UNITED STATES: ‘Jesus’ exercise ban curtailed academic freedom

The Palm Beach Post27 April 2013 Issue No:269

 

A faculty committee at Florida Atlantic University has made a preliminary finding that academic freedom was compromised when the institution banned a controversial classroom exercise that asked students to write ‘Jesus’ on a piece of paper and step on it, writes George Bennett for The Palm Beach Post.

The finding was read during a packed faculty senate meeting on 19 April. While teaching an intercultural communications class in February, instructor Deandre Poole followed the manual for a popular textbook, which said the ‘Jesus’ exercise was intended to teach students that “even though symbols are arbitrary, they take on very strong and emotional meanings”.

Florida Atlantic University initially defended the exercise when a student went to a local TV station with complaints about it. But when a national uproar ensued, administrators apologised and ordered it removed from the curriculum without consulting faculty. Poole, a Christian who said he wouldn’t have stepped on the paper if he had been asked to, received hate mail and death threats and was placed on administrative leave with pay because of concerns for his safety.

UNITED STATES: After Boston, fear of backlash against Muslim students

Dan Berrett, The Chronicle of Higher Education27 April 2013 Issue No:269

 

When she learned that two bombs had been detonated at the Boston Marathon, one thought crossed Ifrah Inam's mind: "Oh God, don't let it be a Muslim."

This is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, America’s leading higher education publication. It is presented here under an agreement with University World News.

The day after the bombing, the student in the pharmacy programme at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston briefly considered visiting Boylston Street, the site of the attack. She decided not to, in part because she worried what the reaction might be to her hijab.

"You couldn't help but be paranoid," said Inam, who is president of her campus's Muslim Students Association.

Paranoia

Paranoia has been in ample supply since the two bombs killed three people and injured more than 175 others. Before the suspects were named in the twin blasts, several young men, mostly South Asian or Middle Eastern, were convicted in the court of public opinion.

A Saudi Arabian national who was injured in the blast and then questioned by the police was erroneously labelled a person of interest by several news outlets.

An Indian-American student at Brown University who has been missing for a month was tagged in social media – in error – as being one of the bombing suspects who engaged in a deadly gunfight with police officers early on Friday morning. [He was later found dead.]

Those stories joined other episodes after the bombing, in which South Asians and Arabs were reportedly assaulted.

"Of course we are concerned about backlashes against our students," said Mody Alkhalaf, assistant attaché for cultural and social affairs at the Saudi Arabian Embassy. "There are still some ignorant people who find stereotyping appealing and easier than dealing with others as individuals."

Bomber brothers

The revelation that the suspected bombers are the brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 19 and 26 respectively, has both confirmed and confounded stereotypes – although the story of what motivated them to allegedly kill innocents remains unknown, and investigators are cobbling together fragments to try to make sense of it.

This much is known: Their family hails from Chechnya, the predominantly Muslim region in the Caucasus with a bitter history with Russia, one fraught with terrorist attacks. The young men moved to the United States about 10 years ago and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

News accounts have portrayed Dzhokhar as seemingly well integrated into American life. President Barack Obama gave voice to the mystery of their motive. "Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?" he asked.

The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, pointed a finger at the United States. "Any attempt to make a link between Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs, if found guilty, is in vain," he wrote on Instagram. "They grew up in the US, their views and beliefs were formed there. The roots of evil must be searched for in America."

A mental health issue

Many Muslim students and their advocates fear that the Tsarnaevs' religion will be seen as the determining factor in their actions, and that the kind of suspicion that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 will re-emerge.

Foremost in many of the students' memories are the efforts by the New York City Police Department to infiltrate Muslim student groups. The police defended their actions, which largely took place in 2006, by saying that terror plots in England had involved Muslim student groups at universities there.

Faculty members in New York condemned the surveillance. Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College of City University of New York, was among them, and she fears its resurgence. She said that several campus associations of Muslim students hang signs during meetings imploring students not to talk about politics.

"If you don't feel comfortable talking about certain things, you don't develop as you should," she said. "That's very costly in terms of education."

