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Anti-science rhetoric and policies, and attacks on the scientific community, have been at the center of neo-nationalist movements and their cadre of leaders. Prominently, both Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s right-wing president often referred to as the South American Trump, follow a similar game plan, including denying the reality of climate change, aggressively reducing environmental regulations and enforcement, and initially calling the COVID-19 pandemic a hoax.

CSHE NEWS RELEASE
Center for Studies in Higher Education
University of California, Berkeley

In recent weeks, elite universities announced some of their largest-ever endowment investment returns. In the Ivy League, MIT led with a 56 percent annual return, growing its endowment from $18 billion to $27 billion. Brown University’s returns also topped 50 percent, and Dartmouth, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University were all above 40 percent.

To varying degrees, universities are feeling the brunt of the rise in neo-nationalist movements and governments, usually led by powerful political demagogues.

Since the late 1970s, when China started re-opening to the West, Chinese universities have made important contributions to the country’s economic development through global engagement: they have increased research productivity, risen in the world rankings and served as the headwaters for downstream commercial development.

In order to achieve these goals, the Chinese state has given universities substantial autonomy when it comes to global engagement and transnational research collaboration.

From party faithful imposed as leaders to scholars sent into ‘civilian death’, institutions face a range of grave threats, argues editor of new collection. Registration required.

Mustafa Özben, an academic, was walking towards his car in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in broad daylight when he was seized and forced into a black transporter van.

“They pulled me out of the van and stripped my clothes off,” the academic told judges of the Turkey Tribunal, a civil society-led symbolic international tribunal established to adjudicate recent human rights violations in Turkey, on Monday.

Özben was locked up in a small cell with just enough light for the camera inside the room to operate.

In assessing the current and future role of universities in the nation-states in which they are chartered and largely funded, it is useful to ask: When are universities societal leaders, and when are they followers – reinforcing the existing political order?

Neo-nationalism is on the rise–a term that describes the emergence, and in some cases revival, of extreme right-wing movements in key areas of the world, often characterized by anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric; economic protectionism; constraints on civil liberties; attacks on critics, including journalists and academics; denial of science related to climate change, the environment, and even vaccines; and the emergence and empowerment of demagogues and autocrats.

In many parts of the world, neo-nationalism is on the rise – a term that describes the emergence, and in some cases revival, of extreme right-wing movements in key areas of the world, often characterised by anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric; economic protectionism; constraints on civil liberties; attacks on critics, including journalists and academics; denial of science related to climate change and the environment; and the emergence and empowerment of demagogues and autocrats.

Over the past two decades, a wave of nationalism has gripped much of the world. Donald J Trump’s surprising 2016 election as president and calls for ‘America First’ policies; Brexit with its elongated uncertainties; nationalist movements in France, Italy, Germany, Brazil and India; and the rise of illiberal democracies in Hungary, Poland and Turkey.

After decades of neglect, the Biden administration appears to be on the verge of developing a coherent federal strategy for promoting the international engagement of American higher education with the larger world.

Thus far, and unlike many of our economic competitors, international engagement has largely been self-funded and pursued by individuals and by universities and colleges, with the exception of what is in reality a small-scale Fulbright program, and vacillating visa policies.

Global university rankings may be distorted by the business activities of the ranker, including selling consulting, analytics and other services to universities, according to a new study from the University of California (UC), Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education

Today, March 23, marks the 153th anniversary of the 1868 legislation that established the University of California, also known as Charter Day. The following provides a reflection on the intent of that legislation and its initial organizational principles that remain relevant today for one of the largest and most prestigious multi-campus public universities in the world.

Becoming a State

Abstract

A little over 40 years ago, in the waning days of his presidency, Jimmy Carter signed the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act launching a transformation in the pursuit and purpose of science in the United States. Before 1980, federally funded science was largely focused on meeting the Cold War defence needs of a nation in a science and technology race with the Soviet Union.

The 1980 act, named after the two sponsoring senators, Birch Bayh of Indiana and Bob Dole of Kansas, initiated in earnest the recognition that the advancement of science was also vital for global economic competitiveness.