Such an approach would seek to encourage wonder and curiosity in the things we notice within the ecology of the present (and future) both inside and outside of the University. This might lead to active and liberating and creative pedagogies such as student-led playfulness where collaboration and individuality are fused in a self-cultivation of being participants in, not observers of, new realities where a praxis for good and justice frames the experience of higher education in all its forms. It opens formal education to a space of “professional practice with a far more politicised activity of intellectual work, both within and outside the university” (Escobar et al., 1994:93). By making the effects of the balance of particularities and singularities conspicuous for each student in the different ways that they are comprehended through discussing and sharing meaning, the mystery and wonder of experiencing beauty, unity and truth can be contextualised in all disciplinary discourses. Suspending what is known from the powerful to open up the strangeness of things and, as Vandenberg suggests, “opening to it and letting it disclose itself as one familiarises oneself with it” (2002:328). In so doing, one familiarises oneself with one’s potential becoming. As Gadamer requires, one “must above all consist in this, that where one perceives one’s shortcomings, one strengthens one’s own resources” (2001:335) and not relinquish this responsibility to the others. This self-examining and the revelation may help in the recognition of our self-deception designed to obtain the comfort of remaining the same as others for the mutuality of sameness. Such self-reflection and self-cultivation suggests silence in educative time by disrupting the busy-ness of life, to provide ‘empty’ curriculum time to think rather than smothering students under the blanket of the noise of information. The silence from others opens spaces for creating and opening up to the world to ourselves, and to generate new meanings, aims and content. Such silence allows for thoughts that disclose, but are not necessarily defendable in the discourses of a disciplinary narrative of sameness. Silence is personal and willed and

Transcending a single reality 53

could liberate the student from her notion of collective student7. Such silent selfcultivation can awaken a potential for being that may rupture our takenfor-granted being-in-the-world with others and facilitates willed liberation of self-imposed oppression from the learned helplessness imposed by powerful others. This idea is embedded in Bildung were Humboldt writes in his Theory of Bildung that the “procedure of our mind, particularly in its more mysterious effects, can be fathomed only by deep reflection and unceasing observation. But even this achieves little, unless at the same time attention is paid to the difference between minds and to the variety of ways in which the world is reflected in different individuals” (2000:61). This new actualisation manifests in multiple forms, shaping the patterning of our ways of becoming, and are implicitly linked to an educative appreciation of the willed self-cultivation of the individual whilst retaining a duty to others8. This may well seem to be inconsistent to, yet still careful of, others, for it is not intended to mirror the reality of other people’s worlds but to be an expression of one’s personal stance within the wholeness of the cosmos. It is individuation, not of the sameness that we share. Moreover, in a “mainly alienated society, to be a professional in a hierarchically structured society is a privilege; in a society that is beginning to open out, the professional is a commitment or should be so. To escape from this commitment is not only the denial of self, but of the national project” (Freire 1976:7, quoted by Espinoza, 2017:421). This as I have inferred is the unity of Bildung and universities should provide the conditions necessary for a rational discussion of national and local issues, where ethics and politics constitute substantive elements of the discussion. It is a place for freedoms of thought, of self-expression and of responsibility to self and to others. Quoting Espinoza, “university students should acquire a critical awareness that allows them to be able to face the structural problems of the environment and society in general, by praxis. In other words, it is not enough to recognise popular knowledge, but a university praxis is required for the making of critical citizens” (Espinoza, 2017:442). Such a praxis is educative self-cultivation. Self-cultivation is embedded in this pedagogy. The lecturer is an enabler for encounters which balance the particularities and singularities of their students in what they teach in ways which have worldly relevance. Students through their studies seek to critically realise for them the beauty of truth and deplore corruption of power through the self-cultivation of their capabilities. This requires a reversal of the concentration of power in Government and its agencies and which is exercised more easily on a homogeneous mass than when engaging with free-thinking individuals. Such a pedagogical intervention expects student self-development as a central rather than by-product of education. It structures content, resources and assessment 9 to be of political and moral relevance to a world in which the students exist as individuals and it fosters a culture which develops self-agency. There are difficulties in trying to integrate freedom and moral self-cultivation and the use of ready-made lists of values to be internalised by students clearly is inappropriate. The underpinning of the pedagogy of

54  P. Gibbs

self-cultivation confronts the commodification of all those in higher education, encourages accountable actions and changes the way in which we formulate challenges and attend to them. It seeks to reveal through the curriculum examples of the good, the beautiful and the thoughtful while not hiding the opposites, and provides a place one might dwell during the process of seeking a stable will which cares about the consequences of its actions in their own careers and in their civic responsibilities. The idea of a form of learning structured around politics, philosophy and economics for all students as a responsive reaction to the occurrence of curiosity during a year of civic service is one possible approach. A pedagogy which expects deep thinking, of sustained argument and of critiques can be developed if education is less about the content and its appropriation and more about its existential appreciation. This approach is seen in flipped classrooms of true student-centred education and in attributing learning to the learner, albeit facilitated. This approach would encourage the dissolving of disciplines as hegemonies of powerful knowledge without losing the methodological tools they have developed. It would require problem-framed learning of practical life problems and an epistemology of transdisciplinarity. Such a programme has, at Master level, been introduced in 2021 at the University of Montpelier. This may sound like a more enlighten version of the Oxbridge tutorial system and perhaps it is. Such a pedagogy is dangerous to enact, for it confronts the knowledges and ways of power but the alternative is servitude to inequalities and excesses of the few. International events of the first half of 2020 have shown how far we have lost our freedom to despots worldwide and how much more universities need to do to alleviate oppression through the nurturing and liberation of individualisation through self-cultivation. A way of realising the potential that resides within us to do this, as a capability to become, is to perceive the potential for action in the form of the realities of the transcendentals. This potential capability is an ontological driver of the actuality of becoming what we can desire to be (or may be able to be), cognizant of both the transdisciplinary subject and object as ways of becoming. Achievement requires activities, full of political, social and economic power, and we make our being feasible by questioning the reality of our everyday experience in the knowledge we have of ourselves, and with a preparedness and courage to create new knowledge of ourselves from the engagement. Freedom resides in our choice to act on our potential, and potentialities are aligned with the properties of the haeccetias (the thingness of a thing) that determines its powers to act. Thus, not all the properties of a thing are equally important to the understanding of the specific activities, relationships, commitments, etc., which give meaning to an individual’s identity, yet all contribute to our potentialities to realise our potentiality to be. Ontologically, the most important result of our analysis is the need to understand a form of determination in reality, in which several irreducibly distinct mechanisms at different and potentially emergent levels combine to

Transcending a single reality 55

produce a novel result. The different levels necessary to the understanding of the result may be conceived as interacting or coalescing or laminated systems of levels of reality. The conscious power of this change can be determined by thinking differently about the transcendental structure of becoming rather than being, though that is romantic and poetic in its first formation rather than logical and calculative. It recognises the world of experiences as existing yet is not constrained by it, and it leads to a new configuration of the world; a new reality, rather than a different interpretation of the world in the sense used by Nicolescu. When our potentialities are actualised by the positive emergent powers of the transcendentals, we flourish. These actualise and can manifest themselves in multiple forms multiple forms, shaping the patterning of our ways of becoming, and are implicitly linked to an educative appreciation of the attitude towards the transcendentals shaping our identity. Morin (2008:29), in advocating a transdisciplinary approach within the university, illustrates how this might be done. This attitude may well seem from the Other to be inconsistent, yet still careful of others, for it is not intended to mirror the reality of other people’s worlds but to be an expression of one’s personal stance within the wholeness of the cosmos. It is the identity of the individual, not of the sameness we share. The exploration of the ways these causal powers bring us into becoming beings provides the potential for us to understand our life project and, through will and freedom, achieve it. This requires a blending of knowledges and realities in order that we might have the power to reflect and deliberate on the impact to be achieved by our actions. This process is captured by Nicolescu when he argues that change does not create a new person but a person reborn (2016:202). Exploration of our being provides the potential for us to understand our life project and to seek it. It is not unencumbered: it requires a blending of knowledge, realities and the unpredictability of the causal powers of the transcendentals in order that we might have the power with which to reflect and. This facilitates the casual powers of beauty, truth and goodness the agency of being for being human. Our individuality is the freedom with which we make the choices we make as becoming in the flux of this unity. When positive choices are made, we recognise the dignity of humanity in them. We can do this by pointing out where beauty, unity and truth exist, both in our everyday experiences of life and in the disciplines we teach. In doing so, we are consciously learning something by becoming aware of the universality of the transcendentals revealing their forces in the clearing made for our potentiality and individuality to flourish. We seek to allow wonder and curiosity in the things we notice. This encounter with the forces of our potentiality needs meditative and inceptual thoughts, not calculative thinking and is not encountered by enframing the transcendental as in specific works of art, poetry and music, predetermined as beautiful, good and harmonious (although these things can help) but by making room for them to present their powers in the being of other things. This might be outside the confinement of the institution in active and

56  P. Gibbs

transdisciplinary pedagogies, or student-led playful, creative ones, where they present collaboratively and individually. Making the effects of the transcendentals conspicuous for each student in ways they apprehend them, discussing and sharing meaning while recognising the mystery and wonder of experiencing beauty, unity and truth can be contextualised in all disciplinary discourses. Suspending what one has come to know from others opens ups the strangeness of things and, as Vandenberg suggests, in so doing, “opening to it and letting it disclose itself as one familiarizes oneself with it” (2002:328). In so doing, I suggest familiarising oneself with one’s being. This suggests that the realisation of the transcendentals might be associated with moments of vision (Gibbs, 2011) which are educative and which provide, through breaking the busy-ness of life, empty time to think. Such thinking, which is essentially meditative, seeks to attend within the clearing to its referential use; the why of being. This allows for thoughts that disclose but are not necessarily defendable in the discourses of disciplinary analysis. It is a form of abandonment of the conventions of others evident in the poetic. Such thinking can awaken us to a potential for being that may rupture our taken-for-granted being-in-theworld with others. I conclude with reference to McMillian, who suggests “Comparing Emersonian Transcendentalism with contemporary Transdisciplinarity is not just academic, not just for amusement nor for the satisfaction of a curiosity, but belongs to a search for responsible approaches to ecological, social, intellectual, and spiritual urgencies Transcending limits, including disciplinary boundaries, and letting one’s self-understanding be infused by, and re-fired with nature, the practitioner of abandonment risks confusion but is re-formed into a voice for the nature of things, speaking ‘somewhat wildly’ and expressing new elements of nature” (2013:122).

Notes 1 I base here my understating/understanding? of this on question six in his Early Oxford Lecture on Individuation. 2 See McMillin (2013). 3 I am grateful for this insight from Professor Sharon Rider. 4 The central idea of self-cultivation has had greater and longer exposure in the East as it is embedded in the Confucian relation of balance and oneness of the world. Confucius’ grandson, Zisi, is attributed with the authorship of the classic text Zhongyong which specifically refers to teaching in the opening, and the most important, positioning statement of the book and to how one might use education to cultivate oneself in a set of processes in Chapter 15. The second chapter, Chapter 20.2, opens in the following way:   The Master said “To love learning come close to zhi; to practice with diligent effort come close to ren; to know shame come close to yong 勇(Courage, bravery). To know these three things is, then, to know how to cultivate the self ” (ibid: 301).   The chapter then discusses how these three attributes of being can be used to cultivate self and to ‘bring good order’ to others.

Transcending a single reality 57

5 These coexistent transcendentals of our being are discussed at length by Duns Scotus and other medieval scholars and it would be a divergence to do so here. 6 It is the sameness of distinguishing student from robots in security access permission on the internet. 7 See Zembylas and Michaelides. The Sound of Silence in Pedagogy (2004) where they discuss the silencing of silence as an act of oppression. Also Gibbs (2011) on moments of view in the silence of Boredom. 8 See Gibbs (2019) discussion of academic duties. 9 See de St Jorre, T. J; Boud D. and Johnson E.D. (2019), Assessment for distinctiveness: recognising diversity of accomplishments.

References Aristotle (1984) De Amina, Metaphysics, Topic, Nicomachean Ethics in The Complete Works of Aristotle, J. Barnes (Ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bohlin, H. (2013) Bildung and intercultural understanding, Intercultural Education, 24(5), 391–400. Deleuze, G. (2014) Difference and Repetition, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Duns Scotus, J. (1987) Philosophical Writings, A Selection, A. Wolter (Trans.). London: Hackett. Duns Scotus, J. (2005) Early Oxford Lecture on Individuation, A. B. Wolter (Trans.). New York: Franciscan Institute Publications. Durkheim, E. (2001) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, C. Cosman (Trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (Original work published 1912). Emerson, R. W. (2000) Self-Reliance, Scotts Valley: CreateSpace Independent. Emerson, R.W. (2020) The Academic Scholar. Escobar, M., Fernandez A. L., Gueraro-Niebla, G., & Freire, P. (1994) Paulo Freire on Higher Education: A Dialogue at the National University of Mexico, Albany: SUNY Press. Espinoza, O. (2017) Paulo Freire’s ideas as an alternative to higher education neo-liberal reforms in Latin America, Journal of Moral Education, 46(4), 435–448. Forsberg, N. (2019) From self-reliance to that which relies: Emerson and critique as self-criticism, Educational Philosophy and Theory Journal, 51(5): 498–507. Freire, P. (1998) Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Gadamer, H.-G. (2001) Education is self-education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 35(4), 529–538. Gibbs, P. (2011) The concept of profound boredom: Learning from moments of vision, Studies Philosophy of Education, 30(6), 601–613. Gibbs, P. (2019) Why academics should have a duty of truth telling in an epoch of posttruth? Higher Education, 78(3), 501–510. Heidegger, M. (2002) Author’s Book Notice (1917), J. van Buren (Trans.), in Supplements, From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, J. van Buren (Ed.). New York: State University of New York Press. Kovalainen, H. A. (2019) High and wide, the exact and the vast: Emersonian Bildung in dialog with Humboldt and Dewey, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(5), 508–518. McMillin, T. S. (2013) The discipline of abandonment: Emersonian properties of transdisciplinarity & the nature of method, Nineteenth Century Prose, 40(2), 105–128. Morin, E. (2008) The Reform of Thought, Transdisciplinarity, and the Reform of the University, in Transdisciplinarity: Theory and Practice, Basarab Nicolescu (Ed.). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

58  P. Gibbs

Nicolescu, B. (2002) Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity. Karen-Claire Voss (Trans.), 2002, Albany: SUNY Press. Nicolescu, B. (2008) Spiritual Dimension of Democracy- Utopia or Necessity, in A. Marga, T. Bercheim, & J. Sadlak (Eds.), Living in Truth, 2008, pp. 509–516. ClujNapoca: Cluj University Press, Babes-BolyaiUniversity. Nicolescu, B. (2010) Methodology of transdisciplinarity–levels of reality, logic of the included middle and complexity, Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering and Science 1(1), 17–32. Nicolescu, B. (2014) From Modernity to Cosmodernity: Science, Culture, and Spirituality, Albany: SUNY Press. Nicolescu, B. (2018) The Transdisciplinary Evolution of the University Condition for Sustainable Development, in D. Fam, L. Neuhauser, & P. Gibbs (Eds.), Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice and Education, pp. 73–81. Cham: Springer. Vandenberg, D. (2002) The transcendental phases of learning, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(3), 321–344. Zembylas, M., & Michaelides, P. (2004) The sound of silence in pedagogy, Educational Theory, 54, 193–210.

Part II

Cultural Growth

4 Decolonial reparation as re-humanisation in higher education Nuraan Davids

Introduction Since the inception of its democracy in 1994, South Africa’s higher education has been beset by calls for transformation and decolonisation. On the one hand, the recent student uprisings, which shut down numerous campuses, confirm the continuing fractured experiences of historically marginalised students. On the other hand, they remind us that whatever upheavals are encountered in higher education are symptomatic of broader social and political ills, and therefore cannot be addressed without cognisance of the discursive impact of South Africa’s relatively new democracy. Despite immense and ongoing reform, higher education remains an elusive and disaffecting space, with superficial prioritising of historical, social and political injustices. Institutional transformational policies and strategies remain trapped in surface and quantifiable representation of historically marginalised students and academics. Scattered and negligible understandings of the dehumanising impact of coloniality and apartheid are evident in the blatantly missing discourses on the necessity for re-humanisation in higher education. Few would argue that at the centre of the deep disaffection experienced by an increasing number of students and academics at South African, as well as other African higher education institutions, is the lingering presence of colonialism. It is well known that the African continent is dominated by academic institutions shaped by colonialism and organised according to the European model. As described by Teferra and Altbach (2004), higher education in Africa is an artefact of colonial policies, which has been shaped and influenced by a multitude of European colonisers, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Spain, as well as Britain and France, which have left the greatest and lasting impact, not only in terms of the organisation DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-7

62  N. Davids

of academe and the continuing links to the metropole, but, most importantly, in the language of instruction and communication (Teferra & Altbach 2004). As a result, South African students, who have been historically excluded, continue to struggle in finding points of belonging and resonance with university curricula, as well as institutional spaces and cultures, which were never meant to include them. Post-colonial attempts at ridding a number of South African universities from their historical injustices remain just that – attempts. Despite bold assertions of reform, redress and a re-imagined higher education, devoid of its repressions and oppressions, the reality is that the promises suggested by a democracy remain trapped under the burdened histories of colonialism and apartheid. There are risks in simplified explanations, arguments and justifications for what is often described as South Africa’s slow pace of transformation. Equally, there are risks in trying to interrogate transformation in higher education without taking account of the context-boundness of this transformation. There are intricate complexities and hegemonies – socially, politically and economically – which are so entrenched, that it cannot, but serve, an anti-transformational purpose. Compounding these complexities are not only expectations that higher education would somehow ensure the undoing of historical inequalities and inequities, but that higher education can somehow fulfil democratic imperatives of restitution and social justice. Not only is the sheer volume of these expectations wholly unrealistic, but there are significant risks, therefore, in thinking that whatever reform higher education in South Africa is aspiring towards can be achieved in the absence of meta-reforms of what it means to be, and to be seen as human. The point of departure of this chapter, therefore, is that unless transformation in South African higher education recognises and is prepared to disassemble its pervading coloniality, neither institutions, nor the lived experiences of students will transform. To this end, the chapter argues for the re-imagination of decolonial reparation as a language and practice through which to re-recognise humanity, and more specifically, the qualities inferred by humanity, such as regard, care and compassion. Decolonial reparation in higher education, as will be argued, creates the spaces not only for connecting with the humanity of all people, but de-hegemonises those institutional practices, which serve to marginalise and exclude. In this regard, I turn to Nussbaum (1997: 7) who holds that the role of the university cannot be limited to emphasising critical thought and respectful judgment, or diversifying ‘the curriculum in a way that ultimately subverts the aims of citizenship, focusing on interest-group identity politics rather than on the need of all citizens for knowledge and understanding’. The university, she argues, must impart an understanding of the histories and contributions of all groups with whom we interact; it must remain open to new points of view by consciously broadening the curriculum to expose students to unfamiliar traditions that may confront them; and it must remain respectful and tolerant of many ways of life.

Re-humanisation in higher education 63

Higher education in South Africa: A negotiated (un)settlement In 1994, the post-apartheid imperative of a single, national co-ordinated higher education system, was largely driven by a motivation to achieve social justice through economic parity (HESA 2014: 10). By 2001, institutional restructuring included either the closure or incorporation of the colleges of education into the universities and technikons, and the restructuring of 36 higher education institutions (HEIs) into 11 traditional (research) universities that mainly offer degree programmes, six comprehensive universities (one distance education institution in the form of the University of South Africa) and six universities of technology. Despite this massive institutional overhaul, South Africa’s higher education system remains binary – it continues to rely on a blend of training colleges, technical/vocational institutes, polytechnic-type institutions and universities. Ng’ethe, Subotzky and Afeti (2008) report that a lack of policy clarity regarding the appropriate boundaries between polytechnics and universities in terms of their mission, purpose, curricula and programmes (and the knowledge underpinnings of these) has facilitated a strict binary divide, and an overall public perception is that polytechnic education is of much lower status than university education. This, however, is not the only divide. Institutional cultures at historically advantaged institutions have retained their historic racially and culturally defined identities and face ongoing criticism of perpetuating a culture of white privilege. As recently as 2015, through the ‘#FeesMustFall’ and ‘#RhodesMustFall’ campaigns, students have called for the end of domination by ‘white, male, Western, capitalist, heterosexual, European world views’ in higher education; and for the incorporation of other South African, African and global ‘perspectives, experiences [and] epistemologies’ as the central tenets of the curriculum, teaching, learning and research in the country (Shay, 2016). These calls, while located in a unique postapartheid-cum-democratic-transitional context, are not dissimilar to other geopolitical contexts where, according to De Sousa Santos (2014: 149), the ‘unequal exchanges among cultures have always implied the death of the knowledge [epistemicide] of the subordinated culture, hence the death of the social groups that possessed it’. The dehumanising narratives imposed first by colonialism, followed by apartheid, are not unlike that of European expansionism in which epistemicide was one of the conditions of genocide. It is a matter of concern, therefore, that, often, when the transitional accounts from apartheid to democracy are recounted, the less appealing, and somewhat questionable compromises which accompanied the regime change-over, is lost in the sentimentality of the transition itself, thereby minimising not only the undignified loss of lives, but also the erosion of ways of life. From the outset, with the long-awaited release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, there was a giddiness which accompanied the hope in a new democracy. The reconciliatory tone and language adopted by Mandela, as the country’s first

64  N. Davids

democratically elected president, set the climate for a discursive discourse of negotiation. On the surface, there is nothing too worrying about the term negotiation. In fact, it speaks to a rather mature intention to meet the other half-way, suggesting a reasonable willingness to engage with, and take into account the perspectives and arguments of others. But it’s hard to dismiss the reality that in most scenarios negotiation does not result in a mutually beneficial agreement or arrangement. Instead, what is often the case are measures of mediation and compromise, which, in the end, tilt the outcome in a way that might not necessarily have been predicted or expected. The volatile frequency of student protests, characterised by calls for decolonisation and access to higher education are clear signals that, to date, universities in South Africa have only been able to provide to weak answers to strong questions – questions, which according to De Sousa Santos (2016: 4), ‘go to the roots of the historical identity and vocation of the university in order to question not so much the details of the future of the university, but rather the university, as we know it, indeed has a future’. This is not only a fairly apt assessment of the state of higher education in South Africa, but also provides the foundational premise as to why it (higher education) continues to operate as a space of tension and irreconcilability. At the centre of this tension is the intersectional persistence of colonialism and apartheid – dissolved into systemic perpetuations of historical norms and dominance, which necessarily imply the subjugation and minimisation of others. While often understood as an exploitative assertion of power (De Oliveira Andreotti, Stein, & Ahenakew, 2015), colonialism (like apartheid) is much more than an insertion of the oppression of others; it signals an epistemic disregard of other forms of life and living. The destruction of knowledge, states De Sousa Santos (2014: 243), is not an epistemological artefact without consequences – ‘It involves the destruction of the social practices and the disqualification of the social agents that operate according to such knowledges’. It dismantles and discards any form or representation of indigeneity – from traditions, culture and dress to language, knowledge and education. The legitimacy of colonialism relies on a distorted assumption that the colonised, in any case, is sub-human and hence, in need of colonisation. Long after the physical departure of the coloniser, colonialism or more specifically, coloniality, endures, if not in political and economic power, then in the long-standing patterns of power implicit in the architecture, institutional culture and curricula of higher education. Understanding just how deeply coloniality filters into the psyche, into ‘the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self ’ (Maldonado-Torres, 2007: 243), provides the necessary frames of references not only for why breaking from the past is so complex, but also why breaking from the past is a non-negotiable for students in a post-apartheid context. It is only against this backdrop that one can understand Mbembe’s (2016: 32) criticism that there is ‘something anachronistic, something entirely … wrong with a number of institutions of higher learning in South Africa. There is something profoundly wrong when, for instance, syllabuses designed to meet the needs of colonialism and Apartheid, should continue well into the liberation era’.

Re-humanisation in higher education 65

The oppressive effects of two waves of colonialism (one by the Dutch and the other by the British), followed by apartheid, place democratic South African society in a somewhat exclusive category – historically and what needs to happen in terms of a future-focused reconstructive strategy. It means finding a balancing act between transformation without neglecting neoliberalist demands of performativity and efficiency (Cross & Motala, 2020). It also means attuning to the needs of deeply stratified student groups, rendered into historical categories of either ‘historical advantage’ or ‘historical disadvantage’, who Cross and Motala (20202: 4) describe as having ‘fundamentally different interests and negotiate change in the context of inherently contradictory relations, different values, and conflicting perspectives over the redistribution of resources and power’. Not only does this context of ‘inherently contradictory relations’ speak to the inseparability between the process of higher education transformation and South Africa’s transition from the apartheid regime, but, explain Cross and Motala (2020), it locates any analysis of change in higher education in South Africa within the historical context of a society in transition from an authoritarian, totalitarian regime to a more inclusive and democratic society. One of the key consequences of a transitioning higher education in a locale of negotiation or compromise is that whatever changes have unfolded have occurred within the constraints of the apartheid regime (Rensburg, 2020). Rensburg (2020: 22) reports that while staff and students in historically disadvantaged (black) institutions looked to the post-apartheid democratic government to set them on a new path of reinvestment, academic transformation and excellence, well-resourced, historically advantaged (white) institutions continue to co-exist, largely unaffected by the democratic transition. Rensburg (2020) is of the opinion that the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE), which was established to advise the democratic government on the architecture and substance of a new university system, has failed to meet the expectations of a transforming system. One of the key reasons and constraints is a reductionist understanding of transformation as a preoccupation with widening black student access to higher education. This focus is informed by an assumption that transformation through diversification meets the criteria of democratisation (Davids, 2019). By all accounts, student enrolments have increased dramatically, with black Africans constituting 70% of the total student cohort. Emanating from this significant student increase, however, are numerous concerns. First, of the students entering a three-year degree, less than half complete, and of those who do, up to 50% take up to six years to graduate (CHE, 2013). Cross and Motala (2020: 2) report that only 35% of the total intake, and 48% of contact students, graduate within five years; approximately 55% students will never graduate. Second, access, success and completion rates continue to be racially skewed, with white student completion rates being on average 50% higher than African rates (Cross & Motala, 2020). Third, increasing black student enrolment has shown little evidence of tackling social inequalities of access and participation; inequalities

66  N. Davids

in terms of access and success persist even in participation systems (Hornsby & Osman, 2014; Marginson, 2016). Fourth, an emphasis on massification (increasing student enrolment) has been accompanied by rising university costs. Rensburg (2020: 7) explains that while state funding kept pace with inflation, it did not reflect the real growth figures in terms of university costs. As a consequence, universities fees almost doubled over the period from 2006 to 2015 (CHE, 2016, in Rensburg, 2020). In sum, attempts by government and higher education to pursue social equity, redress and quality in higher education simultaneously have resulted in difficult political and social dilemmas (Badat, 2010). Primary among these dilemmas is inadequate public finances and academic development initiatives to support under-prepared students, who tend to be largely black and/or of working class or rural poor social origins. Badat (2010: 7) argues that ‘an exclusive concentration on social equity and redress without adequate public funding and academic development initiatives to support under-prepared students has negative implications for quality, compromises the production of high quality graduates with the requisite knowledge competencies and skills, and adversely affects economic development’. Another core constraint arising from a negotiated transition is that the NCHE, according to Rensburg (2020: 22), ‘maintained a post-apartheid university system comprising bedrock universities (predominantly the teaching-heavy and significantly under-resourced Black institutions) and elite research universities (research-productive and well-endowed White institutions)’. Furthermore, states Lange (2020: 48), most of the degrees offered at South African universities ‘are constructed around the notion of the centrality, superiority and universality of Western knowledge … This inevitably perpetuates perceptions of black people as being inferior and incapable of producing knowledge’. As a result, transformation has been left mainly in the hands of university leaders and their governing councils; the reformed higher education policy and the legislation emanating from it kept university councils, senates and executive managements firmly in place, with little disruption of apartheid-based governance practices (Rensburg, 2020). Cross and Motala (2020: 6) believe that while the purpose of the transformation project was to remove and replace the old structures and to eradicate old beliefs, values and practices, these radical goals could hardly be achieved within the framework of compromises and concessions determined by transition politics. Instead, it would seem that the continuing leaning towards a negotiated transition, as opposed to a position of an uncompromising commitment to social justice, has led to the legitimisation of colonialist and apartheid-based practices. For as long as these practices are legitimised, South African students cannot be free to live without the historical afflictions of oppression and stereotypes. The result: the same kinds of (violent) protests, which marked higher education during apartheid, persist in its democracy. In breaking from the past, therefore, it might be useful to take on board McArthur’s (2010) assertion that instead of

Re-humanisation in higher education 67

focusing on arguments about whether change occurs at the structural (macro) level or at the individual (micro) level, we need to understand that the emancipatory social change requires a dialogue between all these levels of change – that is, they cannot be separated or approached in isolation, as has thus far been the case in South Africa.

Protesting battles as dehumanising The more recent student protests – characterised by the hashtags #Rhodesmustfall and #Feesmustfall, which flared up in 2015 – are a mere continuation of ‘unfinished business’ in higher education (Badat, 2016: 19). There is nothing new about protests against exorbitant university costs, inadequate state funding and student debts, which continue to serve as barriers to access, participation and completion. There is nothing new about student (and academic) calls for university spaces which are living reflections of South Africa’s diversity. Even the violence, which defined and overshadowed the protests, is not new – neither to South Africa’s torrid history nor to its democracy. At poorer or historically disadvantaged institutions, such as the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), Fort Hare University (FHU) and the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), students had been protesting regularly against exorbitant university fees, annual fee increases and the cost of higher education in general since 1994 (Davids & Waghid, 2016). Unlike previous protests at historically disadvantaged institutions, the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns received major media attention and sparked solidarity protests as far as London and New York – possibly because it began at a historically advantaged institution, the University of Cape Town (UCT) (Davids & Waghid, 2016). Despite its staleness, there is something to be said about the violence – something more than condemnation. It is a matter of deep concern when protesting students march across campuses, disrupting lectures and exams (Swingler, 2017). But a deep concern drains into anxiety and trauma when protesting students burn buildings and cars, destroy artworks, deface statues and brutally assault non-protesting students (Hall, 2016), or when ‘Kill a Jew’ and ‘Kill all whites’ are spray-painted onto buildings at the universities of Witwatersrand (Wits), and the Western Cape, respectively (Pather, 2016). There is no defence for this kind of vitriol; there is only trepidation about the implications of such language and thinking not only for students and higher education, but also for its society. Institutional and state responses have not only been inadequate, but also have seemingly served to inflame rather than address student rage and disillusionment. On the one hand, universities responded by increasing institutional securitisation, involving the deployment of private security across campus, as well as obtaining court interdicts – effectively using the law to silence voices of dissent as many students were arrested for contravening court interdicts (Langa, 2016). And, on the other hand, the state’s response is in many ways reminiscent of apartheid style

68  N. Davids

aggression, which relies on a characterisation of protesting students as enemies of the state (Suttner, 2016). From a distance, it is hard to decipher why protesting students, who are attempting to redress their experiences of racial, economic and social exclusion, are viewed as antagonistic to the state. It is near to impossible to arrive at any other conclusion that despite the climate of a hard-fought democracy – which, historically included and benefitted from a critical mass of student activism – very little has changed in how black students and their concerns are viewed. Kerr and Luescher (2018: 216) report that the scholarly literature building up to the 2015/16 student movement paints a bleak picture of university life as a source of anxiety and racialised struggle for students – including institutional racism and other forms of discrimination, students’ sense of institutional alienation, difficulty in adjusting to the university environment, students’ financial hardships and poverty on campus, and student leaders’ alienation from university management structures. The depth of racialised discrimination and subjugation is captured in the #RhodesMustFall mission statement (2015): At the root of this struggle is the dehumanisation of black people at UCT. This dehumanisation is a violence exacted only against black people by a system that privileges whiteness. Our definition of black includes all racially oppressed people of colour. We adopt this political identity not to disregard the huge differences that exist between us, but precisely to interrogate them, identify their roots in the divide-and-conquer tactics of white supremacy, and act in unity to bring about our collective liberation. It is, therefore, crucial that this movement flows from the black voices and black pain that have been continuously ignored and silenced. (Ndelu, 2016: 63) To Suttner (2016), ‘Blackness remains associated with poverty, exclusion and vulnerability to violence …. The affluent spaces remain hostile to black people unless they happen to live in such areas. Policing of black bodies is one of the disturbing continuities of post-apartheid South Africa …’ And hence, his argument, that the #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall campaigns may raise wider questions that go beyond the educational realm and offer a lens through which we can look at post-1994 South Africa and ask troubling questions about the nature of this society (Suttner, 2016). It is often the case that when students protest peacefully, they are not only ignored, but their cause, by implication, is not taken seriously. It is necessary to understand that despite competing arguments as to the economic value of a university education, for the majority of South Africans, it continues to be perceived as a vehicle for a better life. When authorities, therefore, choose to ignore the voices of students’ frustration protests, what they are revealing is an indifference to the desperation and pain of black students, whose lives continue to be no different to those of their parents during apartheid. A cyclical process emerges

Re-humanisation in higher education 69

in that the more protesters perceive their plight as being disregarded, the more intensified their forms of protest become – not only in terms of timeframes, but also in terms of its potential for aggression, and violence. In turn, the more police perceive the actions of protestors as contrary to public order, the more hostile their own responses. It is debatable as to who initiates the tone of this encounter, but problems arise, asserts Della Porta, with ‘escalating policing’ and indiscriminate repression. Violence, as Della Porta observes, develops relationally from interpersonal processes – ‘Violent forms of contention usually belong to a wider repertoire … The choice of a certain repertoire of action is emergent in processes shaped by the interactions among various actors … Violence spreads within cycles of protest, during which the development of forms of protest follows processes of innovation and adaptation. Different actors respond to each other in spirals of action and reaction (Della Porta). According to Ndelu (2016), the repertoires of violence on campus were not always characterised by fires and stun grenades, or by teargas and arrests: As more and more students get arrested, injured, interdicted and disciplined by the university, it becomes necessary to ask questions about what triggers and feeds the physical violence that has been witnessed. First, there has been a rise in militarised, often violent, masculinities in both the students and the university management… At UCT, the militarised environment and the hostile terms of engagement between the students and the university created opportunities for student, police, security and management masculinities to compete for space, time and dominance and to attempt to outstage one another through the use of violence… As a modus operandi, the students invoked singing and chanting struggle songs, burning, destroying property, creating barricades and using their bodies as barricades to communicate tacit and direct messages of masculine power and courage. The police and private security used paramilitary wear, rifles, ammunition and bodily presence to communicate their express messages of masculine dominance. (Ndelu, 2016: 58–59) The problem with ‘escalating policing’ in a South African context is not only its historical association with apartheid authoritarianism, but that this authoritarianism has always been reserved for the treatment of citizens, who are not white. There are layered complexities intersecting in this scenario, which pose significant risks for higher education in a democracy. At the heart of the student protests are repeated appeals for a recognition of their fragile conditions – these include daily concerns about having food to eat, accommodation, funding to pay fees, and struggling to find their place in alienating institutional and academic cultures. In addition to the historical overflow of violence upon violence as the same collective of students battle for access, participation, inclusion and equal recognition, there are inevitable ramifications for students, whose experiences of educational pursuits are met with aggression and ostracisation. Not only do

70  N. Davids

they associate their efforts against social injustices as being met with aggression and violence, but they also bracket educational aspirations as a violent encounter. No one would disagree with a view that the epistemological responsibility of higher education must be framed and driven by a humane imperative. Clearly, however, as has been highlighted thus far, the scattered way in which higher education has located itself in the discourse of transitional democracy, and the way it continues to un-see the battered lives of black students, suggests a serious misreading of the South African political and social topography, as well as its epistemological purpose in relation to that topography. The political and epistemological disenfranchisement of colonisation continue to loom large and dominates ways of knowing through monocultural and monolingual means that according to De Sousa Santos (2014: 10) sustain ‘capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and all their satellite oppressions’. As to be inferred, this misreading is not limited to responses to student protests. In other words, the dehumanising response by university authorities does not only pertain to their strategies and actions in relation to protesting students. The fact that students protest in the first instance implies that something is amiss. The dehumanisation is already implicit in unchanged structures, cultures, curricula and institutional attitudes. It is within this context that one begins to understand that the eventual removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes was not about the eradication of a physical structure; it is about the ejection and rejection of colonisation, which functions to induce and normalise particular states of humiliation based on white supremacist presuppositions (Mbembe, 2016). It is only when one understands the epistemic violence imposed by the statue that the full weight of Achille Mbembe’s (2016) comment is grasped: ‘The debate therefore should have never been about whether or not it should be brought down. All along, the debate should have been about why did it take so long to do so’. Unless higher education understands that its future cannot be shrouded in the very structure, culture and language which eroded the humanity of the majority of South Africans, it cannot lay claim to either being attuned to, or cultivating a (humane) educational space. By refusing to sever the colonialist underpinnings of higher education, South African universities run the risk of what NdlovuGatsheni (2013: 10) describes as ‘normalising and universalising coloniality as a natural state of the world’. The remaining question, therefore, is: how can higher education be restored, re-humanised and re-imagined so that students might find recognition and resonance in their educational spaces?