Theoharis said different standards also seemed to be at work in how people thought about the Boston Marathon bombings compared with other recent high-profile tragedies in Arizona, Colorado and Connecticut. In those cases, lone gunmen killed and injured scores of innocent people.

The gun-related killings are seen as the work of mentally unbalanced individuals, she said. White people, like her, don't have to answer for the actions of those white killers in the way Muslims are generally expected to after horrific episodes of mass violence of the kind that occurred in Boston.

"We should be looking at this through the frame of mental health," she said of the marathon bombings. "It's the frame we're comfortable with for other tragedies."

Akbar Ahmed, a professor at American University's School of International Service and a former ambassador for Pakistan, sees another paradigm at work in Boston and its aftermath.

The bombing, he said, is not evidence of a grand ‘clash of civilizations’, as posited by Bernard Lewis and Samuel P Huntington. Instead, Ahmed argued, tribalism is what drives acts of terror.

An anthropologist, Ahmed studied 40 remote tribal societies for his new book, The Thistle and the Drone: How America's war on terror became a global war on tribal Islam. Such societies are driven by a code in which honour, hospitality and revenge are paramount. Many of those precepts run counter to the tenets of Islam, he said.

"Islam had nothing to do with it," he said of attacks like the one in Boston. The real dichotomy, he said, is one in which the centre, or the modernised, prosperous world, conflicts with the periphery, or the tribal world.

When violence scars tribal areas in Chechnya, Pakistan, Somalia or Waziristan, for example, anger boils up among its men, he said. They look for ways to fight back. Since they are suffering on the periphery, men in those tribal regions reason, those who live in the centre should, too.

"They respond with their own mutated sense of revenge," Ahmed said.

While the Tsarnaev brothers had lived in the United States since the early 2000s, he said the legacy of Chechen tribalism ran deep. "The code is so strong."

Ahmed said this more nuanced understanding of Islam and of tribalism would ultimately help those who are targets of terrorism better integrate the alienated and disaffected products of tribalism.

He also thought Islam needed to do a better job of offering young men a fruitful path. "They have to get imams who understand youth culture," he said.

THAILAND: University autonomy prompts concern over student fees

Suluck Lamubol27 April 2013 Issue No:269

 

Thailand’s government is continuing to allow universities more autonomy, claiming that this will deliver administrative flexibility and freedom from state bureaucracy. But it faces opposition from students and academics concerned about fees and lack of accountability.

Last month the Thai parliament approved the first readings of three bills that make the three main universities in Bangkok – Thammasat, Kasetsart and Suan Dusit Rajabhat – autonomous bodies, granting executive and administrative power to their councils instead of the universities being subject to the Ministry of Education, as they currently are.

The bills mean that the universities will no longer be guaranteed state funding subsidies per student, as financial responsibility will fall on the universities, but they will receive an annual block grant from the state budget.

Among Thailand’s 172 universities, there are 15 universities that are already autonomous and 65 state universities. The rest are private institutions, community colleges or institutes.

“The goal of making universities autonomous bodies has nothing to do with having more independence or flexibility,” claimed Kengkij Kitirianglarp, a lecturer in the sociology faculty at Chiangmai University, which became autonomous in 2008.

“The state pushes the financial burden on the university to administrate, so that the state becomes less responsible for peoples’ education,” he told University World News.

Kengkij said that since autonomous universities receive block grants instead of per-student state subsidies, they are driven to earn additional income by opening profitable ‘special’ (commercial) programmes and recruiting more students, while facilities and lecturer numbers remain the same. This unavoidably affects the quality of education.

Statistics compiled by the ThaiPublica website show that after King Mongkut Institute of Technology, Ladkrabang, became an autonomous body in 2008, student fees increased by around 40%.

Burapha University, which also became autonomous in 2008, has raised fees by at least 40% and student numbers have doubled, with around half of them enrolling on commercial programmes. It has been speculated that the university might decrease student numbers on ‘normal’ courses while increasing intakes for commercial programmes.

Pakorn Areekul is a former leader of the Student Front against Autonomous Universities, a network of student groups at some 10 universities, which staged weekly protests early last year to oppose the autonomous university bills.

