Assembling and Governing the Higher Education Institution

Democracy, Social Justice and Leadership in Global Higher Education

Lynette Shultz, Melody Viczko, Lynette Shultz, Melody Viczko

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137522603
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137522610
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

This book emphasizes the inherently democratic nature of education; from those who practice in higher education institutions and are involved in decision-making, to those questioning the methods of reform processes in those institutions. As they are faced with increasing pressures to restructure and change their organizations in line with global institutional demands the foundations upon which their leadership and governance are based are called into question. This book takes a critical approach to understanding higher education leadership and governance. The overarching questions asked in this book are: how has higher education come to be assembled in contemporary governance practices within the context of global demands for reform and how are issues of justice being taken up as part of and in resistance to this assemblage?

© The Author(s) 2016

Lynette Shultz and Melody Viczko (eds.)Assembling and Governing the Higher Education InstitutionPalgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy10.1057/978-1-137-52261-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Global Social Justice, Democracy and Leadership of Higher Education: An Introduction

Lynette Shultz¹ and Melody Viczko²

(1)

University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

(2)

Western University, London, ON, Canada

End Abstract

As higher education institutions (HEIs) are faced with increasing pressures to restructure and change their organization in line with global institutional demands, the foundational assumptions on which their leadership and governance are based are called into question. The basis of this book initiates from an assumption about an inherent democratic nature of higher education governance, whereby those who practise in HEI institutions are involved in deciding, as well as questioning, the ways in which the foundations of higher education are materialized through reform processes. Much leadership literature is focused on building a corporate university that is able to respond to market principles, economic ideology driven policies and practices, alliances with big business and industry, and strategies to internationalize for increased revenue. We take a critical approach to understanding higher education leadership and governance within this global context. The overarching questions asked in this book are: how has higher education come to be assembled in contemporary governance practices within the context of global demands for reform; and how are issues of justice being taken up as part of, and in resistance to, this assemblage?

Therefore, there are two key ideas that underpin the volume. First, the need for a social justice approach that also recognizes the multiple locations from which HEIs are shaped on a global scale. The frame of global social justice provides conceptual and communicative categories to understand complex contexts, structures and relations of injustice (see, for example, Shultz, 2015). Theories of social justice focus on the fairness of conditions of distribution of benefits and burdens in society. However, these conditions must be understood through processes of recognition, as a question of acknowledging actors’ social status (Fraser, 1996, 2009) and its necessary reciprocity, whereby we aim for solidarity in recognition (Fraser, 2007; Honneth, 1995; Odora Hoppers, 2009, 2015). Post-colonial and anti-colonial theorists and anti-oppression activists have shown us how justice must also overcome and reconcile the historical, social and material legacies of colonial practices based on imperialism, patriarchy and racism that continue to exert organizing strength in the lives and relations of people around the world. HEIs have not escaped this legacy, and the durability of issues and intersections of race, gender and class violence are evident in our organizations. We take seriously Fraser (1996, 2009) and Fraser & Nash (2014) analysis, which nests together the conditions of (re)distribution, recognition and representation, deemed participative parity, to provide us with a way to frame situations of injustice in our analysis of leadership and governance of higher education.

The second key notion that is foundational to this volume is that of assemblage (see for example Latour, 2005). Our aim is to challenge the way the HEI is portrayed as a fixed, final entity and to reconceptualize an institution that is built or constructed—that is, assembled—through the interactions of people, materialities (such as knowledge), policies and texts that operate together in the practices of teaching, researching, leadership and governance in HEIs. This aim is lofty, as it poses a significant challenge to how we think about an institution that is often characterized as resistant to change. However, if we assume that the institution is assembled, we can believe in the possibilities for its reassemblage to better reflect the challenges of democracy and social justice, and the issues of leadership raised by the authors in the book. The notion of assembling indicates action and our interest in this book is to explore the practices that work collectively in the performance (Czarniawska, 2008) of higher education, helping us to understand the way in which actors come together to perform higher education itself and, consequently, an interest in the ordering effects that are generated through this performance (Law, 1992, 2009). In this view of higher education, knowledge is generated through these effects and higher education itself is performed into existence. The chapters presented in this book explore the agency, power, knowledge and identity that are the effects of these assemblages performed in HEIs located in many different international contexts.

The authors in this book have all contributed chapters that probe institutional responses to social justice issues in higher education. Collectively, they move us forward in understanding what democratic organization in higher education might look like at this point in time and, perhaps most importantly, they provide ways for us to think globally by highlighting the intersections, compliances and resistances that are emerging in many parts of the world linked through processes of globalization that are material and relational. Their work demands that we examine the organization of higher education within its wider social, economic, political, technical and geo-historical context.

