BERKELEY, CA — In a new analysis published in University World News, John Aubrey Douglass, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), argues that the global academic community has entered a "neo-academic Cold War." This shift, he contends, is systematically dismantling decades of international cooperation, open science, and institutional autonomy.
The commentary, titled "Neo-academic Cold War is closing the door to global science," tracks the devolution from the optimistic "globalization" era of the 1990s to a current landscape defined by "transnational paranoia" and geopolitical silos. Douglass identifies four emerging, semi-autonomous networks of scientific and academic engagement—centered respectively around a retreating United States, a rising China, a strategically expanding European Union, and a group of "multi-aligned" nations in the Global South.
"Within the divisive geopolitical world, rebuilding a global science ecosystem that depends on the shared values of open science, as well as on mutual trust, long-term relationships, capacity building and formal agreements, will be a monumental international challenge." Douglass noted.
Read the full commentary.