He said the bills would deprive students of guaranteed rights to education and give too much power to university councils. However, the protests did not stop parliamentarians from approving the first reading of the three bills in March.

Pakorn, a recent graduate of Burapha University, said autonomy from Thailand’s bureaucratic system could be good in terms of institutional flexibility and faster academic cooperation with other institutions.

But he called for a proper review of the bills by the university community before submitting them to parliament. Also, university councils should allow more participation by students regarding tuition fees.

“We think the university should have academic excellence, independence and quality, but it should also guarantee that all students have equal access to education,” he told University World News.

Pakorn added that student groups were preparing to submit a parallel bill to parliament, proposing a ceiling on tuition fees, more student participation in university councils and income-contingent loans.

Greater autonomy also affects university employees, including administrative staff and lecturers.

Under the autonomous structure, university staff may trade social welfare benefits – such as family-inclusive healthcare supported by the state – with a 1.7% increase in salary. Employment contracts must be renewed every one to three years, while previously people were employed until the retirement age of 60 years.

“Since the university needs to make a profit, it reduces all the ‘unnecessary’ costs, which affects employees’ job security,” said sociology lecturer Kengkij Kitirianglarp.

“It reduces the bargaining power of academics and staff in the university, which unavoidably affects academic freedom, among other things.” 

GLOBAL: Scientists sent to prison for fraudulent conduct

Geoff Maslen25 April 2013 Issue No:269 

Every year around the world, scientists and other researchers are found to have committed various acts of fraud, often after they were discovered to have manipulated research findings. But rarely do they suffer any more severe punishment than being dismissed and, occasionally, having their reputations irreparably damaged in the media.

Sometimes, though, a fraudster is actually sent to jail – as happened last month when a British scientist was convicted of scientific fraud after falsifying research data. Steven Eaton became the first person to serve time under the UK’s 1999 Good Laboratory Practice Regulations and was sentenced to three months in jail.

Eaton had tampered with data from pre-clinical trials of an anti-cancer drug while working at the now-closed Edinburgh branch of US pharmaceutical company Aptuit.

The BBC reported that in handing down the sentence, Sheriff Michael O’Grady said had the fraud not been discovered, Eaton could have caused cancer patients “unquestionable harm”.

The case began in 2009 when the pharmaceutical company noticed irregularities in Eaton’s data while conducting quality control procedures.

The company notified the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency which, after conducting an investigation, found Eaton had been falsifying results of experiments to make them appear successful as far back as 2003.

Ivan Oransky, a clinical assistant professor at New York University and co-author of the blog Retraction Watch, which collates notices of retractions and scientific fraud, said it was unusual to see researchers jailed for professional misconduct.

Oransky said that in the past five years, the US Office of Research Integrity had found more than 40 researchers guilty of misconduct but only two had served any time in prison.

One was Eric T Poehlman, a scientist in the field of human obesity and ageing, who was jailed for six months for falsifying data in a grant application. He also published fraudulent research alleging that hormone replacement injections could serve as a therapy for menopause when it had no proven medical benefits at all.

Another researcher to face a term in jail was Luk van Parijs, an associate professor of biology at MIT’s centre for cancer research. He was sacked for misconduct after fabricating and falsifying research data in a paper, several unpublished manuscripts, and grant applications.

In March 2011, Van Parijs pleaded guilty in a US court to making a false statement on a federal grant application. The government called for a six-month jail term because of the seriousness of the fraud, which involved a US$2-million government grant.

After several prominent scientists, including Van Parijs' former post-doc supervisor, pleaded for clemency, Van Parijs was sentenced to six months of home detention with electronic monitoring, plus 400 hours of community service and a payment to MIT of US$61,117 – restitution for the already-spent grant money that MIT had to return to the National Institutes of Health.

In another instance, in 2010, an anesthesiologist named Scott Reuben was sentenced to six months in prison for healthcare fraud. This followed the revelation that he had fabricated data and had committed “related misdeeds” in six drug trials.

