Universities and Conflict

The Role of Higher Education in Peacebuilding and Resistance

Juliet Millican, Juliet Millican

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351607476
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book uses a series of case studies to examine the roles played by universities during situations of conflict, peacebuilding and resistance.

While a body of work dealing with the role of education in conflict does exist, this is almost entirely concerned with compulsory education and schooling. This book, in contrast, highlights and promotes the importance of higher education, and universities in particular, to situations of conflict, peacebuilding and resistance. Using case studies from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, this volume considers institutional responses, academic responses and student responses, illustrating these in chapters written by those who have had direct experience of these issues. Looking at a university's tripartite functions (of research, teaching and service) in relation to the different phases or stages of conflict (pre conflict, violence, post conflict and peacebuilding), it draws together some of the key contributions a university might make to situations of instability, resistance and recovery. The book is organised in five sections that deal with conceptual issues, institutional responses, academic-led or discipline-specific responses, teaching or curriculum-led responses and student involvement. Aimed at those working in universities or concerned with conflict recovery and peacebuilding it highlights ways in which universities can be a valuable, if currently neglected, resource.

This book will be of much interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, education studies and IR in general.

Part 1

Conceptual issues

1 The social role and responsibility of a university in different social and political contexts

Juliet Millican

Introduction

Universities have existed as centres of higher learning and research, in very different parts of the world since the first millennium ad, (records in Bologna University in Italy and Fez in Morocco date back to at least 1050). Debates about their focus and mission have persisted for much of that time, and include whether they should primarily be for ‘public’ or ‘private’ good (Watson et al. 2011: 24) and prioritise the development of individuals, the creation of new knowledge or the delivery of service to society. These three areas of activity, often referred to as a university’s tripartite mission, have coexisted, always with some kind of contribution to the ‘broader good’ either in relation to the development of godly gentlemen, service to the church or notions of citizenship (Bourner 2008). However since the end of the last century a university’s relationship and engagement with society have become increasingly evident in global debates around forms of higher education appropriate to a new millennium. Such debates suggest that the generation of new knowledge and the education of young people are beneficial to society and as such the third mission is implicit in the other two. While research on social engagement suggests that this is often the case in peacetime (Benneworth 2013; Bourner 2008; Duke 2008; Furco 2010; Jacoby 2009; Millican and Bourner 2011; Smith and Whitchurch 2002; Watson et al. 2011), it ignores some of the pressures inherent in conflicted, occupied or divided societies and does not take full account of the inequalities that universities are able to generate or uphold. Experiences in conflict affected situations have shown that universities, like other forms of education, also have ‘two faces’ (Bush and Saltarelli 2000; Davies 2005, 2010) and can function as both a positive and a negative force. Knowledge, like learning, is capable of bringing groups together and mediating understanding or adding further to divisions within society. The development of large numbers of unemployed graduates, the exacerbation of inequalities through selected access, the prioritisation of particular forms of knowledge can all serve to fuel violence or unrest in tense circumstances or among rival ethnic groups. Bordieu (in Naidoo 2004; Marginson 2008) suggests that although the broader ‘field’ of higher education might present itself as relatively autonomous with its own values and behaviours, it prioritises certain forms of knowledge, provides access to particular social groups, and is equally able to contribute to the naturalisation of structures of domination and oppression.

This chapter unpacks some of these claims by exploring the different positions that universities have taken historically, the changing nature of the tripartite mission, the emergence of recent debates about university engagement and the different forms this might take. It then looks at factors that prevent or inhibit meaningful engagement with society, the particular relevance of these in situations of conflict or resistance and the ways in which universities might contribute to local development or the building of peace.

The three missions of a university

Universities are often described as having a tripartite mission: to provide for the higher education of students, to contribute in some way to the advancement of knowledge and to benefit those beyond their walls (Bourner 2008; Smith and Whitchurch 2002). The term ‘tripartite’ may be misleading, and often those actions which benefit society are embedded within teaching and or research, but as individual aims they have appeared in universities’ mission statements in some form or another since the earliest institutions. Medieval universities described their broader social responsibility in terms of the ‘salvation of the immortal souls’ while early modern universities were more concerned with ‘contributing to the civilisation of those would hold high office in the learned professions and the young nation state’. The Humboldtian university of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reframed a university’s mission around a central concern with the advancement of knowledge, and with ‘contributing to reducing poverty and disease through greater understanding and control of the world in which we live’ (Bourner 2008: 18). Service to society can generally be identified somewhere as an impetus behind the founding of most institutions and is present somewhere in their original goals.

