Weaponising Universities
- Professor Shamit Saggar , Curtin University
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Hostility to seats of learning is now bundled into general ambivalence towards higher education. Besides rows about exploiting students, corporate highhandedness, eye-watering executive pay and lukewarm engagement with societal needs, universities have been dragged into disputes over ideological indoctrination, freedom of speech and support for violent extremism.
I examine the following disputes:
- Luxury goods. Top universities have been caught red-handed serving unresponsive, global elites.
- Exuberance. Campuses have become one-sided engines of indoctrination.
- By-products. Higher education’s training of sharp minds has also bred progressive, values-led opinion.
- Inequity. Universities have created opportunities for new participants but not enough and unevenly.
- Values. Higher education has been poorly served by corporate managerialism and structures.
- Engagement. Academics’ loyalties to knowledge and truth renders them as aloof and monk-like.
Are some critics asking universities to upend their universal mission to inquire, teach, share and apply? Universities remain the best machine invented to discover, test, curate and distribute knowledge at scale. They embody the human genius of combining intelligence, toolmaking and cooperation. This is an overlooked feature.
Therefore, is it fair to conclude that weaponisation is unavoidable?
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In addition to being ACSES’s Executive Director, Shamit is a Visiting Professor at King’s College, London and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Essex. He has 36 years of experience in international academia, government, business, regulation and philanthropy, is a former Senior Advisor to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and a Knowledge Exchange Fellow in the David Cameron administration. Shamit was previously Director of the UWA Public Policy Institute. He has held personal chairs, visiting professorships and senior management roles at Essex, Sussex, Liverpool and Queen Mary in the UK, and at UCLA, Yale and Toronto in North America. He has published six books, 70+ journal papers and book chapters, and 20+ policy reports. His research capture exceeds $70m research income.