Reuben, a former chief of the acute pain clinic at a medical clinic in Springfield, Massachusetts, was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, to pay $361,932 in restitution to the drug companies that funded his research and to forfeit $50,000 in assets. After serving time in prison, Reuben had to undergo three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said.

These researchers, however, remain among the few of an undoubtedly large number of crooked scientists to face a court and be punished for their crimes.

GLOBAL: What motivates Brits and Americans to study abroad?

Yojana Sharma06 March 2013 Issue No:262

 

Students from the UK and US have different reasons for overseas study. British students say a major motivation is to work abroad and prepare for a career with international companies, while most US students view a period abroad as an opportunity to travel and explore other cultures, with less emphasis on the academic experience or job prospects afterwards.

Despite the oft-repeated notion that students in these English-speaking countries lack foreign language skills, four out of five respondents considering overseas study from both countries said they felt confident using a foreign language – and of the top 10 overseas study destinations chosen by UK and US students, seven were non-English-speaking countries.

Nonetheless 29% of UK students considering studying overseas said the US was their first choice destination, while 22% of US students chose the UK, according to a new British Council survey, Broadening Horizons: Breaking through the barriers to overseas study, released on Wednesday during the council’s Going Global conference in Dubai.

Only one in five UK students but just over half (56%) of US students surveyed were considering studying overseas, according to the survey of more than 10,000 students from both countries.

A large number of UK students – two-thirds of respondents – said they were not considering overseas study and many said they did not have enough information to make an informed decision about overseas study.

Among the British students who were considering studying abroad, almost half wanted to do so at undergraduate level and half said they wanted to study abroad as postgraduates. In the US, 82% wanted to study overseas at the undergraduate level.

Motivations

British students have a more utilitarian attitude towards overseas study; 82% of UK respondents considering overseas study believed they would need more than their current qualification to stand out from the crowd and secure a good job.

Nine out of 10 UK respondents believed an overseas study experience could give them an edge when applying for jobs, according to the report. Just 28% said they wanted to have fun and explore other cultures, compared to four out of five students who mentioned this in America.

Among US students, 30% saw study abroad as an opportunity to start an international career and 19% as a chance to improve employment prospects. More than British students they pursued study abroad “to develop soft skills and add non-academic weight to their resumés”, the report said.

For UK respondents the top three countries for study abroad are English speaking – the US (29%), Australia (10%) and Canada (10%), followed by France and Germany – with foreign language students preferring European countries and Japan, and business and management students preferring the US, Australia, Canada and China.

Italy is popular among those interested in creative arts and design. And China was one of the most popular destinations with students at UK universities that had institutional partnerships with Chinese universities.

Improving language skills was also an important motivation for British students, with half of all of those thinking of studying abroad citing this.

For US students, top countries for study abroad were the UK, which was named by 22%, France 11%, Spain 11%, Italy and Australia.

For US students, business and management, health and medicine, and languages are the most popular study-abroad disciplines – the UK, Australia and South Korea in particular are popular destinations for students of health and medicine, while engineering students prefer Japan, Germany and China. China is also the most popular destination for students of business and management.

Barriers

The main barriers to overseas studies were cost, including the cost of healthcare while abroad, as well as language, visa issues and leaving behind friends and family.

While for British students “there is a small but increasing consideration that a destination’s tuition fees may be cheaper than those in the UK”, the report noted that some 37% of US students said that access to financial aid directly affected their decision.

The report estimates that overall, for at least two-thirds of US students, financial issues were a potential barrier to overseas study. But being away from home was also a consideration.

“Many students explained that taking a year away from their established course companions, circles of friends and sports teams would, in their opinion, have an adverse effect on their future progress and success, both academically and socially.

“Establishing and maintaining such networks was often seen as more important than pursuing an overseas study experience,” according to the report.

CHINA: Online courses gain popularity at universities

Global Times09 March 2013 Issue No:262

 

The trend of learning through open online courses has made its way to China, as more of the country's top universities unveil public courses. The first cross-university open class for college students in Shanghai kicked off last Tuesday night, reports Global Times.

The city's university course-sharing platform formally began registering students from 30 schools in the municipality, and the course "Introduction to Philosophy", offered by Professor Wang Defeng with Fudan University, became the first-ever cross-university public course, welcoming 1,072 students last Tuesday.