The book is organized in three parts. Part I begins by looking at the wider contexts for leadership and governance of HEIs. In Chap. 1, Chris Shiel and David Jones discuss the role of universities in creating a sustainable world—one of the critical issues of our time and one by which every person on the planet is impacted. Shiel and Jones provide a model for globally responsible leadership that will help universities play a transformational role in securing a better future. In Chap. 3, Eugenie Samier provides a timely discussion of social justice in a neoliberal globalized world by bringing Islamic ideas of leadership into discussion with Western intellectual traditions. She argues for the recognition of the important contribution of Islamic scholars to theoretical and historical understandings of social justice, leadership and the role of higher education in a complex and interconnected world. In Chaps. 4 and 5, we have a historical view of the Bologna process and higher education in Europe beginning with a keynote address given by Jousch Andris Barblan in 2005 presented in Chap. 4 and a response by Susan Robertson in Chap. 5. Barblan provides a call—a reminder of the social role of the university—highlighting the vital functions of a quest for meaning, order, welfare and truth that are at the foundation of higher education. He is optimistic that the university can contribute to building a modern, democratic European society and provides the principles from which a common set of values could be shared for this purpose. Susan Robertson responds to Barblan in a conversation about the ten years since he made his hopeful call. She points out the devastating impact that neoliberalism has had on the university as a public institution and the need for a fully democratic response, if we are to turn the tide. In a time when democracy has become suspect (for example, UNESCO has removed the word from its key strategic documents), the need for strong democratic leadership of public institutions is urgent. In Chap. 6, Su-Ming Khoo, Lisa Taylor and Vanessa Andreotti examine the impact of neoliberal restructuring on higher education. They outline how an ethics of internationalization approach to governance provides possibilities for ethical academic praxis.

In Part II of the volume, authors explore the expanding role of higher education, offering both critiques and spaces for justice. In Chap. 7, Ali A. Abdi reminds us of the importance of public intellectuals as analysts and activists contributing to community development and social justice. In Chap. 8, David Schmaus argues for the inclusion of ethics education, with a focus on cosmopolitanism and global social justice in polytechnical education. In Chap. 9, Su-Ming Khoo continues the focus on public scholarship and highlights the urgency of sustainable human development. She argues for a re-imagined higher education sector that pushes against neoliberalism’s commodification of education through expanded ideas of democracy and economy. In Chap. 10, Tania Kajner provides a timely and important discussion of community engagement and its popularity in the neoliberal university. Her analysis of new public management in higher education sheds light on how surveillance and privilege work in shaping community engagement and scholarship. Concluding this section, Crain Soudien, in Chap. 11, describes the durability of the racial inequality during the apartheid era and class exclusions, and the challenges that South African higher education has faced in constructing a post-apartheid system. He uses the issue of access to education as an example of how this struggle plays out in the political and social relations in governments and HEIs. He argues for institutional procedures that must take us beyond racism and its formalized apparatus of classification towards achieving equity and social justice.

In Part III, authors discuss particular cases where institutions have (or should have) engaged with critical issues in their institutions. The lessons for policy, governance and leadership provided in this section provide outstanding possibilities for transforming higher education for more democratic and just societies. In Chap. 12, Alyson Larkin calls into question how institutional “north–south” partnerships are implemented, and challenges us to attend to power imbalances and a re-colonizing potential when historical understandings of the superiority of Western knowledge define these relations. She employs the concept of cognitive justice to give language to how these relations might be transformed. In Chap. 13, Sandra Acker and Michelle Webber describe the intensification of the academic tenure processes, and how regulatory mechanisms operate through discipline and surveillance, creating an audit culture that limits how academics can take their place in the academy. In Chap. 14, Randy Wimmer provides a narrative account of his experience as a non-indigenous scholar working with indigenous colleagues to create an inclusive education environment for students, scholars and community members and for their knowledges. He argues for new education leadership processes to achieve this.

In the subsequent five chapters, we have case studies from five countries in four continents, each speaking to the impact of globalization and pressure for new public management reforms. In Chap. 15, Girmaw Akalu and Michael Kariwo describe how African universities respond to African Union goals of “complete revitalization” that places higher education as a vital actor in country level development. In Chap. 16, Len Findlay and Toni Samek bring an analysis of a highly contested case of institutional reform in Canada. This is a cautionary tale of attempts to reform a collegial model of governance in an effort to be internationally recognized as competitive and a highly ranked research institution. The authors bring media accounts, public institutional memos and policies to describe this case of reform and resistance, and the challenges of higher education leadership in neoliberal times. This chapter is followed, in Chap. 17, by research about corporatized governance by Ranilce Guimarães-Iosif and Aline Veiga dos Santos from Brazil. The patterns of reform play out in similar ways in the Brazilian context. These authors see opportunities for democratic engagement by professor, student and community leaders that will enable resistance and a shift to institutions that is more focused on the social goals of research and teaching. In Chap. 18, Tatiana Gounko, Svetlana Panina and Svetlana Zalutskaya describe how the drive to be “world class” has changed the organization of higher education in Russia. Their study of institutional efforts to improve the quality of research and instruction was impeded by diminished material supports, resulting...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Global Social Justice, Democracy and Leadership of Higher Education: An Introduction
• 1. Leadership and the Changing Context of Education
• 2. Expanding the Role of Higher Education
• 3. Education, Democracy and Global Social Justice
• Backmatter