Decolonial reparation To date, state Cross and Motala (2020: 8), the transformation of South African higher education has been applied within the following main connotations: •

equity-driven reform, emphasising student access, equality and promotion of democracy and human rights in and through higher education

Re-humanisation in higher education 71

• • •

a new systemic and institutional culture in higher education, shaped by a democratic culture directed at actively undoing racial segregation new epistemologies and conceptions of knowledge, essential to respond creatively and responsively to the present and future needs of society decolonised university and curriculum, which have yet to be recorded, despite significant changes to the curriculum in response to developmental and socio-economic requirements.

There is an obvious need for this kind of counter-discourse. Scant attention, however, has been given to the damage of living as dehumanised subjects and communities, and hence, the urgency of human reparation. Increasing student access, for example, is seen as a key objective and indicator of the democratisation of higher education. But what happens to students from historically marginalised and impoverished communities once they enter university spaces without any point of resonance, inclusion and recognition? What happens to what McArthur (2010: 494) refers to as ‘the individual, the different, the marginalised, the clusters of disparate groups, beliefs and ideas’? If social justice is to emerge, maintains McArthur (2010), then there has to be a renewed consideration and commitment to the critical inter-relation between education and society. My concern in the concluding section of this chapter is to consider a conception of decolonial reparation as a foundational paradigm for a post-colonialist and post-apartheid higher education. Let me start by stating that calls for a decolonised higher education have long been accompanied by a litany of academic debate, dominated by an argument that decolonisation cannot be separated from a democratisation of access (see Le Grange, 2018; Cross, 2020). Regardless of the agreement and necessity for a dyadic relationship between decolonisation and democratisation, the concept of decolonisation is not without controversy – at least not in a South African context, where it is used, at times, interchangeably with Africanisation, indigenisation as well as internationalisation. The focus of this chapter prevents me from adequately addressing the surrounding contestations. It is helpful, however, to note that the concepts of post-colonialism and decoloniality, as Bhambra (2014: 119) explains, are developments within the broader politics of knowledge production and both emerge out of political developments contesting the colonial world order established by European empires. The difference between these two developments pertain to time periods and different geographical orientations. While the post-colonial-list development is generally associated with Britain’s former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and India, and is associated with the ‘subaltern studies group’, decoloniality is connected to developments in Latin America (Bhambra, 2014). Decolonisation, explains Le Grange (2021), ‘continues to be used by indigenous scholars to refer to processes of discovering and recovering their own histories, cultures and identities; mourning their loss of their knowledges, cultures and languages; correcting the deficit ways in which colonised peoples have been defined and theorised …’. To him, the distinction between decolonisation

72  N. Davids

and decoloniality made by Latin American scholars has been helpful in understanding the legacy of colonialism which imbues the ‘post-colonial world’ and neoliberal order, and why decoloniality is so necessary. My specific interest as I prepare for a discussion on what I describe as decolonial reparation, stems from the concept of decoloniality. Conceived as a necessary liberation struggle, decoloniality, explains Bhambra (2014: 115), emerged from the work (Modernity/ Coloniality project) of diasporic scholars of South America. Briefly, if decolonisation is understood as undoing colonisation (Le Grange, 2018), then decoloniality ‘refers to efforts at rehumanizing the world’ (Maldonado-Torres, 2016: 10). Evident from South African higher education (and hence, society) is that colonialism has not dissipated, despite significant reform measures. Unless the epistemological impact and distortion of colonialism are dismantled and eradicated, re-humanisation and reparation cannot unfold. Instead, higher education will continue to hurtle from one protesting crisis to the next. In arguing for a decolonial reparation, I am arguing for a parallel process, which firstly, not only acknowledges the dehumanisation inflicted by colonialism and apartheid, but also recognises the responsibility of higher education to address and eliminate that harm. Such a responsibility, contends Nussbaum (1997), hinges on the extent to which universities have ensured the spaces and curricula necessary for students to understand the history and character of the diverse groups that inhabit our world. As young citizens, students should acquire the tools to inquire, they should develop a curiosity of the world in those who inhabit it, and says Nussbaum (1997), understand how differences of religion, race and gender have been associated with differential life opportunities. She contends that becoming citizens of the world demands that students step away from the comfort of assured truths, that they do not only surround themselves and interact with those, with whom they share perspectives and convictions, but that they foster a greater knowledge of the world and its peoples so that they might respond with understanding, care and compassion. Too often, the pain of students is reduced to empty by-lines – ‘I recognise that you have nowhere to sleep …’; ‘I recognise that you have no way of paying your fees …’; ‘I recognise that you are subjected to racism and unfair treatment …’ – without any inclination of what Nussbaum (1997: 91) refers to as ‘compassionate imagining’. That is, ‘the ability to imagine what it is like to be in that [vulnerable] person’s place … and also the ability to stand back and ask whether the person’s own judgement has taken the full measure of what has happened’ (Nussbaum, 1997: 91). It is only when we can relate the pain and suffering of others to our own sense of being and life experiences that we can begin to understand the pain and vulnerabilities of another. At the time of writing this chapter, an email popped into my inbox, informing academics in our faculty that one of our students should be granted extensions in submitting her assignments, as her shack had burnt down, destroying not only all of her possessions, but the life of her child. This unspeakable tragedy provides an unfortunate glance into the lives of ‘black’ students, whose personal

Re-humanisation in higher education 73

living conditions are disgracefully far removed from what constitutes living conditions. To repair how this student is perceived and experienced, requires a stepby-step process, which acknowledges that perhaps she was not seen in the first place. So, what needs to happen in order for her to be seen? How can we begin to insert ourselves into her life – living in a shack, a dwelling incapable of providing safeguarding against a storm, let alone a fire? How do we begin to feel her pain, her brokenness at the loss of her child? And then, how do we re-engage with her, recognising that while we know something about her, we do not know everything? Secondly, every institution has a series of institutional memories, accepted behaviours and ways of thinking (Lange, 2020). A university’s traditions and culture, says Lange (2020: 45), are ‘the ethnographic language that encapsulates subtle but important variations in its history, memory, behaviour and thinking – and the way these combine and manifest themselves at different levels and in different structures’. In South Africa, these memories are maligned across forceful racial and ethnic divisions, which persist beneath the surfaces of change. The malignancy of these memories is as evident in the names of campuses, buildings, student residences and language policies, as they are in the lived experiences of students at historically advantaged (‘white’) universities. Yet, the institutional memories, which present itself in defensive claims of ‘this is how it was always done’, ‘or this is our culture’, remains disturbingly uninterrogated. The mere changing of names or removal of statues, busts and paintings will not undo the memories, knowledge, language and judgements, which reside in these symbols. It is less messy ‘to get on with it’, ‘to leave the past in the past’ than it is to confront that which we know, and how we have come to know what we know. In my faculty as well as the rest of the university, there are heavily laden, unspoken conversations, which simmer beneath displays of professional collegiality and decorum. Political reform has certainly not erased value systems in support of apartheid, or the persistence of racist views, which emerge often enough in the appointment or promotion of academics, or in the (racially) differentiated treatment of students. Despite its prominent role in the propagation of apartheid (which this university acknowledges), it has never extended this acknowledgement into recognising that the residual effects of apartheid continue to live in the ecology of the university. In both of the aforementioned descriptions, the concern has very little to do with what is immediately tangible, and hence, fixable. Rather, the concern being emphasised has to do, on the one hand, with human (student) vulnerability, trauma and pain, and on the other hand, with the implicit persistence of institutional harming, despite its presentations of change. The two are connected by a lack of knowledge. Because institutions refuse to do the hard work of actually questioning their memories and language, and recognise that there are, in fact, other kinds of language and memories, they are incapable of seeing the different lived experiences which students bring into their spaces. In this regard, it is necessary to understand that it is not only about restoring humanity – that is, acting

74  N. Davids

with sensitivity, care and compassion – to those who have been dehumanised; it is also about restoring the humanity of the dehumaniser. What a decolonial reparation has in mind, firstly, is a re-humanisation of the world by abandoning hegemonic forms of perceptions and perspectives. As a foundational premise, such an undertaking demands seeing all people (students) as humans, accompanied by a willingness to engage from the perspective of another – as argued in Nussbaum’s (1997) ‘compassionate imagining’. In recognising the humanity of all students, institutions, as living organisms, are able to see their value, and hence the value of what they bring. In so doing, institutions rid themselves of the proclivity to see students through the mythical lens of stereotypes, and instead see human beings. Stereotypes, as Bhabha (1994: 107) reminds us, give access to an ‘identity’ that originates as much ‘from mastery and pleasure as it does from anxiety and defense of the dominant, for it is a form of multiple and contradictory beliefs in its recognition of difference and disavowal of it’. Apartheid South Africa prided itself on a mythical construction of blackness as unintelligent, incompetent, inferior and valuable only insofar that it serves the hegemony of white supremacy. Secondly, therefore, to undo this obscene injustice, a decolonial reparation requires a re-telling and re-storying of humanity, from the perspective of the dehumanised. It is not possible to conceive of social justice, says De Sousa Santos (2014), without attending to cognitive justice. Engaging with the experiences of other, those who have long been silenced through the violence of colonialism, is not to suggest the creation or establishment of a new centre. A decolonial reparation is not interested in replacing one centre or hegemony with another. Rather, the concern is to disrupt the existing centre so that a space is opened for other kinds of identities, cultures, traditions, histories, languages and ways of seeing the world. It is not only about creating separate memories; it is about recognising that these memories were already there all along. Thirdly, a decolonial reparation recognises that unless students are encouraged to articulate their truths, they will not be equipped to deal with competing truths. The experiences in and of higher education are not limited to a time and place; these experiences are connected to broader political settings and enunciations, and part of a university’s task is to prepare students for these settings. Decolonial reparation through re-humanisation cannot occur in the absence of systemic and institutional reform. Universities, therefore, have to reconceive not only the content of their academic programmes, but also the pedagogies, which shape the content. Often-heard calls for decolonised curricula in South Africa have yet to extend to the necessity of critical pedagogy. As noted by McArthur (2010), critical pedagogy comprises diverse ideas, opinions, backgrounds, groups and theories; it has many players with many roles, who need to be brought into authentic dialogue. To McArthur (2010: 498), critical pedagogy requires ‘not only building better alliances with other forms of radical pedagogy; it may need to consider alliances with those

Re-humanisation in higher education 75

whose ideas it finds anathema’. In turn, this requires institutional intellectual settings and climates of ‘greater toleration and celebration of diversity and conflict’ (McArthur, 2010: 499). In the South African context, a capacity and willingness to engage across deeply divided, at times, even hostile contexts and positions, continues to present serious hindrances to transformation, and hence, the internal inclusion of all students. The wedges driven into the lived experiences and identities of groups of people have not disappeared. In some instances, the divides have been intensified, as people and students alike retreat into the familiarity of disconnected silos. The annual demonstrations of student protests, which often descend into violence, is a clear sign that what is needed is a transformation of the current policies and practices of transformation. There is no point in persisting with the same kinds of actions and responses, when the outcomes remain unchanged. Transformative initiatives have to translate into experiences and practices of trust, as well as a commitment to big or strong change – whether in the classroom or in the public space of the university, whether at an individual or institutional level. As a decolonial reparation, transformation has to be conceived and approached as a discursive process, one embedded in a recognition of multiple understandings, and one which is prepared to locate humanity at the core of its engagements and disagreements.

References Badat, S. (2010). The challenges of transformation in higher education and training institutions in South Africa. Paper commissioned by the Development Bank of Southern Africa. https://www.ru.ac.za/…/The%20Challenges%20of%20Transformation%20 in%20High Badat, S. (2016). Deciphering the meanings, and explaining the South African higher education student protests of 2015–2016. https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/ documents/Saleem%20Badat%20-%20Deciphering%20the%20Meanings%2C%20 and%20Explaining%20the%20South%20African%20Higher%20Education%20 Student%20Protests.pdf Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture, London: Routledge. Bhambra, G. K. (2014). Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues, Postcolonial Studies, 17(2): 115–121. Council on Higher Education (CHE). (2013). A Proposal for Undergraduate Curriculum Reform in South Africa: The Case for a Flexible Curriculum Structure, Cape Town: Council on Higher Education. Cross, M. (2020). Decolonising universities in South Africa: Backtracking and revisiting the debate. In I. Rhensburg, S. Motala & M. Cross (eds.), Transforming Universities in South Africa: Pathways to Higher Education Reform (pp. 101–114), Leiden: Brill Sense. Cross, M. & Motala, S. (2020). Introduction. In I. Rensburg, S. Motala & M. Cross (eds.), Transforming Universities in South Africa: Pathways to Higher Education Reform (pp. 1–19), Leiden: Brill Sense. Davids, N. (2019, September). The consequences of increasing student alienation in higher education institutions, Council on Higher Education (CHE), Briefly Speaking, 9.

76  N. Davids

Davids, N. & Waghid, Y. (2016). History of South African student protests reflects inequality’s grip. https://theconversation.com/history-of-south-african-studentprotests-reflects-inequalitys-grip-66279 De Oliveira Andreotti, V., Stein, S. & Ahenakew, C. (2015). Mapping interpretations of decolonization in the context of higher education, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 4(1): 21–40. De Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. De Sousa Santos, B. (2016). The university at a crossroads. In R. Grosfuguel, R. Hernández & E. R. Velásquez (eds.), Decolonizing the Westernized University (pp. 3–14), Lanham: Lexington Books. Hall, M. (2016). South Africa’s student protests have lessons for all universities. Higher Education Network. https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/ 2016/mar/03/south-africas-student-protests-havelessons-for-all-universities Higher Education South Africa (HESA). (2014). ‘South African higher education in the 20th year of democracy: Context, achievements and key challenges’. HESA presentation to the Portfolio Committee on higher education and training in Parliament, Cape Town, 5 March. http://www.hesa.org.za/hesa-presentation-portfoliocommittee-higher-education-and-training. Hornsby, D. J. & Osman, R. (2014). Massification in higher education: Large classes and student learning, Higher Education, 67(6): 711–719. Kerr, P. & Luescher, T. (2018). Students’ experiences of university life beyond the curriculum. In Ashwin & Case (eds.), Higher Education Pathways: South African Undergraduate Education and the Public Good (pp. 216–231), Cape Town: African Minds. Langa, M. (2016). Researching the #FeesMustFall movement. In M. Langa (ed.), #Hashtag: An Analysis of the #FeesMustFallmovement at South African Universities (pp. 6–12), Braamfontein: Centre for Research on Violence and Reconciliation. Lange, L. (2020). Transformation revisited: Twenty years of higher education policy in South Africa. In I. Rensburg, S. Motala & M. Cross (eds.), Transforming Universities in South Africa: Pathways to Higher Education Reform (pp. 39–59), Leiden: Brill Sense. Le Grange, L. (2018). Decolonising, Africanising, indigenising, and internationalising curriculum studies: Opportunities to (re)imagine the field, Journal of Education, 74: 4–18. Le Grange, L. (2021). (Individual) responsibility in decolonising the university curriculum, South African Journal of Higher Education, 35(1): 4. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On coloniality of being, Cultural Studies, 21(2): 240–270. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2016). Outline of ten theses on coloniality and decoloniality. Foundation Frantz Fanon. http://frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com/ article2360.html. Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems, Higher Education, 72(4): 413–434. Mbembe, A. (2016). Decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive. https:// wiser.wits.ac.za/system/f iles/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20 Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf McArthur, J. (2010). Achieving social justice within and through higher education: The challenge for critical pedagogy, Teaching in Higher Education, 15(5): 493–504. Ndelu, S. (2016). ‘Liberation Is a Falsehood’: Fallism at the University of Cape Town. In M. Langa (ed.), #Hashtag: An Analysis of the #FeesMustFallmovement at South African Universities (pp. 58–82), Braamfontein: Centre for Research on Violence and Reconciliation.

Re-humanisation in higher education 77

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013). Why decoloniality in the 21st century? The Thinker, 4: 10–15. Ng’ethe, N., Subotzky, G. & Afeti, G. (2008). Differentiation and articulation in tertiary education systems: A study of twelve African countries, World Bank, 145. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Pather, R. (2016). Condemnation for ‘f*** the Jews’ graffiti at Wits. https://mg.co.za/ article/2016-11-01-condemnation-for-f-the-jews-graffiti-at-wits/ Rensburg, I. (2020). Transformation of higher education in South Africa, 1995–2016: Current limitations and future possibilities. In I. Rensburg, S. Motala & M. Cross (eds.), Transforming Universities in South Africa: Pathways to Higher Education Reform (pp. 20–38), Leiden: Brill Sense. Suttner, R. (2016). Op-Ed: Student protests, an indictment of “post-apartheid” South  Africa. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-02-11-op-ed-studentprotests-an-indictment-of-post-apartheid-south-africa/ Swingler, S. (2017). #FeesMustFall: Protests disrupt exam at UCT but varsity stays open. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-10-25-feesmustfall-protests-disruptexam-at-uct-but-varsity-stays-open/ Teferra, D. & Altbach, P. G. (2004). African higher education: Challenges for the 21st century, Higher Education, 47: 21–50.

5 Unfixing the university Higher education and the ontology of travel Søren Bengtsen & Ryan Evely Gildersleeve

Introduction Academics travel around the world in a measure and with a momentum not witnessed before. Higher education policies increasingly favour academic mobility, exchange agreements, internationalisation of staff and students, and truly global institutional profiles and strategies. Such policy is found in faculty rewards systems, enrolment management regimes, and government accountability systems (Blanco & Muthanna, this volume). Paradoxically, universities brand themselves increasingly as individual institutions, with often fenced in, or even walled in, campus areas, complete with access codes, membership cards, and material and corporate protectionism agendas. Even with a, seemingly, global and societal openness, universities withdraw into the brick and mortar fortresses (Temple, 2014), protecting their brands and credentials and creating hidden elites (Ivy League, Russel Group, and other university ‘clubs’). In a sense, universities become sites of bordering – expanding their influence and prestige by expelling those people and institutions deemed undesirable (i.e. outsiders). We find studies arguing that in all their inclusion and ‘out-reach projects’, universities become still more defensive and isolated from the societies, cultures, and communities around them – and, thereby, easier to become ‘under siege’. The university immunises itself from genuine engagement with those outside of its borders (Davids & Waghid, 2021; Rider, 2018; Wright & Shore, 2018). To explore alternative understandings of the situation and possibilities for universities, we draw inspiration from the notion of academic nomadism and pilgrimage found in medieval universities and academic communities, and the erosion of the European monastic ideal of ‘stabilitas loci’ (De Ridder-Symoens, 2003). Through movement-centred ontologies (Lingis, 1998; Nail, 2015; 2018; 2019), we show that the potential of ‘living reason’ (Barnett & Bengtsen, 2019) is still DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-8

Unfixing the university 79

to be realised if universities should truly become integrated and submerged into their societal and cultural surroundings. Indeed, an ontology of motion and travel is inscribed into knowledge and our knowing efforts, when such practices extend beyond lecture theatres and course syllabi and become woven into, and provides life to the architecture of buildings, city design and layout, social norms and moral codes, and social and welfare work. With Nail (2015; 2016; 2018; 2019), we argue that the student is inherently a movement-based position. In a traditional sense, students are moving from adolescence into adulthood. They are moving from compulsory education to tertiary/elective education. Students often move to a college campus and away from home communities. Some students are moving between social classes, while others are moving from passive recipient of class standing into authorship and producer/sustainer of social class. Conceptualising the student within the figure of the migrant (Gildersleeve, 2021; Nail, 2015) holds great promise in excavating how the becoming-student might engage/be engaged in building and producing the new university. In this sense, we suggest unfixing the university from its static commitments to historically privileged knowledges and memberships, setting it free to explore and invigorate with a new velocity of nomadism, pilgrimage, travel, and/or migration how knowledge might become seen as truly communal, organic, and always in a state of transformation. Further, we show that the deepest form of academic travel is the movement from self to other (Levinas, 2000; 2003), which involves not only an intellectual vulnerability and exposure to the criticism and scepticism of others – but, and even more demanding still, an ethical relation that makes creative intellectual achievements possible. The university becomes unfixed through establishing itself not as a fenced-in space of privilege and remoteness, but as a community of indebted strangers (Esposito & Campbell, 2008) – an alien community. Such a community engenders knowledge producers and the constitution of knowledges to one another, effectively re-assembling knowledge to meet the demands of the world’s integrated problems and promises. Universities, we argue, have become under siege exactly because current global drivers about academic mobility, the transferability of knowledge, and the internationalisation of higher education are only rooted in political and economic surface levels of the university (Shumar & Bengtsen, 2021) – whereby the institution, its members, and practices, do not truly connect and engage with their surroundings and wider social and cultural ecosystems (Barnett, 2018). Bringing out the depth-levels of an ontology of travel will enable universities to dissolve notions of siege (imagined and real) and to emerge naked and unfixed – organically integrated into the terroir of the societies and cultures that sustain academic communities.

Wanderlust As we write this chapter, many people and places in the world are under, or have been recently been so, COVID-19 caused societal lockdowns, which also affects

80  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

the life and day-to-day practices of academics around the world. Academic conferences are cancelled, research visits and study stays abroad are made impossible, and even national and local commuting to attend lectures and meet up with colleagues and fellow students are restricted or banned altogether. Movement is not possible. Courses are transferred to online settings; meetings and conferences are held digitally – but it is not the same. The current situation makes us feel the imperative of travel embedded deep within our academic pursuits. Before taken for granted, and now suddenly foregrounded and explicit. Before the pandemic, mobility and academic travel was sometimes criticised for being overestimated and part of instrumental socioeconomic drivers and funding flows of internationalisation and globalisation agendas implicating universities into the “wider historical, economic, and cultural geopositioning” (Andres et al., 2015, p. 2) of higher education. After a period, where mobility was often looked upon as part of the game of ranking systems, academics start to recall and readdress why travel is essential for the role of universities and higher education in the first place. Scholar of university history De Ridder-Symoens (2003, p. 281) describes how the “academic pilgrimage,” since the founding of the first medieval universities, has been essential to the meaning of academic work, identity, and practices of higher learning. In contrast to the many spiritual travels performed by the same people (mainly clerics at the time), academic pilgrimage “was not to Christ’s or a saint’s tomb, but to a university city where they hoped to find learning, friends, and leisure” (De Ridder-Symoens, 2003, p. 280). In order to learn from others, and to acquire expertise knowledge and understanding, travel was mandatory. Due to increasing pursuits of knowledge and colleagues who could understand and challenge them, “[m]obility among [academics] (…) eroded the European monastic ideal of stabilitas loci (stable residence)” and “[t]welfth-century intellectuals did not feel bound to any particular school or curriculum” (p. 283), but sought out communities of knowledge across national and cultural contexts. Over the centuries, travel has only increased in range and magnitude and today, still “academics respond to the same dialogic energy between universities – now worldwide” (Barnett & Bengtsen, 2019, p. 141). As Barnett and Bengtsen (2019, p. 143) argue, knowledge has “life in itself and in the world and has to be kept alive and given continuous epistemic energy” (italics in the original text). In a way, travel is the life of reason and becomes the connecting link not only between minds, persons, and institutions, but also between diverse societal and cultural lifeworlds. The philosophy of Alphonso Lingis (1994; 1998) helps us realise the deep interconnection between travel, thought, and understanding. Lingis’ own constant travels to remote cultures and parts of the world, and directly drawing from his travels in his academic work, has made George and Sparrow (2014) term his academic achievements an “itenerant philosophy” – a philosophy itself constantly on the move and in motion. Lingis (1994, p. viii) states that through travel, we understand “persons my nation and my culture have made enemies” and we connect with “people my nation and my culture have conquered and silenced.”

Unfixing the university 81

To travel is to move physically as well and intellectually, and to be able to move away from one’s own epistemic and cultural preconceptions. Travel takes place when I leave behind “the operative paradigms of [the] culture of which [I am] a practitioner” and in the measure that “the voices of those silenced by one’s culture and its practices are heard” (Lingis, 1994, p. ix) in my own thoughts, words, and actions. Travel is not to confirm one’s expectations or to be able to bring home exotic photographs and anecdotes, or to include yet another member into already well-established academic or cultural elites. Travel is to lose your epistemic and cultural bearings and regain a new footing through the words, customs, and educational paradigms of the strange and the stranger. We do not really understand or grasp the world and people around us only through rational study and intellectual knowledge pursuits. We understand the world, and everything in it, by moving with it. We cannot survey or study the world from an intellectual remoteness, but we have to move with it. Through travel we become “caught up” (LIngis, 1998, p. 101) in what is different and strange to us and we become fully engaged with stories, worldviews, and belief systems of other and we suddenly “find ourselves among them and carried on by them into a time of fate” (ibid.). Through ontological travel, we do not only gain further access deeper into the practicable world, but we are being led “into the hidden spaces of an alien voluptuousness” and become transported into an “intrigue unknown to us, a tragic or comic mask that refracts our gaze into the stage of a historical or farcial drama” (Lingis, 1998, p. 135). In travel, there are no guarantees, and we are, willingly, entering into a ‘darkness of learning’ (Bengtsen & Barnett, 2017) where we may not return where or as who we expected. As Gert Biesta (2006, p. 71) points out, the notion of travel in the work of Lingis makes us understand how a “second birth” is possible. Travel in the deepest sense of the term is not necessarily a “pleasant experience” and it “can be difficult and painful to come into the world” and to “expose oneself of what is other and different.” Yet, the engagement with the other, is “what makes us unique and, in a certain sense, human” (ibid.). The impossibility of physical travel in the current health crisis should make us aware that we are not allowing our intellectual, academic, and cultural spaces narrow in and diminish too. When movement is restricted, and the opportunities to relocate oneself in a distance to one’s own academic, societal, and cultural turf, we need to make possible travel in other ways and with other means. If we lose the ability to travel as academics, in the most sincere meaning of the term, we lose our opportunities for intellectual and cultural growth.

An ontology of motion Much has been written of late about process ontologies and ontologies of becoming. These notions of being each emphasise the undetermined and everchanging qualities of being. They speak to open possibilities, parallel outcomes,

82  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

and rhizomatic connections that might create anew our sense of what it means to be, to become as unstable yet recognisable beings. And yet, each remains somewhat trapped in an Einsteiniean paradigm wherein there are fixed notions of what that becoming can entail or entwine. In writing beyond notions of process and becoming, Thomas Nail (2015; 2019) has theorised an ontology of motion – movement-centred being. He takes as a starting point an anthropologically and historically fundamental quality of humankind – migration. Humans, as a species connected to the Earth, have traveled across it since we learned to exercise the power of our feet. Humans, as a species connected to the Earth, have travelled across it since we learned to exercise the power of our feet. We and indeed our fellow residents of the Earth (things like animals, plants, minerals, etc.) are always in motion. Departing from the human need, desire, and agility to move, Nail (2015) explores how movement is central to our species’ political organisation and social structures. Specifically, he provides a summary of how various configurations of “the migrant,” as a figured notion of the human, have been produced through various power relations and the various bordering technologies exercised by our social and political constructs and institutions. Borders, in these senses, are also in motion, never fixed, and constantly placed/re-placed (Nail, 2015). Borders function to direct social flows, empowering particular kinds of movement by particular groups of things and people while also constraining, redirecting, and/ or restricting the movement of others. Nail explains how humans have used the state apparatus to expand its (state) power by expelling those humans deemed undesirable, configuring them as the migrants of the time. Nail (2015) calls this expansion by expulsion. He outlines four kinopolitical forces of state power: centripetal, centrifugal, tensional, and elastic. The centripetal exercise of state power seeks to expand the state outward by seizing land and setting up new border technologies such as palisade fences at its frontier. Whereas the centrifugal exercise of state power expands the state by pulling migrants in toward the centre, strengthening the political administration of society and fortifying it with bordering technologies such as military walls and ramparts. States expand tensionally through juridical strategies, such as enacting contradictory sets of laws that make life untenable for particular populations, thus expelling them from the flows of society. States expand elastically through economic strategies, using and replacing undesired populations within the economy (e.g. migrant labour) at its will, thus making life unsustainable for particular populations. Within Nail’s ontology of motion, each undesired population that gets expelled via state expansion can be understood as one of humankind’s historical figures of the migrant. These include the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat. Each figuration then is historically tied to particular border technologies and state expansion-by-expulsion strategies. Movement, in Nail’s system, is an ontological necessity and a defining feature of being. Humans are ontologically produced through movement, and the state’s power to control such movement then configures humans into various beings

Unfixing the university 83

and becomings. The state’s expansion by expulsion strategies and bordering technologies determine the social flows and potential junctions through which flows might change – that is, through which society (and all of its practices, institutions, and the like) takes shape and form. Migrants, however, are not powerless in the trappings of social flows and junctions produced by the state. Rather, migrants exercise pedetic force – the power of the foot. And in doing so, have the power to create waves of change in the social flows; migrants produce anew via their movement. Nail outlines specific migrant strategies that historically have manifest various cultural movements or waves of change to differing success. In such ways, culture then is both of movement and from movement. Movement creates culture, and the various junctions of social flows brought on through pedetic forces, bordering technologies, and expansion by expulsion practices configure such a culture from movement and as movement. Culture then moves as we instantiate it with social junctions that redirect being. For example, the student protests in higher education that emerged across Europe and North America in the middle of the 20th century became waves that reorganised the borders of higher education’s relationship to students. In the United States, these waves effectively forced the end of in loco parentis and transformed how students participated in the institution. Culture-on-the-move can be seen in the contemporary conditions of the academy. In recognising the pedetic potential of students as well as the deployment of mobile academic programmes, culture-on-the-move can be useful in unfixing the old ways of higher education that previously appeared unmovable. With inspiration from Nail (2019), Barnett underlines that the story of the university is one of “the interconnectedness of the world, an interconnectedness that is dynamic and always in motion” (Barnett, 2021, p. 19). Through social and cultural trajectories of movement, “[k]nowledges are affected by the world, and knowledge can and does affect the world” (ibid.). The university, as an institution and an idea, develops because it moves. A well-known academic form of the migrant, the precarity, may influence on institutional changes from the institutional periphery. As Bengtsen (2021) has argued, doctoral students and junior researchers find new momentum and opportunities for agency in academic associations and societies beyond the institutional domain – through which they manage to engage university leadership in discussions about wellbeing, belonging, and recognition not possible from within the institutional domain itself. With inspiration from Nail’s (2019) ontology of motion, we may glimpse what Gildersleeve (2021) has termed ‘the migrant university’. The migrant university “is a university built and rebuilt through pedetic forces,” and the migrant university emerges from “a movement-centered ontology,” where “the university is sustainable temporal, illusory, allusive, and elusive from fixity” (Gildersleeve, 2021, p. 168). When social peripheries come into motion, we come to see a university not only sustained from institutional, cultural, and political centres, but sustained from the margins and peripheries, where the true transformative

84  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

potential may arguably be said to exist. As Sørensen (2019, p. 109) points out, “marginality has epistemological value per se. Being marginal adds to the epistemic sensitivity, especially when it comes to perceiving injustice, inequality, reification, alienation, difference, etc.” Social justice, as McArthur (2018, p. 158) points out, is exactly about “critique and transformation,” which happens through “understanding the injustices and distortions in the existing social world, and arguing for a better one beyond it.” The future of the university rests on an ontology of motion and the roles and powers of migrants.

Nomad ethos The university travels. The meanings, purposes, and practices of the university cannot be reduced to the gated physical buildings, campus areas, or password-encrypted digital confines. Higher learning and research do not hinge of a corporate ethos but, we argue, a nomad ethos. The meaning of the university is in the movement; the meetings, the dialogues, and the visits (physical and digital). The inspiration, the wonder, and the awe, which propel research and higher learning forward, and make it worthwhile in the first place, cannot be captured in large research grants or institutionalised, and high-profile, research centres and flagship academic think-tanks. The university travels in the interstices of institutionalised spaces. We use the term nomad ethos, coined by Hooke (2018), and the metaphor of the nomad camp to suggest a future transformative trajectory of the university. As Lingis (2011, p. 16) writes, the “nomad camp is the arena of circulation of people, where every event becomes a story that surprises and entertains, where places and events from long ago and far away are held in narratives retold and shared.” The camp is not owned by anyone but the people (and animals, and artefacts) who, temporarily, dwell there. The camp, which is “now here, now there” becomes “a community” (ibid.). Other meanings of the nomad ethos include hospitality, trust, generosity, and humaneness. As Hooke (2018, p. 24) points out, the “nomadic ethos remains an enduring and essential trait of humanity.” The nomadic ethos represents the trust we place in strangers, the imperative felt to accompany those going through misfortune and hardships, and the welcoming of “pilgrims and aliens” which “illuminates a humaneness that one infrequently finds in private homes, walled-in neighbourhoods or gated communities” (ibid.). Nomadic life “be it worldly travels or accompanying those who are suffering – remains a central human trait that is undervalued” (Hooke, 2018, p. 32). There is no academic development, no originality in research, and no higher learning possible without the constant sharing of viewpoints, critical discussion of methodological soundness, and co-construction of new ideas and research practices. The academic ethos, we argue, is, at its core, nomadic as it does not, ultimately, depend on its socio-material sites. Academic work and knowledge belongs to the common (Szadkowski, 2018) and takes place through travel and movement.

Unfixing the university 85

The university travels with the people who enact it, also in unofficial and academic communities, sometimes involuntarily, far away from accreditation systems and ranking games. A good example is found in Schildermans (2019) and Schildermans Simons and Masschelein (2020), in their work on universities in refugee camps, where the university emerges in the grey-zones and interstices between what is considered to be sociopolitical real and unreal. Like the academics who enact the university in refugee camps, the university suffers and aims to include and understand the suffering – in order to transform it into learning and perhaps more positive social and cultural futures. Universities in camps and sociocultural margins do not represent the global university or world-class university with a halo of excellence and global reach. The campus in camps emerges from the very margins and peripheries of society, where “it is life in exile that is investigated and that requires responsibility” (Schildermans et al., 2020, p. 39). This form of university “does it allow to take refuge in the imaginations of edenic pasts or salvific futures” – it is, on the contrary, “staying with the trouble” (Schildermans et al., 2020, p. 40). In our understanding, the way to further (re-)connect universities and its societal contexts is not through changed funding structures tying universities, including research and educational programmes, financially closer to the European Commission (e.g. Erasmus+ programmes and Horizon 2020-grants), the ministry (e.g. various national ministerial-funded programmes), or the industry and cultural institutions (e.g. through development projects or co-funded PhD scholarships). When such predesigned and prestructured schemes are applied on programmes for higher and doctoral education, it often “generates tensions in the (…) curriculum and threatens to create a ‘torn curriculum’ in which the curriculum is split into separate parts with a traditional knowledge-oriented curriculum, a professionally-oriented curriculum, and a project-oriented curriculum” (Bengtsen et al., 2021a, p. 2). On the contrary, the university travels to where it feels it belongs, and where its knowledge pursuits and knowledge imperatives take it (Gildersleeve, 2016). Having the university transforming into ever greater organisations, even with several regional or national universities fusing into transnational megainstitutions with hundreds of thousands of students, physically anchored in brandprotected and membership-exclusive-designated physical places and digital spaces, seems not the way to go. Having academics travel and gather around social causes, cultural events, natural enigma, and spiritual potential seems to fit much better with the underlying nomadic ethos and the knowledge imperative of the university.