Attempts to open resources at top universities to the public have gained popularity in the past two years. "I have a dream that everyone who wants to go to Peking University can see their wishes come true," said Zhou Qifeng, president of Peking University.

Full report on the Global Times site

 

The trend of learning through open online courses has made its way to China as more of the country's top universities unveil public courses, and the first cross-university open class for college students in Shanghai kicked off on Tuesday night.

The city's university course-sharing platform formally began registering students from 30 schools in the municipality, and the course "Introduction to Philosophy," offered by Professor Wang Defeng with Fudan University (FDU), became the first-ever cross-university public course, welcoming 1,072 students Tuesday. 

Wang's first lecture was broadcast live online Tuesday. Registered students at other universities could log on to watch it. 

"It took quite some effort to register for Wang's class. We call him the Prince of Philosophy," one student wrote on Weibo.

Another student surnamed Zhong, from Shanghai Jiaotong University, told the Global Times that he registered for a course on Western music history offered by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. In addition to logging on for live classes, students are divided into 40 groups for panel discussions, and guest lecturers will also share their thoughts with the students.

Attempts to open resources at top universities to the public have gained popularity in the past two years. "I have a dream that everyone who wants to go to Peking University can see their wishes come true," said Zhou Qifeng, president of Peking University (PKU), on Tuesday.

As a flagship university in China, PKU is posting lectures by prestigious professors online. "We've produced dozens of episodes and will work hard to increase quality and share it with the public," said Zhou.

"This is a great trend. I love the film  class by Professor Dai Jinhua, and I don't need to feel jealous of PKU students anymore," a Beijing-based software engineer surnamed Lin told the Global Times. He added that such courses give people in narrow fields the chance to explore more ideas.

Global Times 
 

UNITED STATES: Tensions reappear at University of Virginia

The Washington Post09 March 2013 Issue No:262

 

 Out of sight, tension has continued to build between University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan and Helen Dragas, rector of the institution's board of visitors, as they struggle for control over the university’s agenda and priorities, according to several people close to the situation, writes Jenna Johnson for The Washington Post.

In recent weeks, the conflict hit boiling point. Days after Virginia lawmakers confirmed Dragas’ reappointment to the board in January, the rector sent the president a lengthy and detailed list of goals to meet this year. Sullivan, apparently incensed, responded by sending the entire board an email arguing that the 65 goals constitute, among other things, “micro-management”.

The university is still recovering from the events of the summer, when Dragas and another board leader asked Sullivan to resign in early June without publicly providing reasons. Faculty revolted, demanding Sullivan’s return and the resignation of responsible board members. They were soon joined by thousands of alumni, students, donors and others. After 18 days of upheaval, the board reinstated Sullivan. 

Full report on the News http://Leader.com site

UAE: Universities reminded of obligation to teach in Arabic

The National09 March 2013 Issue No:262

 

Teaching in Arabic should be compulsory in state universities in the United Arab Emirates, Federal National Council members and linguistic and education experts have urged, writes Wafa Issa for The National.

Lessons taught in English are "a clear violation of the country's constitution", said Jamal Al Mehiri, a cultural advisor in the Dubai government. Article 7 of the constitution states that "the official language of the federation is Arabic", he said. "I am asking that the Federal National Council require UAE universities and schools to teach in Arabic, otherwise we will take to court any university that imposes English on our children.”

The comments and others were made at a seminar on the status of Arabic, its future and its relation to national identity, the last in a series of meetings between the committee and educational and linguistic experts. The committee will issue a report to the council and cabinet on policies and measures needed to enhance Arabic, especially among young people.

Full report on The National site

GLOBAL Australia rises as US, UK universities dip in reputation survey

David Jobbins05 March 2013 Issue No:262

 

 Three UK universities have dropped out of the top 100 in the latest Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, while Australia continues to build its presence. The US, which has more universities than any other nation in the top 100, has lost two universities since the ranking began.

The 2013 rankings, published on Monday, seal Harvard University’s place at the head of an elite 'top six' of Anglo-American universities that continue to move further ahead of the rest.

