Populism – Is the academy on the wrong side of history?

The election of Donald Trump as United States President in November 2016 and the vote in the United Kingdom five months earlier to leave the European Union have highlighted the difficulties universities face in coming to terms with a rising tide of populism. It is by no means confined to the US and the UK but is a wider phenomenon across Europe and globally.

This is the subject of the 2017 Worldviews Lecture on Media and Higher Education, "Populism and the Academy: On the 'wrong side' of history", for which University World News is a media partner.

In a live video lecture at the University of Toronto, Canada, on 5 April, Dr Peter Scott – professor of higher education studies at the UCL Institute of Education in the UK and previously a vice-chancellor of Kingston University, UK, and the former editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement – will discuss the problems universities face in this context and how they can react.

He says the demand for evidence-based policy expertise is being “trumped by emotion” and the distrust of experts is “palpable”. Most menacing is that higher education is being bracketed with those other global elites, political and financial, that have been the target of populist revolt. “It has almost felt in the past 12 months that we have ended up on the ‘wrong side’ of history,” he says.

Is it universities' fault? Is the drive to become world-class universities turning off those left behind? Is the rise of populism a wake-up call, not just to speak up more loudly for open societies, but also to recover the sense of social purpose universities are in danger of losing?

These are among the questions Scott will raise in his lecture and that will be addressed by a panel discussion on the challenges Canadian universities face in dealing with the rise of populism.

The lecture in Toronto is a free public event but advance registration is required. The event will be webcast live on 5 April and an archived recording will be available following the lecture. You can register here.

Worldviews is a forum to advance mutual understanding of the relationships, challenges and the potential of the academy and media.