Movement and community As movement is seen as an ontological expression of higher education in both its central mission of learning and in its political composition (i.e. the bodies that constitute higher education, such as students), it should also be extended to the

86  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

movement of the broader assemblages of things that constitute higher education. Such as to say that higher education, as expressed in a movement-centered ontology, not only travels between cultures, but beyond them – specifically beyond human culture. Here, we simply imply that contemporary higher education is an artefact of the Anthropocene (Gildersleeve & Kleinhesselink, 2019). Therefore, we recognise that exploring how to unfix perceived rigidity and fixity in higher education’s contemporary condition through a movement-centered ontology must be inclusive of nonhuman contributions to academic cultures. In making the university’s pedetic movements enliven and unfix its normative modes of operations, it requires that actants of the university (e.g. faculty, students, and other things) will need to find shared purpose and practice to some extent. Indeed, the pedetic forces that migrants can exert in order to effect change only generate cultural movements and disrupt the normative structuring of social flows (through re-bordering, and shifting established junctures), when they can form waves (Nail, 2015). Waves emerge from collective migrant force. They are not singular acts, but rather broadened movements across groups and spaces. Thus, the university community must be reconfigured in order to affect pedetic forces to re-shape or unfix its standard rigidity. We seek to know how to get academic community members to actualise the power of their movement in order to amplify and perhaps centre the movement of the university. We need a higher education community that refutes the normative borders of a campus and engages in the wanderlust of the nomadic ethos. Yet, we also recognise the practical conditions of contemporary higher education that restrict wide-scale wanderlust, in very real ways. Such restrictions are perhaps a contemporary mode of our institutions’ expansion by expulsion. In countering the institutional forces that sustain the status quo, and in attempt to engender a higher education that readily can engage in wanderlust and a nomadic ethos, we need a new figuring of the university community. Drawing inspiration from Maurizzio Lazzarato (2012) and Roberto Esposito (2006), we push to consider the university as a community of indebted strangers that refute an immunity paradigm of coexistence. Lazzarato theorised the contemporary political subject – perhaps configured as a migrant – as one ontologically grounded in debt. That is to say that in contemporary society (at least Western societies and liberal democracies), the human is born into, persists through life in, and can only be made knowable by its debt. Humans, therefore, are the indebted subjects of the Earth. One consequence of this subjectivation via debt is to recognise further that all beings are indebted to society. Gildersleeve (2017) applied Lazzarato’s philosophy to higher education and theorised the indebted student, highlighting ways that students by virtue of belonging to the university community are made into subjects of debt – owing to the institution in order to participate as part of it. If we combine Lazzarato’s indebted subject with Roberto Esposito’s (2006; 2007) work on community, immunity, and biopolitics, we can reconfigure a

Unfixing the university 87

movement of the indebted subject to understand community as a debt, as a gift that begets giving, as a requirement to contribute by continuing the movement of gifting. Esposito (2006) demarcates community as something that binds together, in contrast with the immunity paradigm that prevails across society today. The immunity paradigm, put bluntly, is an effort to immunise us from one another (and other things, actants, etc.) and the infectious ills that direct contact or shared movements together might provoke. From a biopolitical analysis, Esposito (2006) demonstrates how the immunity paradigm ultimately collapses us onto ourselves and supports the repetition and reproduction of the status quo. Immunity as a strategy of social organisation, then, further enhances the state’s expansion by expulsion. Whereas community, understood as a debt that begets giving, an indebtedness that binds and continues the social flow of movement, provides a generative platform from which academic nomadism might emerge and thrive.

The university unfixed The university has not only been fixed through the governance of physical place and digital spaces, as mentioned above, but also through time-governance (Bengtsen, 2021) and the instrumentalisation of time and temporality in higher education (Gibbs et al., 2015). Examples include the commodification of time, where study time becomes part of an economic transaction between students as consumers and the university as providers of academic products. In the attempt to scaffold students’ learning processes and help them organise their time, some universities have “started to distribute what look like a conventional school scheme to all undergraduate students. This scheme prescribes activities for the students in a sequential workflow from eight o’clock Monday morning to Friday afternoon” (Bengtsen et al., 2021, p. 100). This approach transfers an industrial understanding and model of time management into a very different institutional context and practice, and such a notion of functional time “fosters a narrow ideal of good learning processes as clean and rational, when for many students they are highly messy, deeply confusing and exhausting” (Bengtsen and Barnett, 2017, pp. 124–125) – and where key insights and research breakthrough cannot be planned like pearls on a string, or goods on an assembly line. In the work of Manathunga (2019), we discover that the institutionalisation of time in higher education seems to acknowledge and recognise, and even favour, some cultural identities over others. Manathunga points out that we currently witness chronological and bureaucratic approaches to higher education “timescapes (…) which positions [certain] candidates as lacking the capabilities, organisational skills and commitment deemed necessary to fit with dominant temporalities” (Manathunga, 2019, p. 11). The temporality inscribed into higher education teaching and learning, and administration, practices crowd out, perhaps unintentionally, some cultural identities and give better room for others. If the university is to be unfixed, time and temporality need to become unfixed too.

88  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

We suggest an alternative perspective on time, where time is being spent (and not bought or neatly parcelled out and streamlined) and “offered to a greater cause raising beyond the individual learner” (Bengtsen et al., 2021b, p. 107). Student time and temporality are not goods to be stored or saved and increased “but to be used, and used up, in the contribution to other times, and others’ time” (ibid.). Time is something students and teachers give to each other, and give in order to better understand the specific part of the world they spend years studying. Time in higher education is not a commodity but a gift. With inspiration from Levinas (2000), we argue that the ethical dimension of academic travel has often been overlooked. The time given over to research is a time given of oneself, a spending of one’s energies and resources. The transformation of the university can only happen through greater vulnerability in the serving of a greater good where the university goes through a further “uncovering [of ] itself, (…) denuding itself of its skin, (…) offering itself even in suffering (…)” (Levinas, 2000, p. 15). The purpose of the university is not to aid its funding bodies in achieving greater scores in the ranking tables, or to, primarily, further the professional careers of its students. The ethical obligation goes deeper and is oriented towards “the homelessness [and] the strangeness of the neighbour” (Levinas, 2000, p. 91). The transformation of the university will not guarantee stronger and more powerful institutions (in the instrumental sense), and the transformation itself is like “the risky uncovering of oneself, in sincerity, the breaking up of inwardness and the abandon of all shelter, exposure to traumas, vulnerability” (Levinas, 2000, p. 48). The possibility for movement, travel, and transformation lies in the ability to making oneself open and vulnerable to the strange, and the stranger, and to give of oneself. Transformation is always for the sake of the other. Research has to be politically and economically unfixed in order to be radically critical, open, and original. Higher learning is not about harnessing one’s own professional competences with the purpose of making possible careertrajectories more robust and predictable. Higher learning is, of course, not antiprofessional and should not hinder connections between higher education and the job market – but the instrumentality should not take first priority. Higher learning, we argue, is first and foremost about moving away from intellectually secure, privileged, safe, and accustomed understandings and reaching out for what is peripheral, strange, other, and challenging one’s preconceptions and personal, and cultural, dogmas. If worthwhile topics of study, and even the research and learning approaches, are being decided politically on the national or transnational level, research and higher learning risk fulfilling already preset political prophecies and preferences. The so-called ‘grand challenges’ are usually defined by the cultural and political centre, and not the social periphery. Sometimes it takes a migrant university to see into the crevices and blind angles of world-class universities, and to steer for the understanding of social and natural phenomena that have no worldwide attention and which importance is not of, immediate, global concern or relevance.

Unfixing the university 89

Conclusion In a time where universities become increasingly fixed to national agendas (and new nationalisms), schemes of institutional protectivism (the formation of university clubs – often centralised around the so-called global North), and funding regimes governing research interests, means, and methods from a political and economic distance, we call for a greater awareness of the need for an ontology of travel. Travel should, here, be understood: i. Epistemically – that researchers and students should be able to travel through places, spaces, and times suitable to their study purposes and not management regimes. ii. Socially – that agendas of inclusion are further developed avoiding the crowding out and exclusion of ‘migrants’, which include, here, all marginalised social groups from socially disadvantaged students (with little possibility of assess to current programmes of higher education) to the growing academic precarity living an academic ‘half-life’ in the institutional periphery. iii. Culturally – that forms of administrating and organising higher education programmes and learning and teaching practices do not crowd out marginal cultural identities but allow for greater diversity in the ways students, teachers, and researchers organise their practices according to their own backgrounds and worldviews. iv. Ethically – that research and higher learning should not, as a first priority, be centered towards the individual student, researcher, or leader in order to further that person’s career trajectory but should be centered around original research questions with wider social and cultural implications for the greater (public) good. The unfixed university will be able to travel through, and travel with, the challenges and conundrums these realms posit and to respond in ways, where the institution and its practices will be able to move with them and not stop short in its politically or culturally fixed position. Unfixing the university is the major challenge in our time in order to facilitate transformative and positive higher education futures.

References Andres, L., Bengtsen, S., Crossouard, B., Gallego, L., Keefer, J., & Pyhältö, K. (2015). Drivers and interpretations of doctoral education today: National comparisons, Frontline Learning Research, 3 (2), 63–80. Barnett, R. (2018). The Ecological University. A Feasible Utopia. London & New York: Routledge. Barnett, R. (2021). The Philosophy of Higher Education: Forks, Branches and Openings. In S. Bengtsen, S. Robinson, & W. Shumar (Eds.), The University Becoming. Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (pp. 15–28). Cham: Springer.

90  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

Barnett, R. & Bengtsen, S. (2019). Knowledge and the University: Reclaiming Life. London and New York: Routledge. Bengtsen, S. (2021). The PhD Revolution: World-Entangled and Hopeful Futures. In R. Barnacle & D. Cuthbert (Eds.), The PhD at the End of the World: Provocation for the Doctorate and a Future Contested (pp. 181–196). Cham: Springer. Bengtsen, S. & Barnett, R. (2017). Confronting the dark side of higher education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51, 114–131. doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12190. Bengtsen, S., Barnett, R., Grant, B., McAlpine, L., Wisker, G., & Wright, S. (2021a). The societal entanglements of doctoral education: The development of a research framework for a critical analysis of the societal impact of the humanities PhD. Working Papers on University Reform. Working Paper 36, Centre for Higher Education Futures (pp. 1–48). Aarhus: Aarhus University. Bengtsen, S., Sarauw, L. L., & Filippakou, O. (2021b). In Search of Student Time. Student Temporality and the Future University. In S. Bengtsen, S. Robinson, & W. Shumar (Eds.), The University Becoming: Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (pp. 95–109). Cham: Springer. Biesta, G. J. J. (2006). Being Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future. Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers. Blanco, G. & Muthanna, A. (In press – this volume). Looking for Hope Abroad: The New Global University beyond Neoliberalism. In S. Bengtsen & R. Gildersleeve (Eds.), Understanding the Transformation of the University. New Academic Realities, New Institutional Hope. London & New York: Routledge. Davids, N., & Waghid, Y. (2021). Academic Activism in Higher Education: A Living Philosophy for Social Justice. Singapore: Springer. De Ridder-Symoens, H. D. (2003). Mobility. In W. Rüegg & H. D. Ridder-Symoens (Eds.), A History of the University in Europe. Volume 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (pp. 280–306). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Esposito, R. (2006). The immunization paradigm. Timothy C. (Trans.), Diacritics, 36 (2), 23–48. Esposito, R. & Campbell, T. (2008). Bios. Biopolitics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. George, B. & Sparrow, T. (Eds.) (2014). Itenerant Philosophy: On Alphonso Lingis. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books. Gibbs, P., Ylikoji, O.-H., Guzmán-Valenzuela, C., & Barnett, R. (Eds.). (2015). Universities in the Flux of Time: An Exploration of Time and Temporality in University Life. London: Routledge. Gildersleeve, R. E. (2016). The neoliberal academy of the anthropocene and the retaliation of the lazy academic. Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies, 17 (3), 286–293. Gildersleeve, R. E. (2017). The making of the indebted student. Thresholds in Education, 40 (1), 55–68. Gildersleeve, R. E. (2021). The Migrant University. In S. Bengtsen, S. Robinson, & W. Shumar (Eds.), The University Becoming. Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (pp. 157–171). Cham: Springer. Gildersleeve, R. E. & Kleinhesselink, K. (2019). Introduction: The Anthropocene as Context and Concept for the Study of Higher Education. In R. E. Gildersleeve & K. Kleinhesselink (Eds.), Special Issue on the Anthropocene in the Study of Higher Education. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education (pp. 1–15), 1 (1). New York: Peter Lang. Hooke, A. E. (2018). Alphonso Lingis and Existential Genealogy. Winchester & Washington: Zero Books.

Unfixing the university 91

Lazzarato, M. (2012). The Making of the Indebted Man. Jordan, J. D. (Trans.). South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e). Levinas, E. (2000). Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Lingis, A. (Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. (2003). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Lingis, A. (Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Lingis, A. (1994). Abuses. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lingis, A. (1998). The Imperative. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Lingis, A. (2011). Violence and Splendour. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Manathunga, C. (2019). ‘Timescapes’ in doctoral education: The politics of temporal equity in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/07294360.2019.1629880. McArthur, J. (2018). When Thought Gets Left Alone: Thinking, Recognition and Social Justice. In S. Bengtsen & R. Barnett (Eds.), The Thinking University: A Philosophical Examination of Thought and Higher Education (pp. 155–166). Cham: Springer Publishing. Nail, T. (2015). The Figure of the Migrant. Redwood City: Stanford University Press. Nail, T. (2019). Being and Motion. New York: Oxford University Press. Rider, S. (2018). Truth, Democracy, and the Mission of the University. In S. Bengtsen & R. Barnett (Eds.), The Thinking University. A Philosophical Examination of Thought and Higher Education. Cham: Springer. Schildermans, H. (2019). Making a University. Introductory notes on the ecology of study practices. PhD dissertation. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. Laboratory for Education and Society. KU Leuven. Schildermans, H., Simons, M., & Masschelein, J. (2020). From Ruins to Responseability: Making a University in a Palestinian Refugee Camp. In N. Hodgson, J. Vliege, & P. Zamojski (Eds.), Post-critical Perspectives on Higher Education: Reclaiming the Educational in the University (pp. 27–41). Cham: Springer. Shumar, W. & Bengtsen, S. (2021). An Entrepreneurial Ecology for Higher Education. A New Approach to Student Formation. In S. Bengtsen, S. Robinson, & W. Shumar (Eds.), The University Becoming: Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (pp. 125–138). Cham: Springer. Sørensen, A. (2019). Social Ethos and Political Mission: University on the Margins. In S. Bengtsen & A. Sørensen (Eds.), Danish Yearbook of Philosophy (pp. 104–138), Special Issue, “Revising the idea of the university,” Spring 2020. Leiden & Boston: Brill. Szadkowski, K. (2018). The common in higher education: A conceptual approach. Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0340-4 Temple, P. (Ed.) (2014). The Physical University: Countours of Space and Place in Higher Education. London and New York: Routledge. Wright, S., & Shore, C. (Eds.) (2018). Death of the Public University?: Uncertain Futures for Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy. New York: Berghahn Book.

6 Towards decolonisation and transformation in universities Foregrounding Indigenous and transcultural knowledge systems and communities Catherine Manathunga, Jennifer Carter & Maria Raciti

Introduction Many universities globally are presently focused on neoliberal competition, commodification, consumerism and corporatisation (Manathunga and Bottrell, 2019). Such processes have devalued knowledge to a transactional exchange and substituted instruction for collegiality, weakening the ‘public good’ aspect of universities. This commercialisation impoverishes a university’s original commitment to knowledge creation (Rolfe, 2013). It also diminishes the work in universities towards social justice, equity, and social and cultural inclusion, witnessed in the gradual opening of higher education to women, working-class, migrant, refugee and Indigenous1 peoples (Stengers, Despret and Collective, 2014). This chapter focuses on an emergent initiative at our University to establish a transdisciplinary Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre (ITRC) (henceforth, ‘the Centre’), led by three women professors. The Centre had been incubating for six years when a review of the University’s research concentrations in mid-2019 provided the opportunity to merge two existing groups—the Indigenous Studies Research Theme (housed within the larger Sustainability Research Centre since 2013) and Indigenous and Transcultural Pedagogies Research Group (formalised in 2018)—to form a larger research collective. Members spanned six of the seven schools in the University to create a truly interdisciplinary collective comprising researchers and research higher degree students. Strategic investment of start-up funds for seed projects by members were highly successful in building research capability, generating publications and other recognised outputs and being scaled up to secure external funding. Professors Jennifer Carter and Maria Raciti co-led the Indigenous Studies Research Theme and Professors Catherine Manathunga and Maria Raciti co-led DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-9

Decolonisation and transformation 93

the ITRC. Some members were also associated with both groups. With stable, dedicated leadership, a critical mass of enthusiastic researchers and demonstrated ability to turn small funds into large outcomes, a case was made to merge the smaller predecessor groups and emerge as a unified Centre. The Centre partners with Indigenous, migrant, refugee and culturally diverse communities to deliver impactful research nationally and internationally and improve the lives and well-being of Indigenous and culturally diverse peoples in Australia and globally. We situate this initiative within the current neoliberal context and seek to build a case for the social justice role universities can play in the 21st century. We locate the philosophy of the Centre within cognitive justice theoretical frameworks for decolonisation and transformation. We then reflect on our positionality and outline the formation of the Centre and its vision and aims. Our research has brought opportunities to build close partnerships with Indigenous and transcultural communities, enabling coresearch and community capacity exchange. Using praxis informed by an ethics of care and hospitality, we suggest a new vision for academic knowledge that builds recognition and engagement with Indigenous and transcultural knowledge systems. We aim to mirror our socially just knowledge creating capacity through our post-feminist approach to leadership and our governance functions. Our Centre is designed to spark cultural growth, nurturing strong and respectful links with Indigenous and transcultural communities and ultimately create a transformation in universities that goes against the tide of neoliberalising logics and can reinstate the intent of universities to work for social justice, cultural inclusion and decolonisation.

Social (in)justice in the neoliberal university The contemporary university has been hollowed out by dominant neoliberal agendas that foreground competition, commodification, consumerism and corporatisation (Manathunga and Bottrell, 2019; Shumar and Robinson, 2018). Neoliberalism, with its notions of a free economy and unregulated markets, is an ideology emerging from the 1980s onwards where consumer capitalism came to dominate not only economic policy but all social policy (Shumar and Robinson, 2018). We build upon early critiques of neoliberalism, such as those by Barnett (1990) about arguments to reinstate liberal higher education’s emancipatory agenda, Shumar’s (1997) critique of commercialisation in US higher education and Readings’ (1996) tracing of how the empty and commercially measured discourse of ‘excellence’ has replaced the development of culture as the key driving force in universities. The resultant commodification of knowledge under neoliberalism positions students, governments and transnational corporations as consumers purchasing knowledge through university studies and/or research. Academic commitments to debate, collaboration and relationality as essential in the creation of critical, insightful and meaningful knowledge have

94  C. Manathunga, J. Carter & M. Raciti

been overturned in the favour of competition and ‘a fragile model of knowledge transmission’ (Shumar and Robinson, 2018, p. 36). Within universities, corporate governance structures have replaced more collegiate forms of governance, which, while always hierarchical and dominated by white, middle- and upper-class males, had a greater tolerance for debate and contestation. Corporate-style governance in universities emphasises accountability, audit and the measurement of outputs and has an increasingly ruthless intolerance for democratic processes, rational debate and a diversity of perspectives (Manathunga and Bottrell, 2019). Measuring outputs has become more important than the intellectual, pedagogical, cultural, political and social benefits research is designed to produce. Under these conditions, research becomes ‘an information machine driven by the ethos of efficiency and administration’ (Rolfe, 2013, p. 11). Neoliberal agendas have damaged the university’s role in the production of imaginative, forward-looking and critical knowledge; cultural regeneration and renewal; and the formation of democratic and critical citizens (Rider, 2018). Problematic global ranking systems deliberately structured to privilege Northern American and European universities (Connell, 2019) have reinscribed Northern geopolitical knowledge hierarchies and perpetuated the domination of Western scientific knowledge at the expense of valuing culturally diverse knowledge systems. We draw upon Honneth’s (1999) third generation of critical theory like McArthur (2018), which constructs social justice as mutual, reciprocal recognition built upon inter-subjectivity and has three key dimensions—an emotional dimension where we receive the validation of who we are; a rights-based dimension where all peoples are ‘moral agents able to participate [in all ways] in the social sphere’; and a social esteem dimension where all people are perceived as able to make a useful contribution to society (McArthur, 2018, pp. 157, 159). Social justice as mutual recognition incorporates both ‘critique and transformation’ and perceives knowledge as ‘social … intersubjective … complex, dynamic and contested’, emphasising that ‘we should be ambitious about the social justice role the university can play’ (McArthur, 2018, pp. 160, 165). This understanding of social justice would shape universities’ practices in ways that would ensure that all students from diverse social, cultural and economic backgrounds would be able to recognise themselves in the university curriculum. It would prepare all students to become ‘active, thoughtful and transformative citizens’ who are able to make significant and useful contributions to the social sphere (McArthur, 2018, p. 165).

Cognitive justice theoretical frameworks for university decolonisation and transformation To achieve such a social justice as mutual recognition role, universities require epistemic and cultural transformation. While every civilisation across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America, Australasia and Oceania (Assié-Lumumba, 2006)

Decolonisation and transformation 95

has a long history of advanced and higher learning, European colonisation from the 15th century onwards ensured that Western epistemologies and discourses dominate contemporary universities. As one of the most important cultural institutions of society, universities have played a key role in continuing the legacies of colonialism and imperialism by privileging Western and Northern knowledge (Connell, 2007), research and pedagogical practices, despite the gradual opening of higher education to women, working-class, migrant, refugee and Indigenous peoples (Stengers, Despret and Collective, 2014). De Sousa Santos (2014, p. 92) calls these practices ‘epistemicide’ or ‘the murder of knowledge’ as ‘unequal exchanges among cultures have always implied the death of the knowledge of the subordinated culture’. Leading Indigenous scholars like Nakata (2007) and Tuhiwai-Smith (2012) demonstrate the myriad ways that universities and knowledge and disciplinary formation are deeply embedded in colonialism. The forces of globalisation and the continuing dominance of the English language in many academic disciplines reinforce these colonial legacies. Although Indigenous peoples around the world developed Indigenous knowledge as an academic discipline, the space created in universities for Indigenous knowledge is often small and marginalised. Neoliberal obsession with quantifiable outputs reinforces this marginal positioning of Indigenous and transcultural knowledges, which may not be easily quantifiable in these ways. Key post-colonial and decolonial theorists have challenged this perpetuation of Northern/Western domination of knowledge production in universities. The point here is not to diminish the usefulness of Northern/Western knowledge but to ensure that Southern theory (Connell, 2007) or the epistemologies of the South are accorded equal significance in global knowledge production. This is what de Sousa Santos (2018) calls cognitive or epistemic justice, which can bring about true social justice. de Sousa Santos’ (2014) ‘epistemologies of the South’ are founded upon two principles—the idea of ecologies of knowledges and of intercultural translations. In this chapter, we focus mainly on the concept of ecologies of knowledge, which challenges the current monocultural dominance of (Northern) scientific knowledge. Instead, de Sousa Santos (2014, p. 190) suggests that scientific knowledge should be located within a broader ecology of knowledge systems where all knowledge systems are accorded ‘equality of opportunity’ to ‘maximise their respective contributions towards building … a more just and democratic society as well as one more balanced in its relations with nature’. Such knowledge systems would be used in dialogue with each other. This approach to knowledge also accepts the partiality and incompleteness of each knowledge system and that complexity of the world’s environmental and social problems requires interaction between all the world’s knowledge systems to create innovative research strategies. The establishment and work of our Centre are founded upon this theoretical ecology of knowledges framework as a significant and practical approach to decolonising and transforming universities. We also draw inspiration from the work of

96  C. Manathunga, J. Carter & M. Raciti

Professor Catherine Odora Hoppers who leveraged funding and the backing of the University of South Africa to establish new ways of working with knowledge in the university. Hoppers assembled an international, transcultural group of postgraduate students; involved community Elders and other Indigenous knowledge holders and practitioners to lead transcultural theorists in the working of the Centre; and created a global network of Indigenous knowledge intellectuals (Soudien, 2019). Furthermore, Professor Hoppers foregrounded a sense of hospitality to all knowledges through the concept of enlargement, where dialogue, respect and knowledge interfaces and integrates (Soudien, 2019). Her approach enabled critical and ‘transgressive conversations’ about knowledge, designed to be ‘in service of humanity not the market’ as well as a re-examination of the ‘norms, practices and ideas of the academy’ (Soudien, 2019, pp. 146, 147).

Our standpoints Each of us has worked towards cognitive justice for Indigenous and transcultural communities throughout our careers. In this section, we outline our own cultural identities and standpoints building upon feminist and Indigenous standpoint theory. Standpoint theory encourages us to carefully interrogate our own entangled histories, geographies and cultural knowledge as feminist scientist Sandra Harding (2004) and Torres Strait Islander scholar Martin Nakata (2007) have argued. Each of us will have a complex positioning in relation to colonisation. Professor Catherine Manathunga is an Irish-Australian with an expanding transcultural family. Her ancestors fled the West Coast of Ireland because of colonisation and famine, arriving in Australia in 1834 and 1858. A visceral sense of dispossession, loss of language and land and a longing for Ireland (the home of her ancestors) carried across her family’s generations, igniting her passion for history, decolonisation, social justice and inclusion. Catherine has often framed herself as a settler/invader scholar to acknowledge how her ancestors fled colonisation and famine in their own country, but then acted as colonisers in this land now known as Australia. This troubling identity as a settler/invader/privileged white woman acts as a catalyst for Catherine to recognise and act upon the responsibilities this places on her to respect and work with and for Indigenous Australian peoples. Experiences of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment in Australia have also shaped her desire to make a difference. Catherine’s first marriage was to a Sri Lankan-Australian and she has two Sri Lankan-Irish-Australian sons. Her sons’ experiences of racism and exclusion and her own experiences of being a transcultural mother drive her research, teaching and engagement commitments to social justice for transcultural communities. Her family now includes step-children with Italian-Australian heritage and daughters-in-law with Colombian and Scottish-Australian and Chipewa First Nations American heritage. Catherine has worked as an academic in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand for nearly 30 years in the fields of History, Higher

Decolonisation and transformation 97

Education and Education. She continues to research and teach about Indigenous and transcultural communities’ histories, cultures and educational experiences, internationalisation of the curriculum and decolonisation. This work has enabled her to work closely with culturally diverse and Indigenous peoples in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, South Africa, Rwanda, Oman, Vietnam, China and Colombia. Professor Jennifer Carter has maternal Gaelic Irish ancestry. Her maternal great-grandfather was part of the Irish resistance movement against British colonisers until he left Ireland for Mackay (Australia) in the 1880s, although his family continued their resistance activities into the early 1900s. His son, her maternal grandfather, married a woman of Danish descent. They eloped to the Sunshine Coast, Australia, and were estranged from family due to sectarian hostility to their marriage. His stories of their Irish homeland stirred Jennifer’s childhood passion for that place, and an understanding of the implications of the loss of land (particularly through song, poetry and diaries). Her mother was subject to post-school unemployment (prior to marriage) due to anti-Catholic racism by the ascendant protestant class. Her paternal great-great-great grandfather was of French-English-Welsh descent and one of the first selectors on the Sunshine Coast in the 1880s. His descendants include her relatives of Kabi Kabi (traditional owners of the Sunshine Coast), Solomon Islander, English, Chinese and Scottish ethnicities. Her nieces and step-children have Indigenous Australian, Maori, Indigenous Fijian and ‘white’ ethnic heritage and are all well aware of the persistence of structural racism in contemporary times. This places her with a twinned understanding of the loss of land due to colonisation, the perpetuation of structural racisms, and yet the ‘white privileges’ that she has received through these historical processes of colonisation and its enduring structure. She has spent over twenty-five years working in the area of Indigenous Studies and with many Indigenous Australians, Pacifica peoples and Zimbabweans to address structural inequity in environmental and development programs and higher education. Professor Maria Raciti has maternal Aboriginal ancestry, being a descendent of the Kalkadoon-Thaniquith/Bwgcolman peoples. Her maternal great-grandfather was ‘King’ Johnny Mapoon who was forcibly removed from Mapoon to Palm Island with his four children in 1939. Maria’s grandparents, Fred and Iris Clay (nee Mapoon), were tireless and well-known activists in the 1960s and 1970s who renounced Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ Affairs Act 1965, profoundly influencing a social and political change at both state and national levels. Their legacy is honoured by governments with a street named after them in Canberra (Australia’s capital), the Iris Clay Hostel in Townsville and Fred Clay Park on Palm Island. Maria was born in Mackay (Australia, Birri Gubba) after her young parents left Greater Palm Island and Tully in pursuit of new horizons. Greater Palm Island was a former Aboriginal mission established in 1914 by the Queensland Government comprised of 57 language groups who were forcibly removed from

98  C. Manathunga, J. Carter & M. Raciti

their traditional land and sent to the island. Greater Palm Island was regarded as a penal settlement for Aboriginal people and became the largest in the state. Her mother recalled how the tolling of the bell dictated their lives, with the morning bell requiring them to line up for parade and the night bell signalling lockdown and lights out. Food rations were reduced or withheld and arrests made for those who did not comply. Maria’s father is a Sicilian immigrant granted passage to Australia as a young child post-World War 2 as a result of the bombing of civilians which resulted in the death of his family members. Maria’s father’s family migration appears to have been part of the Australian ‘populate or perish’ Displaced Persons Program (1945–1965), an agreement with the United Nations International Refugee Organization. Her father recalled how as an immigrant they were told to assimilate by using ‘English’ names and not speak or teach their children their language. At the age of 10 (Year 4), he was removed from school to work full-time cutting cane manually with a machete. In the context of her father’s education to Year 4 and her mother’s education to Year 7, Maria and her sibling’s completion of high school was unexpected let alone her completion of a Bachelor, First-Class Honours and PhD as the first for Indigenous doctoral student for her university. Maria has studied and taught marketing at universities for over two decades, with her research efforts focused using marketing tools to achieve social justice and equity rather than neoliberalist agendas. Maria is married to an English immigrant and they have two children.

ITRC vision and themes The Indigenous and Transcultural Centre was established in January 2020 at our small Australian regional university in what was to become a year shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. The vision of the Centre was that we proudly partner with Indigenous, migrant, refugee and culturally diverse communities to deliver impactful research nationally and internationally that seeks to improve the lives and well-being of Indigenous and culturally diverse peoples in Australia and around the globe. Our first research theme is building knowledge systems. Our researchers seek to respectfully engage with and support the retrieval, retention, extension and further creation of First Nations, migrant, refugee, culturally diverse and international knowledge, building recognition and engagement with Indigenous, Southern, Eastern and other knowledge systems. For example, one project plans to work in respectful partnership with Indigenous and transcultural doctoral candidates and their supervisors to foreground and accredit Indigenous and transcultural knowledge systems. In our second research theme, creative cultural practices, we aim to revive, document and extend languages, educational and social and creative cultural practices through transdisciplinary explorations of poetry, art, music, dance and other

Decolonisation and transformation 99

creative forms, and social and educational interactions. For example, the Wandiny (Listen with the Heart): Uniting Nations through Poetry project brings together a transgenerational group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous university staff and students, schoolteachers and school students, and community members to listen to stories, music and poetry by Indigenous Australian Elders, poets, performers and musicians. The audience then responds with poetry, which is collected in online databases and anthologies. Our final theme, community capacity exchange, is premised on the notion that knowledges and aspirations of diverse academic and cultural groups can be exchanged to mutual benefit that enhances each other’s research/knowledgegenerating and practical capacities. For example, the lPlace project explored factors that would resituate the University as a place where Indigenous students can ‘be, belong and become’. That work supported student achievement of their professional identities, but also the University’s desire to have greater Indigenous student participation, retention and graduation.

Goodwill, beginnings and then the pandemic! … Significant goodwill towards the Centre and its Directors had developed since 2013. The Centre was held in high esteem by University executive, who provided advice, feedback and support. While across the sector support for Indigenous research and researchers is a prerogative, the support provided by University executive was significant. Our successful application saw the ITRC officially instated on the 1st January 2020. Much of the first few months of Centre were dedicated to establishment, including teasing out the Centre’s classification as a strategic research group and its place relative to the larger research institutes and research centres. This classification as a strategic centre provided the aperture to facilitate post-feminist collaborative leadership approaches. Centres were required to have a single director; however, being a named strategic centre excluded the leadership group from this directive providing the opportunity to have three directors. Two months after the formal commencement of the Centre, the world suffered the COVID-19 pandemic, jeopardising the normal business of universities and communities through challenges such as lockdowns, social distancing and massive financial trauma (especially the loss of international higher education students in Australia). While Centre plans were paused and uncertainty about the next steps prevailed, the implications of the disruption were not as bad as it could have been had the Centre operated longer. A full launch of the Centre with all the fanfare was delayed for some months until a wellattended online soft launch marked the Centre’s official beginning. Physical space has been harder to secure (even temporarily). However, the School of Social Sciences, who had physical space where it housed the Sustainability Research Centre (SRC), generously provided desks for our Centre research higher degree students and signage.

100  C. Manathunga, J. Carter & M. Raciti

Importance of engagement and impact imperatives for our kind of work One consequence of restrictions to limit the spread of COVID-19 has been the inability of academics to travel internationally and domestically, as a pre-condition of establishing and building relationships that can identify and refine research agendas. Relationships cannot be built using only ‘Zoom’, especially with marginalised and Indigenous communities who have quite rightly a cautious, even suspicious, approach to research because of its colonial and power-laden history (Tuhiwai-Smith, 2012). Greenop (2010) warns of the potential for research to cause harm or go off on a tangent when it becomes too removed from ‘stakeholders’. The Centre was fortunate that many of our relationships with First Nations and transcultural communities in our region had been forged prior to the pandemic. This has meant that the shift to online communication was built upon substantial prior trust and face-to-face relationship building. This ensured that we were still able to maximise participation and accountability to the communities within which research occurs through decision-making on projects, planning, co-design, ethics approval, interpretation of data and reporting even when we had to rely solely on online communication. Even so, these stages of research are vulnerable to a gravitational pull in the direction of compliance to neoliberalised institutional expectations, and away from the aspirations and preferences of community members. The issue of benefit-sharing and ‘giving back’ to the community is a complex political and ethical field (Herman, 2018). There are less tangible obligations and benefits in recognition of community’s multiple inputs to successful research, which are difficult to deliver in an increasingly metrics-driven academic reward system that penalises participatory research. In Australia, academic research is customarily reduced to citations, dollars and higher degree research student completions. Although the ‘impact’ of research has been presented as a new framework for assessing research that works with/for external partners, it retains a narrow interpretation of ‘outcomes’ that are demonstrable and measurable (Olssen, 2016). It is important to acknowledge that a participatory approach is not inherently progressive. Participatory research can serve community interests or co-opt them in reproducing power differentials and marginalisation. As such, the ITRC seeks an ethical and political praxis that is transformative of academic and professional structures, pedagogy, research practice and community activism that ‘disrupts the unhelpful boundaries between researcher and researched and between community and university’ (mrs. c kinpainsby-hill 2011, p. 221). While the University can tout the Centre in its promotional material, in its compliance with national standards of transcultural competence and its internationalisation of graduate attributes (Palmer and Carter, 2014), the Centre must be hyper-vigilant to be humble in its self-promotion and ensure that the academy is genuinely accountable to those communities who host and enable the research to occur.

