Whether they acknowledge it or not, cultural institutions, particularly higher education, have long been centres of power, influencing intellectual discourse locally as well as globally while profoundly affecting national and international politics across every spectrum from public policy to grand strategy. From their earliest days, universities have operated as specific political entities, as their structures, interests, and objectives inevitably fluctuate with prevailing ideological frameworks. Inextricably linked to the broader social and societal context of their time and place, both their internal and external settings consist of an intricate web of political interrelationships, shaped and propelled by the underlying power dynamics at work behind and beyond their gates.
For instance, in antiquity, not only did Aristotle's Lyceum instruct in philosophy, but it also provided advice to Alexander the Great. As the illustrious Greco-Macedonian emperor and conqueror advanced towards India, he concurrently propagated the ideas of the Peripatetics beyond the confines of the known world. Strabo similarly reported that Theophrastus, a distinguished disciple of Aristotle and the fortunate posthumous inheritor of his master's inestimable book collection, travelled to Egypt to teach the Ptolemaic dynasty how to arrange and manage a library. This endeavour established the foundation for the renowned Library of Alexandria, a cultural and educational powerhouse for the entire Mediterranean area until its destruction at the decline of the Western Roman Empire.
In the same vein, during the Middle Ages, European universities functioned as intellectual hubs for vigorous political struggles. Founded in the 12th century, the Sorbonne, the most ancient university in Paris, was notably divided into factions based on the geographical backgrounds of its students and scholars, with their political allegiances to the French crown inherently mirroring those of the regional rulers to whom they were vassals. This resulted in a situation where, amid the Papal Schism, the legitimacy of both papacies emerged as a major point of contention within the walls of this highly influential university, deeply impacting the conclusions of the Council of Constance.
More recently, throughout the Cold War, museums, colleges, and scientific organisations integrated and exported the antagonistic values of capitalism and communism on a large scale. In particular, the USA and the USSR strategically employed their political systems to advance and disseminate their development theories, extensively and intensively training their political thinkers, leaders, and practitioners to articulate and communicate the essential tenets of their ideological narratives, thereby enhancing their soft power within their respective spheres of influence.
In the 1990s, subsequent to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the US superpower into a hyperpower, which resonated with the concepts of “the end of history” in politics and “the unipolar moment” in geopolitics, higher education shifted from being merely international to fully globalised in a situation of pervasive Westernisation, and more specifically Americanisation, unprecedented since the era of colonisation. Accelerating the transition from modernity to postmodernity, Western advocacy for the construction of a “global citizenship” through teaching and learning involved a vast array of ideologically driven policies intended to awaken the purportedly dormant Euro-American post-national and post-political citizen, presumed to reside within all individuals beyond the real and metaphorical boundaries of the American empire.
However, with the advent of a multipolar world order, the West can no longer exert exclusive control over the rest under the pretence of civilisation, modernisation, democratisation, liberalisation, or globalisation. Consequently, there is an immediate necessity to recalibrate the power dynamics of instruction, information, and innovation, restructuring higher education to align with the rapidly evolving political landscape, disengaging from outdated Western-centric paradigms, and endorsing the rise of autonomous spaces of civilisational dimension. In order to act as multipolar entities and converge their vision and mission with the wider national and regional objectives of these sovereign bodies, our universities must encourage students and scholars to understand the rich diversity of civilisations and the languages and cultures that shape them, rather than adhering to a single global, unilateral narrative that supports Western attitudes and interests in homogeneity and hegemony.
Indeed, learning and teaching have a substantial political dimension. For this reason, contemporary educational processes should strive to cultivate not only skilled professionals but also actively engaged individuals and, above all, proudly invested civilisational actors who understand their place and role within a broader metanarrative that preserves the variety of societies, philosophies, and spiritualities in their traditions and expressions.
While proponents of the Old World typically associate educational institutions with corporate social responsibility principles that enforce Western normative frameworks and undermine non-Western alternatives, universities in the New World should embrace “civilisational responsibility” criteria that transcend their primary functions of teaching and research to participate in the political necessity of civilisational sustainability, devoid of unipolarity and hegemony, and serve the national and regional communities by fostering a new generation of multipolar leaders with the capacity to solve the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Dr Julien Paret is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Alliance Centre for Eurasian Studies, Alliance University. He is a scholar specialising in Russian and Eurasian affairs, with expertise in geopolitics, culture, and international relations.