Harvard University (pictured) is followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of California – Berkeley, and Stanford University.

Although Oxford traded places with Stanford this year, membership of the top six has remained consistent since the rankings’ first edition in 2011, "with the gap between it and the chasing pack widening each year", according to the survey.

The World Reputation Rankings are a part of the ranking system published by the THE, but do not replace the broader World University Rankings published each autumn.

US representation in the top 100 dipped from 45 in 2011 to 44 in 2012 and to 43 in 2013.

Most of the US institutions to suffer significant falls are public universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison (27 to 30), the University of California – San Francisco (31 to 40), the University of Massachusetts (39 to 42), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (which has dropped out of the top 50) and the University of Pittsburgh (which has fallen from the 61-70 band to 71-80).

US winners include Carnegie Mellon University (37 to 26) and New York University (34 to 29).

Outside the US, the UK has the most representatives (nine) in the top 100, but its overall performance has weakened since 2011, when it had 12.

The UK has seven universities in the top 50, with University College London up one place to 20 and the London School of Economics up from 29 to 25. The University of Edinburgh climbed three places to 46 and the University of Manchester has entered the global top 50 for the first time, in 47th place.

But this year the University of Leeds dropped out of the top 100, following the relegation in 2012 of the University of Sheffield and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education Rankings, commented: “Traditionally, the strength in depth of the UK system has been one of its most notable features. Having a large number of institutions with truly world-class standing has delivered huge returns for the sector and the wider economy.

“However, it now seems that a gap is opening up between the best and the rest, with even star institutions losing their lustre. With the coalition government attempting to introduce a ruthless market in UK higher education and concentrating increasingly scarce resources on a select few, it looks like there will be trouble ahead for UK plc.”

Australia rising

Outside the US and UK, Australia built on its strong representation, with the four existing top 100 universities joined for the first time by Monash University (91-100 band) and the University of New South Wales (81-90 band).

Baty said: “In many ways these results show that Australia’s image among scholars around the world is catching up with the reality: until now it has tended to perform less well in the reputation rankings compared with the overall, objective World University Rankings, which come out every autumn.

“These results show how well poised Australia is to make the most of its geographical advantages: while it has strong links with the best universities in the West, it has also made the most of East Asia’s booming higher education scene.

"If it continues to exploit these opportunities, Australia could be a serious beneficiary of the Asian Century, which is great news for its economy and competitiveness.”

Other nations

Japan, The Netherlands and Germany each has five institutions in the top 100, with Germany gaining a new entrant in 2013: Freie Universität Berlin, which entered the 91-100 band.

Canada, Hong Kong and Sweden each has three institutions in the top 100.

Japan remains Asia’s leading nation, but its universities are losing ground to rivals in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, including the National University of Singapore (up one place to 22), Nanyang Technological University (from 91-100 in 2011 to 71-80 this year), Seoul National University (41), and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (up from 81-90 to 61-70).

The University of Hong Kong is in 36th place (up from 39 in 2012 and 42 in 2011) and National Taiwan University moved up from the 81-90 band in 2011 to the 51-60 group in 2013.

Although they remain in the top 50, China’s two globally reputed universities have slipped down the ranking – Tsinghua University from 30 to 35 and Peking University from 38 to 45.

Just 20 countries are represented in the top 100. India and Ireland do not appear, and nor does any African country. Brazil’s University of São Paulo, which holds its position in the 61-70 band, is the only Latin American institution represented.

Israel lost one of its two top 100 representatives, Tel Aviv University, while the Hebrew University of Jerusalem slipped from the 61-70 band to 71-80.

The reputation rankings are based on a global invitation-only opinion poll carried out by Ipsos MediaCT for THE’s rankings data supplier, Thomson Reuters. Over three years, there have been 48,000 responses from senior published academics in more than 150 countries, with the 2013 survey based on 16,639 responses.

Baty said: “It is clear that no university, no matter how prestigious, can afford to be complacent in this fast-moving, information-rich global age. New forces in higher education are emerging, especially in the East Asian countries that are investing heavily in building world-class universities, so the traditional elite must be very careful.