Decolonisation and transformation 101

An ethics of care and hospitality One discourse of enduring ethical engagement between researchers and communities emerges from feminist literature on the ethics of care (Gilligan, 1982). Fisher and Tronto (1990) identified four crucial components of care ethics: attending to preferences and aspirations, being responsible for action, being competent, and responsiveness. An ethics of care is mindful of power, attempts transformation, establishes dynamic relationality between all actors and balances individual and collective agendas (Silk, 2004; Lawson, 2007). A research practice informed by care ethics can contest neoliberalism and build networks of solidarity and political affect as well as being mindful of where actors are situated within global power structures such as universities (Feldman and Sandoval, 2018). Robinson (2010) established how care ethics within neoliberal discourses can challenge gendered, racialised and other social inequities, suggesting organisations must take up their binding duty of care for the vulnerable to avoid routinely reproducing power and inequity. Manathunga (2016) links an ethics of care with notions of hospitality. Barnacle (2018, p. 83) wrote about care ethics as an ‘openness to the other’, ‘attentive receptivity’ and emphasised ‘knowledge creation as a relational practice’. The challenge for the Centre is to satisfy the expectations of the University for a small research centre while contesting the burdens and barriers imposed internally by audits and metrics in line with an outward-looking commitment to social justice, relationship building and an ethics of care and hospitality in research praxis. This is not just the typical challenge of balancing time, resources and priorities in our research. These ideologies, discourses, structures and processes are in serious combat. Ironically, the university sector is technically vigilant about human and animal ethics processes, while maintaining a studied refusal to engage with rigorous assessment of its institutional ethics and responsibilities (Armitage, 2018).

Post-feminist approach to collaborative leadership In line with the ethics of care and hospitality, Armitage (2018) suggests management systems and performance development would benefit from collaborative, relational leadership. Elements of this approach to leadership are also reflected in Macfarlane’s (2012, pp. 76, 89) concepts of intellectual leadership which involves being ‘a critic and an advocate’ … ‘a mentor, a guardian, an enabler and an ambassador’ for our [inter]disciplines. Macfarlane (2017, p. 472) has also critiqued the over-use of the term ‘collaboration’ in neoliberal times, where the emphasis is on ‘collaboration-as-performativity’ rather than ‘collaboration-as-intellectual generosity … as-mentoring’. Our approach to collaborative leadership is based upon these latter three practices. Our Centre has adopted a post-feminist approach to shared collaborative leadership through the three-woman 2 co-Director model, but management

102  C. Manathunga, J. Carter & M. Raciti

still finds this awkward to deal with and tend to interact with a single named Director (Acker and Wagner, 2019). Nicholson and Kurucz (2019, p. 25) propose an ethical framework of relational leadership that would ‘involve challenging our existing measures of organisational “success” and “effectiveness”’. In their framework, leadership is a relational practice fostering co-construction of meaning and decision-making as collective moral learning, rather than instituting a heroic leader’s vision of a research centre that stultifies other visions and fosters a particular organisational culture. Such a leadership is a process of social influence, including the practice of genuine care that brings about social equity and environmental justice alongside economic progress. By working in such relational ways, the Centre espouses a work and knowledge ecology of collectively producing research. This builds upon the earlier work of Wright (2016) and Barnett (2017) who have argued that ecological approaches to higher education are key contributors to social cohesion and cultural connectivity. As places are made up of relationalities between humans and the more-than-human (including the co-constitution of place and knowledge) care and hospitality praxis like ours can ‘intersect with colonial and capitalist’ structures (Carlson and Walker, 2018, pp. 786, 788) to decolonise knowledges ‘as a specific cultural and political project’.

ITRC governance An Advisory Board of community members was established to counsel the Centre regarding strategic plans, specific projects and activities, events, communications and community engagement. The Directors reached out to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts who had been with the University in various capacities. Transcultural experts included representatives of key local organisations such as the Descendants of the Australian South Sea Islander Inc., the Sunshine Coast Chinese Association, the Settlement Officer for Multicultural Australia, the Thai Community Association and several local government Multicultural Advisory Group representatives. The Advisory Board has an equal number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts and transcultural experts to provide a balance of perspectives and voices. The purpose of the first meeting of the Advisory Board was to introduce members and to learn of the experiences, issues and concerns of their communities with the intent of finding common ground with the Centre’s foci and membership research capabilities and interests. This ‘getting to know you’ approach was favourably received as it was a respectful exchange with the Centre ‘reaching out’ and inviting the Board to ‘reach in’. The need to amplify the voices and visibility of the strengths, talents and achievements of Indigenous and transcultural communities in the geographic footprint of the University was vital to a strengths-based Centre that celebrates diversity and models respectful relationships as foundation stones for rigorous, useful and meaningful research while maintaining representation, affinity and sensitivity.

Decolonisation and transformation 103

Terms of reference calibrated to national guidelines, standards and protocols are of critical importance. Sources consulted include the AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research (2020); the National Indigenous Australians Agency Indigenous Voice co-design process; and the Refugee Council of Australia, with additional guidance from Block, Riggs and Halsam’s (2013) text on ethical research with refugees and asylum seekers.

Towards decolonisation and transformation in universities We, therefore, argue that the Centre seeks to transform research in universities so that knowledge is co-created with, by and for Indigenous and transcultural communities in ways that address the real world, urgent issues and needs of these communities (Soudien, 2019). Foundational to such an approach is the continued building of strong and respectful links with Indigenous and transcultural communities through careful dialogic decision-making and reciprocal community capacity and knowledge exchange. Such research needs to be premised on benefit-sharing, ‘giving back’ and accountability to these communities (Herman, 2018). We seek to transform university knowledge production so that it becomes intimately connected with the communities we serve. This approach challenges the neoliberal university by valuing knowledges for their capacity to produce imaginative, forward-looking, collaborative and critical approaches to real-world problems and to produce democratic, active and transformative citizens (Rider, 2018; McArthur, 2018). It also reworks neoliberal approaches to ‘impact’, going beyond measurable outputs to achieving the full and respected participation of these communities in society and all political, cultural, social and economic spheres. This creates considerable tension as we must continue to work within a neoliberal institution. There are no simple solutions or resolutions possible between these conflicting agendas. Somehow, we must balance the imperative to create real and meaningful change for First Nations and transcultural communities, while at the same time satisfying the metric-driven desires of our neoliberal university. Our Centre has achieved success in the latest round of Australian Research Council research grant funding, thereby producing the kind of outcomes desired by neoliberal management. It is our hope that this funded research will also pave the way for significant change in Australian doctoral education for First Nations and transcultural students. Our principles of transformative research are firmly rooted in the concept of mutual recognition as the founding element of the University’s social justice role. This mutual recognition for Indigenous and transcultural communities involves ensuring that all peoples receive validation of their identities, cultural knowledge and capacities; gain access and rights to full participation in all aspects of society and are recognised for their contribution to society and knowledge generation (McArthur, 2018). Our aim is that all researchers, students and community members develop a strong self-belief

104  C. Manathunga, J. Carter & M. Raciti

in their own ability to work for positive change and social justice; a capacity to appreciate and value the contributions of others and deep understanding of the importance of debate, dissensus, critique and contestation (McArthur, 2018). Such approaches to transformative knowledge creation are achieved through a praxis of the ethics of care and hospitality to Indigenous and transcultural peoples and the unique knowledges, cultural practices, capacities and networks they possess (e.g. Manathunga, 2016; Barnacle, 2018). These ethics are based upon dynamic relationality, interdependence, a responsibility to act and cultural courage in calling out racism and discrimination (Silk, 2004; Robinson, 2010; Aberdeen et al., 2013), openness and ‘attentive receptivity’ (Barnacle, 2018, p. 81). These principles of innovative knowledge creation constantly call into question our own standpoints, assumptions and positioning and are mindful of the operations of power and the need to balance individual and collective agendas (Silk, 2004). Transformative knowledge creation is also achieved by a deep recognition of the multiplicity of perspectives and approaches to any problem/issue. This enacts de Sousa Santos’ (2014) ecologies of knowledges approach towards the achievement of social and epistemic justice and the decolonisation of the University. Such a democratic approach to knowledge generation accords parity of esteem and full recognition to all the vibrant and insightful knowledge systems of Indigenous and transcultural communities. The full recognition and utilisation of all the world’s cultural knowledge systems would spark cultural growth within Indigenous and transcultural communities. Research that seeks to revive, document and extend the languages, educational, political, social and creative cultural practices of Indigenous and transcultural cultures builds upon and enhances these communities’ cultural dynamism and vibrancy. Such an approach is transgenerational, transdisciplinary and multimodal. It brings together poetry, art, music, dance and other creative forms with science and technology to generate practical and critical approaches to key issues. These forms of Indigenous and transcultural cultural growth can benefit all of humankind by extending our repertoire of ways of being, knowing, thinking and acting together and in concert with the more-than-human landscapes and life forces available in our world. Enacting all these principles of transformative knowledge creation and research enables us to find a new language to voice our work as professors and academic leaders. This language emphasises the importance of post-feminist, collaborative and relational leadership and the centrality of an ethics of care and hospitality in the academy. Furthermore, this language challenges neoliberal discourses and the gendered, racialised and other social inequities they exacerbate. It seeks to undermine the power of metrics and hollowed out, instrumental neoliberal practices of accountability, audit and surveillance in the university. Instead, what may come to be valued is the potential for academic work to strive for social and epistemic justice, cultural inclusion and decolonisation.

Decolonisation and transformation 105

To enact these transformative principles for knowledge creation, our Centre faces many challenges in a world still gripped by the pandemic and the powerful forces of neoliberal market-driven ideologies. It is difficult for a small research centre with limited funding to work towards the achievement of social justice and decolonisation while resisting the constant performative pressure to produce endless publications, grant income and research student completions. Working with Indigenous and transcultural communities to challenge existing power relations involves vast amounts of care, patience and vigilance about our own positionality and privilege. However, we remain hopeful of the university’s capacity to achieve transformative social and epistemic justice and decolonisation. Without hope, we cannot believe that change is even possible (Barcan, 2013). We invite local, national and international collaborations and linkages for the Centre to build momentum towards university decolonisation and transformation.

Notes 1 Indigenous is inclusive of all First Nations peoples. 2 During the time between writing this chapter and attending to the revisions, one of our Directors, Jen Carter, has had to reluctantly step down from her role as CoDirector to take on substantial national responsibilities in her discipline. Jen remains a co-author of this piece, as she contributed substantially to our writing.

References Aberdeen, L., Carter, J., Grogan, J. and Hollinsworth, D. (2013). Rocking the foundations: The struggle for effective Indigenous studies in Australian higher education. Higher Education Review, 45(3), 36–55. Acker, S. and Wagner, A. (2019). Feminist scholars working around the neoliberal University. Gender and Education, 31(1), 62–81. Armitage, A. (2018). Is HRD in need of an ethics of care? Human Resource Development International, 21(3), 212–231. Assié-Lumumba, N.D.T. (2006). Higher Education in Africa. Dakar: Codesria. Barcan, R. (2013). Academic Life and Labour in the New University. Surrey: Ashgate. Barnacle, R. (2018). Research education and care: The care-full PhD. In S. Bengtsen and R. Barnett (eds.), The Thinking University (pp. 77–86). Cham: Springer. Barnett, R. (1990). The Idea of Higher Education. London: SRHE & Open University Press. Barnett, R. (2017). The Ecological University. London: Routledge. Block, K., Riggs, E. and Halsam, N. (2013). Values and Vulnerabilities. Toowong: Australian Academic Press. Carlson, A. and Walker, B. (2018). Free universities and radical reading groups: Learning to care in the here and now. Continuum, 32(6), 782–794. Connell, R. (2007). Southern Theory. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Connell, R. (2019). The Good University. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing. de Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. de Sousa Santos, B. (2018). The End of the Cognitive Empire. Durham: Duke University Press.

106  C. Manathunga, J. Carter & M. Raciti

Feldman, Z. and Sandoval, M. (2018). Metric power and the academic self: Neoliberalism, knowledge and resistance in the British University. Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 16(1), 214–233. Fisher, B. and Tronto, J. (1990). Towards a feminist theory of caring. In E. Abel and M. Nelson (eds.), Circles of Care (p. 35). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greenop, D. (2010). Rightly dividing the word: Research beyond the limits of ethical approval. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(3), 306–310. Harding, S. (ed.) (2004). The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader. New York and London: Routledge. Herman, D, (ed.) (2018). Giving Back: Research and Reciprocity in Indigenous Contexts. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press. Honneth, A. (1999). Pathologies of the social: The past and present of social philosophy. In D.M. Rasmussen (ed.), The Handbook of Critical Theory (pp. 369–398). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Kinpainsby-Hill, mrs.C. (2011). Participatory praxis and social justice. In V. Del Casino, M. Thomas, P. Cloke and R. Panelli (eds.), A Companion to Social Geography (pp. 214–234). UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Lawson, V. (2007). Geographies of care and responsibility. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(1), 1–1. Macfarlane, B. (2012). Intellectual Leadership in Higher Education. London: Routledge. Macfarlane, B. (2017). The paradox of collaboration: A moral continuum. Higher Education Research & Development, 36(3), 472–485. Manathunga, C. (2016). A critical turn in knowledge construction in intercultural doctoral pedagogy and communication? In M. Dasli and A. Diaz (eds.), The Critical Turn in Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (pp. 109–125). London: Routledge. Manathunga, C. and Bottrell, D. (eds.) (2019). Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education. Vol 2. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McArthur, J. (2018). When thought gets left alone: Thinking, recognition and social justice. In S. Bengtsen and R. Barnett (eds.), The Thinking University (pp. 155–166). Cham: Springer. Nakata, M. (2007). The cultural interface. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 36(Supplement), 7–14. Nicholson, J. and Kurucz, E. (2019). Relational leadership for sustainability: Building an ethical framework from the moral theory of ‘ethics of care’. Journal of Business Ethics, 156, 25–43. Olssen, M., (2016). Neoliberal competition in higher education today: Research, accountability and impact. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(1), 129–148. Palmer, J. and Carter, J. (2014). Working in the border zone: Developing cultural competence in higher education for a globalised world. Knowledge Cultures Special Edition Globalisation Now, 2(4), 25–48. Readings, B. (1996). The University in Ruins. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Rider, S. (2018). Truth, democracy and mission of the University. In S. Bengtsen and R. Barnett (eds.), The Thinking University (pp. 15–30). Cham: Springer. Robinson, F. (2010). After liberalism in world politics? Towards an international political theory of care. Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 130–144. Rolfe, G. (2013). The University in Dissent. London: Routledge. Shumar, W. (1997). College for Sale. London: Falmer Press.

Decolonisation and transformation 107

Shumar, W. and Robinson, S. (2018). Universities as societal drivers: Entrepreneurial interventions for a better future. In S. Bengtsen and R. Barnett (eds.), The Thinking University (pp. 31–46). Cham: Springer. Silk, J. (2004). Caring at a distance: Gift theory, aid chains and social movement. Social and Cultural Geography, 5(2), 229–251. Soudien, C. (2019). Testing transgressive thinking: The ‘learning through enlargement’ initiative at UNISA. In J. Jansen (ed.), Decolonisation in Universities (pp. 136–154). Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Stengers, I. Despret, V. and Collective. (2014). Women Who Make a Fuss. Minneapolis, MN: Univocal Publishing. Tuhiwai-Smith, L. (2012). Decolonising Methodologies. New Zealand: Otago University Press. Wright, S. (2016). Universities in a knowledge economy or ecology? Policy, contestation and abjection. Critical Policy Studies, 10(1), 59–78.

Part III

Institutions

7 University challenge Realising utopias in the twenty-first century Ronald Barnett

Introduction In principle, universities can be transformed on a number of different levels. After all, universities have manifest activities and systems – in teaching and research – but they also reflect huge underlying and largely invisible global forces of cognitive capitalism and so forth. Moreover, any transformation of universities, at whatever level, calls for the imagination to proffer an idea of the hoped-for changes. Transforming the university, therefore, is a matter of being alert to the university as Real and as imaginative Idea. Accordingly, teasing out this relationship – between the university as Real and as Idea – is the task of this essay. The thesis being contended for here is that the idea of utopia is particularly helpful, not least in widening horizons of the realm of the possible. However, if the task of university transformation is to be undertaken seriously, any would-be utopian idea of the university should pitch itself against a set of criteria of adequacy. In its real and its imaginative forms, the university is such that there are a number of conditions – five are specified – that its attempted transformation should heed.

Two kinds of transformation The world of higher education is witnessing transformations upon transformations; in other words, two kinds of transformation. Across the world, many university leaders are looking to transform their universities. Some university leaders and their teams have formed fairly large visions for their universities and have worked those ideas up into corporate strategies, perhaps for thirty years ahead, the texts in question having gone through a process of consultation, and being announced with some fanfare. The strategy document – perhaps intended for different audiences and very colourful with lots of DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-11

112  R. Barnett

photographs – typically identifies a number of large themes around which ideas for teaching, research and outreach are set out. The themes will vary but they tend to cluster around matters of the student experience, inclusion, sustainability, service, employability, and engagement with the economy and society. Whether it is a purely internal document or intended for a more public consumption, a casual look at a typical corporate strategy might convey an impression of inclusivity, incorporating large themes, many disciplines, concerns over both students and society, perhaps a global reach and a sense of forward momentum. The document might even include explicit mention of the university undergoing some kind of ‘transformation’, as it looks back over that university’s very recent past and as it peers into the future that it glimpses for itself. Quite often, substantial change seems to be in the offing: not uncommonly, the university seems to be an institution that is seized of its having responsibilities towards society and its students. Of course, the empirical details will vary. Both within a stratified national system of higher education and across nations – say, across market-led systems, systems with a heavy dose of state steerage or quasi-market systems of liberal democracies or systems imbued with religious traditions – the space available to universities to develop their own missions varies; and even more so, therefore, the space available for university transformation. We can leave these matters to the sociological, political and system analysts. What I am interested in here is the very idea of university transformation and how we might understand it. The senior management team has, we may imagine, produced some kind of institutional strategy document but how might it be understood? If one stands off from any such document, a sense of incompleteness may emerge. Large matters that might have been felt to be candidates through which a university might be transformed – such as culture, ecology, interconnectedness, academic freedom, knowledge and social justice – are characteristically given only walk-on parts at most. Yet other large matters, such as reason, truth, thought, the moral goods and the public good of universities, spirit, value as such, the matter of being in the twenty-first century and what it is to lead a university are given even shorter shrift. The details of this situation are unimportant. What might be generally agreed is that efforts to transform universities turn on a limited range of matters and tend to neglect a larger set of considerations that could be felt to come into view. Be all that as it may, what is before us here is a sense of university transformation as being (i) intended (whether its intentionality is expansive or limited). Against that we may pit a sense of university transformations as also being (ii) unintended. Moreover, we may depict transformations (i) as a response, in part, at least, to transformations (ii). Transformations (i), in other words, are but rather surface transformations in responding to the deeper changes that constitute transformations (ii). The institutional strategy is far from being self-sufficient. The deeper structural transformations of universities (transformations (ii)) have been witnessed worldwide over the course of the last sixty years or so; not

University challenge 113

universally by any means, but a general pattern can be observed across a surprising range of nations, well beyond the Western world or the Global North. The pattern includes the formation of systems of higher education, with universities steered by the state, whether private or public institutions; the injection of market-elements (to form a quasi-market); the establishment of state-orchestrated audit systems; a heightened attention paid to research; the emergence of the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematic and some are now adding another ‘M’ for medicine) as powerful knowledge centres; disciplines and programmes of study being oriented towards the labour market; the emergence of a nexus between universities, industry and the military; the positioning of students as customers of a service; an immersion in the digital age; and a performance management regime giving high value to metrics. This pattern has witnessed – as by-products – a diminution of the humanities, lessenings in academic freedom and institutional autonomy, the disappearance of a ‘slow’ mode of academic life marked by a scholarly carefulness and a monitoring of the life of what has become an administered university. It is evident, then, that universities have been subject to a set of massive structural transformations over the last half century or so. This movement still lacks an adequate theorisation. Talk of cognitive capitalism (Boutang, 2011) or knowledge capitalism (Peters, 2013) goes some way but insufficiently, for as intimated, the transformations are to be found in both overly capitalist societies and those where there is considerable state steering. We can leave this matter to the social theorists. The point here is that unintended university transformations are apparent, and over a relatively short period of time. These initial reflections – of (intended) transformations (i) in response to (unintended) transformations (ii) – open fundamental questions. What is the conceptual and practical space in which we might sensibly speak of university transformation? Are there profound problems with the very idea of the transformation of universities? And, to the extent that this idea – of university transformation – holds water, does the further idea of utopia help us or hinder us? How might the concepts of university transformation and utopia connect with each other? I shall argue that the idea of utopia can indeed help us in thinking through the matter of the transformation of universities but that that idea – of utopia – has to be approached in a circumspect fashion. It can do serious work here providing that it is not only made subject to a certain set of conditions but that it is understood as a never-ending quest. Further, since it speaks both to the way the world is and to possible imaginings of the world, that relationship – between the Real of the university and imaginings of it – warrants attention.

The university as an institution and as an idea The central matter before us is that of the transformation of the university. To speak of the university is to speak of the idea of the university, to speak – in other words – of the university as a general concept. This conceptual ploy is justified

114  R. Barnett

in that the university finds institutional expression across the world, there being about twenty thousand universities being distributed across almost every country. ‘University’ is a universal concept, it having a non-contextual aspect, even though its actual form varies considerably and even within countries, and even though it has discernibly multiple traditions. Furthermore, the idea of the university has lent itself to literatures about the idea of the university, especially but by no means only in the Global North. (Efforts are underway to carve out ideas of the university in the settings of Africa, South America and China.) When we speak of the transformation of the university, therefore, two possibilities lie before us: (i) a transformation of the idea of the university and (ii) a transformation of the university as an institution. These two possibilities are by no means antipathetic. On the contrary: a transformation of any university is dependent on transformation in the ideas that help to shape it. Correspondingly, practical changes in a university may help to prompt new ideas about its possibilities. For example, the emergence of the digital age, in which universities have played a major part, has been inspiring new thought about the university, with ideas of the virtual university (Robins and Webster, 2002), the borderless university and the post-digital university (cf. McLaren and Jandric, 2020). The university as institution and the university as idea play upon each other. To put the point more formally, we may say that the university lives in the world of the real – it has an ontological status – and it lives in the world of ideas, beliefs, values, understandings and imaginings: the university as Real and the university as Idea. We may be tempted to say of this latter dimension that the university has an epistemological status (alongside its ontological status). That is not totally unhelpful as a kind of shorthand, but what is at issue are imaginings of the university; ways in which the university is – or could be – imagined. The imaginative dimension is especially significant here, in relation to the transformation of the university. We have, then, a dual way of understanding the university, as an institution (in the Real of the world) and as idea (in the imagination). I have already indicated that these two aspects – the ontological and the imaginative – can and do influence each other. Institutional leaders will often have ideas for the transformation of their university to which they wish to give practical expression. And having ideas is the easier part, some might say; their practical implementation is quite different, often being especially demanding. Given the challenges of this interaction between idea and realisation in and of the university, one might be tempted to draw on a term that is becoming almost ubiquitous in social philosophy and suggest that the university is an ontoepistemological entity or construction. The ontology of the university and ideas of it run into each other. One might even back up that idea by drawing on the concept of entanglement (Barad, 2007), for in a relationship of entanglement, both parties are entwined in each other such that each configures the other. It is not just that perceptions and knowledge claims affect the world and the world affects perceptions but that knowing, believing and imagining are in the world and that

University challenge 115

the world is in those representations of the world. There is a tight and radical reciprocity at work. Being and knowing are ravelled in each other. It is on the basis of such an onto-epistemological idea that it made sense for Latour (Latour et al., 2011:57) to suggest that an Emperor in classical Greece could not have died of tuberculosis for tuberculosis had not then been detected and the theoretical and practical framework in which the idea had its place was not then present. No framework, no entity in the world. But this is to overstretch the idea of entanglement and to lose the vital distinction between the world and perceptions of it. The university is a massive institution, with a major presence in the world, at once legal, financial, societal, cultural and epistemological – it constitutes a ‘hyper-object’ (Morton, 2013) – and there are perceptions, imaginings and ideas of it. If we conflate the two, we are then unable to examine ways in which the university as an institution might be affecting our thinking about it; and, vice versa, how our thinking might help to change – to ‘transform’ – the university. A recognition of this interplay – between the way the world is and our sense of it; between the university in the world and its understandings – is vital, not least for our purposes here.

The university in double motion The world is in motion, such that it exhibits considerable turbulence (Nial, 2019). This turbulence is often readily apparent – a virus sweeps across the world and universities widely are faced with disruption, not least in their recruitment of international students being in jeopardy, and they make efforts to mitigate the upheaval, by putting courses online, having their staff and students work at a distance, setting up new support systems, freezing appointments and reducing expenditures where feasible. However, knowledges that emerge from universities in the wake of such turbulence – in the forms, say, of vaccines, or modellings, or of socio-cultural responses to vaccines – inject yet more turbulence into the world. The university, then, is in double motion. The world affects the university and its knowledges: ontology affects epistemology. But epistemology self-evidently affects ontology, and is (often) intended to do just that. The biomolecular understandings emerging from the university and its theories of the economy, colonialism and justice manifestly affect the world. However, turbulence in and around the university may be much less visible. Terms such as globalisation, neoliberalism, ideology and ecosystem point to systems and forces that have a large degree of invisibility: they possess a subterranean character, and are intimations of our ignorance. To pick up terms within Bhaskar’s (2008a) philosophy of critical realism, there are (i) empirical or manifest aspects of the university, there are (ii) actual aspects that are at work whether seen or not (for example, the ways in which the total world system of higher education has impact upon individual universities) and there are (iii) real aspects of higher education that have an even greater depth. For example, epistemologies are embedded over centuries into ways of being in

116  R. Barnett

the world and of being with the world. Epistemologies structure a university’s being: they are part of a university’s own ‘enframing’ (Heidegger, 2007:325); the way it is in the world and the way it comes to understand the world, a world in which Nature came to be regarded ‘as standing-reserve’ (ibid.). These features of the university, working at different levels of depth, lie in the Real of the world, in the way the world is and the university’s place within it. And at each level, the Real exerts its influence and its powers over the university. Following Bhaskar (2008a), we can say that these features form the intransitive dimension of universities. In parallel to this intransitive aspect, we should recognise the presence of a transitive dimension. Here, we find (i) ideas of, (ii) imaginings of and (iii) idealistic hopes of the university. Whereas it is natural to depict the different layers of the Real or ontological dimension – in relation to the university – as having depth, we may more naturally depict the layers of the perceptible dimension of the university as exhibiting height. (Newman, we may note, spoke of a university education as being to ‘ascend’, to ‘mount above’ (1976:125).) Let us delineate these three heights as (i) ideational, (ii) imaginary and (iii) utopian. Level (i), the ideational level, is that of ideas of the university that are addressed to matters as they immediately present themselves. They could be concerned with a single university or universities more generally. An idea at this basic level takes the form of a project or proposal with an instrumental orientation. It seeks to change a situation x into a situation y. It might be a matter of a programme of study, taking on say a new internet-based mode to widen student access or it could involve many universities in a region, looking to effect, say, a joint credit-accumulation system, or it could involve a whole university, to lead it towards taking on an entirely new role within its immediate locality. At level (ii), the imaginary level, ideas become more abstract and elevated but yet opening to policies and actions on the part of the university. For example, ideas and practices might be developed that pick up on concepts of the digital university, or the civic university, or pedagogical research or seek its possibilities in providing ‘public goods’. Hard and difficult thought would have to be given both to going deeply into any such concept and discerning its practical possibilities for a particular university in the circumstances of its situation, its resources, its relationship with the state, and its position in its society and the wider world. We may term this the imaginary level, since such practical possibilities do not display themselves but have to be imagined, en route to being brought into life in a university. At level (iii), the utopian level, effort would be made to open a space in which the university – any university – could become quite other than it is, and in a way (or ways) that are linked both to large value-oriented concepts (such as freedom, authenticity, justice, emancipation, coloniality, otherness and ecology) and large hopes of different orderings of the world. In principle, a university could posit for itself a role as a societal revolutionary, aiming to bring about transformation not just in itself but in the whole society. In this way, large and open-ended vistas might open, in which utopian possibilities might emerge.

University challenge 117

We are, of course, on dangerous ground in speaking of utopian thinking, for the idea of utopia – much like ‘culture’ or ‘ideology’ – has to be among the most complex concepts in modernity. And much like ‘culture’ and ‘ideology’, the idea of utopia poses awkward questions as to its location. ‘Utopia’ is literally nowhere but it hankers for realisation. And yet, its not being ever present suggests that there can be no ‘blueprint’ utopias ( Jacoby, 2005). There can be neither a precise specification of its constitution nor even a definite game-plan for its realisation. Utopian thought yearns for an entirely different world-order or, here, a university so strange that it can barely be envisaged. It is a yearning born of a dissatisfaction with the present order – the form that universities have taken on – such that a yearning so intense for a world-that-can-never-be, a university-that-cannever-be and that can never be even specified, holds the attention. The university, then, sits both in the Real of the world, and that Real is stratified at levels of varying depth; and in ideas of the university, with ideational levels, again stratified but ascending into the heights of universal concepts that open utopian possibilities. The university lives in double motion, amid the turbulence of the world in itself and the turbulence of intermingling ideas of the university. We may hazard this set of relationships as shown in Figure 7.1.

FIGURE 7.1

The university: its (ideational) heights and its (ontological) depths

118  R. Barnett

It follows that university transformation has both to live in the clouds of large ideals of the university but also be attentive to its Real formations, to the underlying forces at work upon it. And in being attentive to the Real of the university, it has also to be attentive to the local particulars of any individual university. Every university stands in its own place and space and time, even while it owes something to large and even universal ideas of the university.

The idea of transformation again It is clear that the idea of the transformation of the university poses considerable difficulty. It poses, firstly, practical difficulties. To what extent might it be possible, say, for a new Rector to bring about a transformation in a university? It would be, as it is said, like turning round an oil tanker. There it is, with its panoply of programmes of study, its staff and their embeddedness in their own scholarly communities, its tangible assets, its networks, its pattern of income and its connections to the state: transforming any of that is a challenging proposition, to put it mildly; and the time horizon of any serious transformation would surely stretch over many years; and probably beyond our Rector’s future probable retirement date. The changes just mentioned lie in the Real of the university, how it is in the world and the nature of the world in which it has its being. Those possibilities concern the university’s ontology and, as noted, there are layers of depth to that position. Programmes of study can be changed fairly readily at one level, but to effect a change in which, say, all the humanities departments were to be taken out, and a new faculty, say in biomedicine, installed would incur considerable cost, and even risk. The geology of a university is not lightly disturbed. Deeper levels of ontological change, say in the relationship with the state or in establishing a totally different set of relationships with the locality (to form a new kind of civic university) and the economy would be more demanding still. On the cards here is a fundamental shift in the networks, within which the university is but a node. And at even deeper and murkier levels, say in trying to move the university in its ideological and cultural setting in confronting the neoliberalism that lies deep within it, might be felt to be intractable. In trying to transform a university, then, we run into Derrida’s (2001) idea of a university without condition. This is a fantasy. On the ontological side, not only is it evident that there are always structural conditions attaching to a university but that very large numbers of those conditions are deep, are systemic and are not at all easily dislodged. The deep structures of the university seem to be impervious to being transformed; or, at least, to intentional transformation. They are there, sediments of worldly, national and local forces and influences, laid down over many years, if not centuries. Transforming universities might be an attractive idea but realising it seems to be a forlorn matter.

University challenge 119

On the imaginary side, too, there are conditions to be heeded. If ideas are to have some contact with the world, if imaginative discernments are to be realised in the practices of a university and if utopian visions are to avoid floating into the ether, unable to help the human condition – or that of universities – then conditions both of the way the world is, and of bringing discursive power to ideas, have to be acknowledged. (I return to this matter shortly.)

Axes of transformation Emerging here are two axes through which we might understand university transformation: i. An intentional and non-intentional axis: The forces in the world – of capital, geo-political movements, events in Nature and of ideology – are so massive that transformations of universities are happening in any event. The Real of the world exerts its powers surreptitiously as ‘generative mechanisms’ (Bhaskar, 2008a); and almost unseen. Globalisation, for instance, possesses a degree of invisibility but it also has a large degree of non-intentionality; and yet, it has profoundly affected universities, whose strategies of internationalisation may be seen as a response to globalisation. Globalisation is a highly diffuse phenomenon, and is difficult to locate and define (cf. Sloterdijk, 2014); and yet its powers have been considerable. However, when we hear of the transformation of universities, more probably in mind are intentional changes that are deliberately instituted, where concepts of leadership, planning and design can legitimately come into play. ii. An axis of value, where the dominant tension lies between instrumental and non-instrumental transformations. The distinction is easier to state than to articulate. As a first pass, we might venture that instrumental transformations are carried forward in universities in order to bring about some outcome beyond universities and its members, including its students. Non-instrumental transformations would, in contrast, be those that are focused on effecting change in students and universities in themselves. The phrase ‘for their own sakes’ tempts here. Such transformations are wrought with an eye on the good or the well-being of the persons or the university as such, without a concern as to whether there is a further external good in mind. We are, however, on slippery ground. Suppose we wish to bring about a transformation of universities so as to bring about in them a concern for the natural world, with an eye on the climate crisis and ecological degradation, would this be an example of instrumentalism? It seems to be that instrumentalism is permissible when it favours external goals that are held to be of value, but then why should Nature be accorded precedence over, say, a heightening of economic productivity?

120  R. Barnett

It turns out, then, that neither of the aspects that immediately suggest themselves – of instrumentalism and of value – can easily function as discriminators of ventures in effecting a transformation in universities; but the axis remains for all that.

Utopian thinking In response to such non-conclusive considerations, it may be suggested that – to gain a university transformation of the fullest kind – we should leap out of this world altogether and abandon sensitivities towards the Real of the world and, instead, dwell in the world of the imagination. Let us put our imaginations to work and allow our imaginations to fly. And let us embark on a trajectory of the highest kind (trajectory (iii) on the ideational side of our diagram), namely that of utopian ideas of the university. How are we to understand the resulting vision? It is clearly counterfactual: that is partly what is meant by a utopia – literally ‘nowhere’. But could it become somewhere? What is its point? Is it to plague our consciences, to call attention to that which are not and never can be? Is it a call to action, a call to arms even, a storming of the Bastille? And then what? Is it to wallow in the what is not, a kind of psychological escape, like watching an old Hollywood movie on a wet Sunday afternoon? Is it to call attention to the paucity in our current thinking, our concepts and our ideas; simply to make us think? It is a provocation and no more. Utopian thinking is triply utopian. First, it holds up a vision of what is not; so much so obvious. But, and second, that it counts as utopian represents ‘an erasure of the “background noise”’ (Zizek 2011:6): it strips out the Real of the world, and here, of higher education. It pretends that we can forget about ‘cognitive capital’ (Boutang, 2011), the perniciousness that is part of the internet age (in which universities play such a large part) and the epistemic violence written into the world higher education order. And third, ‘the fantastic narrative always involves an impossible gaze, the gaze by means of which the subject is already present at the scene of its own absence’ (Zizek, 2011:84). This is not merely utopian, it is a sleight of hand: one both places oneself in the utopia and excludes oneself from it. It is a total deception, of oneself and of others. One way around these dilemmas is to proffer a ‘practical’ utopia (Wolff, 1997), a ‘concrete’ utopia (Bhaskar, 2008b) or a ‘feasible’ utopia (Barnett, 2018). Here, we may avoid the disingenuity ( just identified) that is associated with utopias. These would be utopias that take account of the Real of universities, of their being caught up in worldly and national entanglements. The university – any university in the world – simply IS caught up in a welter of fluid forces that have major effects in the world; ‘generative mechanisms’ (Bhaskar, 2008a) that cannot be evaded. If utopias are to gain any purchase, their advocates should be able to demonstrate that their favoured visions can live with the Real of the university world or surmount the forces at play. The visions have to be feasible, capable of being realised not just in the best of all worlds, but in the best of all really possible worlds.

