1.1 Argument of the Book
In efforts to rebuild war-torn countries, policy-makers and planners have long overlooked one of the oldest institutions in contemporary societyâhigher education. The early 1990s witnessed the emergence of post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction as a major international response to armed conflict in the wake of the Cold War. While superpower rivalry had constrained the scope of international intervention which was largely limited to peacekeeping, the new unipolar world order gave rise to an ambitious optimism in the capacity of the West to build peace in war-torn societies (de Waal 1997; Campbell 2011).
An increasingly interventionist and professionalised international enterprise emerged, with standardised approaches to reconstruction and peacebuilding. In Bosnia, Kosovo , East Timor and elsewhere intervention extended to the establishment of international administrations overseeing all aspects of post-conflict transition. Post-conflict reconstruction rose further up the international policy agenda in the 2000s in the context of the âWar on Terror â and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan leading to decades-long projects of nationbuilding . However, post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding have a poor track record and âhas resulted in drastic failure for Western powersâ (Ăzerdem 2016, p. 37). Many nominally âpostâ-conflict countries remain mired in high levels of violence and instability (Boyle 2014). Between one-fifth and one-third of all post-conflict societies are estimated to revert to conflict within five years (Call and Cousens 2008).
On the one hand, this poor track record, at enormous cost to the public purse, has triggered a widespread loss of faith in grand schemes of reconstruction. The Iraq and Afghanistan interventions alone are estimated to have cost $4â6 trillion to taxpayers in the United States (Bilmes 2013). Yet despite spending billions of dollars on security sector reform over the course of a decade, the Iraqi army in June 2014 collapsed in the face of an estimated 8000 militants of the Islamic State . After 15 years of stabilisation efforts in Afghanistan, the country still faces a Taliban insurgency, remains highly dependent upon aid, and lacks capacities in critical areas. On his campaign trail in 2016, President Trump captured the mood when he declared an end to the era of nationbuilding .
On the other hand, recent years have witnessed a greater policy interest in addressing the issues posed by conflict and state fragility . This has been in part driven by the global escalation of conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen , and elsewhere which in 2014 reversed the long-term decline in the number of armed conflicts and total war-related fatalities (Gates et al. 2016). The global refugee crisis has also led Northern statesâin particular European onesâto renew their interest in reconstruction and other forms of intervention as a means to stabilise conflict-affected and fragile states and stem the flow of refugees. With greater recognition that Western âblueprintsâ for intervention in post-conflict societies have not been effective (Chandler 2013 ), and a sustained academic critique of the purportedly âliberal â character of peacebuilding organisations and interventions (Campbell et al. 2011), a renewed search has been underway to identify what has worked, why, and in what context in breaking out of cycles of violence and conflict (World Bank 2011).
In the search for new and more effective approaches to post-conflict recovery, the higher education sector is long overdue a serious reappraisal. While basic education has emerged as an increasingly important sector in conflict settings (Bush and Saltarelli 2000; UNESCO 2011 ) and is now viewed as a fourth pillar of humanitarian action (Machel 2001; Nicolai and Triplehorn 2003), the higher education sector in conflict-affected societies remains neglected in terms of both policy and research . The burgeoning literature on education in conflict, emergencies, and reconstruction (Pigozzi 1999; Davies 2004b ; Kagawa 2005; Smith 2010; Paulson 2011) does not frequently address higher education and the sector does not figure prominently in research on reconstruction and recovery in conflict-affected societies.
There are many reasons why higher education has not been a major area of focus in policy towards conflict-affected and fragile contexts. Higher education is often viewed as a peripheral sector at bestâand a luxury that war-torn societies saddled with more pressing challenges can ill-afford to indulge in. Yet even in the worldâs most âfragileâ statesâmarred by poverty and insecurity âthe aspiration of millions of children is to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers. The failure to provide the higher education opportunities needed to realise these aspirations would entail losing out on the huge talent and potential of young people to contribute towards development and transition.
While higher education has been, and continues to be, a neglected sector, the sector has been subject to increased attention in recent years. The field of higher education in emergencies is developing rapidlyâspurred on in particular by the responses to the worldwide refugee crisis and the war in Syria. While more programmes supporting higher education in conflict-affected environments are now being implemented, too little is known about what works and why in what context.
Over the past decade, however, a limited yet expanding body of research has emerged on the role of higher education in conflict-affected, fragile, and post-conflict contexts. Research on the topic includes analysis of the highly politicised process of higher education reform in Kosovo (Bache and Taylor 2003; den Boer and van der Borgh 2011), donor-government contest over higher education in post-genocide Rwanda (Hayman 2007), higher educationâs complex role in mediating identity and conflict in the Balkans (Bacevic 2014), and higher education reform during conflict in southern Sudan (Babyesiza 2013). There are also a growing number of policy-level contributions, in particular those reflecting on the experience of Northern academics engaged in university partnership and scholarship programmes in post-conflict contexts such as Iraq and Afghanistan (Jarecki and Kaisth 2009) and the protection of higher education communities from attack ( GCPEA 2013b).
The majority of these studies adopt a single case approach focused on particular national higher education programmes, institutions, or systems. Few studies have adopted a comparative perspective that provides a more global view of the role of higher education in post-conflict recovery (examples include Feuer et al. 2013; Tierney 2011). This book attempts to provide such a global overview based on analysis of the complex relationship between higher education and recovery in a wide range of conflict-affected contexts. While these contexts vary widely in terms of a range of contextual factorsâincluding per capita income, levels of violence, types of conflict, and higher education enrolment ratiosâthere are many commonalities in âtypicalâ post-conflict environments that make such an exercise valuable (Berdal 2009).
Furthermore, existing research has focused almost exclusively on how to protect (Quinn 2010; Novelli and Selenica 2014) or rebuild (Brunskell-Evans and Moore 2012; Johnson and Hoba 2015) the sector and not how higher education can contribute to recovery. While rebuilding and protection will be addressed in early chapters, the book will later contribute towards redressing this gap by analysing the roles higher education can play in various dimensions of recovery in conflict-affected environments: its role in conflict and peacebuilding, emergencies, reconstruction, development, and statebuilding. While each of these interventionary approaches differs in terms of how they view the problem of engaging with conflict-affected contexts, in none of the approaches is the role of higher education sufficiently understood and appreciated. By analysing the often-neglected mechanisms and processes that link higher education to recovery, it is argued here that higher education is connected to many of the major challenges faced in conflict-affected environments and that the sector can, if harnessed strategically, act as a catalyst for recovery in the aftermath of war.
1.2 Scope and Definitions
This book aims to provide a broad overview of how higher education can contribute to recovery from conflict. It will chart...