This month China has unveiled its new action plan to become a “leading educational power” with universities to play a strategic role in building China’s position as an education centre with “global influence.” All the familiar toolkit of internationalisation is to be strengthened towards this goal.
In making such statements the Chinese education minister is explicitly positioning universities as instruments of its soft power. China is far from alone in recognising the power of international higher education to gain influence for states, from where I am writing in Paris stretches out a global network of diplomats, public research, and federal universities forming a “reseau Mondial de diplomatie universitaire et scientifique” [a global network of university and scientific diplomacy].The French government has also been very active in supporting higher education endeavours that aim to improve France’s standing in the world. One such endeavour was the Franco-Turkish Université Galatasaray born out of the intergovernmental agreement of 1992.
The role of universities as diplomatic actors in the dissemination of “soft power” is well established. However, beyond such a narrow conceptualisation of this role lies a much broader role as actors in knowledge diplomacy, which may well serve the interests of its home nation, but builds in a completely different conception of power and influence based on mutuality, exchange and the tackling of issues and questions beyond national borders. It posits a global shared interest in advancing knowledge cooperation, rather than a singular self-interest of participating nations.
Universities are uniquely placed to engage in more values driven cooperation in this way, but are also subject to the laws and expectations of their home nation and this is especially the case in international relations. At the same time they are engaged in a complex web of cooperation and competition both within and outside their home countries. Knowledge diplomacy as a concept explores this territory and provides a space for debate and exchange.
Diplomatic roles
Why introduce a new “diplomacy” when we already have so many? Scientific diplomacy is well established, as is cultural diplomacy and, more recently, sports diplomacy – think the Paris Olympics opening session – and it also seems that diplomacy can extend to the loan of pandas and such gestures rooted deeply in our cultural and historical legacies. So what advantage does the term knowledge diplomacy bring?
Our project at the University of London has approached this question pragmatically, seeing the term as useful in that it encompasses the diplomatic role of all knowledge-intense institutions and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the issues facing society and how knowledge flows across borders can address these. We see knowledge diplomacy as a project analysing the role of higher education, research, and knowledge exchange in transnational cooperation across a range of processes and stakeholders engaging but not exclusive to higher education institutions.
It is clear that universities play their international and diplomatic roles in a great variety of ways. Historically, communities of scholars have congregated in places of higher learning around the world and have shared learning and knowledge irrespective of national borders. The 330 or so international branch campuses currently operating around the world are perhaps one of the clearest examples of this outreach and necessitate a great degree of engagement between the home university and the campus location wherever it may be.
Many of these have been the subject of political debate and the pattern of sending and receiving countries could be seen as reflecting the hierarchical sense of influence of each participating nation – a pattern that is currently evolving fairly rapidly although still dominated by the US and then the UK. Other large scale projects such as the 64 European University Alliances encompassing 560 higher education institutions are an integral part of European culture and identity. The pandemic, growth of distant technologies, artificial intelligence and large mission driven research projects are contributing to an increased connectivity across borders.
Realpolitik
However, we are far from the flat and interconnected world once envisaged – and in some senses the current geopolitical climate and an increasing risk-based approach to international work is throwing up a host of questions and issues for universities to deal with. In recent discussions on knowledge diplomacy at the University of London and at a Wilton Park event sponsored by the University of Nottingham the sense that geopolitics is evolving far more quickly than policies designed to help universities navigate these was an ever-present theme.
Most of us working in universities the world over are committed to openness and the free creation and movement of knowledge. However, security concerns and national responses to geopolitical events have an increasing impact. Whether the concern be around specific state actors or increasingly sophisticated and AI enabled cyber-attacks.
Universities are deeply involved in the new generation of asymmetric politicking in their roles as creators of knowledge and their facilitation of learning and sharing, as political advantage increasingly weaponizes knowledge – vaccine diplomacy being a recent example. They complain that governments offer partial advice, that advice can vary or contradict according to the agency and role within the state and that different advice is received on and off the record.
Individual institutions often lack the experience and expertise to be able to navigate the risks they face, and are increasingly hampered by the risk framework that aims to support them. Universities do need to develop their capacity to engage with policy and to navigate the increasing complexities of the international situation. Some international departments develop strategies and approaches that are sensitive to this environment while others simply do not have the resources and capacities to be able to do this.
There is an important mediation role to be played with national and international university associations and agencies. One example of such work in the context of the current debate in the US and elsewhere on scientific collaboration with China is the guidance produced by the German DAAD agency on “realistically shaping scientific cooperation with China.” The document takes a risk-informed but “realpolitik” approach to relations acknowledging the sometimes conflicting goals of achieving cooperation in a relationship that will at times be competitive. The agency took as its starting point the German government’s strategy on China and interpreted this for higher education through an extensive range of consultations with German and Chinese stakeholders.
Stewards and champions of knowledge
Coupled with their role as diplomatic actors, universities have a unique and crucially important role in the stewardship of knowledge creation, dissemination and preservation. As institutions of higher learning they have a responsibility to nurture sound epistemological principles and encourage careful knowledge creation and dissemination ensuring at the same time that diverse approaches to knowledge are embraced. This is especially the case as fake news becomes supercharged with AI and the danger of misinformation greatly increases. But this is also affecting the trust with which expertise, specialism and their institutional homes are held.
The context of knowledge and how it is selected and applied is deeply human and socially bound. Thus the humanities and social sciences are crucial disciplines in knowledge diplomacy and our work embraces interdisciplinarity. The work of bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is exemplary in demonstrating how knowledge can be built, shared, critiqued and socially integrated while welcoming and nurturing expertise in the many forms it interacts with combatting the effects and causes of climate change. Indeed, knowledge diplomacy seems to be a particularly apt lens through which to view such global issues and the panels we have conducted on this issue have benefitted from interdisciplinarity as well as academic and practice viewpoints.
What, then, is the relevance of knowledge diplomacy to universities and what are the implications going forward?
In the context of the worsening geopolitical environment universities need to be in tune with policy. Universities have long been adept at balancing competition with cooperation and are indeed themselves highly porous and flexible organisations. Their civic role in their home base is increasingly balanced against their role in multiple overseas engagements and they are constantly buffeted by the winds of politics. Some universities may have the capacity to relate to policy and form their own “foreign policies” if they deem this advisable, but others will need to rely on larger structures that are better connected and better informed. These national and supranational interpretive and advisory structures need to evolve more quickly to the fast changing environment around them.
Universities need to continue to champion their independence in their role as knowledge institutions. While adopting pragmatic risk-informed approaches to protection of sensitive knowledge against malicious intent they need to continue to work against very narrow interpretations of a secured knowledge environment and to champion openness, fluidity and transparency in knowledge.
There is also a vital role for universities to play as stewards and champions of knowledge, its epistemologies and its careful application to the betterment of the world we live in. Although this is the daily work of universities, we are not always very good at translating this work into communication to our wider stakeholder communities and for thinking more holistically about how we do help the world’s globally owned knowledge base – often termed global science – is nurtured, preserved, diversified and made accessible where it’s needed.
A knowledge-dependent world
Many universities, cultural institutions, diplomatic entities and others across the world are conducting work under the banner of knowledge diplomacy and like us finding the concept as a useful lens with which to analyse the issues touched on in the above. Part of our work is to help build this network of networks and the nodes and links between these projects.
Surveying our environment today, we could be forgiven for pessimism about the future of diplomacy and in the raw conflicts around us we do see many such failures at work. However, paraphrasing Tom Fletcher, one of our project contributors, it is in such times that diplomacy becomes more necessary than ever and knowledge diplomacy is an essential part of this work in an increasingly knowledge-dependent world.