University challenge 121

Criteria of adequacy To suggest that a utopia is feasible implies that it comes up to muster against some set of criteria; and such ‘criteria of adequacy’ (Barnett, 2013) can be identified. They include: i. Range: does any idea being suggested lend itself to conceptual and/or theoretical exposition? Can it have practical or policy implications? Can it be cashed out across the educational and research practices of the university? ii. Depth: is the idea sensitive to the deep structures of higher education (to the kind of subterranean forces noted earlier)? iii. Feasibility: can the idea be realised in the best of possible worlds? Does it lend itself to being taken up by imaginative institutional leaders, with practical projects being envisaged and put into action? iv. Ethics: does the idea have an ethical component? Is it prompted or buttressed by a definite value background? Is it guided by considerations of wellbeing in relation both to the human world and the natural world? v. Emergence: does the idea possess qualities of emergence, such that it can legitimately take on new form in the context of unforeseen exigencies? (from Barnett, 2013) A set of criteria such as this is likely to prompt two critical responses. Firstly, it may be said that, taken together, they are far too onerous. No putative utopian idea of the university is going to survive the ordeal of such a tribunal. It will rule out of court any really imaginative idea, which after all is just what a utopia requires; a leap of imagination out of the present order. What is required, it may be suggested, is the opposite stance: let a thousand imaginative ideas bloom. That way, we just might see emerge a really utopian idea that presents us with a quite different idea of the university; perhaps free of institutional settings; or independent of state control; or intended to promote revolutionary action among the students; or a higher education that lives in quite new time-space coordinates; or reflects a particular conception of the ontology of the world; or that implicitly calls for a prior overthrow of global capitalism; or that harbours a repudiation of organised research and wishes to retreat to a past idea of scholarly endeavour; or that wishes to see the university playing its part in a fully ecological society, totally imbued with values of care, otherness, reticence and a sense of the claims of the entities in the entire world. Derrida’s ‘university without condition’ may not be realisable in practice – there are always conditions that structure the university and its situation – but perhaps it is realisable in the imagination. There, at least, we can roam freely, imagining a total transformation of the university and its societal setting. But then just how are any such proposals to be evaluated? Is it that they are not to be evaluated, that their bone fides are to be taken on trust? It just may be that any such putative utopia – if it were to be subjected to scrutiny – would turn out

122  R. Barnett

to be a non-feasible utopia; a utopia without qualification, never to be realised. And where would be the sense in that? A second critical response could run as follows. The five tests of adequacy not only contain an undue conservatism – a fear of utopia even – but betray an ideological stance. For what they do is to allow ideas of the university that merely continue to sustain the current state of affairs. The criteria of adequacy are actually a status quo agenda. Any so-called utopia that survives these tests will leave things are they are and so serve the existing dominant interests. There will be no rocking-of-boats here; only lame sets of ideas that leave the dominant frameworks intact. Any university transformation that emerges will be a thin affair, a transformation in name only. Moreover, these criteria are likely – so the critic may suggest – to be a carrier for the dominant epistemologies in the world, variously described as those of ‘the West’, the ‘Global North’ or even ‘modernity’. A real utopia would evade capture by the dominant epistemologies and demonstrate its capacities to reach out and to do justice – ‘cognitive justice’ (de Sousa Santos, 2016) – to the dispossessed, the neglected, the indigenous and traditional cultures and so on. There are two responses to this objection. First, in what way – I would ask – do the five criteria rule out of court a priori a concern for the interests of those in marginalised cultures and situations? To the contrary, each one of those five criteria – range, depth, feasibility, ethics and emergence – has the elasticity to be stretched in those directions and many others. Indeed, some of those criteria such as those of range, ethics and ethics especially lend themselves to taking account of the other, in the way that our critic seems to want to see. The other response is to admit that, both explicitly and implicitly, there are exclusions built into the five suggested criteria. The range criterion excludes ideas that are narrow and serve only particular interests; the depth criterion excludes ideas that are trivial or shallow, in the sense that they reflect and sustain empirically present situations; the feasibility criterion explicitly excludes the nonfeasible; the ethics criterion excludes ideas that fail to take into account well-being in the most general sense; and the emergence criterions excludes ideas that have closure built into them. Our critic’s position would need to demonstrate how it wishes to evade any of these exclusions.

Implications In the Real of the world, the university has its being amid multiple and stratified conditions. The very idea of the university being transformed, therefore, works at different levels. A university could determine to switch its total programme of taught courses such that there were no lectures face-to-face or even in real time, all the courses being placed online for students to access in their own way. As commonly understood, this change would certainly amount to a transformation of the university. It would be likely to have major repercussions among both staff and students, as well as having implications for many of the services and

University challenge 123

systems of the university, but be that as it may. However, despite its far-reaching character, and despite its being the kind of change that, say, university leaders and policy-makers might have in mind by the idea of university transformation, it probably does not fall within the spectrum of the change that theorists of the university would envisage for the idea of ‘transformation’. In short, university transformation can work on levels that are successively deeper and so darker. The deeper levels would implicate either values or structures (Becher and Kogan, 1992), and these can criss-cross at ever deeper levels. Ultimately, therefore, university transformation would have to implicate the whole society if not the world. The idea of university transformation would call for a societal and even worldly revolution. We may call this a utopia but another term for it would be fantasy. It follows that, if the idea of university transformation is to do serious work, and yet to go beyond the immediately possible, a mid-range of putative changes have to come into play, changes that are most unlikely given the structures – they actually are utopian – but which are not so far-reaching that they would call for a social revolution, for a new kind of world order (for instance, for an overthrow of global capitalism). University transformations of this kind – that live with the Real of the university – we may term feasible utopias. However, the idea of feasible utopias still needs some boundaries; hence the suggested criteria of adequacy.

Conclusions Far from being without condition, the university has its being amid many heavy conditions. In such circumstances, the idea of a utopia can amount to an indulgence unless it is brought into a set of relationships with the Real in which the university finds itself. It is important, though, that we realise the extent of the task in front of us. It is to so craft, so design, a state of affairs for the university that is most unlikely to be brought about, given the conditions in which the university finds itself, but which feasibly could just come into being. It is not simply a matter of curbing the imagination but really pushing the imagination, such that it lives in the not-yet but could-just-be. It presses at the bounds of the Real and of the imagination all at once. Only here would we come into the presence of a transformation of the university that realises its full possibilities. It is to have one’s head in the clouds but one’s feet on the ground, a difficult position in which to be. In the clouds, however, there is no limit to the number of visions that may be feasible, even abiding by the conditions suggested here. And, then, these utopian visions, feasible as they must be, will conflict. The idea of utopia is, therefore, a universal space in which competing visions may have their day. And then must begin the task of constructing a new space, at once discursive and practical, in which those competing utopias can play out. This is especially befitting of the university, which is after all, a site of conflict. Far from utopias spelling the end of debate, they encourage it. Transforming the university calls for never-ending debate and experiment. There is no end to this quest.

124  R. Barnett

References Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham and London: Duke University. Barnett, R. (2013) Imagining the University. London and New York: Routledge. Barnett, R. (2018) The Ecological University: A Feasible Utopia. London and New York: Routledge. Becher, T. and Kogan, M. (1992) Process and Structure in Higher Education. London and New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R. (2008a/1975) A Realist Theory of Science. London and New York: Verso. Bhaskar, R. (2008b) Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. London and New York: Routledge. Boutang, Y.-M. (2011) Cognitive Capital. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity. de Sousa Santos, B. (2016) Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge. Derrida, J. (2001) ‘The Future of the Profession or the University without Condition (Thanks to the Humanities, What Could Take Place Tomorrow)’, in T. Cohen (Ed.) Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Heidegger, M. (2007/1978) ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in D.F. Krell (Ed.) Basic Writings. London and New York: Routledge. Jacoby, R. (2005) Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age. New York and Chichester, Sussex: Colombia University. Latour, B, Harman, G. and Erdélyi, P. (2007) The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE. Winchester, UK, and Washington, DC: Zero. McLaren, P. and Jandric, P. (2020) Postdigital Dialogues on Critical Pedagogy, Liberation Theology and Information Technology. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Morton, T. (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota. Newman, J.H. (1976) In I.T. Ker (Ed.) The Idea of a University. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nial, T. (2019) Being and Motion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peters, M.A. (2013) Education, Science and Knowledge Capitalism: Creativity and the Promise of Openness. New York: Peter Lang. Robins, K. and Webster, F. (Eds.) (2002) The Virtual University: Knowledge, Markets, and Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sloterdijk, P. (2014) In the World Interior of Capital. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity. Wolff, R.P. (1997/1969) The Ideal of the University. New Brunswick and London: Transaction. Zizek, S. (2011) Living in the End Times. London and New York: Verso.

8 Looking for hope abroad The new global university beyond neoliberalism Gerardo L. Blanco & Abdulghani Muthanna

Introduction Few aspects of contemporary universities crystallise neoliberal ideas as clearly and saliently as internationalisation. For example, it is now accepted as common sense that universities compete against each other in the spectacular and global arena of rankings (Chang & Osborn, 2005); that international students simultaneously constitute legitimate sources of revenue (Kandiko, 2013) for universities and savvy consumers due to their access to rankings data; and that corporate partners, such as recruiters and placement specialists are legitimate—and even necessary—players in the higher education ecosystem. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the neoliberal orientation of internationalisation, painfully illustrating how much universities in the whitesettler countries of the Global North—such as Australia, Canada and the United States—rely on the revenue flows from much poorer countries in the Global South to keep their universities at the top of global rankings and league tables. In these national contexts, universities and their lobbying arms have influenced the reversal of policies against the flow of international students and the provision of economic stimuli to the benefit of universities and international education providers. This reveals how much university internationalisation is thought of as an industry. The universal values of human rights and security in relation to international students and scholars at the time of crisis were mobilised only in relation to economic rationales and only to the extent that declines in international student enrolments were quantified in financial terms. These economic concerns, unfolding in real time during the pandemic, detracted attention from the real struggles international students faced to maintain housing or secure means to return to their home countries. They also effaced the harsh reality of international students facing xenophobic backlash. DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-12

126  G. L. Blanco & A. Muthanna

This chapter questions the benevolence and beneficence of internationalisation in higher education by exploring its connection with neoliberalism over the past several decades. Conceptually, we rely on the tension that exists between the global and the universal (Baudrillard, 2002, 2010; Baudrillard & Petit, 1998) in the contemporary neoliberal university. While internationalisation is often conceptualised in opposition to xenophobia, nationalism and bias, the rise of internationalisation coincides with the acceleration of neoliberalism in higher education and therefore further analysis is warranted about the connection between both concepts. We further argue that the constant language of crisis and epochal change have atrophied higher education’s capacity for transformation. Nevertheless, global circulation can once again revitalise new ways of being beyond the neoliberal impasse universities are currently in. If internationalisation can be decoupled from neoliberalism, or if at least neoliberal ideology is recognised as such and no longer naturalised as a given, then it is possible to imagine internationalisation creating spaces for radical inclusion in the university. However, in this chapter we present examples of just how complex this process can be. Frequently imagined as an industry, internationalisation is subject to the four Cs of neoliberalism: competition, commodification, consumerism and corporatisation (Bengtsen & Gildersleeve, this volume). The number of international students has long been a key metric in the competition of global university rankings and used as evidence of quality (Blanco & Metcalfe, 2020). Under the mantle of educating students for a global workplace, international learning has been commoditised (Dorothy & Lo, 2013) with providers of international student recruitment and placement as well as of education abroad. While the idea of international students is a very elastic concept, they are often presented as revenue sources for universities in the Global North (Stein & de Andreotti, 2016) as well as consumers willing to take their business elsewhere if they are not satisfied, further fuelling competition among higher education institutions. Finally, the corporate terminology of mergers, entrepreneurship and even the expression senior international office (SIO) have become normalised in the scholarship of internationalisation (Deschamps & Lee, 2015). Based on this evidence, we argue that over the last several decades, when internationalisation of higher education has flourished, internationalisation and neoliberalism have grown intertwined. Although universities have always been a global endeavour, the first few decades of the 21st century have seen an emergence of concerted efforts to adapt to an increasingly globalised world. This adaptation has been defined as internationalisation (Knight, 2008). While internationalisation has gone through several processes of updating and reform (de Wit, 2020), mostly focused on the mechanisms for internationalisation and less frequently focused on rationales, practitioners and scholars focused on this activity have seldom confronted how modernity and colonisation are at the core of internationalisation (Stein, 2017). Moreover, since internationalisation creates spaces within the university for global learning, teaching intercultural understanding, cognitive sophistication

Looking for hope abroad 127

and cultural relativism (Deardorff, 2016), it is frequently seen as an allied space for advancing social justice and combating racism and xenophobia. It is our contention that, in light of this evidence, internationalisation on campus constitutes one of the ultimate hopeful spaces within the university. However, we will also illustrate that, while this hope is warranted, it remains unrealised as it is possible to identify countless examples of mobility without true encounter, a theme that we develop later in the chapter. The frequent calls for new forms of internationalisation, such a new internationalisation for society (Brandenburg et al., 2020) or university social responsibility, make evident that the standard definitions and motivations for internationalisation have changed little from their early articulations (e.g., Altbach & Knight, 2007) based on global trade and economic integration. As well, emerging concepts such as “forced internationalization” (Ergin et al., 2019, p. 9) remind us that, without qualifiers, internationalisation is inserted in the neoliberal logics of market benevolence, the primacy of the individual (Saunders, 2010) and need for endless growth. These historical stages of internationalisation, which the field of international education generally places around the early 2000s, signal that what we understand as contemporary internationalisation is a concept grafted within the neoliberal university long in place by the turn of the century. As a result, we must acknowledge that even if we want internationalisation to become something else, it has always been neoliberal in orientation. To acknowledge this in not to romanticise and olden epoch, as previous historical stages either involved the total exclusion of the majority of the world from higher education, or the overt complicity of universities in the maintenance of colonisation. Before going any further, we want to make explicit our position in relation to the phenomena we discuss in this chapter. We are wary that our efforts to theorise internationalisation in the neoliberal university might imply that we are neutral observers or spectators; rather, we are participants that shape and are shaped by the phenomena we discuss in this chapter, and we seek to present our view from inside and from below the “teaching machine” (Spivak, 2012). Inspired by powerful first-hand accounts of fellow educators making sense of their lived realities in the global, neoliberal university (Andreotti, 2015; Metcalfe, 2017), we are well positioned to conduct what Stein (2017) describes as a liminal critique of internationalisation. Both authors of this chapter are mobile academics, working in universities outside our home countries after conducting graduate studies also in national contexts different from where we were born. We live our professional lives, including writing this chapter, in a foreign language and despite the many social privileges afforded by our profession, we are routinely subjected to random additional checks, secondary inspections and migratory surveillance. Muthanna (2013, 2015), author in this chapter, has documented the deteriorating educational and social conditions in Yemen that have caused an exodus in his country. While not displaced forcibly, Blanco (Ramírez & Metcalfe, 2017), also author

128  G. L. Blanco & A. Muthanna

of this chapter, has documented state-sponsored violence in Mexico targeting university students and conceptualised his own academic mobility both as privilege and as necessity (Blanco & Saunders, 2019). Our work together in this chapter started because we were brought together by the Scholar Rescue Fund Partnership for Scholar Advancement. However, first due to travel restrictions against nationals from Muslim-majority countries in the United States, that are fuelled by the same racist xenophobia (Stein, 2018) that we critique in this chapter, and later to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of our collaboration has been remote.

Diversity’s hidden rejection: Lived realities inside the global university The transformation of universities into global entities with a focus on global citizenship, characterised by acceptance of and respect for others’ cultures, thoughts and knowledge(s) plays a central role in internationalisation. Yet, practicing these values in academia is still challenging, despite the central discourse of Global Citizenship. The first challenge relates to the nationalist agendas of governments that fund universities, sometimes hidden and sometimes explicit, that take internationalisation of higher education as a means for furthering (soft) power and dominance of other regions through providing academic assistance (e.g., fellowships and scholarships, financial funding, loans, etc.) to those governments/ applicants that receive the support (Trilokekar, 2017). The second challenge also associates with the fact that universities are competing with one another on global rankings that consider that internationalisation, as represented by the presence of more foreign students and teachers in some universities, makes these institutions of higher quality. While internationalisation is rewarded in global rankings and league tables, it is not evident that the collaboration among those foreign and local academics is indeed taking place. It appears that universities merely seek better positions in global rankings, without considering whether international students and academics are being included or integrated into the new university systems. A third factor is also linked to citizenship issues and immigration policies. In other words, many university decision-makers enact biases and turn away academics who might be well-qualified but appear to be too different. For example, international scholars face obstacles that local are free from. Put another way, national protectionism in academia remains prevalent. Despite promising new generations of global citizens, who are cosmopolitan in orientation, and therefore freed from the evils of xenophobia and ethnocentrism, internationalisation in higher education painfully illustrates that bringing together people from different national origins does not suffice to create true justice and inclusion. The following examples are intended to illustrate the current limits of inclusion in the neoliberal global university. Some authors report that foreign academics feel not comfortable being in another community of scholars

Looking for hope abroad 129

who look down at them (e.g. Ahmed, 2012). International scholars suffer from the lack of implementation of diversity in higher education institutions and are not seen as the targets of diversity and inclusion agendas in the neoliberal university. For example, one of our colleagues shared being overlooked from serving as a reviewer for a journal only because the editor perceived them to be foreign: I still remember when I approached the office of a senior colleague at my university, who was working as the editor in chief for a journal. I volunteered to be a reviewer for the journal. I demonstrated my expertise on how an excellent reviewer I could be for that journal. After the discussion, I went home hoping to hear from them but heard nothing at all. After a short while, one of the colleagues (I personally know) who was conducting their doctoral studies at that time was immediately appointed as associate editor for that journal. The reality is that such a decision/appointment is simply based on relationship and not on qualification or research achievements. Reflecting on how such offer to review manuscripts by an international associate professor was turned down also reveals the prevalence of insider groups. Others will always be others, and shall not be included despite the fact that the institutions call for diversity. Rather than strangers at our doors (Bauman, 2016), foreign academics are often strangers/others inside the neoliberal university. The only contribution they are allowed to make is statistical, while reporting data for rankings. In the above example, we analysed the editor’s rejection of the outsider as a reviewer and the appointment of the insider as associate editor for the journal merely on the basis of relationship and not on expertise. It seems that insiders are supported to cut to the front of the line while outsiders continue waiting if not being thwarted down. The deliberate inclusion and exclusion of scholars indeed puts academic publishing into question, but that is not a concern because it has no impact on the university remaining competitive. A similar experience reflects how the corporatisation of academic management affects foreign academics, showing a hidden rejection to diversity. A foreign academic fellow at a European university was active in conducting research, contributing to research groups, complying with all the regulations of the institution, and treating all colleagues with high respect. When the time came for the university to provide a report to an organisation funding the fellow’s stay at the university, they expressed the following: When the first year of my two-year fellowship was about to end, I applied for a renewal, and the head of the department expressed appreciation for my efforts, and I was hoping that I would receive the requested extension. While I got the fellowship for the second year, another leader for the department was appointed. At the end of the fellowship, a colleague sent me the report written by the newly appointed manager [it seems

130  G. L. Blanco & A. Muthanna

that they did not read it; otherwise, they might not have shared it with me]. The report discussed “… the challenges in integrating” me into the department, and the reason provided for this challenge was “that the fellow comes out of a fundamentally different academic culture and his approach to research and supervision do not resonate well with the academic culture in [the country].” This colleague conducted their graduate studies in highly respected universities, outside of their country of origin, but also different from their place of current employment. This means that at least once before they had successfully navigated a foreign academic culture. Rather than focusing on the activities conducted during the two-year fellowship, including the publication of several academic works, and significant contributions to the overall activities of the department, the report highlighted a fundamental otherness. Therefore, such evaluation of the fellow’s academic culture and research and supervision approaches was merely based on the personal impressions of the leader who was likely looking down at the fellow based on their nationality. To these experiences, we might add our own “Am I going crazy?!” (Gildersleeve et al., 2011, p. 93) moments. These include the local colleague telling us that we need to get more books in our office to look like “a real professor” or a librarian exculpating us for having a “weird name” that they cannot pronounce: “it’s not your fault.” We might also add the senior colleague, expressing surprise at an invitation to present at a conference abroad: “How did they find you?” Our experience as foreign academics illustrates the boundaries of inclusion in the global neoliberal university and disabuse us of the assumption that internationalisation will exorcise us from bias and xenophobia. Our intention is not to decry these microaggressions, but rather to explore them, understand them, and perhaps find alternatives since internationalisation—as we have argued—is no panacea, but rather has been a placebo. To make sense of these experiences, we find it useful to explore the differences and tensions between the global and the universal as discussed in the final works of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (Featherstone, 2011). Gane (2015) explains that Baudrillard’s approach reworks principles of Marxist analysis to make sense of a society in which sociality can only be conceived through consumption, the epitome of neoliberalism.

The global and the universal in internationalisation A central concern in Baudrillard’s final works was that “in the age of globalization … Western values are pure simulations of their original long-dead selves” (Featherstone, 2011, p. 474). Accordingly, Western powers seek to democratise other countries, being undemocratic themselves; they promote diversity while practicing discrimination and segregation. This parody of values makes evident the contradiction between universality, understood in a very particular sense, which Baudrillard equates with “the universality of values, human rights,

Looking for hope abroad 131

freedoms, culture and democracy” (Baudrillard, 2002, p. 155) and therefore is simulated and globalisation, which is concerned with “technologies, the market, tourism and information” (Baudrillard, 2012, p. 67). It is no surprise that Baudrillard draws a connection between universality and the enlightenment, and by extension we may add the rise of the modern university. Baudrillard (2002) argued that while globalisation was accelerating, the universal was “disappearing” (p. 155). Contemporary universities illustrate this very well. While academics and university leaders individually share concerns about human rights abuses or breaches of academic freedom, we rarely disengage from working in contexts that are problematic. While in most cases, disengagements would equate hypocritical posturing, the truth is that universality dwindles while globalisation has thrived for the most part. In Baudrillard’s (2012) analysis, as globalisation brings people from all around the world together, “discriminations and exclusion are not accidental consequences; they are part of the very logic of globalization” (p. 69). This idea may account for the examples we discuss in this chapter illustrating contact without encounter, coexistence without conviviality (Mallman, et al., 2019) and diversity without inclusion. Let us return for a moment to the example of our colleague described by their department chair as being from a “fundamentally different academic culture.” While being included in the activities of the department— teaching, research, committees—is there anything they can do to really belong? In Baudrillard’s account, it may seem that the more globalised the university becomes, the more strictly that boundaries will need to be enforced. Otherness is a threat and an affront to the imposition of universality: “Radical otherness survives everything: conquest, racism, extermination, the virus of difference, the psychodrama of alienation … the Other is indestructible” (Baudrillard, 1993, p. 166). Perhaps it is fear that invites the exclusion of foreign academics, but also allowing international academics may be a preemptive move to prevent a takeover, especially in societies such as the United States permanently in panic of immigration, and more recently Europe (Streitwieser & Brück, 2018) so deeply concerned with outsiders taking over. This, of course, is not surprising because there is no hospitality without an other, and Lévinas (1989) goes as far as stating: “I am hostage to the Other” (p. 160). The other, who receives our hospitality, is always foreign—a stranger in Romance languages— and therefore strange (Bauman, 2016) to us. This is a central role of universities, which for centuries have promoted cosmopolitan values: to make the others familiar, embracing their foreignness without erasing differences.

Hospitality as hope, under the threat of globalisation For the first two decades of the 21st century, globalisation was an uncontested idea in society and within the university. The anti-globalisation movements of the 1990s and early 2000s, along with their concern for preserving indigenous cultures and natural resources, gave way to hegemonic notions of globalisation

132  G. L. Blanco & A. Muthanna

as inevitable. The idea of internationalisation as an institutional response to the inevitable process of globalisation (Altbach and Knight, 2007) emerged against this background, and always seemed to include discussions about free-trade agreements, which were still a novelty back then. While some thought that the September 11 events in New York—along with the subsequent Islamophobic, and generally xenophobic sentiments in the West—would constitute a reversal of globalisation, those predictions did not come to pass. Instead, during the 21st century, an unholy alliance between neoliberalism and internationalisation at the heart of the university became cemented. One might argue that internationalisation may have provided a much more palatable avatar to neoliberalism as both marched according to the same agendas, including preparing students for a global workforce and seeing international activities as fertile ground for entrepreneurial activity. In the United States and other developed contexts, recruiting minimally qualified international students through bridge programs became a big business and universities developed many mechanisms for revenue sharing. As a result, placement consultants, third-party recruiters and pathway companies thrived. Some of these service providers have proven to be pandemic-proof and moved their operations to the virtual sphere. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the advance of internationalisation in universities. However, it would be misguided to blame all this on the pandemic. Months before the pandemic, the United States enacted policies surveilling US academics working on research funded by foreign sources, arrested Chinese scholars and graduate students on espionage charges and lured students through sting operations to crack down on student visas. The US government has used the pandemic as an excuse to limit foreign workers and students on H-1B and J visas (Blanco, 2020). The attacks on internationalisation in the United States are too many to count, but the pandemic has made the global dimension not only a dangerous space, but the source of all danger. In the midst of these realities, hostile policies are presented as justifiable. Surprisingly, the roots of the words hostility and hospitality are connected. Jacques Derrida (Dufourmantelle and Derrida 2000) explains this connection by pointing out that it is not possible to be open to others and other’s ideas without incurring risk. As the colonisation of the Americas, Africa and Asia illustrate, it is impossible to separate contact and contagion. Here, it is important to clarify that we do not look at the past two decades with nostalgia. Hospitality was not a trait of neoliberal internationalisation. As the examples of exclusion and marginalisation we have discussed illustrate, the neoliberal international university created spaces for diversity without integration, for contact without encounter and for presence without belonging. The neoliberal global university has been a space for mobility without hospitality.

Resistance and obstacles While scholars may have different cultures, recognizing each other’s humanity should be a taken-for-granted within the university. Further, given the long

Looking for hope abroad 133

tradition of cosmopolitanism and global citizenship within universities, it is not unreasonable for both hosts and guests to understand and support one another. However, changing the misconceptions or misbeliefs of some local (wherever local might be) scholars and academic managers is challenging. Some resist a transformation and continue to show their hidden bias and shallow cultural understanding. Rejection to other cultures and others’ contributions limits possibilities for yet-to-be-imagined futures. Further, the use of “fundamentally different” when referring to a foreign colleague is dehumanizing, as if they came from another planet or a different species. These biased statements reflect a closedness and rejection towards the possibilities of authentic international engagement. Universities are in dire need of an urgent positive transformation, a transformation that helps change universities into arenas that care for all affiliates without any sort of partiality towards the local ones. This radical, or utopian hospitality can emerge within universities, just like many of the most important social movements have started at the heart of universities around the world. We have discussed our own experiences of mobility and, therefore, dislocation. While many scholars suffer in their home universities or nations, some— including ourselves—left their nations with hope for a better future. Our search for hope abroad still continues, and we hope to make this hopeful pilgrimage towards the future not an individual endeavour any longer, but the collective effort of the university of the future. Unless university leaders and administrators, and program heads and colleagues consider accepting that everyone can contribute to the overall success of the institution, the real sense of internationalisation is then not achieved; that is, the sharing of knowledge(s) through a real collaboration among colleagues with diverse backgrounds. It also demands of all university affiliates to collaboratively work on improving the architecture of building minds with sufficient cultural growth. A central obstacle for the transformation of the university is the embrace of inaction in anticipation of a major transformation that never took place: “everyone’s lying low … eyes riveted in the countdown” (Baudrillard, 1998, p. 9). It is not that academics cannot imagine a different internationalisation; we do not dare to imagine when something momentous could happen any minute now … it has been coming since before 2000. Keeping an eye on internationalisation, when imagining the university of the future, we ask ourselves with Baudrillard (1972): Will the Universitas … be the place where the theoretical, practical, and scientific imaginations are institutionalized, and dangerous in their wild state, become a domesticated force in the service of what the system seeks above all: foresight and control? Or, will it be a vibrant fragment of a counter-institution? (p. 454) This question has important implications for authentic internationalisation of higher education. In retrospect, it seems plausible that some of the stories we

134  G. L. Blanco & A. Muthanna

have relayed in this chapter have been aimed at institutionalizing or domesticating the unruly dynamics of international encounter. International engagement is messy, full of awkward silences and broken social conventions. If we engage authentically, we will speak out of turn, accidentally offend others and most certainly embarrass ourselves more than once. That is the nature of encounter. It seems that the efforts we have narrated of other showing us, and other foreign academics, their place constitute an effort to dull the edge of encounter, to bring control into a messy space. Since the concept of “otherness” regards a person as someone who is bodily present but mentally remote in the eyes of the cultural majority (Bauman, 2016; Simmel, 1971) being represented as a different social identity (Eriksen, 2002; Jenkins, 2014), we, like many other foreign academics, have been told to “listen, just listen,” and we have been reminded that “we are all equal” in front of others as a reminder that we are less than our interlocutor. We could categorise these instances as attempts to domesticate and institutionalise difference. This demand and entitlement towards the assimilation of the other is has historical roots: “Western societies have … reduced the reality of the Other through colonization and cultural assimilation” (Baudrillard & Guillaume, 2008, p. 48). It seems that this process of colonisation that demands cultural assimilation has been moved from the colony to the metropolis and continues to take place even within the boundaries of the university.

Towards lifelong collegiality and collaboration In a general sense, internationalisation of higher education provides an opportunity for increasing the diversity of students and faculty. By the recruitment of international students and teachers/researchers, universities aim to achieve a higher ranking in global and national measures. With the endless competitiveness among universities for higher university rankings, the effect is being reflected on the affiliates of such higher education institutions in the form of producing numerous publications that promote the profiles of their universities, and receiving local and international funding. This trend of “publish or perish” (Lee & Lee, 2013) leaves little space for colleagues to establish trusting and lifelong bonds, because many of such ties are basically based on self-interests. In other words, when these interests are achieved, the connections among colleagues also vanish. This is more critical when it comes to building a concerted collaboration among colleagues with different backgrounds. Building a lifelong collaboration among colleagues with different backgrounds demands not only universities’ policies about the acceptance of colleagues’ cultures, but also the need for intentional efforts, and even perhaps some level of monitoring practices. Lifelong collaboration demands the actual sensing of affiliation within the various institutions. In the human capability approach (Sen, 1999), affiliation is defined as the capability to live with others, imagining the situations of others, reciprocating mutual respect and showing nondiscrimination of any type (Walker & McLean, 2015). At international universities, this affiliation capability

Looking for hope abroad 135

development is more critical and should initially be advocated for and exercised by leaders of institutions along with local affiliates. This in return helps new professionals feel like affiliates of such institutions as well. This affiliation feeling, accompanied by some sort of belonging, is necessary for the new academics and to build a collegiality. Among colleagues, the colleagueship fosters collaboration that involves the participation and reflection of those engaged in the process (Weinberg & Graham-Smith, 2012). With this in practice, affiliates enhance their feeling of a meaningful inclusion and advancement of professional learning. Therefore, we are calling upon universities to rethink the building of lifelong collegiality and collaboration rather than basing their policies and implementations on competitiveness among their affiliates. Universities in the future must remain cosmopolitan institutions, extending this principle of affiliation/hospitality to all based on their potential contributions, rather than their place of birth or the colour of their passport. Our call for open affiliation, despite nationality, and for radical hospitality is necessary because keeping the door open does not constitute an invitation. It is necessary because once someone is in our home, we need to make them feel they are a guest, rather than expecting them to integrate into our routine. A conversation about open affiliation and radical hospitality is needed because we recognise that the other’s presence is indeed a disruption to our everyday life, but not nearly as significant as the disruption to theirs. Just like contemporary universities need to explore a pedagogy of dwelling (Blanco, 2021a) to prepare students for an increasingly integrated world, they also need to transform themselves to accommodate the cosmopolitanism and diversity they embrace in their aspirational discourses and vision statements. This requires a dramatic reorientation of priorities, which universities have been demonstrated to be capable of in the wake of the pandemic. This requires the cultivation of yet-to-be-imagined orientations to the university that promote an ecology of knowledges away from the epistemological monopolies and even epistemicide (de Sousa Santos, 2009, 2015). The practice of radical hospitality requires us to take a long and hard look at the most vulnerable aspects of the experience of international students and to turn that gaze towards the most vulnerable groups in higher education mobility, which, despite their vast numbers, are often invisible. There are thousands of displaced, imprisoned and exiled academics, and there are millions of school- and university-aged refugees in the world. It is crucial that, as a higher education system, we move the conversation beyond the stereotypical full-tuitionpaying international student and embrace the complexity of academic and student mobility beyond neoliberal assumptions. In other words, rather than returning to internationalisation, we must disentangle internationalisation and neoliberalism, as we have demonstrated this alliance throughout this chapter. If these concepts cannot be decoupled, then it is necessary to imagine something different altogether. After all, internationalisation as we know it is not the only way to look for hope abroad.

