Western universities ‘learn more’ from Global South collaboration

Western universities’ most productive global partnerships may soon increasingly be with institutions in the Global South rather than the traditional anglophone powerhouses, a leading vice-chancellor has predicted.

Duncan Ivison, vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester, told the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit that he believed the “great entrepreneurs and the great scientists and the great creators of the future” were going to come from parts of the world such as Africa and South-East Asia, “who are dealing with these global crises with a fraction of the resources that we have to deal with them”.

“My hunch is that we’re going to learn more from engaging with the global universities of the South, frankly, than we will be by signing yet another agreement with Harvard or MIT,” said Professor Ivison, whose university is hosting the THE event.

Professor Ivison joked that there was “nothing wrong with Harvard and MIT – some of my best friends work at Harvard and MIT”, but he suggested that “increasingly we’re going to see these partnerships or coalitions growing between ourselves and other universities in the Global North working closely with those in the Global South”, referencing Manchester’s existing links with the universities of Toronto and Melbourne, and how he was keen to pivot those towards links with Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, and to explore “how do we expand those partnerships and create something really exciting and dynamic”.

Professor Ivison, who was in conversation with THE’s chief global affairs officer, Phil Baty, acknowledged that universities were operating in an environment in which governments were ever more wary of academic collaboration with partners in countries that were perceived to be geopolitical rivals.

But, he argued, while governments might take “short-term positions”, universities had to take the “long view”.

“We have to be the institution that is maintaining a focus and value on long-term collaboration with researchers and partners across the world, wherever that is, within reason – within the law, of course. But universities have to take the long-term view, and that means we have got to identify the areas where we can work together and work together well and be cognisant of the areas where there are other issues which might make it more difficult,” Professor Ivison said.

“But the minute we start to pretend that we are somehow an extension of any particular party’s geopolitical position or view, I think we have lost the focus on our tradition. We are ultimately both deeply place-based institutions, but at the same time we have to be global in our aspiration and global in our ambition.

“Great 21st-century universities will be the ones that are able to combine that place-based commitment with maintaining that global aspiration and maintaining that commitment to dialogue across difference.”

Professor Ivison lamented the increasing hostility to international students in the UK, Australia – where he was, until recently, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney – and elsewhere, blaming it on the “toxicity” of the debate around immigration and the decision by politicians of all stripes to reach for the “devastatingly short-sighted lever of controlling international student numbers”.

He said his key concerns as a vice-chancellor were for his students, and how universities could create “true dialogue across difference”, and for how universities could “get our ideas out into the world faster”.

“I think this will define the great universities of the 21st century – they will be the ones that have that superpower of discovery and wonder, but are able to get those ideas out into the world more quickly,” Professor Ivison said.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com