On existential threats and the need to reorient higher education to inspire and nurture youth activism

The last few months in 2018 have helped put the challenges we face as a global community in sharp perspective. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) in October estimated a window of about twelve years for preventative action before we enter an unknown territory of runaway climate change. At the COP24 conference in Poland in December there was talk of civilizational collapse unless we act. To be clear, if 97% of the scientific community is to be believed, what we are facing is nothing short of an existential threat. Our ability to address these most pressing challenges is severely restricted by rapidly rising inequalities globally and political polarisation, coupled with an ascendancy of parochial, nationalistic politics. Given this context, the lack of urgency, at all levels, in addressing these challenges is worrying. Even on University campuses, after nearly four decades of neoliberal inspired apathy, democratic disengagement and decline in student activism, young people seem largely detached. The promise of social media to mobilise young people into action remains largely undelivered. Public spaces to encourage and nurture engagement and activism are limited and shrinking. Yet we know that without an actively participating young population, rapid change on the scale that is required, is unimaginable. This presentation suggests that in these circumstances, educational institutional cannot function on the basis of business as usual. Drawing on the insights gained by the experiences of Project 93, an action research effort at a University in the UK, this presentation argues for an urgent need to re-evaluate, re-examine and reconsider the purposes of higher education and to reorient it towards social relevance that goes well beyond the quest for employability. Unpopular as the idea has been in the past few decades, the presentation argues for activism to become central to education again.