136  G. L. Blanco & A. Muthanna

References Ahmed, S. (2012). On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham: Duke University Press. Altbach, P.G., & Knight, J. (2007). The internationalization of higher education: Motivations and realities. Journal of Studies in International Education, 11(3–4), 290–305. Andreotti, V.D.O. (2015). Global citizenship education otherwise: Pedagogical and theoretical insights. In Decolonizing Global Citizenship Education (pp. 221–229). Rotterdam: Brill Sense. Baudrillard, J. (1972). Brief thoughts about the symposium. In E. Ambasz (Ed.), The Universitas Project: Solutions for a Technological Society. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Baudrillard, J. (1993). The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena. London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (1998). The consumer society: Myths and structures. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Baudrillard, J. (2002). Screened Out. London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (2010). Carnival and Cannibal: Ventriloquous Evil. London: Seagull Books. Baudrillard, J. (2012). Impossible exchange. Chicago: Verso. Baudrillard, J., & Guillaume, M. (2008). Radical Alterity. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, J., & Petit, P. (1998). Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit. London: Verso. Bauman, Z. (2016). Strangers at Our Door. London: Wiley. Blanco, G.L. (2020). Trump has just made it harder to attract academic talent. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story= 20200703145123105 Blanco, G.L. (2021a). Global citizenship education as a pedagogy of dwelling: Re-tracing (mis) steps in practice during challenging times. Globalisation, Societies and Education. doi: 10.1080/14767724.2021.1899800 Blanco, G.L., & Metcalfe, A.S. (2020). Visualizing quality: University online identities as organizational performativity in higher education. The Review of Higher Education, 43(3), 781–809. Blanco, G.L., & Saunders, D.B. (2019). Giving account of our (mobile) selves: Embodied and relational notions of academic privilege in the international classroom. Teaching in Higher Education, 24(5), 666–677. Brandenburg, U., De Wit, H., Jones, E., Leask, B., & Drobner, A. (2020). Internationalization in Higher Education for Society (IHES), Concept, Current Research and Examples of Good Practice (DAAD Studies). https://static.daad.de/ media/daad_de/pdfs_nicht_barrierefrei/der-daad/analysen-studien/daad_s15_ studien_ihes_web.pdf Chang, G.C., & Osborn, J.R. (2005). Spectacular colleges and spectacular rankings: The ‘US News’ rankings of American ‘best’ colleges. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(3), 338–364. de Sousa Santos, B. (2009). A non-occidentalist west? Learned ignorance and ecology of knowledge. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(7–8), 103–125. de Sousa Santos, B. (2015). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. London: Routledge. de Wit, H. (2020). The future of internationalisation of higher education in challenging global contexts. ETD: Digital Thematic Education, 22(3), 538–545. Deardorff, D.K. (2016). How to assess intercultural competence. In Z. Hua (Ed.), Research methods in intercultural communication: A practical guide (pp. 120–134). Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

Looking for hope abroad 137

Deschamps, E., & Lee, J.J. (2015). Internationalization as mergers and acquisitions: Senior international officers’ entrepreneurial strategies and activities in public universities. Journal of Studies in International Education, 19(2), 122–139. Dorothy, I., & Lo, W.Y.W. (2013). Internationalization or commodification? A case study of internationalization practices in Taiwan’s higher education. Asia Pacific Education Review, 14(1), 33–41. Dufourmantelle, A., & Derrida, J. (2000). Of hospitality. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ergin, H., de Wit, H., & Leask, B. (2019). Forced internationalization of higher education: An emerging phenomenon. International Higher Education, (97), 9–10. Eriksen, T.H. (2002). Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (2nd ed.). London: Pluto Press. Featherstone, M. (2011). Against the fake empire: Utopia, dystopia, apocalypticism in Baudrillard’s late works. Cultural Politics, 7(3), 465–476. Gane, M. (2015). The cultural logics of neoliberalism: Baudrillard’s account. Cultural Politics, 11(1), 1–17. Gildersleeve, R.E., Croom, N.N., & Vasqquez, P.L. (2011). ‘Am I too crazy?!’: A critical race analysis of doctoral education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 44(1), 93–114. Jenkins, R. (2014). Social Identity. New York: Routledge. Kandiko, C.B. (2013). Students in a global market. In C. Kandiko (Ed.), The Global Student Experience. London: Routledge. Knight, J. (2008). Higher education in Turmoil: The changing world of internationalision. Leiden, Brill: Sense Publishers. Lee, H., & Lee, K. (2013). Publish (in international indexed journals) or perish: Neoliberal ideology in a Korean university. Language Policy, 12(3), 215–230. Lévinas, E. (1989). The other in Proust. In S. Hand (Ed.), The Levinas Reader (pp. 160–165). Oxford: Blackwell. Mallman, M., Harvey, A., Szalkowicz, G., & Moran, A. (2019). Campus convivialities: Everyday cross-cultural interactions and symbolic boundaries of belonging in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 46(7), 1–13. Metcalfe, A.S. (2017). Nomadic political ontology and transnational academic mobility. Critical Studies in Education, 58(2), 131–149. Muthanna, A. (2013). A tragic educational experience: Academic injustice in higher education institutions in Yemen. Policy Futures in Education, 11(5), 532–537. Muthanna, A. (2015). Quality education improvement: Yemen and the problem of the ‘brain drain’. Policy Futures in Education, 13(1), 141–148. Ramírez, G.B., & Metcalfe, A.S. (2017). Hashtivism as public discourse: Exploring online student activism in response to state violence and forced disappearances in Mexico. Research in Education, 97(1), 56–75. Saunders, D.B. (2010). Neoliberal ideology and public higher education in the United States. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 8(1), 41–77. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simmel, G. (1971). The stranger. In D.N. Levine (Ed.), On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings (pp. 143–149). London: University of Chicago Press. Spivak, G.C. (2012). Outside in the Teaching Machine. London: Routledge. Stein, S. (2017). Internationalization for an uncertain future: Tensions, paradoxes, and possibilities. The Review of Higher Education, 41(1), 3–32. Stein, S. (2018). Frames of immigration justice in US university responses to the travel ban. An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 17(4), 893–919. Stein, S., & de Andreotti, V.O. (2016). Cash, competition, or charity: International students and the global imaginary. Higher Education, 72(2), 225–239.

138  G. L. Blanco & A. Muthanna

Streitwieser, B., & Brück, L. (2018). Competing motivations in Germany’s higher education response to the “refugee crisis”. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees/Refuge: Revue Canadienne sur Les Réfugiés, 34(2), 38–51. Trilokekar, R.D. (2017). North America: From ‘soft power’ to ‘economic diplomacy’. In Understanding Global Higher Education (pp. 103–105). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Walker, M., & McLean, M. (2015). Professionals and public-good capabilities. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, 3(2), 60–82. Weinberg, A.M., & Graham-Smith, G. (2012). Collegiality: Can it survive the corporate university? Social Dynamics, 38(1), 68–86.

9 Programme ‘Future-se’ Brazilian higher education meets neoliberalism Alexandre Guilherme & Fernanda Felix de Oliveira

Introduction On the 17th of June 2019, the Brazilian Ministry of Education announced a new programme, ‘Future-se’ (i.e. Future Yourself ), a programme that aims at reforming the Brazilian higher education system. The project has three central pillars: (i) higher education institutions (HEIs) are encouraged to adopt more effective management practices and become more entrepreneurial; (ii) HEIs should seek private investment for research, strengthening the connection between university and society; and (iii) HEIs must expand their international connections, facilitating the recognition of foreign degrees, employing foreign faculty and encouraging the publication of research in foreign journals. All of the aforementioned three pillars will be familiar to colleagues in most developed countries as they are part and parcel of educational systems in the Global North. However, the Brazilian public education system is highly centralised, with all academic and supporting staff being federal and state civil servants, and all funding coming directly from the public purse in the form of salaries, payment of utilities, maintenance of building and so on and so forth. Further, research funding opportunities are mainly pursued through two Federal Funding Agencies, CAPES (i.e. Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), which is linked to the Ministry of Education, and CNPq (i.e. National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), an arm of the Ministry of Sciences and Technology.1 In this connection, the programme Future-se is aimed at the 69 federal universities in Brazil, which are being invited to be part of it, and 39 federal institutes; however, it has been met with a great deal of resistance by institutions, academic staff and students because of the systemic changes it aspires to implement. DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-13

140  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

In our argument analysing the ‘Future-se’ programme, we shall consider the issue of equality as the main justification to reform the educational system. John Rawls’ work is very pertinent for us here because it provides us with a relevant framework about equality of opportunities and justice. According to Rawls (1999: 91), in his work entitled The Theory of Justice, “There exists a marked disparity between the upper and lower classes in both means of life and the rights and privileges of organizational authority. The culture of the poorer strata is impoverished while that of the governing and technocratic elite is securely based on the service of the national ends of power and wealth. Equality of opportunity means an equal chance to leave the less fortunate behind in the personal quest for influence and social position. Thus a meritocratic society is a danger for the other interpretations of the principles of justice but not for the democratic conception”. Taking this into account, we believe that we must frame the ‘Future-se’ programme within this perspective as well. That is, a programme that has the potential to provide equality of opportunities to many Brazilian citizens who live at the margins of the education system. In this chapter, we f irst provide an overview of the ‘Future-se’ programme. Following from this, we critically analyse the current scenario in Brazil, the confrontation between what is being perceived as the implementation of neoliberal policies in higher education and bastions of resistance posed by the academic community. Finally, we discuss neoliberalism as a political, economic and social theory, and its implementation in the f ield of education.

The current system of universities in Brazil Baeta Neves and Martins (2016) provided us with a very encompassing historical view of the Brazilian higher education system. They state that the process of Brazilian higher education was slower when compared with European and Latin American counterparts. The first universities were founded in Latin America in the 16th and 17th centuries; however, by this time in Europe, there were already several well established universities. In the case of Brazil, universities were founded much later. According to Baeta and Martins, “the first higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil were created only at the beginning of the 19th century, with the transfer of the Portuguese court, in 1808, to the colony” and the intention was to form “professional staff to perform different occupational functions at court” [our translation] (Baeta Neves and Martins, 2016: 96), and thus not necessarily research. It must be noted here that Brazil was colonized by Portugal, who was contrary to the creation of HEIs and universities in their Brazilian colony. The result of this colonial policy was that higher education in Brazil started two centuries later than in other countries in Latin America colonised by Spain, who adopted a much more innovative and visionary educational policies. This problematic delay

Programme ‘Future-se’ 141

can still be seen and felt by perusing the Brazilian education system nowadays. Baeta Neves and Martins (2016: 96) note: At the end of the Empire (1889), the country had only six higher schools dedicated to the training of lawyers, doctors and engineers. In 1900, there were no more than 24 higher education schools; three decades later the system had a hundred institutions, several of which were created by the private sector, mainly by the Catholic confessional initiative. Until the beginning of the 1930s the higher education system was made up of a set of isolated schools, of a professional nature, divorced from scientific research and that absorbed approximately 30 thousand students. (our translation) Further, during the period in which higher education was reinforced and expanded, we must emphasise that “the research activity was carried out in research institutes that, in general, did not have academic ties with the existing higher education system” [our translation] (Baeta Neves and Martins, 2016: 96). That is to say, HEIs still maintained their ethos of forming individuals as “professional staff”; however, no longer for engaging in “different occupational functions at court” (Baeta Neves and Martins, 2016: 96), but now in the high echelons of government and society. From this historical account, it is clear that the development of higher education in Brazil was both late in coming and problematic because it faced very strong political and colonial hindrances. It was only after the 1930s that the system started to properly evolve, and that the Brazilian state started to take control of it, and this explains the highly centralised system that is currently in place in the country. Also important to note is the fact that there have been various moments of expansions of the system, with the opening of new universities and institutes, which occurred through the implementation of new higher education regulation acts in the past decades. The World Education Services (2019) corroborates this: “The first public universities in Brazil were established at the beginning of the 20th century, followed by the creation of the Ministry of Education and Public Health in 1930. At this point, the Brazilian state began to slowly establish tighter control over education and to develop a modern mass education system”. Also, Baeta Neves and Martins (2016: 99) comment on the fundamental characteristics of the Brazilian higher education system such as “i) coexistence of university and non-university institutions; ii) segments of institutions maintained by government (federal, state and municipal) that offers free education and another segment of institutions, maintained by the private sector, and which are mainly supported by the collection of monthly fees” [our translation] (Baeta Neves and Martins, 2016: 99). These institutions maintained by the government are the reason why the ‘Future-se’ programme instigate a reconceptualisation and reconstruction of the public system. It is a fact that some public universities

142  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

are recognised, nationally and internationally, by the high quality of their undergraduate and graduate programmes; however, applying and being approved to study in these such institutions is a taxing and stressful process encompassing a number of entry exams. As a consequence of this process, on the one hand, those individuals who come from state schools are in an unfavourable position because public basic education displays many fragilities in Brazil; and on the other hand, those individuals from private schools find it easier to succeed in the admissions process – this is a fact that demonstrates the utter inequality present in the Brazilian education system. Further, Baeta Neves and Martins (2016: 99) comment on the “very uneven distribution of enrollments among the public and private segments, both in undergraduate and graduate courses, and very poor offer in higher education as a whole” [our translation], which makes competition for a place in HEIs between school leavers very fierce. Needless to say, and emphasise here, that pupils from a private schooling background tend to get most places at public high-ranking institutions. Also, the governance of federal universities is “highly concentrated in the hands of the Ministry of Education, particularly with regards to policy-making prerogatives and supervisory, control and evaluation instruments” [our translation] (Baeta Neves and Martins, 2016: 99). This indicates that all federal universities and institutes are in the dominion of the Ministry of Education, and consequently the highly centralised financing structure, which “compromises the expansion of enrollment and social inclusion” [our translation] (Baeta Neves and Martins, 2016: 99). As we mentioned before, places at universities are unequally distributed between school leavers coming from state and private schools, reflecting structural, social and economic problems in the country. In general, universities do have inclusion policies in place; however, these are not entirely efficient and effective if we consider the high number of individuals that cannot gain access to undergraduate and graduate courses at public universities – these individuals only have a choice of paying for a degree at lower ranking private universities or abandon their dream of studying at a HEI altogether. Compare this to Nixon’s (2012: 141–145) comment that “what began over half a century ago as an egalitarian dream of ever-widening access to educational opportunity, a dream of higher education as an intrinsic component of the common good, had from the start to confront the economic reality”. Indeed, education is a fundamental right, and thus it must be effectively implemented in the social structure of any society. Finally, it is important to mention that a process of consolidation of a vigorous postgraduate system has occurred in the past decades, a postgraduate system “based on a triennial peer review and ongoing support programs” and “an increasing concern with the internationalization of higher education” [our translation] (Baeta Neves and Martins, 2016: 99). This movement of consolidation of the Brazilian postgraduate system has been very important to the country as it enabled the qualification of master and doctoral students, which are in much need by the country. The above provides us with an overview of the Brazilian

Programme ‘Future-se’ 143

higher education system, and this will suffice for the purposes of this chapter as it provides us with the background for the ‘Future-se’ programme. We shall discuss the programme now.

Future-se: The programme The Brazilian Ministry of Education launched the ‘Future-se’ programme, or “Programme Innovative Institutes and Universities” (in Portuguese, Programa Institutos e Universidades Inovadoras) on the 17th of July 2019. The polemical programme is the brainchild of the very controversial, and former, Brazilian Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub, who described it “as the biggest revolution in the area of education taking place in the country for the past 20 years” (Ministry of Education, 2018a). In its essence, the programme aims at providing Brazilian federal HEIs with more budgetary, financial and managerial autonomy, allowing them to source funding more freely and to invest increasingly in entrepreneurial ventures. In its original version, the programme contemplated some dimensions that are described in detail below. The ‘Future-se’ programme has an important financial dimension. This aspect grants more autonomy to federal institutes and universities, and this implies that they should actively seek new ways of self-financing so to ensure their activities. This dimension was the target of some very strong criticisms because it was not entirely clear how this could be effectively implemented in the highly centralised Brazilian higher education federal system. This is so because all funding, from staff salaries to research, is provided by the federal government through the public purse. Besides this, there are other important dimensions to the programme, such as turning federal institutes and universities into social organizations (so no longer federal institutions) and promoting new forms of development and innovation by providing them with tax incentives and allowing the sale of properties, under the authority of the central government. This also generated criticisms because it waived the ‘federal’ status of institutes and universities, and allowed them to dispose of monuments, theatres and other buildings to private institutions or companies. This change to social organization is part of an agenda seeking to reform the state and its institutions. The following passage corroborates this: (1) the strategic core of the State, (2) the exclusive activities of the State, (3) non-government exclusive or competitive services, and (4) the production of goods and services for the market. […] The proposed reform is to transform them in a special type of non-state entity, social organizations. The idea is to transform them, voluntarily, in “social organizations”; that is, in entities that enter into a contract management with the Executive Branch of the state and has Parliament’s authorization to participate of the public budget. (Bresser-Pereira, 1996, p. 286)2

144  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

Also, as a direct consequence of the above, lecturers and professors at federal public institutes and universities will be allowed to seek personal profits and benefits, participating in private ventures and companies, such as star-ups and spin-offs, and this has promoted a debate about the role of academics, lecturers and professors. This change would also affect all current institute and university staff, who are all federal civil servants, instituting a new career mode within these institutions since all new staff will be employed by a social organization and not a federal institution. However, some commentators have critiqued this development, such as Silva Júnior and Fargoni (2020: 8): Accompanying this trend, lecturers and professors at Federal universities will be faced with the reframing of their work. It will now be regarded increasingly as a technological product, meeting the university’s external demand, and thus, the researchers’ specialised immaterial work will be transformed into something productive. This means that, in the first phase, the researcher will start to find the object produced somehow strange, and this is so, because the research agenda will come from sources external to the university. In the second phase, the researcher will also find strange the chronogram and the reasoning behind the work process: that is to say, the reasoning will now be focused on the economy and chronogram will be established by world corporations, always articulated with financial capital. (our translation) Yet, perhaps the most controversial part of the proposal is a change regarding the organisation of university hospitals, which would be allowed to charge for their services and provide private health care services. This is a major change since these services are currently provided for by the government to all citizens and free at the point of delivery (cf. Leher, 2019). This is something considered problematic in a country with a two-tier health system: a private one, efficient and of quality, accessed by the well to do, and a public one, facing many difficulties and at the breaking point, available to the less well-off and vulnerable populations. However, we must emphasise that the above refers to the first version of the programme. The ‘Future-se’ went through some reformulations, especially after, the already mentioned Brazilian Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub, was forced to resign. In fact, there are three versions of the whitepaper implementing the programme, and the last version is currently being analysed by the Brazilian congress. The first version was made public on July 20193, the second version on October 20194 and the latest version on February 20205 (cf. Wegner, 2020: 283). On perusing the three versions, it is possible to assert that changes have been mainly cosmetic and have not modified or interfered with the main content. However, some aspects of the whitepaper should be introduced here in more detail to the reader so that we can proceed with our discussion.

Programme ‘Future-se’ 145

The whitepaper describes the programme ‘Future-se’, and its goals as (PL N. 3076, 2020: 01): i. encourage additional private sources of financing for projects and programmes of interest to universities and federal institutes; ii. promote and encourage scientific development, research, scientific and technological training and innovation, observing national science directives and technology and innovation policies, as well as thematic priorities defined by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications; iii. foster an entrepreneurial culture in projects and programmes aimed at higher education. iv. encourage the internationalisation of universities and federal institutes; and v. increase completion rates and employability rates for university and federal institute graduates. [our translation]6 The proposal above may be the cause of some concern because it might have a negative impact on the autonomy of public universities, considering that they will be have to engage with the great national and world corporations (cf. Silva Júnior and Fargoni, 2000: 6–7). On the one hand, it is undeniable that private initiatives could have a positive and effective affect for the funding and development of higher education; but on the other hand, this interaction between the public and the private cannot be an obstacle to academic freedom in terms of research and teaching-learning scope. This is a balance that is difficult to attain, and that must be bore in mind when considering the ‘Future-se’ programme. The change in scope for the financing of academic projects and programmes is a critical issue, and it has been criticised because there is a serious concern that it will lead to the privatisation of public universities and federal institutes. This is so because, as we have already mentioned, Brazilian federal universities and institutes are funded by the public purse. However, the whitepaper is clear, and promotes the understanding that new measures must “create the conditions and incentives for these institutions to expand their additional sources of funding” (our translation) (PL N. 3076, 2020); that is to say, private sources of financing for projects and programmes are aimed at increasing and supporting developments in public HEIs. Also, the whitepaper states that private sources of financing will not affect public investment, as it is written in the document that federal public universities and institutes will always remain part of the heritage of all Brazilians and will continue to be supported by the public purse. Thus, this means that the proposal to prompt additional private sources for federal public universities and institutes aims at diversifying opportunities and providing alternatives for higher education financing. The justification for this development is, according to the whitepaper, due to “the limited capacity of the public budget to meet various and relevant social demands, a limitation that is particularly important when one is aware of the fact that Brazil is a country of continental dimensions (it is the fifth largest in the world, in size of territory), of high middle income (according

146  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

to the World Bank classification)” (our translation) (PL N. 3076, 2020). That is, the public purse is not capable of meeting all its demands, and it must prioritise areas for investment. Compare this to the idea that universities are a Public Good. Jon Nixon, in his work entitled Higher Education and the Public Good (2017), argues that education is a Public Good7, and that this “is premised on the claim that it contributes to society as a whole across a wide variety of institutional settings” (Nixon, 2017: 01). In this connection, the more neoliberal ideals get hold in the field of education, the more we must consider the issue of privatisation of a Public Good – indeed, this movement implies that education is no longer something that contributes to the whole of society (i.e. a Public Good), but something to be consumed according to one’s purchase power. As Apple (1993a: 305) says: There are major differences between democratic attempts at enhancing people’s rights over the policies and practices of schooling and the neoliberal emphasis on marketization and privatization. The goal of the former is to extend politics, to revivify democratic practice by devising ways of enhancing public discussion, debate, and negotiation. It is inherently based on a vision of democracy that sees it as an educative practice. The latter, on the other hand, seeks to contain politics. It wants to reduce all politics to economics, to an ethic of ‘choice’ and ‘consumption’ ( Johnson, 1991, p. 68). The world, in essence, becomes a vast supermarket. (Apple, 1993a) Further, Nixon notes that as a consequence of this process of “privatization” in education, “marketization” follows, “which in turn leads to increased competition” (Nixon, 2017: 03). This may present a very problematic scenario; that is to say, if we scrutinise the philosophical meaning of the term ‘competition’ in the neoliberal perspective, it is defined as something ‘useful’ as well as ‘essential’ to social development. However, this may give rise to situations that create a power struggle and dynamics between individuals, largely based on their purchase powers (or lack of ), which in turn becomes almost impossible to compensate. Compare this with Rawls’ principle of redress: “this is the principle that undeserved inequalities call for redress; and since inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved, these inequalities are to be somehow compensated for” (Rawls, 1999: 86). Thus, a reform in educational system, such as the one proposed by the ‘Future-se’ programme, has to address these concerns, especially in countries that display extreme inequalities, such as Brazil. Another goal present in the whitepaper, ‘Future-se’, concerns the issue of scientific development – and this is directly linked to the problem of a lack of capacity for financing and keeping up with all demands. Generally speaking, within the context of federal public universities and institutes, it is understood that they have a duty to promote the development of science and technology for the whole society, Brazilian society. However, some concerns have arisen

Programme ‘Future-se’ 147

regarding a statement presented in the whitepaper, and this is a reference to “thematic priorities defined by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications”. Does this mean a reduction of the scope of the themes being worked on and of the financial incentives for research in the various areas of knowledge? This concern emerges because some public financial incentives for certain areas, such as the arts and humanities, have been drastically reduced. All this said, and in compliance with a statement in the whitepaper, it is necessary the “observance of the university’s autonomy, provided for in Article 207 of the Constitution” (cf. PL N. 3076, 2020); and this means that the greater the autonomy of the universities, the better their own goals, such as pursuing particular areas of expertise, can be achieved. This is a somehow controversial statement and proposal because of the tension between that which is possible and that which is desired; this is to say, between pursuing pragmatic policies given that the public purse is limited and desiring that the state must fund any and every kind of research because this is, in principle, the role of universities and institutes. All this said, it must be noted here that all these practical propositions have a more philosophical foundation; this is to say, to encourage the internationalisation and to increase the entrepreneurial culture in federal public higher education in Brazil. These two features, entrepreneurship and internationalisation, are central to the Future-se programme. With regards to the issue of internationalisation, CAPES, one of the Brazilian federal funding agencies, has implemented a programme in 2019 with a budget of R$300 million Brazilian Reais8, encouraging and supporting the internationalisation of some Brazilian universities. In total 36 institutions, public and private non-profit, have been selected to become ‘beacons’ of internationalisation in the country, and are part of the Programme of Internationalisation (i.e. PrInt) (cf. Ministry of Education, 2018b). As we shall demonstrate below, of these two philosophical foundations, internationalisation and entrepreneurship, the latter has been emphatically criticised in the literature. To conclude this section, it is fair to say that some of the dimensions of the ‘Future-se’ programme, if successfully implemented, would completely change Brazilian higher education.9 We believe that the ‘Future-se’ programme would be an important game changer, and that it will be possible to talk of a ‘preFuture-se era’ and a ‘post-Future-se period’. Further, it has been argued that the programme presents and defends a neoliberal perspective to higher education, and this is directly connected to the concepts of entrepreneurship. Various commentators have affirmed that this aspect of the programme is neoliberal in nature, that it tries to foster ‘entrepreneurship’ in education, and we cite a few here as a way of demonstrating their arguments. This is important for the next section, since we shall focus on the issue of neoliberalism and higher education. Wegner (2020: 286) affirms: ‘Future-se’ must be understood as one of the vertices of Jair Bolsonaro’s neoliberal program for our country. With the labour reform - approved by the Temer government - with the original Social Security Reform proposal

148  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

and, more recently, the “Mais Brasil” [More Brazil] programme, …, a renegotiation with the higher education model in the country becomes fundamental. Historically, universities articulate – through teaching, research and extension – technical-scientific knowledge with the productive system, forming the qualified workforce, and in proposing the ‘Entrepreneurship’ as an essential goal of public higher education, Future-se articulates with one of the facets of precarious work institutionalized by Labour Reform, which is to ‘the detriment’ of the workforce. Thousands of students will leave Higher Education understanding each other ‘entrepreneurs’, which would not make sense even in a hypothetical world of perfect competition. (our translation) And Leher (2019: 1) states: The whitepaper suggests that the central axis of the programme concerns entrepreneurship and innovation. More clearly, the document suggests the implementation of induction measures so that Federal institutes and universities become innovative institutions, integrated to the market (i.e. dependent of a capitalist society), able to be inserted in the flow of time directed to the future, a future idealized as positive. It is understood that those institutions who do not accept the Future-se programme will be doomed to failure, as they will not be part of a history driven by the market. (our translation) And Silva Júnior and Fargoni (2020: 9) incisively comment: In more recent data, more than 70% of the 63 federal universities in the country have rejected the whitepaper. This is to say, 43 of the 63 federal universities have already held meetings and analysed the proposal of the government, presenting several criticisms to the programme.10 In general, federal universities have signaled that Future-se does not provide a solution to Federal Higher Education institutions’ problems. The rejection of the educational ideal centered on entrepreneurship is based on a defence of philosophical, sociological, literary, historical, artistic etc. and, above all, human mediation in teaching and research. Entrepreneurship, based on the idea of innovation and development of immediate products for the market, symbolizes the privatisation of human labour and of the production of knowledge by federal universities and institutes. That is to say, all activities will be conducted according to the Future-se logic: serving the interests of the market and its companies. (our translation)

Programme ‘Future-se’ 149

These examples of criticisms will serve for the purpose of our discussion in the next section. However, it is interesting to note here that restrictive understanding by the part of these commentators about the concept of ‘being entrepreneurial’; that is, ‘being entrepreneurial’ is regarded, through clearly Marxist lenses, as something negative and as an untruthful argument advocating that everybody can succeed and become a high-flyer businessman/woman. Clearly, if this was indeed the argument, as this Marxist perspective holds, it would indeed be a fallacy. However, we believe that the argument should not be understood in such a restrictive way; rather, it is more encompassing, defending the understanding that individuals must be more entrepreneurial in the sense of having a ‘life project’, in possessing the competences for identifying resources available at hand and being capable of improving his or her life, and that of Others.

Higher education and neoliberalism It is arguable that the whitepaper presenting the programme ‘Future-se’ draws up a neoliberal framework for the future of public higher education in the country – and as we previously affirmed ‘Future-se’ has a potential to completely change higher education in Brazil. The ‘Future-se’ programme fits in a neoliberal perspective because, as Guilherme and Picoli (2019: 6) comment: “The university is no more an institution for producing and sharing knowledge but instead becomes an institution for profit-making”. This is an important aspect because neoliberalism requires “to control the educational discourse to inculcate its values in children and young people, particularly with regards to individual success (self-determination), and freedom of choice in the marketed relations between the individual and Others” (Guilherme and Picoli, 2019: 4). And this means that the neoliberal conception of education must emphasise the idea of freedom, understood here as free will and autonomy, as well as an individual’s potential to achieve its dreams. We note that the debate about neoliberalism and education raises questions about equality of opportunity; that is, the principle of how to guarantee the right to education for all, and most fundamentally for those issuing from vulnerable backgrounds. Further, the debate cuts through the very nature of education, of its purpose. Jon Nixon (2017: 06) comments on these neoliberal ideas: “do we want a highly specialized higher education curriculum or a more broad-based and cross-disciplinary curriculum? (…) Is it to prepare young people for entry to a highly competitive job market or to become responsible and informed global citizens?”. We perceive that ‘Future-se’ has the potential to answer these questions: first, through expanding the system through private funding, and enabling individuals from vulnerable backgrounds to access higher education; and second, by bringing a balance between preparing individuals to enter a highly competitive job market and to become responsible and informed global citizens, and this is so because both of these pillars are contemplated in the programme – that’s is, more ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘internationalised’ individuals, as previously argued.

150  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

Certainly, both of these pillars would have to be implemented in a very effective way, which is something not very easy to attain. The above reminded us of John Rawls’ work because it is arguable that the education system must establish a component of equality of opportunity for all, and rely on the principle of justice that should be present in society. In this respect, Rawls says (1999: 03) that “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. (…) Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others”. It can be argued here that the “inviolability founded on justice” mentioned by Ralws with reference to education must be understood as related to the concept of fairness. That is to say, Rawls’ Theory of Justice seeks an equality of opportunity. Corroborating with this Rawlsian view is Pogge, who comments (1989: 174) that the “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social citizens”. Both authors reinforce a perspective about the need to redress inequalities, even in a neoliberal view, seeking an equality needs in all areas, including education. Pogge (1989: 175) comments on this affirming that the principle of redress11 demands equality of opportunity, and also that “everyone should have access to a roughly equivalent education defined in terms of cost”. In addition to this, Rawls (1999: 87) maintains that “the value of education should not be assessed solely in terms of economic efficiency and social well-being”, in this proposition by the philosopher reaffirms the need for equally in the education system; and he complements (1999: 87) saying that “equally, if not more important, is the role of education in allowing a person to enjoy the culture of their society and participate in its business, thus providing each individual with a secure sense of his own worth”. We would maintain that the Brazilian higher education system should strongly consider the principle of redress. This is so because the country experiences high levels of inequality, which are a barrier to entering universities – and this is the reality for most Brazilians. Of the various criticisms directed at ‘Future-se’, based on the understanding that it neoliberal in nature, the one that appears most often is the one advocating that it is privatising public higher education (cf. Silva Júnior and Fargoni, 2020; Leher, 2019; Wegner, 2020). In fact, several authors argued against the mere possibility of private resources being allocated to federal HEIs. However, as we noted before, at its core, the proposal is not about privatising federal HEIs, but to expand the sphere of influence of HEIs, encompassing the wider society, and in doing so, increasing the autonomy of these institutions, allowing them to make increasingly more investments in favour of an education for all. It is important to note that these neoliberal ideals in Brazil are not something entirely new, and thus, there is a historical background to the programme ‘Future-se’. According to Guilherme and Picoli (2019: 8), “neoliberal

Programme ‘Future-se’ 151

ideas started to be implemented with the National Plan for Privatization under Fernando Collor de Mello’s government (1990-1992) but it was under Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government (1995-2002)” that they were effectively implemented. According to Frigotto and Ciavatta (2003: 95), during the 1990s, by and large, public policies were based around concepts such as globalisation, minimum state, productive restructuring, information society, total quality, employability and so forth (cf. Leher, 2001: 162). Reforms were in three areas: “deregulation, decentralization and privatization”. After these events during Michel Temer’s government (2016–2018) (cf. Guilherme and Picoli, 2019), a series of reforms were implemented to modernise secondary education; that is to say, Michel Temer’s government proposed to “reform the system, reducing the timetable for History, Geography, Biology, Physics and Chemistry and prioritising Maths and Portuguese language; further, this reform extinguished Philosophy, Sociology, Art and Physical Education as compulsory subjects” (Guilherme and Picoli, 2019: 8). Indeed, the reduced timetable for some subjects remains a concern in the academic community. It is arguable that different areas of knowledge are important for the development of certain competences, such as critical thinking, and this is so because they stimulate different kinds of abilities and skills. However, Guilherme and Picoli (2019: 8) argue that “focus on Maths and Portuguese language is largely regarded as a demand from the labour market whilst the exclusion of disciplines such as Philosophy and Sociology as an attempt to hinder critical thinking”. Thus, neoliberalism is not something new to the Brazilian context. If we refer back to Rawls and Pogge, and the issue of equality of opportunity, we note that the Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government (1995–2003) created the Student Financing Fund for Higher Education (FIES) and the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government (2003–2011) “created another financing device called University for All Program (ProUni)” (Guilherme and Picoli, 2019: 9). Both programmers were responsible to give opportunities to individuals who cannot afford to pay for private university fees or to prepare themselves properly to pass the extremely hard and competitive exams and enter public federal universities. However, Guilherme and Picoli (2019: 9) mentioned that both programs are “in practice, … voucher systems, by which the state pays for places at private universities”. These ‘voucher systems’ were implemented by Centre–Left (1995–2003) and Left (2003–2011) governments, implementing and financing a large expansion of the private higher education sector in Brazil. These policies were put in place because the Brazilian economy, in a time of fast expansion, required a more qualified labour force. However, the public higher education sector, which remains largely elitist, resisted expanding under the argument that it would affect the quality of its courses and degrees. Then, it was left to the private higher education sector to fill the gap, offering places financed by the federal government, albeit while providing courses that ranged from the excellent to the very poor in quality. It is ironic that neoliberal-based policies implementing a voucher system and funding the expansion of the private higher education sector

152  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

were implemented fostering equality of opportunities to many individuals, who would otherwise be unable to gain access and study at public federal institutions. Hence, even if the programme ‘Future-se’ is neoliberal in nature, as it has been argued by commentators, it still has a potential to be executed in a way that aims at promoting individual autonomy, social justice and academic freedom. However, Silva Júnior and Fargoni (2020: 7) provide us with a different perspective: The predominance of economic rationality in the culture of universities and colleges is an alert that has been signaled for many years: producing knowledge under market demand will, through Future-se, be normalized; that is, science will have its time compressed, stop being science and become technoscience. (our translation) And they continue: Future-se will overvalue technoscience from the perspective of the global scientific market and reduce suddenly public funding for investment in development and research, science and technology. This is inspired by the internationalised formula of the American university, which established guidelines for the ‘World Class University’. This logic is at the core of the 2019 and 2020 whitepapers of the Future-se programme, which were sent to be voted by the Brazilian Congress through protocol no. 302, on May 26, 2020. (our translation) We understand commentator’s concerns about the implementation of neoliberal policies in countries like Brazil, where social equality is a structural problem of society. This means that to implement actions and policies that are neoliberal in nature, we must provide the conditions for equal opportunities to vulnerable and marginalised individuals; and this not only in higher education, but also in basic education. However, we agree with critics that ‘Future-se’ can lead us in a dangerous direction. This is so, because if the private sector increases its participation, such as ‘Future-se’ intends, then this, on the one hand, can be something very positive because it will increase investments in education and research, but on the other hand, this can be something restrictive, since research and activities must follow market demands. With regards to this point Silva Júnior and Fargoni (2020: 8) commented that: Schwartzman et al. warn that, in this respect, “the expectation that the private sector significantly increases its participation, whether in joint research and innovation activities technological, or in philanthropic donations is very optimist” (2019). This is because the productive sector has

Programme ‘Future-se’ 153

historically not invested in research and development, except in the state of São Paulo, where technoscience stands out for many partnerships with companies and with large investments – what Future-se intends is to institutionalize this as a practice. (our translation)

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter was to raise some questions about the programme Future-se, and to provide some arguments pro- and con- based on a critical analysis and research of the literature. It is clear that the programme challenges some established conceptions about financing, quality of education, improvement of research capabilities and social inequalities within Brazilian higher education. The fact that the Brazilian higher education system is highly centralised, depending on federal financial support and resources for many decades, is certainly one of the main reasons for several of the criticisms toward the programme ‘Future-se’. However, it can be said that universities are complex organisations that must adapt to changes of technological and social nature, in the economy and so on and so forth, and for this to ensue in an effective way HEIs must have more autonomy and academic freedom (cf. Lopes and Bernardes, 2005: 01–02). Further, with respect to HEIs most people would agree that: “i. the university’s mission is related to the production and dissemination of knowledge; and ii. it is urgent and necessary to generate a process of organization and planning of its activities [our translation]” (Lopes and Bernardes, 2005: 03). Lopes and Bernardes (2005: 03) continued and maintained that “the problem with the administrative structure of the HEIs lies in the search for a model that meets their specificities, and which originates in political and ideological pluralism [our translation]”. Through this lens, the programme Future-se fosters new opportunities for HEIs in Brazil, with the potential for a complete system overhaul. Finally, it must be said here that the federal higher education system in Brazil faces a great challenge in the coming years; that is to say, not only to encourage and pursue technological and scientific development, but also to consider society’s and market’s demands. To fulfil these needs, it is imperative that higher education public institutions be empowered, supporting quick technological developments in society as well as providing increasingly more opportunities to everyone who wants to read for a degree.

Notes 1 It is also important to note that all 26 states of the Federation and the Federal District of Brasilia, the capital, have their own funding agencies. However, with the exception of FAPESP (the funding agency for the State of São Paulo) and FAP (the funding agency for the Federal District of Brasilia), the other funding state agencies have a very timid impact.