More recently the concept of a third or tripartite mission as general shorthand for the contributions that universities might make to external actors has begun to be seen more in terms of a local or regional responsibility; not just to a broader social good, but in relation to the city or community in which an institution is based (Benneworth and Charles 2013; Laredo 2007). As such it is articulated as much more context dependent, involving connections with organisations and institutions in the immediate locality (Perry & May 2012 in Pinhero & Benneworth 2012). Universities have been described as ‘anchor institutions’ (Birch, Perry and Taylor Jr. 2013; Goddard et al. 2014; Parham, Green and Lloyd 2013) able to make a significant contribution to their local economies or communities, durable over time and increasingly influential, as former power structures – of church or local government have begun to decline. Watson et al. (2011: 25) observed that:

Higher education now makes an appearance in virtually every ‘strategy’ set by public authorities at all levels. Thus there will be a role for higher education in economic development, in supporting the compulsory phase of education, in health and social care and in criminal justice at the local, regional and national levels… . Sometimes they will stress the role of higher education in conflict resolution, in community relations and in social cohesion.

In an earlier publication, Watson (2007) identified three broad theories outlining the purpose of higher education: as liberal institutions dedicated to ‘self-realisation and social transformation’ – able to support social mobility and improve or transform society for the greater good, as organisations for professional formation – providing expertise and vocational identity, able to develop a future generation of citizens and professionals, and as research engines allied to regional and national ambitions for economic growth, capable of growing businesses and becoming a source of national pride.

However higher education is not always beneficial and from each perspective there is the capacity for universities to make a positive or a negative contribution to society. While as liberal institutions they are able to promote critical thinking and understanding and discourage narrow prejudice, they are equally able to operate as a means of social selection or exclusion, contributing to social inequality and preventing social mobility through processes of discrimination. As institutions dedicated to professional formation they are also capable of developing self-interested specialists primarily interested in personal gain and as research engines using research to generate economic profit, ignoring broader ethical responsibilities. If universities are to be a positive actor in situations of conflict or injustice (and conflict is often fuelled or sustained by the existence of underlying injustices) it is important to develop a more critical understanding of the nature of engagement, the reasons for its recent re-emergence into global debates and what social responsibility means for institutions in challenging circumstances.

Discourses of engagement: mutual benefit, collaboration, co-creation

The concept of mutual benefit has begun to accompany notions of engagement in more recent university strategy documents, stressing the value that can be gained by students, academics and civil society from active involvement with the locality. There is the sense that these need not be in opposition to each other but that the external roles a university might play may be equally beneficial internally and contribute to the quality of teaching and research.

An alternative view of universities, now emerging, locates them more centrally and directly in the development process. Teachers, researchers and students are seen as development actors, collaborating with others to help meet urgent social needs, and in the process enriching their own learning and that of the diverse people they work with. Community service by academics moves from the margins of the university, from being defined as a charitable donation over time and above what academics really get paid to do, to become an integral part of intellectual discovery. In short universities become socially engaged.

(Boothroyd and Fryer 2004: 2)

These have come to replace earlier twentieth-century discourses of ‘service’ that emerged in the Land Grant colleges in the US. Here a university was conceptualised as having a responsibility to provide service for society, in the form of ‘service learning’ where students spent part of their accredited study time in supporting local civil society organisations, or gathering knowledge for society where students or academics use their research skills to tackle questions posed by civil society using academic expertise. The university was presented as the expert, with acknowledged privilege, providing time in service of others. The Global University Network for Innovation, established in 1999 and supported by UNESCO, was formed with the explicit purpose of strengthening the role of higher education in society and contributing to the renewal of the visions and policies of higher education across the world under a vision of public service, relevance and social responsibility (Guni mission statement, their italics). However since the year 2000 there has been an increasing realisation of the value of different forms of knowledge and the importance of working on a more equal basis with practitioners, professionals and community members to share or broker knowledge. Prompted by global debates on the nature of higher education in a new millennium social responsibility and external engagement have begun to be described as key to a university’s stability and sustainability (Zlotkowski 1999 in Furco 2010; Bourner 2008; Millican and Bourner 2011; Duke 2008). GUNI’S 2013 World Report (Escrigas et al. 2014: xxxiv), ‘Knowledge, Engagement and Higher Education: Contributing to Social Change’ discusses the importance of using knowledge to confront key social issues, locally and globally:

Knowledge democracy is in part the idea that knowledge is to be measured through its capacity to intervene in reality and not just to represent it… . Now is the moment to widen the scope of knowledge in society and to move beyond creating socioeconomic well-being towards a true knowledge-based society, through engagement with citizenry as a whole, at all scales of activity, to dealing with the problematic issues of the day and the global issues.