"In the three years that the World Reputation Rankings have been running, we have clear evidence that the US and the UK in particular are losing ground.”

Full results of the survey are here.

* Photo credit: Busch Courtyard at Harvard University. Picture by Rose Lincoln, a Harvard staff photographer.

GLOBAL: Higher education as soft power in the age of autonomy

Yojana Sharma08 March 2013 Issue No:262

 

Higher education is often seen as playing a ‘soft power’ role in international relations. But it is not easy for governments to co-opt universities, and soft power can be both positive and negative, an international higher education conference in Dubai heard this week.

Dorothea Rüland, secretary general of Germany’s Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), said at the British Council’s Going Global conference on 5 March that using higher education for soft power had become more difficult, despite the growing importance of the sector.

In a panel on “Soft Power: Higher education and cultural diplomacy”, delegates heard that the emergence on the scene of new players such as China had changed the landscape of soft power using higher education, which had previously been based on the strength of a country’s higher education and research sectors.

A totally different environment

Many more emerging countries “want to be players. They want to be knowledge economies and they want a very strong position. So I am sure governments will try to promote soft power to position themselves for reputation, visibility and influence,” Rüland said.

And the picture has become more complicated. “It’s harder now because former ‘target countries’ such as China or Brazil are now themselves players in this field. It’s becoming far more competitive. Soft power today takes place in a totally different environment.”

Also, not all universities would necessarily do a government’s bidding abroad. “Universities have high autonomy, and they have their own internationalisation strategies. They know what they want and where they want to be active, so it’s much more difficult for governments to use universities as agents in their soft power strategy,” she said.

Martin Davidson, chief executive of the British Council, said: “The paradox of soft power is that the greater the government involvement is, the weaker the soft power is.

“Increasingly, the strongest higher education institutions are autonomous of governments. Governments may talk of where their national interests lie; but the government can’t instruct universities to act in a certain way.”

What governments can do is help “create conditions of exchange”, Davidson said. But even organisations like the British Council, founded to promote British culture and education abroad, must “remain at arm's length from government in order to work effectively”.

Hard versus soft power

Dr Li Minjiang, an associate professor at Singapore’s Nanyang University of Technology’s S Rajaratnam School of International studies, told the conference: “There’s no such thing as hard and soft power; it depends how you use it.”

Culture can be used to coerce as well as for diplomacy, he said. “There are many, many examples where culture can motivate violence.

“Nation states engage in soft power activity because they want to achieve certain objectives with their national interest. For example, if country A decides to forbid higher education exchanges with country B, then country A is using higher education for hard power,” Li said.

China in particular had been using various policies to improve soft power, including through its Confucius Institutes abroad – they now number 700 – that teach the Chinese language and promote Chinese culture.

“The purpose of China investing so much money is to improve the image of China, globally, to help people understand China. China also provides a lot of scholarships to foreign students – in 2010 almost 23,000 scholarships,” said Li.

“So obviously China has been very serious about using higher education to cultivate soft power.

Some countries would prefer soft power relations to hard power. “We are getting hard power support from different sources, but soft power is not coming,” said Junaid Zaidi, rector of the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology in Pakistan.

“We need higher education for our own development,” he said. “We depend on different countries to get our people trained.”

Panellists agreed that soft power was most effective when the relationship was ‘win-win’. It will only work “if you really have cooperation and not one partner utilising the other”, Rüland said.

’Denationalisation’ of higher education

But in terms of international relations, she said: “In the 20th century, politics was very important, but now education, the power of research in addressing big global issues, has grown in influence. Nations may not play such a big role any more.”

Technology, including information technology and massive open online courses (MOOCs), may well be leading to a ‘denationalisation’ of higher education, Rüland added, which would make its use for soft power purposes even more challenging for governments.

Regarding the MOOCs movement: “We do not know what it will mean in the end and who will join and which countries and universities will feed into it worldwide."

Said Rüland: “We can observe a strong networking going on in the university sector”, and it could significantly change the way governments are involved in promoting higher education collaborations – perhaps excluding them altogether.