154  A. Guilherme & F. F. de Oliveira

2 In the Union, the most relevant non-exclusive state services are universities, technical schools, research centres, hospitals and museums. (cf. Silva Junior and Fargoni, 2000: 6–7). 3 Available on: https://ufrj.br/wp-content/uploads/legacy/img-noticia/2019/07/ projeto_de_lei_do_programa_future-se.pdf (Accessed on 19 December 2020). 4 Available on: http://estaticog1.globo.com/2019/10/16/minuta_de_anteprojeto_de_ le i _ _ f ut u r e s e _ _ g t _ _ p o r t a r i a _1701 _ _1610 2 019.p d f ? _ g a = 2 . 2 416 35 8 42 . 1496747869.1586101167-affc6229-5b24-3725-2d27-29b869c0164a (Accessed on 19 December 2020). 5 Available on: http://www.participa.br/future-se/anteprojeto-de-lei-que-instituio-programa-universidades-e-institutos-empreendedores-e-inovadores-future-se. (Accessed on 19 December 2020). 6 The original reads: I – incentivar fontes privadas adicionais de financiamento para projetos e programas de interesse de universidades e institutos federais; II – promover e incentivar o desenvolvimento científico, a pesquisa, a capacitação científica e tecnológica e a inovação, observadas as políticas nacionais de ciência, tecnologia e inovação, e as prioridades temáticas definidas pelo Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações; III – fomentar a cultura empreendedora em projetos e programas destinados ao ensino superior; IV – estimular a internacionalização de universidades e institutos federais; e V – aumentar as taxas de conclusão e os índices de empregabilidade dos egressos de universidades e institutos federais. 7 Jon Nixon (2012: 148–150) remarks: “if we value the university as a constituent element of our common good, then universities will have to re-order their priorities, the public will have to acknowledge that higher education is to be valued for its social as well as individual benefits, and government will have to ensure a strong public presence in whatever arrangements emerge from the current impasse.” 8 About US$60 million at today’s rate 12/2020. 9 It is also possible to assert that the Future-se programme would also affect the Brazilian health system. 10 Although the authors have mentioned 63 federal public universities, the correct number is in fact 69 institutions. 11 According to Rawls (1999: 86): “the principle holds that in order to treat all persons equally, to provide genuine equality of opportunity, society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into the less favorable social positions.”

References Apple, M. W. (1993a) What post-modernists forget: Cultural capital and official knowledge. Curriculum Studies, 1(3), 301–316. Apple, M. W. (1993b) Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age. New York: Routledge. Baeta Neves, C. E. and Martins, C. B. (2016) Ensino Superior no Brasil: Uma Visão Abrangente. In Jovens Universitários em um Mundo em Transformação: Um Estudo SinoBrasileiro. Brasília: IPEA, Available at: https://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/ stories/PDFs/livros/livros/160715_livro_ jovens_universitarios.pdf (Accessed on 20 December 2020). Bresser-Pereira, L. C. (1996) Crise Econômica e Reforma do Estado no Brasil (p. 34). São Paulo: Editora. Congresso Nacional. (2020) Projeto de Lei (PL) N. 3076. Brasília. pp. 01–16. Frigotto, G. and Ciavatta, M. (2003). Educação bÃsica no Brasil na década de 1990: subordinação ativa e consentida à lógica do mercado. Educação e Sociedade, 24(82), 93–130. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0101-73302003000100005

Programme ‘Future-se’ 155

Guilherme, A. and Picoli, B. A. (2019) Neoliberalism and education in the global south: A new form of imperialism. In I. Ness and Z. Cope (Eds.) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_144-1 Johnson, R. (1991) A New Road to Serfdom. In Education Group II (Eds.), Education Limited. London: Unwin Hyman. Leher, R. (2019) [online] Análise preliminar do Futura-se. Available at: http://adufcg. org.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Sobre-o-FUTURE-SE-notas-prelim-rleher22-07PDF.pdf (Accessed on 7 December 2020). Leher, R. (2001). Projetos e modelos de autonomia e privatização das universidades públicas. In P. Gentili (Ed.),  Universidades na penumbra: neoliberalismo e reestruturação universitária (pp. 151–187). São Paulo: Cortez. Lopes, L. and Bernardes, F. (2005) Estruturas administrativas das universidades brasileiras. In Seminário em Administração da Faculdade de Administração da USP. São Paulo. Ministry of Education (MEC) (2018a) É a maior revolução na área de ensino no país dos últimos 20 anos’, diz ministro. Available at: http://portal.mec.gov.br/component/ tags/tag/52641?start=0 (Accessed on 29 December 2020). Ministry of Education (MEC) (2018b) Divulgado resultado de programa de internacionalização da Capes. Available at: http://portal.mec.gov.br/component/tags/tag/print (Accessed on 20 December 2020). Nixon, J. (2012) Universities and the common good. In R. Barnett (Ed.) The Future University: Ideas and Possibilities (pp. 141–151). New York: Routledge. Nixon, J. (2017). Higher education and the public good. Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_15-1 Pogge, T. (1989) Realizing Rawls (pp. 173–181). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rawls, J. (1999) A Theory of Justice (Revised). Cambridge: Belknap Press. Schwartzman, S., et al. (2019) Uma análise sobre o programa Future-se, proposto pelo MEC, 2019. Available at: https://desafiosdaeducacao.grupoa.com.br/analise-doprogramafuture-se/ (Accessed on 20 December 2020). Silva Júnior, J. d. R. S. and Fargoni, E. H. E. (2019) Mundialização da educação superior: Notas sobre economia, produção de conhecimento e impactos na sociedade civil. Revista Trabalho & Educação, 28(3), 35–49. Silva Júnior, J. d. R. S. and Fargoni, E. H. E. (2020) Future-se: O ultimato na universidade estatal brasileira. Educação & Sociedade, 41, e239000. Epub 6 July 2020. https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/es.239000 Wegner, R. (2020) Ensino superior no Brasil: Descaminhos propostos pelo future-se. Revista Docencia e Cibercultura, Rio de Janeiro, 4(1), 281–297. World Education Services. (2019) Education in Brazil. Available at: https://wenr.wes. org/2019/11/education-in-brazil (Accessed on 19 December 2020).

10 What comes after the ruin? Designing for the arrival of preferable futures for the university Rikke Toft Nørgård

Introduction We have to recognize that the University is a ruined institution, while thinking what it means to dwell in those ruins without recourse to romantic nostalgia. (Readings, 1996, p. 169)

A university in ruins In The University in Ruins (1996), Bill Readings argues that the university has outlived its purpose. The university of the past helped to solidify national cultures, gave reason to the common life of a people, and fused past tradition and future ambition into a unified field of culture, and was a site for socialisation, education and building (Readings, 1996). In recent decades, however, with the rise of rankings, managerialism and the neoliberal university determined by market criteria, the university is, if not a ruined institution, then at least a somewhat unkempt or broken-down institution. The present university today is governed by administrative and accounting strategies and techniques, which has transformed it into a globalising, bureaucratically administered and transnationally corporate university (LaCapra, 1998). Following from this, the university in ruins is more akin to a modern-day glistering glass-monolith corporation than a withered gentle ruin in the woods. According to Readings, the contemporary university as a ‘ruined institution’ filled with the ghosts of a cultural and glorious past and he call upon us to find ways to inhabit the ruins of the present-day university: [Readings] affirms in his own voice the image of the university in ruins and asks how best to dwell in the ruins of reason, culture, the centered DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-14

What comes after the ruin? 157

subject-citizen, nationalism, and a sense of evangelical if not redemptive mission. For what is indeed definitively ruined, in Readings’ eyes, is the university of culture that provided citizen-subjects for the nation-state and in which the humanities where the site of liberal education, displaced religiosity, and identity-forming culture. (LaCapra, 1998, p. 35) As a front-runner in the critique of managerialism and the neoliberal university, Readings illuminates the past and diagnoses the present of the university to create a nuanced debate about the possible futures it might arrive at. However, reading Readings, he has less to offer when it comes to methods and practices for designing and materialising a future university beyond the ruins. Readings’ proposal for the future university pinpoints ‘Thought’ and ‘Dissensus’ as potential ways forward (Readings, 1996). Readings’ central question: ‘How are we to reimagine the University, once its guiding idea of culture has ceased to have an essential function?’ (Readings, 1996, p. 119), both acknowledges the current ruined state of the university, and poses the question of how to work positively and productively among those ruins. The imperative question of how to actually do this through designing for the arrival of more preferable and ‘unruined’ futures for the university is left somewhat unanswered. There are no blueprints or building instructions for an envisaged future university to be found amongst the ruins. And no concrete methods or processes for how to materialise such unknown mythical beings: ‘Within this context, a certain opportunism seems prescribed. To dwell in the ruins of the University is to try to do what we can, while leaving space for what we cannot envisage to emerge’ (Readings, 1995, p. 23). This chapter is likewise not helpful in providing concrete blueprints or building instructions – or even tangible examples or cases. In this regard, it might be deemed inoperable, vague and abstract when it comes to the actual construction or practice of a university after the ruin. What it does hope to contribute with, nonetheless, is methods, processes and alternative concepts for undertaking such work.

Designing for feasible utopias? As a response to Readings’ ruinous university, and the widespread lamenting of the present state of the contemporary university, this chapter presents a possible framework imagining and manifesting more preferable future institutions, systems or forms of governance in the form of materialised ‘feasible utopias’ (Barnett, 2018). This is done in four steps. Firstly, speculative design is introduced as a way of working with the deliberate materialisation of imagination and possible futures that can help us design for the university after the ruin. Secondly, collective visioning and the futures cone are presented as methods for widening the field of possible futures for the university and for visioning preferable future

158  R. T. Nørgård

universities. Thirdly, the concepts of hopepunk and imagination are introduced as an opening framework for daring to hope for more preferable futures. Lastly, design fictions and design probes are described as concrete future-making strategies and techniques for moving the future university into the present in the form of materialised mini-unitopias. Higher education philosophy and theory, today does not present an abundance of methods, processes and tools for materialising the future university in the form of design proposals for preferable futures, prototypes, design probes or materialised imagination (Amsel & Facer, 2017; Duggan, Lindley, & McNicol, 2017). Such a design vocabulary and methodology might, however, be crucial to transform and leave behind the present-day institutional landscape of anxiety and control. Such a landscape renders it almost impossible to engage with utopian, open, multifarious, unsettled and unknowable futures. Within this landscape, there is a directed intentionality towards reducing possibilities in order to be able to see and plan for the future through ‘future-oriented preventive measures’ (Lyon, 2014; Amsel & Facer, 2017). Consequently, the future-making imagination becomes colonised by an already known future to be planned for through disciplining possible futures into a singular projected future (Adams, Murphy, & Clarke, 2009; Amsel & Facer, 2017). The imposition of institutional logics which prefabricate the future makes it almost impossible to enlarge the space of possible futures and look ahead imaginatively to envision possible universities after the ruin. To arrive at what might at the outset seem like hopelessly starry-eyed future forms, the university must first abandon its inclination to fulfil a predetermined future. It must integrate and practice methods and ways of thinking that deliberately move the imagination beyond projected, probable and even plausible futures. To do so, the university needs thinking and methods for preferable, possible and sometimes even preposterous futures. To imagine what comes after the ruin the future of the university should first be addressed as mutable, multifarious and open (Facer, 2013; Duggan et al., 2017). In the ruins of the university and in the context of competition, commodification, consumerism and corporatisation what concrete methods could be incorporated and put to work to accommodate the university, as well as higher education philosophy, in imagining, designing and proposing preferable futures that will materialise a university after the ruin? In the words of Ronald Barnett, we are on the lookout for ways of imagining and methods for materialising ‘feasible utopias’ (Barnett, 2018). Here, ‘feasibility does not entail realization, but rather the possibility of realization’ (Barnett, 2018, p. 167) – there is good reason to believe that a design proposal for the future university could well materialise, and we might even be able to materialise ‘embryonic instances’ of the future university in front of us (Barnett, 2018, p. 10). The preferable university of the future might be deemed utopian but, existing within the possibility space of all possible futures, it is a ‘feasible utopia’. ‘It could emerge in the best of possible worlds, and there are good grounds for believing that it just may yet emerge. The idea is an optimistic idea’ (Barnett, 2018, p. 173). One could almost say it

What comes after the ruin? 159

is an act of unwavering and intentional speculation, visioning and hoping. But how could such an approach be practised as a concrete methodology? And how can we move from imagination and speculation in the form of philosophy to materialising utopias through design speculation? To begin contemplating this, the next section will turn to the field of speculative design.

Speculative design: Designing for the arrival of the university after the ruin As we rapidly move toward a monoculture that makes imagining genuine alternatives almost impossible, we need to experiment with ways of developing new and distinctive worldviews that include different beliefs, values, ideals, hopes and fears from today’s. If our belief systems and ideas don’t change, then reality won’t change either. It is our hope that speculating through design will allow us to develop alternative social imaginaries that open new perspectives on the challenges facing us. (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 189)

Speculative design and design speculations Outside the field of design theory and philosophy, design is often regarded as primarily a problem-solving and product-oriented practice connected to economical or societal growth. Consequently, design is a service activity that address clients’ needs or help solve their problems. This is predominantly true of design fields such as industrial design, service design or user experience design. However, there are fields of design that have decidedly different approaches, frameworks and methods. Gaver (2012) highlights how design can be practised as ‘a generative discipline, able to create multiple new worlds rather than describing a single existing one. Its practitioners may share many assumptions about how to pursue it, but equally, they may build as many incompatible worlds as they wish to live in’ (p. 943). Design fields such as critical design, future design, radical design, discursive design or speculative design turns away from the commercial or problem-solving dimensions of design to focus on broader societal engagement, manifestations of thinking, design provocations and philosophical, political or poetic practices aimed at asking questions, generating critical reflection or opening up spaces for imagination and action. Through speculation, design thinkers within these fields radically reimagine futures, systems, societies and worlds. This is done in an effort to de-colonise, anticipate and open up the future: ‘We are not talking about a space for experimenting with how things are now, making them better or different, but about other possibilities altogether. We are more interested in designing for how things could be […] with unreality’ (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 12). In Nørgård and Bengtsen (2018), we have previously employed design philosophy and thinking as a way to materialise the ‘worldhood university’. This could be

160  R. T. Nørgård

considered an attempt at design speculation for a university integrated in the world and having a distinct design signature grounded in ‘earth philosophy’ (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2018). Through taking a design approach, it became possible to flesh out how different university designs create a specific signature for the being, doing and knowing of the university. Here, we also discussed how design highlights the need for universities to take charge and be the intentional architects of their own future, rather than followers or opportunists in the present: ‘From this also follows a moral obligation to take action and be proactive through ethically imagining that-which-do-not-yet-exist. This entails that the worldhood university is not only a spatial and social arena, but connects to past, present, and future time also’ (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2018, p. 174). Following from this, there is the possibility for universities to become sites for experimentation, speculation and the reimagination of future everyday life in preferable worlds. Design thinking within speculative and critical futures scholarship argues that the future is undetermined and does not exist as such, but is an inherent domain of design imagination and ideation (Candy & Kornet, 2019). The future ‘cannot be experienced directly, but only though images, thoughts, feelings and the multiple ways these are subsequently expressed in the outer world’ (Slaughter, 2018, p. 444). That is, the future has to be materialised to be shared, discussed and explored together in the form of prototypes, design fictions, blueprints or design probes or similar in order to make the invisible visible and tangible (Candy & Kornet, 2019). Through engaging in future-making and forging feasible utopias in the form of tangible designs for possible futures for the university, it becomes possible to enter into conversations with possible futures, what such futures might hold for the university, what they might look and feel like, and whether they are desirable or undesirable (Adam & Groves, 2007). The future of the university might be intangible, invisible and undetermined, but nonetheless have very real and material consequences for the being of the university in the present and the becoming of the university in the future: ‘Genesis is ongoing. As human beings, we continuously create things that help reshape the reality and essence of the world as we know it. When we create new things – technologies, organizations, processes, environments, ways of thinking, or systems – we engage in design’ (Nelson & Stolterman, 2012, p. 1).

The methodology of ‘what if …?’ As a design field, speculative design thrives on imagination ‘to create spaces for discussion and debate about alternative ways of being, and to inspire people’s imagination to flow freely [for …] collectively redefining our relationship to reality’ (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 2) to create more ‘socially constructive imaginary futures’ and ‘collectively define a preferable future for a given group of people’ (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 6). Through the methods of deliberate imagination, collective visioning and speculative design, reality becomes more malleable and the likelihood for more desirable futures increases (Dunne & Raby, 2013).

What comes after the ruin? 161

Furthermore, speculative design works purposefully with virtues, ideals and values as ‘practical fiction’ to judge reality by whether it lives up to ideals (rather than the other way around). Overall, speculative design opens a space for exploring and experimenting with alternative futures in order to redefine our relation to the present and reality itself (Auger, 2013). To achieve this, speculative design draws on science fiction, poetry, art and other practices of the imagination to actively and critically question the system or world we live in, its values and functions as well as the expectations it creates about the future to help people become intentional agents and deliberate future-makers. Speculative design, as a method for future-oriented thinking and doing, works to move people’s imagination from ‘what will be’ to ‘what if …?’ to materialise radically different futures that confront and disturb the dominant consumerist neoliberal ideology (Markussen & Knutz, 2013). A key factor responsible for the success of speculative design as future-making is the careful management of the speculation – it is neither too straightforward and realistic (projected and plausible futures) nor is it too far-fetched or fantastic (impossible futures) (Auger, 2013). Importantly, speculative design is constantly working to avoid imaginative resistance in its recipients so as to circumvent a disconnect, disengagement or alienation in regard to the materialised proposed future. Consequently, speculative design works to build a bridge between the proposed futures and the present reality and world of its recipients. To be able to construct a speculative design proposal in the form of a preferable world, the designer must take into careful consideration the environment, system and context within which the design proposal would exist: ‘This could be described as an ecological approach to speculative design and assist in grounding the concept [proposal]’ (Auger, 2013, p. 13). That is, a design proposal for a future university would have to exist within the class of all possible futures, build a bridge between that future and the present reality of the university, avoid causing imaginative resistance in the recipient and explicate the design choices that would materialise the proposed preferable future university in the world of its the recipients.

Through the futures cone: From forecasting probable futures to visioning preferable futures Vision without action is useless. But action without vision does not know where to go or why to go there. Vision is absolutely necessary to guide and motivate action. More than that, vision, when widely shared and firmly kept in sight, brings into being new systems. (Meadows, Meadows & Randers, 1992, p. 224)

Collective visioning of a future university Design can be seen as the deliberate materialisation of design visions, whereas collective visioning, then, is the expression of social action- and future-oriented

162  R. T. Nørgård

imagination. While most scholarly disciplines and domains focus on how the world is and how it came to be – that is, being occupied by understanding the present in the light of the (immediate) past – design focuses on how the world could be and proposes feasible pathways to arrive at such futures (Wahl, 2006). Accordingly, design uses the present university as a springboard to dive into a multitude of possible futures for the university. However, any design process or strategy for the future university is useless if there is no clear vision of where to go to and what to arrive at. In other words, designing for the university after the ruin requires both deliberate imagination (intentional future-making) and social imagination (collective visioning). In design, visioning is about imagining preferable futures and design is about how to make those preferable futures happen. As a comportment, visioning is always located in the ontology of the Not-Yet (Amsler & Facer, 2017). Visioning in relation to the university is not ‘only imagining’ feasible utopias; it actively operates in the field of hope to guide us beyond what is given as possible for ourselves and for the university towards a more indeterminate horizon and a broader space of possible futures. Visioning as a method use social and deliberate imagination to assists us in opening up a space for the university which cannot yet be imagined and which is always yet-to-come (Amsler & Facer, 2017). Here, imagination in the form of collective visioning is centrally important for a democratic and community-based approach to materialising futures in the form of attainable utopias (Wahl, 2006) – for example, futures in the form of possible universities after the ruin: There are several ways of looking at the future but two methods predominate. The first is by prediction and the second is ‘visioning’. Prediction is, perforce, based on extrapolation of past trends. Through this process the future can only be viewed as though along a corridor of constraining possibilities. The corridor might widen along its length but the process of prediction is essentially a restrictive one. Visioning, on the other hand, is a process that begins with the desired future state and then looks backwards to the present (building a new corridor between the states) […] Therefore, visioning is radically different from conventional futurology which is predictive, prophetic and tends to offer pictures of exaggerated optimism or pessimism. (Ball, 1999, pp. 62–63) Collective visioning of the future university frames the university as a being in the process of becoming – as unfinished, underway and undecided. Design then, is a type of visioning that materialises this (visioned) future by way of tangible demonstrations, arguments or design proposals for how we might live (Margolin, 2002). As such, design can be viewed as a practice of ‘revolutionary futurity’ (Freire, 1970) for bringing new possibilities, systems or institutions to life than those currently found in the world through experimenting with and creating prototypes for the possibility of the impossible.

What comes after the ruin? 163

Visions for the university after the ruin are principally idealistic, creative, poetic, ethical and imaginative (Wahl, 2006). They are not governed by the projected, predicted, probable or plausible (forecasting from the present to the future) but by the potential, possible and preferable (backcasting from the future to the present). Overall, visioning is characterised by (a) operating on a large time scale, often looking 25+ years into the future to avoid forecasting and being trapped in the present, (b) being collective as no individual can vision on behalf of a community; the vision should span all affected by it; (c) pinpointing desired and preferred outcomes by focusing on the ideal – ‘that which is desired to be’ and ‘that which ought to be’; (d) being untestable in the present and (e) leading to collective action in the form of designing to materialise the visioned future in the present (Wahl, 2006; Nelson & Stolterman 2012). According to Meadows et al., ‘visioning means imagining, at first generally and then with increasing specificity, what you really want […] not what someone has taught you to want, and not what you have learned to be willing to settle for […] Vision, when widely shared and firmly kept in sight, does bring into being new systems’ (Meadows et al., 2004, p. 272).

The futures cone as a way of visioning preferable future universities Following from the above, the first step in imagining the desired and preferable university after the ruin is, then, for institutions and higher education communities to engage in processes of collective visioning. Visioning opens up spaces for collective dialogues around desirable futures and beyond the restrictions of the present or the lauding of the past. Like a beacon, visioning can guide the university towards truly new futures; but, like a beacon, visioning is not the point of arrival only a means to move towards a destination that lies beyond it. One such concrete framework for visioning preferable future universities is the futures cone (Bezold & Hancock, 1993; Hancock & Bezold, 1994; Voros, 2003; Dunne & Raby, 2013; Voros, 2017). The futures cone is a framework for differentiating between different classes of futures: the projected future, probable futures, plausible futures, possible futures, prespoterous futures and preferable futures – as well as describing and organising their relations into nested classes of futures (Voros, 2017) moving from the narrow, exptrapolated and singular projected future, through more or less known and forecasted probable and plausible futures, into the broadest field of possible and even preposterous futures. The cone is like a beacon or flashlight, brightest in the knowable centre and diffusing into unknowable darkness at the edge of all possible futures. In the unknown darkness outside of the futures cone, we find the unreasonable or ridiculous ‘preposterous futures’ (Voros, 2017). Cutting across both probable, plausible and possible futures and sometimes even venturing into preposterous futures, we find the class of preferable futures – these are the futures that we desire to happen or that ethically ought to happen.

164  R. T. Nørgård

FIGURE 10.1 

The futures cone, adapted from Voros (2017)

All classes of futures nested within each other that make up the futures cone is positioned within the potential. Everything beyond the present is a potential future, but these futures can be more multifarious and malleable or more closed and rigid, and an idea – like aeroplanes, jetpacks, bionic limbs, space stations or self-driving cars – have gone through all classes of futures travelling from preposterous futures to projected future. Preposterous futures are the futures that in the present are judged to be ridiculous or impossible. These are futures deemed to be pure fiction and will often be met with decidedly imaginative resistance if people are asked to entertain such futures for the university as feasible. The projected future (in the singular) is extrapolated directly from the present and is the future that can be fully predicted. This is the future that might be claimed to happen if we only see one future when we

What comes after the ruin? 165

look ahead. It is a future pinned down by the present. Probable futures are futures that are forecasted based on current trends, quantitative data, extrapolation from similar cases in the past or present, and, as such, are futures that are likely to happen. Plausible futures are futures built on our knowledge about the past and the present. These are futures grounded in our understanding of the world and could happen. Possible futures are the span of futures that are realistic or unrealistic, but possible, if we stretch our imagination. They can be unpredictable, not-yet-seen, unknown and detached from the past and present. They can be more or less unlikely futures but feasible. Finally, preferable futures are the ideal futures that ‘ought to happen’ or that we ‘desire to happen’ and can range from the preposterous to the projected (Voros, 2003; 2017). In Envisioning Real Utopias, Erik Olin Wright writes: as a theory of a journey from the present to a possible future: the diagnosis and critique of society tells us why we would want to leave the world in which we live; the theory of alternatives tells us where we want to go; and the theory of transformation [speculative design] tells us how to get from here to there – how to make viable alternatives achievable. (Wright, 2010, pp. 25–26) Hancock and Bezold (1994) underline the importance of thinking and acting beyond the projected and probable to avoid being caught in a singular future like a deer in the headlights. If we see the future university as more or less fixed and predictable, there is not much we can do about it – ‘The probable future is something that seems to be done to us, something over which we have little or no control, and often something we don’t like very much’ (Hancock & Bezold, 1994, p. 25). If people are presented with the probable future, then the only option left is how to prepare for it and how to deal with it when it arrives. To imagine the university after the ruin, we should stop imagine based on the probable (or even plausible) and start to imagine based on the possible (or even preposterous).

What comes after the ruin? Hopepunk, deliberate imagination and products of imagination The imagination will not be content in simply being critical; it will not rest simply in point to a “university in ruins” or “the crisis in the university”. Rather, it will seek to imagine, to create new narratives of the fullest kind that may serve the university and take it forward. This is utopian thinking. And it is an injunction upon the imagination; to strive to form new ideas of the university that could represent the university – now in the twenty-first century – as it might be in the best of all possible worlds. (Barnett 2011, p. 90)

166  R. T. Nørgård

A hopepunk university? While the condition of the current ruinous university may be experienced as a totalising foreclosure of possibility, there are also movements which are specifically aimed at challenging the parameters of future possibilities itself by creating and organising hope. Such hope movements, like speculative design and hopepunk, intend to open up for brighter or more preferable futures and widen the space of possible futures that are not-yet on the horizon (Amsler & Facer, 2017; Dinerstein & Deneulin, 2012). According to Aja Romano, hopepunk signifies an insistence on hope, humanity, virtuousness and possible futures – not as a purely naïve optimist or utopian state – but as an active political choice ‘made with full self-awareness that things might be bleak or even frankly hopeless, but you’re going to keep hoping, loving, being kind nonetheless’ (Romano, 2018). It is, on the one hand, a proactive existential insistence on believing in a desirable future and then fighting for that future to materialise, and, on the other hand, vigorous resistance against pernicious worldviews and futures that diminish hope or humanity. In this way, hopepunk signals a genuinely and sincerely activist spirit of fighting for something and demanding more virtuous, kind-hearted and desirable futures. Hopepunk is the opposite of settling down in the ruins and accepting the inevitable future. Historically, hopepunk is a response to the concept of grimdark – a pervasively gritty, bleak, pessimistic or nihilistic view on the world and the future (Romano, 2018). We find grimdark worlds in Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Nolan’s Batman and other universes of despair, disappointment or hopelessness, while we see hopepunk in the universes of Sense8, The Good Place, Sailor Moon and embodied in the long struggling journey of the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. Grimdark is not very far removed from the descriptions of the ruinous university (the university lost) or the mega-corporate university (the coming university). Here, hopepunk signals an anti-nostalgic forward-looking stance against the grimdark and encroaching darkness of the present world. Hopepunk is characterised by a vibrant activist aesthetic of softness and wholesomeness that advocate taking concrete action towards building positive social systems. Where grimdark is a warning, hopepunk is a promise. It implies aggressively choosing friendliness, humanity, care and buoyancy over efficiency, performativity, cynicism and gritty realism: ‘Hopepunk is a radical call to arms for us to imagine better […] To embrace the fact that fantasy is not simply an escape from the world but an invitation to go deeper into it. That we must fall in love with the world that we so deeply wish to change’ (Romano, 2018). Accordingly, hopepunk is signalling a future-oriented activist punk attitude or approach to the world that is grounded firmly in hopeful virtues such as care, compassion, community, love and friendship. Hopepunk does not care for the past, but is highly captivated by the future and the potentialities that lie in wait within it. The ruin is the breeding ground for hopepunk – an unsentimental junk playground [skrammellegeplads] where the building materials of the past and present can be disassembled and played

What comes after the ruin? 167

with to imagine and construct preferable futures. Through adopting a hopepunk attitude, we are no longer enslaved or immobilised by the nostalgic ruin and what it represents. Rather, utopian fiction, optimistic sci-fi and sanguine imagination runs in the veins of hopepunk as a mode of resistance.

Deliberate imagination and imaginative resistance Importantly, to imagine is something quite different from remembering, believing or perceiving. When we imagine we have the ability to go beyond both that which is and that which we believe to be the case. When we imagine, we envisage alternative possibilities and realities that stand outside of what is currently perceived to be the case – this can be both in the form of sensory imagination (imaginations) and cognitive imagination (imagining possibilities) (McGinn 2004). Whereas what we perceive, remember and believe stands in a relation to what is true and is determined by what the actual world is like – the direction of fit being mind-to-world or world-to-mind (Searle, 1983) – what we imagine is to a large extent up to us and is directed towards non-actual worlds. To distinguish further, in Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990), Kendall Walton differentiates between spontaneous imagination and deliberate imagination (i.e. intentional direction in the act of imagination) and between solitary imaginings and social imaginings (i.e. joint participation in the act of imagination). Furthermore, we can also identify desire-like imagination (Currie, 2002) – a form of wishful imaginative thinking with a focus on the way we desire something to be and act. The way imagination is understood within the context of this chapter goes beyond simple hypothetical reasoning and points to engaged, vivid and affective imagination that evokes emotional responses that can motivate actions in the actual world through affective or cognitive transmission (Gendler, 2006). In affective transmission, emotions or felt qualities generated within the act of imagination spill over and subsequently effect our being or doing in the actual world, while in cognitive transmission, it is our thinking, experience or perception in the real world that is impacted by our imaginings. In this way, imagination has the potential of changing our attitudes or dispositions and be action-guiding: If we imagine together, we might subsequently begin to see the world differently, change it or change ourselves. However, opening up the imagination when it comes to preferable futures for the university might be difficult and encased by imaginative resistance. Imaginative resistance builds up when we find it problematic, ridiculous or difficult to commit to the different forms of prompted imaginative activity (e.g. deliberate imagination, social imaginings or desire-like imagination). Today, we find ourselves in a situation – in the ruins of the university – where people find it unexpectedly difficult to imagine beyond the probable or plausible. This imaginative resistance can be expressed in the form of can’t or won’t. Imaginative resistance in the form of can’t is prompted by an experienced impossibility,

168  R. T. Nørgård

inconsistency or ridiculousness. Here, imagination breaks down because what is to be imagined is too incoherent or far-fetched. Imaginative resistance in the form of won’t is grounded in an unwillingness, opposition or refusal from the person invited to imagine. Here, the imagination breaks down because the invitation to imagine might entail an unwanted change in the way the actual world is perceived or in the person’s actual beliefs and desires (Stokes, 2006). Overall, imaginative resistance is anchored in conflicting views on that which is (the facts) and that which is proposed to be (the ideal). In other words, imaginative resistance emerges due to people holding a differing imagination of the situation (van Oers, 2005). If people do not perceive it as a feasible future, they cannot enter the imaginative space and play with such futures. One way to widen the space of imagination is through use of ‘evocative objects’ (Turkle, 2007) that give concrete form to our imagining, so we can experience, explore and experiment with the future together.

Products of imagination Products of imagination, like alternative universities or possible futures, can oppose the actual state of things and consequently be the basis of creative action, critical thinking and conjuring of feasible utopias. In and through design, these products take on material form that suggest a non-trivial and binding way of manifesting visions that can be shared as social imagination within a group or with the world. Here, speculative design as future-making is the act through which imagination achieves concrete and collective form as evocative objects (Turkle, 2007) or objects we can think with together (Stevens, Boden & von Rekowski, 2013). Imagining the future, however, does not happen out of the blue, but is based on unconventional reconfigurations of existing building blocks – through playing in and with the rubble of the ruin, new imaginative manifestations of the university can emerge. Deliberate imagination through the act of intentional and speculative future-making, produces new objects, actions and possibilities, but only within the context of designing or some other material activity (van Oers, 2005). By giving our imagination concrete form through speculative design, we are able to demonstrate, in material ways, that there are whole arrays of possible futures the university could take on. Imagination through design, then, is a form of tangible imagination that consists of giving material form to alternative representations or beings that subsequently allows us to share, discuss and collectively try out how the university could be. Picturing the future university differently (imagination), and, subsequently, manifesting different imaginings of the future university (design) help us move from the probable future (narrow imagination/design space) towards possible future universities (wide imagination/design space), which again opens up for discussions of the preferable future university. It is through the conjunction of imaginative thinking and design manifestations that we are able to arrive at the university that ought to be and

What comes after the ruin? 169

that we desire to be instead of being stuck with the university that will happen or is likely to happen.

Materialising future universities: Design fictions and design probes Design fictions are a core method of speculative design and are used to frame the deliberate creation of diegetic prototypes or design probes that help manifest a space for envisioning and interrogating preferable futures in the form of materialised imagination (Duggan et al., 2017). Design fictions focus on the relationship between speculative prototypes (crafting the speculation) and the possible future that they would create or exist in. This is done to facilitate imagining and prompt speculation in the recipients, transforming them into ‘active imaginers’ (Dunne & Raby, 2013). A speculative design proposal can serve as a ‘probe’ for highlighting the unethical, unwanted or undesirable reality of current systems or institutions – what Dunne and Raby call ‘materialised speculative ethics’ to explore notions of future good and future bad (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 64). It is the materialisation of imagination as prototype in the form of ‘socio-material configurations that embody existing and future practices in durable artefacts’ (Suchman et al., 2002; Duggan et al., 2017). Speculative design in the form of diegetic prototypes – future universities – functions as a site, process and practice for configuring new futures in the form of necessary incomplete materialisations of collective visioning of the future. Design fictions and diegetic prototypes are methods for ‘designing for unreality’ to systematically move the world, system, institution or indeed our thinking from existing to preferred situations or futures. Markussen and Knutz (2013) present one way of doing this through a fourstep design fiction method for novices to move from imagination to prototyping speculative futures. Adapted to imagining the university after the ruin it gives us a first step towards materialising preferable future universities: (1) write a 1-page value-oriented scenario that describe an ideal experience or example of the preferable university; (2) based on the description, create a ‘what if …?’ scenario, for example, ‘what if there were no students at the university?’, ‘what if universities were run as co-operatives?’ or ‘what if all external funding disappeared?’; (3) experimental university-making through drawing storyboards of the future university, designing micro-universities or small-scale utopias, manifesting the university through tangible materials and visualising the interactions and experiences of the future university and (4) prototype the preferable university through transforming the imagined university into a viable poetic prototype (or feasible utopia) – what is elsewhere called crafting the speculation (Auger, 2013) or diegetic prototypes (Kirby, 2010). Candy and Kornet (2019) describe another approach through their developed five-step process for engaging diverse stakeholders and participants in coconstructing possible futures and preferable worlds. Adapted to imagining the university after the ruin, it provides a framework for participatory future-making

170  R. T. Nørgård

of preferable future universities: (1) map people’s actual or existing images of the future from probable to preposterous and inquire into, for example, ‘whose futures are explored and why?’ and ‘who and how many different voices speaks for the institution?’; and (2) multiply the possible futures and widen the possibility space of the university by generating alternative scenarios and extending the imagination through challenging, diversifying and expanding imagination and collective visioning; (3) mediate the possible futures of the university by materialising imagination and ideation into provotypes, design probes, design fictions or other tangible representations to be experienced, explored and experimented with; (4) mount the materialised speculative designs through performance, debate, interactive exhibitions or field testing; and (5) map people’s engagement, experiences and responses to the proposed future to gauge its desirability, preferability, consequences and transformative qualities in relation to the future university. Such materialised imagination through speculative design can be seen as discursive design probes for the future university indicating that the prototype is part of an ongoing investigation and functions as an instigator of debate or philosophical analysis. In this way, speculative designs have a decidedly speculative and scholarly status (Auger, 2013). They are not commercial products or made to tackle practical problems of the present (projected future), but rather function as probes for research, philosophy and thinking otherwise. They make up a ‘speculative wunderkammer’ inviting people to ‘step out of their everyday reality and enjoy engaging with a variety of what-if questions in the form of tangible design proposals’ (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 141). It is a way for people to tinker with reality and the future to accommodate their desires and dreams. For the university, it can be a way to move out of the ruins and into an imaginative space for materialising more preferable and genuinely new futures.