Challenges to the predominance of academic knowledge and shift in the way that knowledge is understood, include Gibbons’ concept of ‘mode 1’ knowledge generation (pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expert-led, supply-driven, hierarchical, peer-reviewed and almost exclusively university-based) and ‘mode 2’ (applied, problem-centred, trans-disciplinary, heterogeneous, hybrid, demand-driven, entrepreneurial, network-embedded etc.) (Gibbons et al. 1994). The gradual but global growth of participatory and co-created research reflect the recognition that universities learn from broader societal groups and an appreciation of the mutual benefits that could come from collaboration. By prioritising these engagement becomes more sustainable, equally valuable to both partners and more likely to have a positive rather than a negative impact. Terms such as ‘student community engagement’ have begun to replace ‘service learning’, knowledge exchange to be used instead of knowledge transfer and science shops to be described in terms of responsible or co-created research working with rather than for civil society.

Background to current notions of university engagement

These more recent understandings of engagement, as mutually beneficial but both locally connected and globally concerned, are framed by a number of significant overarching events.

In 1990 a number of universities committed to incorporating environmental and sustainability literacy into the broader university curriculum signed a declaration while on retreat in Talloires in France. This led to the founding of the Talloires Network, an international association of institutions committed to strengthening the civic roles and social responsibilities of higher education and implementing the recommendations of the declaration they signed. Convened originally as a meeting between heads of 22 universities, the network has since grown into a global movement with over 350 member institutions in 77 countries and a number of regional groups.

The World Declaration of Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century, held in Paris in 1998, cited education as a fundamental pillar of human rights, democracy, sustainable development and peace and gave higher education a particular role to play in this. Their final declaration suggested that ‘the solution of the problems faced on the eve of the twenty-first century will be determined by the vision of the future society and by the role that is assigned to education in general and to higher education in particular’ and concluded that it was the duty of higher education to ensure ‘the values and ideals of a culture of peace prevail and that the intellectual community should be mobilized to that end’ (1998: 2).

The Council of Europe conducted a large piece of research into ‘Higher Education as sites of Citizenship in 2002’ which looked at how far universities might contribute to a broader sense of citizenship in Europe and the mechanisms through which it might do this. Their report concluded that universities had a part to play in sustaining greater participation in the political life of the community and that involving students and academics in the decision-making and governance of the university was valuable preparation for this. However it also recognised that the extent to which they might be able do this is shaped by larger historical political and economic factors. This is particularly pertinent in view of the increased marketisation and privatisation of universities during the decades that have ensued, and the political restrictions that governments might place on universities in relation to political life, particularly in conflict, pre-conflict or post-conflict situations, and will be discussed in more depth later in this chapter.

UNESCO’s conference in World Higher Education in 2009 began to recognise rapid changes in the higher education sector and the impacts of massification, communications developments, the knowledge economy and globalisation on a university’s ability to serve society and work across borders. The final communique, called ‘The New Dynamics of Higher Education and Research for Societal Change and Development’ defined higher education as a public good but made it ‘the responsibility of all stakeholders, especially governments’ to ensure this was possible. The communique discussed the social responsibility of higher education to ‘advance our understanding of multifaceted issues, which involve social, economic, scientific and cultural dimensions and our ability to respond to them’ and attributed to universities a leading role in generating global knowledge and addressing global challenges. The final report makes a commitment to institutional autonomy, academic freedom, interdisciplinarity and active citizenship suggesting that the core functions of research, teaching and service to the community should contribute to sustainable development, peace, well-being and the realisation of human rights. It reiterates a university’s role in the education of ethical citizens, the construction of peace, the defence of human rights and democratic values (UNESCO 2009: 2).

The role of a university in citizenship, democracy and peacebuilding reappears in the British Council’s Going Global Conference for Leaders of International Education in 2013. Here it was formally acknowledged that ‘there is increasing interest in the role of higher education in post-conflict societies, and the potential contribution it can make to long-term peacebuilding’ (British Council 2013: 37, in Omeje 2014: 2). Omeje acknowledges the growing work that takes place in centres for Conflict Research and Peacebuilding but also discussed the broader role a university might play in supporting po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Conceptual issues
• Part 2 Institutional responses to conflict or occupation
• Part 3 Academic-led responses, working through specific disciplines with governments and their local communities
• Part 4 Student-led responses of protest, resistance and peacebuilding
• Part 5 Implications for the future
• Index