CGHE Webinar

Weaponising Universities

Date: Tuesday, 2 September 2025 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Location: All times BST. Teams, registration required
Speaker(s):
  • Professor Shamit Saggar , Curtin University

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?

Booking

Event Notes

Please find the General Privacy Policy of UCL, one of our partner universities, here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/legal-services/privacy/general-privacy-notice.

Other upcoming events

Autumn School
Wednesday, 10 September 2025 9:00 am to Friday, 12 September 2025 6:00 pm
Department of Education, University of Oxford, UK
CGHE Webinar
Tuesday, 18 November 2025 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
All times BST. Teams, registration required
Vera Spangler
CGHE Webinar
Tuesday, 4 November 2025 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
All times GMT. Teams, registration required
Michael Bastedo
CGHE Webinar
Tuesday, 9 September 2025 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
All times BST. Teams, registration required
Joshua Brown
Anthony Lising Antonio
Thomas Cowhitt
Shinui Kim
CGHE Webinar
Tuesday, 11 November 2025 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
All times GMT. Teams, registration required
Maria Gretzky
Privacy Overview
Centre for Global Higher Education

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

3rd Party Cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.