Conclusion: Future directions for the university after the ruin A million mini-unitopias Recently, there has, within design and elsewhere, occurred a shift away from top-down mega-utopias dreamt up by society, governments or the elite towards one million tiny utopias formed by groups of people or single institutions (Dunne & Raby, 2013). This shift could also prove an opportunity for the future university where the materialisation of preferable futures can be instituted through the construction of what could be named mini-unitopias; one-off miniutopias built around the virtues, desires and dreams of a group, faculty or institution. Considering the university after the ruin, such mini-unitopias celebrate and showcase people’s ability to make their own imaginative futures tangible. Mini-unitopias work against top-down mega-utopias to encourage a million tiny feasible utopias to emerge from the bottom up and move the future little by

What comes after the ruin? 171

little from the projected towards the preferable. Such mini-unitopias, cases and examples are absent from this book chapter, whose objective has been something else, but they can be found sprouting in both literature and life world. There are even whole books, such as Staley’s (2019) Alternative universities: Speculative design for innovation in higher education, that present entire conceptual catalogues or speculative wunderkammers of potential future universities ready to be explored and tried out. An example of a mini-unitopia can also be found in Nørgård, Mor and Bengtsen (2019) that flesh out a conceptual framework, pedagogical formats and concrete activities for the networking and networked university as a way to explore, probe and try out what a university for networked learning, in, for and with the world might look like. Another mini-unitopia is found in Aaen and Nørgård (2015) and Nørgård and Mathiesen (2018) that describe participatory academic communities as a tested format for teachers and students to forge communities that engage in research and education together based on core academic virtues. Still another example is The Playful University Platform (https://open-tdm.au.dk/blogs/playuni/) by Nørgård and Solheim, where scholars within playful higher education from around the world meet to exchange practices and build a concrete framework for the future playful university. Within Meadows et al. (1992), Ball (1999), Metzner (1993) and Wahl (2006), we also find concrete frameworks for how to design a future university for planetary health from the bottom and up in ways that might see the coming of a radically different university and world. All of this is to say that there is an abundance of collective visioning through the futures cone happening, but we are still faced with the task of materialisation and realisation – that is, of designing for the arrival of preferable futures for the university beyond the ruin.

Forging futures and future directions for the university after the ruin The enlargement of possible futures for the university through a million mini-unitopias occurs because opportunities for manifesting, proposing and testing preferable futures for the university in the form of speculative design, design probes, provotypes, design fictions or similar are both given and taken. Exploring, experimenting and experiencing hopepunk mini-unitopias make it possible to envision and engage a university after the ruin beyond a colonised or foreclosed future. Collective visioning, deliberate imagination, speculative design, hopepunk design proposals and materialised imagination in the form of prototypes or design fictions open up for possible futures liberated from the projected future of today and an already known future to be planned for. Intentional action-oriented future-making through speculative design has the potential of evoking affective imagination and moving our hearts and minds when it comes to believing in the possibility of a future for the university

172  R. T. Nørgård

after the ruin. Looking towards the future through the futures cone, there is good reason to believe that preferable futures for the university after the ruin could well materialise, and we might be able to find ‘embryonic instances’ of this preferable future university in right in front of us (Barnett, 2018). A next step would be to engage in speculative design, design speculations or similar to tinker with reality and bring into being objects to think with together, hopepunk institutions, arrays of evocative objects and ‘what if …?’ worlds. To create, organise and materialise hope. Designing for the arrival of preferable futures for the university might be hopepunk, starry-eyed and utopian but, existing within the possibility space of all possible futures, it is nonetheless a ‘feasible utopia’.

References Aaen, J. H., & Nørgård, R. T. (2015). Participatory academic communities. A transdisciplinary perspective on participation in education beyond the institution. Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 67–98. Adam, B., & Groves, C. (2007). Future Matters. Action, Knowledge, Ethics. London: Brill. Adams, V., Murphy, M., & Clarke, A. (2009). Anticipation. Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity, Vol. 28, pp. 246–265. Amsler, S., & Facer, K. (2017). Contesting anticipatory regimes in education: Exploring alternative educational orientations to the future. Futures, Vol. 94, pp. 6–14. Auger, J. (2013). Speculative design. Crafting the speculation. Digital Creativity, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 11–35. Ball, J. (1999). Bioregions and future state visioning: A visually integrative approach to the presentation of information for environmental policy and management. PhD thesis, Robert Gordon University. Barnett, R. (2011). The idea of the university in the twenty-first century: Where’s the imagination. Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 88–94. Barnett, R. (2018). The Ecological University. A Feasible Utopia. London: Routledge. Bezold, C., & Hancock, T. (1993). An Overview of the Health Futures Field. Washington, DC: Institute for Alternative Futures. Candy, S., & Kornet, K. (2019). Turning foresight inside out: An introduction to ethnographic experiential futures. Journal of Futures Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 3–22. Currie, G. (2002). Desire in imagination. In: T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.). Conceivability and Possibility. London: Oxford University Press. Dinerstein, A., & Deneulin, S. (2012). Hope movements. Naming mobilization in a post-development world. Development and Change, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 585–602. Duggan, J. R., Lindley, J., & McNicol, S. (2017). Near future school. World building beyond a neoliberal present with participatory design fictions. Futures, Vol. 94, pp. 15–23. Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything. Design, Fiction and Social Dreaming. London: The MIT Press. Facer, K. (2013). The problem of the future and the possibilities of the present in education research. International Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 61, pp. 135–143. Freire, P. (1970/2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum. Gaver, W. (2012). What should we expect from research through design? Proceedings of CHI 2012, pp. 937–946.

What comes after the ruin? 173

Gendler, T. S. (2006). Imaginative resistance revisited. In: S. Nichols (Ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hancock, T., & Bezold, C. (1994). Possible futures, preferable futures. Healthcare Forum Journal, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 23–29. Kirby, D. (2010). The future is now: Diegetic prototypes and the role of popular films in generating real-world technological development. Social Studies of Science, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 41–70. LaCapra, D. (1998). The university in ruins? Critical Inquiry, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 32–55. Lyon, D. (2014). Surveillance, Snowden and big data. Capacities, consequences, critique. Big Data & Society, pp. 1–13. Margolin, V. (2002). The Politics of the Artificial. Essays on Design and Design Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Markussen, T., & Knutz, E. (2013). The poetics of design fiction. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces (DPPI ‘13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, pp. 231–240. McGinn, C. (2004). Mindsight. Image, Dream, Meaning. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., & Randers, J. (1992). Beyond the Limits: Global Collapse or a Sustainable Future. London: Earthscan. Meadows, D. H., Randers, J., & Meadows, D. L. (2004). Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. Post Mills, Vermont: Chelsea Green. Metzner, R. (1993). Emerging ecological worldview. Bucknell University Review, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 163–172. Nelson, H. G., & Stolterman, E. (2012). The Design Way. Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. London: The MIT Press. Nørgård, R. T., & Bengtsen, S. S. E. (2018). The Worldhood University. Design signatures & guild thinking. In: S. S. E. Bengtsen & R. Barnett (Eds.). The Thinking University. A Philosophical Examination of Thought and Higher Education. London: Springer. Nørgård, R. T., & Mathiesen, K. H. (2018). Undervisningsbaserede forskerkollektiver. Fra studenterundervisning til akademiske partnerskaber. Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Tidsskrift, Vol. 13, No. 24, pp. 82–103. Nørgård, R. T., Mor, Y., & Bengtsen, S. S. E. (2019). Networked learning in, for and with the world. In: A. Littlejohn, J. Jaldemark, & E. Vrieling-Teunter, & F. Nijland (Eds.). Networked Professional Learning. Emerging and Equitable Discourses for Professional Development. London: Springer. Nørgård, R. T., & Solheim, J. E. M. (2019). The Playful University Platform. https://opentdm.au.dk/blogs/playuni/ Readings, B. (1995). Dwelling in the ruins. Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 17, No. 1/2, pp. 15–28. Readings, B. (1996). The University in Ruins. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Romano, A. (2018). Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2018/12/27/18137571/ what-is-hopepunk-noblebright-grimdark Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slaughter, R. A. (2018). Two fine additions to the futures literature. Foresight, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 443–446. Staley, D. J. (2019). Alternative Universities. Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

174  R. T. Nørgård

Stevens, G., Boden, A., & von Rekowski, T. (2013). Objects to think with together. In: Y. Dittrich, M. Burnett, A. Mørch, & D. Redmiles (Eds.). End-User Development. IS-EUD 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 7897, pp. 223–225. London: Springer. Stokes, D. (2006). The evaluative character of imaginative resistance. British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 46, pp. 347–405. Suchman, L., Trigg, R., & Blomberg, J. (2002). Working artefacts. Ethnomethods of the prototype. British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 163–179. Turkle, S. (2007). Evocative Objects. Things We Think With. London: MIT Press. Van Oers, B. (2005). The potentials of imagination. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 5–18. Voros, J. (2003). A generic foresight process framework. Foresight, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 10–21. Voros, J. (2017). The future cone, use and history. Foresight, Futures Studies, Method. https://thevoroscope.com/2017/02/24/the-futures-cone-use-and-history/ [Accessed on 01/09/2021]. Wahl, D. C. (2006). Design for human and planetary health: A holistic/integral approach to complexity and sustainability. PhD thesis, School of Design, University of Dundee, Scotland. Walton, K. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Wright, E. O. (2010). Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso.

Coda Trust and vision Søren Bengtsen & Ryan E. Gildersleeve

Understanding the transformation of the university has to rely on the understanding of a deeper academic and institutional strive and aim: to further connect with the societal, cultural, natural and biological surroundings of the university – a connection through research and higher learning. Any such further connection rests, ultimately, on the transformation of trust between universities and its partners and environments. Understanding the transformation of the university hinges on understanding the conditions and possibilities of trust. As Lingis (2004) notes, trust is always involving an element of risk – as we, through trust, connect with someone or something we do not fully understand, and does not understand us. In trust, we rely on the knowledge, abilities or worldviews that we may not understand or share but, nevertheless, are dependent on. We become vulnerable in trust. Perhaps trust between universities, its funding bodies and wider society has always been central to the growth and purpose of institutions for higher learning – certainly, as Gibbs (2004) has argued, trust is fundamental to higher education practices of learning and teaching. On the one hand, external stakeholders like the policy community, public and private institutions, organisations, and companies and the wider societal public have to trust the university and its meaningfulness in (and usefulness to) the society. In particular, trust becomes necessary, in situations when it is not immediately clear in what ways research, or certain educational programmes, will directly contribute to societal values and growth. Here, universities need to be trusted. Trust becomes important when you cannot yourself see or understand the consequences of decisions and choices of the people, or institutions, you have put your faith in. And trust is inherently, always, multi-directional, or else it becomes exploitation. What we have come to understand with the term ‘academic activism’ is certainly an expression of the lack of trust – on both, or all, sides of the waters. DOI: 10.4324/9781003102922-15

176  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

To academics, the trust in its benefactors (the state, the industry, the governing board and the taxpayers) starts to erode when its core institutional ethos is being challenged: that the university is a ‘locus for interrogation, a place where cultural values, intellectual positions and the practices of society are held open to questioning’ (Davids & Waghid, 2021, p. 7). However, this is not an expression of academic disconnectedness from societal concerns, and at the heart of academic activism lies an ethical demand. Through research and higher education, we lend our thoughts, words and voices to others and ‘let them speak through us – when allowing what is different and weird and kept in the margins of our consciousness and language to enter into institutional and societal awareness and debate and to become culturally real and a part of our societies’ (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021, p. 508). When the academic freedom to speak for others becomes contested, the sole meaning and purpose of the university is being contested. Of course, the governing powers in any country could more or less immediately close down universities, imprison the academics, and use higher education as means for state propaganda. Sadly, this scenario is not pure fiction. Universities exist on the mercy of other powers, there is a social contract (or pact) that needs to be trusted on both sides. The above are examples of political, social and cultural forms of trust. However, as recent debates and research strands have pointed out, trust is not only valid between members of the same species but, in order to ensure biological and social sustainability, involves a transformation of the relationship across the species and various bio-cultures (Gildersleeve & Kleinhesselink, 2019). Here, the university may play an important biopolitical and biosocial role through its knowledge pursuits, education and formation or new generations, and the collaboration between the policy community and the wider ecology of societal organisations and institutions (Barnett, 2018). Here, universities find that they are perhaps not permanent institutions, as the idea of permanence becomes contested in a longer bio-cultural view. When understanding the deeper interconnectedness between species, Haraway (2016) suggests that we adapt to an understanding not only of creation but co-creation, or ‘sympoiesis’, which means ‘making-with’ (Haraway, 2016, p. 58). As Haraway points out, ‘[n]othing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organising’, and ‘[s]ympoiesis is a world proper to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems. It is a word for worlding-with, in company’ (ibid.). This perspective is perhaps valid on a more general level – that transformation is needed that moves beyond understandings of self-sufficient, walled-in universities catering for only certain social segments. A transformation of the university is needed, where autonomy and academic freedom is possible only through social, cultural and biological interconnection. Trust is not only present between two parties sealing an economic or social agreement – trust shows itself to have wider ecological reach. Universities aim at unlocking a bigger and more nuanced world, allowing for new understandings of ourselves, our societies and cultures, and the natural,

Coda 177

spiritual and biological worlds we co-inhabit. The university does not exist with the aim to reproduce well-known understandings of the world, and even amidst the orthodoxy of medieval universities originality and odd thinking were key to the international reputation of universities. Knowledge opens up the world through the imagination, which ‘has a power to see into things, to feel into things, to be at one with things anew, so as to produce a new understanding of the project of the imagination’ (Barnett, 2013, p. 25). Vision and imagination are not powers for assimilation, at least not in the academic sense of the meaning, but are hopes of engagement with, and understanding of, social identities, natural phenomena, spiritual experiences, cultural values and belief systems that are other and different to what we already know. Research and higher learning do not rest on the understanding of vision as an oppressive and hegemonic light. Already in Plato’s allegory of the cave in Republic, we learn how difficult it can be to understand, and welcome, understandings of the world that do not immediately (or permanently) align with current norms. Plato describes how experience of vision may inflict ‘pain’ upon us ‘because of the dazzle and glitter of the light’ (Plato, 2002, p. 748), and that it may be difficult to match new and profound knowledge and learning with traditional ways of understand, and navigating in, the world. Universities are institutions for vision – through research and higher learning. However, we are not suggesting that vision implies a univocally rational, linear and upward intellectual, moral or spiritual journey. Often quite the contrary, multi-vocal circuitry visions of the universe, its workings and inhabitants can certainly come from pragmatic, pedetic sources. Indeed, some of the greatest and most inspirational moments in everyday university life stems from such nonlinear, irrational and practical activities. Students and researchers may struggle hard (and for years) to understand and to provide sober yet critical descriptions of personal experiences, social identities, historical and pre-historical events, biological and cosmic phenomena. Sometimes, they even have to give up the endeavour. Crossing into epistemic twilight zones may indeed ‘feel like departing into the wild—producing an uncertainty about the terrain, in-habitants and environments being encountered’ (Bengtsen & Barnett, 2017, p. 129). In connection with Plato’s description so long ago, we argue for a renewed understanding of higher learning and research as vulnerable intellectual practices. Vision does not expose a ‘superhuman or super-societal institution’ and academics do not always engage in research and higher learning in order to grasp or solve unfamiliar events or phenomena but ‘to endure them and stay with them’ (ibid.). Transforming is not a movement away from, or distancing oneself from, someone or something – but an opening up, making oneself exposed to and embracing, what is different, strange, surprising and other. Transforming engages across multi-species and multi-positional frames and planes of explanation and sense-making. This way seen, vision and trust are connected – perhaps they are one.

178  S. Bengtsen & R. E. Gildersleeve

References Barnett, R. (2013). Imagining the University. London & New York: Routledge. Barnett, R. (2018). The Ecological University. In A Feasible Utopia. London & New York: Routledge. Bengtsen, S. & Barnett, R. (2017). Confronting the Dark Side of Higher Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51(1), 114–131. Davids, N. & Waghid, Y. (2021). Academic Activism in Higher Education: A Living Philosophy for Social Justice. Singapore: Springer. Gibbs, P. (2004). Trusting in the University. The Contribution of Temporality and Trust to a Praxis of Higher Learning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Gildersleeve, R.E. & Kleinhesselink, K. (2019). Introduction: The Anthropocene as Context and Concept for the Study of Higher Education. In R.E. Gildersleeve & K. Kleinhesselink (Eds.). Special Issue on the Anthropocene in the Study of Higher Education. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education (pp. 1–15), 1(1). New York: Peter Lang. Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Lingis, A. (2004). Trust. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Nørgård, R.T. & Bengtsen, S. (2021). The Activist University and University Activism. An editorial. In R.T. Nørgård & S. Bengtsen (Eds.), The Activist University. Between Practice and Policy, Special Issue. Policy Futures in Education, 19(5), 507–512. Plato. (2002). Republic. P. Shorey (Trans.). In E. Hamilton & H. Cairns (Eds.). The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to notes. Aaen, J. H. 171 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ Affairs Act 1965, 97 academic citizen scholars 36–39 academic freedom 2, 3, 18, 19, 112, 113, 131, 145, 152, 153, 176 academic knowledge 3, 4, 6, 7, 93 academic mobility 7, 78, 79, 128 academic nomadism 78, 87 academic pilgrimage 80 academics 3, 36, 39, 72, 78, 80–81, 85, 135, 144, 176, 177; appointment of 73; and COVID-19 100; foreign 128–131, 134; interest-driven 21; marginalization of 7, 61; mobile 127; parochial 21; promotion of 73 activism 3; academic 175–176; community 100; student 68 adequacy, criteria of 121–122 Afeti, G. 63 affiliation 134–135 agency 13 AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research 103 alienation 3, 51, 53, 68, 69, 84, 131, 161 Altbach, P. G. 61–62 alternative facts 28, 36 Althoff, F. 24–25 Althoff System 24

Apple, M. W. 146 Aristotle 48, 52 Armitage, A. 101 Arndt, S. 5 Australian Research Council 103 autonomy 13 Badat, S. 66 Baeta Neves, C. E. 140–142 Barnacle, R. 101 Barnett, R. 1, 33, 80, 83, 93, 102 battles as dehumanising, protesting 67–70 Baudrillard, J. 130–131, 133 Bengtsen, S. 1, 80, 83 Bengtsen, S. S. E. 159–160, 171 Bezold, C. 165 Bhabha, H. K. 74 Bhambra, G. K. 71, 72 Bhaskar, R. 115–116 Biesta, G. J. J. 81 Bismarck, O. von 24–26 Blanco, G. L. 127–128 Boud, D. 57n9 Brazil: current system of universities in 140–143; Future-se programme 139–154; “Mais Brasil” [More Brazil], 148; Ministry of Education 139, 142, 143; Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications 147; Programme of Internationalisation (PrInt) 147; Student Financing Fund for Higher Education (FIES) 151

180  Index

Calcutt, A. 28 Candy, S. 169 Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) 67 CAPES 139, 147 Cardoso, F. H. 151 Carter, J. 92, 97, 105n2 centrifugal force 82 centripetal force 82 Charter for Transdisciplinarity (Nicolescu) 45 Chubb, I. 37 Ciavatta, M. 151 citizenship: and scholarship, relationship between 36 CNPq 139 cognitive capitalism 113 cognitive justice 122 cognitive justice theoretical frameworks, for university decolonisation and transformation 94–96 collaboration 39 collaboration-as-performativity 101 collaborative leadership, post-feminist approach to 101–102 collective visioning, of future university 161–163 commodification 2, 8, 15, 54, 87, 92, 93, 126, 158 community capacity exchange 99 community embeddedness 38 compassionate imagining 72, 74 competition 2, 8, 27, 39, 92–94, 126, 142, 146, 148, 158 concept 2, 9, 23, 29–31, 71–72, 117, 126, 147, 149, 151; of the citizen scholar 33; of ‘critical hope’ 31–32; of decoloniality 71–72; of the digital university 116; of enlargement 96; of grimdark 166; of hope 31; of hopepunk and imagination 158; of intellectual leadership 101; of mutual recognition 103; neoliberal socioeconomic 2; of “otherness” 134; of trust 30consumerism 2, 8, 92, 93, 126, 158 cooperation 39 corporate-style governance 94 corporatisation 2, 8, 92, 93, 126 COVID-19, 99, 125, 132 CPUT see Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) creative university 38 critical realism, philosophy of 115–116 Cross, M. 65, 66, 70–71 cross-cultural learning 37 cultural growth 4, 7, 8, 81, 93, 104, 133

culture 1, 6, 7, 33, 62, 70, 72, 74, 78–81, 83, 97, 112, 117, 156–157; academic 86, 130–131; entrepreneurial 145, 147; human 86; Indigenous 104, 131; institutional 63–64, 69, 71; marginalised 122; organisational 102; research 34; and self-agency 53; transcultural 104 culture-on-the-move 83 curriculum: balanced 37; holistic approach to 37; torn 85 Curzon-Hobson, A. 28 da Silva, L. I. L. 151 decolonial reparation, as re-humanisation in higher education 61–75; battles as dehumanising, protesting 67–70; South Africa 63–67 decolonisation 71; cognitive justice theoretical frameworks for 94–96; in universities 103–105 deconstruction 2, 28, 50 Deleuze 47 deliberate imagination 167–168 Della Porta 69 democratisation 71 De Ridder-Symoens, H. D. 80 Derrida, J. 118, 132 Descendants of the Australian South Sea Islander Inc. 102 design fictions 169–170 design speculations 159–160 de Sousa Santos, B. 63, 64, 70, 74, 95, 104 de St Jorre, T. J. 57n9 disinterestedness, value of 20–23 Displaced Persons Program (1945–1965) 98 diversity 8, 38, 57n9, 67, 75; of faculty 134; hidden rejection 128–130; of students 134; without inclusion 131 Duns Scotus 47–50, 52, 57n5 Durkheim, E.: Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The 46 educational philosophy 158 elastic force 82 Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The (Durkheim) 46 Emerson, R. W.: Self-Reliance 49–50 Emersonian Transcendentalism 50, 56 engagement 28, 54, 69, 75, 78, 93, 96, 98, 170, 177; authoritarian 50; community 102; critical 37; ethical 101; importance of 100; international 133–134; transcendent 44 enlargement 96

Index 181

Envisioning Real Utopias (Wright) 165 epistemic authority, crisis of 17–20 epistemicide 95 epistemic vulnerability 14–17 Espinoza, O. 53 Esposito, R. 86–87 ethics of care 101 ethnocentrism 128 evaluation 17–20 existence 16, 19, 20, 38, 46 expertise 17–20 fairness 150 FAP (the funding agency for the Federal District of Brasilia) 153n1 FAPESP (the funding agency for the State of São Paulo) 153n1 Fargoni, E. H. E. 144, 148, 152–153 #FeesMustFall campaign 63, 67, 68 Felton, P. 35–36 FHU see Fort Hare University (FHU) Fichtelius, E. 15–16 FIES see Student Financing Fund for Higher Education (FIES) Finkel, A. 29 Fisher, B. 101 forced internationalization 127 Fort Hare University (FHU) 67 Freire, P.: Pedagogy of Freedom 51 Frigotto, G. 151 Fung, D. 35 future: academic 3; cultural 85; forging 171–172; future-focused reconstructive strategy 65; ‘future-oriented preventive measures’ 158; imagining 168; learning and teaching practices 4; plausible 165; possible 157–158, 160–166, 168–172; preferable 6, 8–9, 158, 161–165, 167–172; preposterous 158, 164; probable 161–165; projected 164; social 85; university 157, 161–163, 169–170 futures cone, as way of visioning preferable future universities 163–165, 164 Future-se 139–154; goals of 145; neoliberal framework for higher education 149–153 Gadamer, H.-G. 52 Gane, M. 130 Gaver, W. 159 Gibbs, P. 32, 57n7, 57n8, 175 Giddens, A. 30, 39 Gildersleeve, R. E. 83, 86 Global Citizenship 128 globalisation 119

Greenop, D. 100 Guilherme, A. 150–151 haeccetias (the thingness of a thing) 54 Haffner, S. 22 Hancock, T. 165 Haraway, D.J. 176 Harding, S. 96 Heidegger, M. 45, 47, 48 HEIs see higher education institutions (HEIs) higher education: in contemporary world 27–29; decolonial reparation as re-humanisation in 61–75; internationalisation of 79; neoliberal 2; neoliberal framework for 149–153; and ontology of travel 78–89; problems in 2; transformative 5 Higher Education and the Public Good (Nixon) 146 higher education institutions (HEIs) 63, 139, 140–142, 145, 153 historical perspective 47–48 holistic approach to the curriculum 37 Honneth, A. 94 Hooke, A. E. 84 hope: critical 31–33, 35; definition of 31; new institutional 39 hopepunk university 166–167 Hoppers, C. O. 96 Hornsby, D. J. 35 hospitality 101, 131–132 Humboldt: Theory of Bildung 53 imaginative resistance 167–168 immunity paradigm 87 inclusion 38, 69, 71, 75, 89, 92–93, 96, 112, 126, 128–131, 135, 142 inconvenient facts 17 Indigenous and Transcultural Pedagogies Research Group 92 Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre (ITRC) 92, 93, 95; Advisory Board 102; COVID-19 pandemic and 99; ethics of care 101; goodwill 99; governance 102–103; hospitality 101; impact imperatives 100; importance of engagement 100; post-feminist approach to collaborative leadership 101–102; vision and themes 98–99 Indigenous Studies Research Theme, Sustainability Research Centre since 92 institutional leadership 4 institutions 1–6; cultural 85, 95; epistemic 22; expert 27–30; higher education

182  Index

2, 39, 61, 63, 129, 134, 139–142, 153, 163; historically advantaged 63, 67; hopepunk 172; and institutional memories 73; polytechnic-type 63; private 113, 143, 175; public 113, 175; ruined 156–157; social 5, 33, 150; university as an 113–115 Integrated Engineering Framework 34–35 internationalisation 8, 71, 78–80, 97, 100, 119, 125–128, 133–135, 145, 147; global and universal in 130–131 internationalization: forced 127 ITRC see Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre (ITRC) JIF see journal impact factor ( JIF) Johnson, E.D. 57n9 journal impact factor ( JIF) 18 justice: cognitive 74, 93, 94–96, 122; environmental 102; epistemic 95, 104–105; social 8, 31, 35, 62–63, 66, 71, 74, 84, 92–94, 96, 98, 101, 104–105, 112, 127, 152 Kerr, C. 18 Kerr, P. 68 Kierkegaard 46 knowledge 13; academic 3, 4, 6, 7, 93; bureaucratisation of 15; capitalism 113; claims 17; creation 4, 92, 101, 104, 105; transferability of 79; transformative 104 Knutz, E. 169 “konsekvensneutralitet” (“consequence neutrality”) 15–16, 19 Kornet, K. 169 Kovalainen, H. A. 50 Lambert, L. M. 35–36 Lange, L. 66, 73 language 28 Latour, B. 115 Lazzarato, M. 86 leadership: collaborative leadership, post-feminist approach to 101–102; institutional 4; post-feminist 104; relational 104 legitimacy 13, 15, 22, 23, 64 Le Grange, L. 71–72 Leher, R. 148 Levinas, E. 88 liberal arts 37 lifelong collegiality/collaboration 134–135 Lingis, A. 80–81, 84, 175 lPlace project 99 Luescher, T. 68

Macfarlane, B. 101 MacLure, M. 28 “Mais Brasil” [More Brazil], 148 Manathunga, C. 87, 92, 96, 101 Mandela, N. 63–64 marginalisation 7, 100, 132 marketization 146 Markussen, T. 169 Martins, C. B. 140–142 Masschelein, J. 85 Mathiesen, K. H. 171 Mbembe, A. 64, 70 McArthur, J. 66–67, 71, 74–75, 94 McMillin, T. S. 50, 56, 56n2 meaning 14, 18, 21, 28, 31, 52, 54, 56, 84, 102, 176, 177 Mello, F. C. de 151 Michaelides, P.: Sound of Silence in Pedagogy, The 57n7 migrant university 83 Mimesis as Make-Believe (Walton) 167 mini-utopias 170–171 Mor, Y. 171 Morin, E. 55 Motala, S. 65, 66, 70–71 movement-centered ontology 85–87 Muthanna, A. 127 Nail, T. 79, 82, 83 Nakata, M. 95, 96 National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) 65, 66 National Indigenous Australians Agency: Indigenous Voice co-design process 103 Nature 49 NCHE. See National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) Ndelu, S. 69 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. 70 neoliberalism 3, 4, 93; four C’s of 2, 126; new global university beyond 125–135 neoliberal university, social (in)justice in 93–94 new public management 17 Ng’ethe, N. 63 Nicolescu, B. 44, 47, 49, 55; Charter for Transdisciplinarity 45 Nietzsche, F. 19–20, 23 Nixon, J. 142, 149, 154n7; Higher Education and the Public Good 146 nomad ethos 84–85 Nørgård, R. T. 159–160, 171 Nussbaum, M. 62, 72, 74

Index 183

ontology of motion 81–84 ontology of travel 78–89; movement and community 85–87; nomad ethos 84–85; university unfixed 87–88 oppression 53, 54, 57n7, 62, 64–66, 68, 70, 177 Osman, R. 35 otherness 131, 134 Oxbridge tutorial system 54 participation 65–67, 69, 99, 100, 103, 135, 152 partnership 35–36 pedagogy of self-cultivation 50–56 pedetic force 83 Peterson, A. 32 philosophy 3, 22, 28, 31, 54; of Alphonso Lingis 80; Arabic Aristotelian 48; of critical realism 115; design 159–160; earth 160; Islamic 48; itenerant 80; Neoplatonic 48; social 114 philosophy of higher education 6, 86, 158 Picoli, B. A. 151–151 Plato: Republic 177 Playful University Platform, The 171 Pogge, T. 150, 151 politicisation 15 Popper, K. 26n2 post-feminist approach to collaborative leadership 101–102 postmodernism 28 post-structuralism 28 post-truth 28, 36 potential, revealing 45–46 Pretzel, R. see Haffner, S. privatization 146 products of imagination 168–169 Programme of Internationalisation (PrInt) 147 Putnam, R. 30 Quantum University, The (Rettig) 38 Raciti, M. 92, 97 Rawls, J. 150, 154n11; redress, principle of 146; Theory of Justice, The 140, 150 Readings, B. 93, 156–157; University in Ruins, The 156 redress, principle of 146 Rensburg, I. 65, 66 Republic (Plato) 177 research 4, 13; academic 100; academic autonomy for 25; costs 25; cultures 34; financial incentives for 147; historical 19; Indigenous 99; participatory 100;

pedagogical 116; politically and economically unfixed 88 Rettig, P.: Quantum University, The 38 #RhodesMustFall campaign 63, 67, 68 Robinson, F. 101 Robinson, Sir K. 36–37 Romano, A. 166 Rüegg, W. 1 sameness 2, 50, 52, 53, 57n6 scepticism: as a pathway to trust, embracing 28–29 Schildermans, H. 85 Scholar Rescue Fund Partnership for Scholar Advancement 128 scholarship: and citizenship, relationship between 36 School of Social Sciences 99 “Science as a Vocation” (Weber) 20 self-control 13 self-critical thinking 50 self-culturalisation 49 self-interested impartiality 24–26 Self-Reliance (Emerson) 49 senior international office (SIO) 126 Shumar, W. 93 Silva Júnior, J. d. R. S. 144, 148, 152–153 Simons, M. 85 SIO see senior international office (SIO) social contract 33–39 social justice 84 social (in)justice, in neoliberal university 93–94 society 5–6, 85–87, 94; Brazilian 146; democratic 65, 95; ecological 121; hierarchically structured 53; liberal democratic 15; meritocratic 140; South African 65; US 30; welfare 13, 150 Solheim, J. E. M. 171 Sound of Silence in Pedagogy, The (Zembylas & Michaelides) 57n7 South Africa: higher education in 63–67 speculative design 159–160 Spinoza 47 spirituality 46–47, 49 SRC see Sustainability Research Centre (SRC) STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) 37 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) 37, 113 stereotypes 66, 74 Student Financing Fund for Higher Education (FIES) 151

184  Index

students 3–5, 7; doctoral 83, 142; ‘#FeesMustFall’ 63; graduate 18, 132; historically marginalised 61; Indigenous 99; international 115, 125–126, 128, 132, 134–135; partnerships 35–36; postgraduate 96; racialised struggle for 68; ‘#RhodesMustFall’ campaign 63; socially disadvantaged 89; South African 62, 66; transcultural 103 Subotzky, G. 63 Sunshine Coast Chinese Association 102 Sustainability Research Centre (SRC) 99 teachers 3–4, 14; academic 15, 17; international 134; and participatory academic communities 171; school 99 teaching: content of 33–35; method of 35–36 Teferra, D. 61–62 Temer, M. 151 tensional force 82 Thai Community Association 102 theory: chaos 38; design 159; Indigenous standpoint 96; social 6, 140; Southern 95 Theory of Bildung (Humboldt) 53 Theory of Justice, The (Rawls) 140 transdisciplinarity 44–57 transdisciplinary nexus 45 transformation: axes of 119–120; cognitive justice theoretical frameworks for 94–96; of university 1–3, 103–105, 111–114, 118–119 transformative knowledge 104 Tronto, J. 101 trust 28–33, 175–177; and dread 30–31; mistrust 31; scepticism as a pathway to, embracing 28–29 truth: post-truth 28, 36 Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) 67 Tuhiwai-Smith, L. 95 TUT see Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) UCT see University of Cape Town (UCT) United Nations International Refugee Organization 98 university: as an idea 113–115; as an institution 113–115; challenge 111–123; designing for arrival of preferable futures for 156–172; design

speculations 159–160; in double motion 115–118, 117; in ruins 156–172; speculative design 159–160; transformation of 1–3, 103–105, 111–114, 118–119; ‘what if …?’ methodology 160–161 university, as honest broker 13–26; disinterestedness, value of 20–23; epistemic authority, crisis of 17–20; epistemic vulnerability 14–17; evaluation 17–20; expertise 17–20; inconvenient facts 14–17; self-interested impartiality 24–26; virtue of being inconsiderate 14–17 University for All Program (ProUni) 151 University in Ruins, The (Readings) 156 University of Cape Town (UCT) 67, 69 Usher, A. 34 Uslaner, E. 30 utopia 111–123; designing for 157–159; mini-utopias 170–171 utopian thinking 120 value 119–120; cultural 8; of disinterestedness 20–23; epistemological 84; intrinsic 20, 51; societal 8 Vandenberg, D. 52, 56 vision 175–177 Walton, K.: Mimesis as Make-Believe 167 wanderlust 79–81, 86 Wandiny (Listen with the Heart): Uniting Nations through Poetry project 99 Weber, M. 17, 20–23; “Science as a Vocation” 20 Wegner, R. 147–148 Weintraub, A. 143 ‘what if …?’ methodology 160–161 world 2–3, 6, 13–14, 26n2, 45; describing 16; higher education in contemporary 27–29; post-colonial 72; re-humanisation of 74; transdisciplinary 49; Western 113; ‘wicked’ challenges 36 World Education Services 141 Wright, E. O.: Envisioning Real Utopias 165 Wright, S. 102 Wynne, B. 28 xenophobia 125–128, 130, 132 Zembylas, M. 32; Sound of Silence in Pedagogy, The 57n7 Zhongyong (Zisi) 56n4 Zisi: Zhongyong 56n4