Global Edition

‘Universities must stand up and support each other’

Brendan O’Malley

The Trump administration’s push against universities and science is posing an ‘existential threat’ to higher education and democracy and is transforming universities into breeding grounds of compliance, university leaders and academic freedom experts warned the Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum MCU2020.

Brendan O’Malley

A Swedish university became the 1,000th signatory to the Magna Charta Universitatum on 13 November at a global convening of university leaders in London to discuss increasing threats to academic freedom and autonomy internationally, and the growing need for universities to demonstrate their value to society.

Nic Mitchell

After four years out in the cold, Swiss researchers and innovators were welcomed back into the Horizon Europe fold at a ceremony in Bern this week. Swiss researchers can now lead consortia, receive direct European Union funding, and access all thematic pillars and instruments.

Cristina Costa

A paradox has unfolded in higher education: universities restrict generative AI use by students for academic work but encourage them to use it to boost productivity and future employment. This dual message exposes unresolved tensions in how education defines legitimate, creative and ethical uses of AI.

Vu Tran-Thanh

As academics, we are all encouraged to engage, to have impact and to connect with the community. But if we are doing so on platforms where our work can be erased overnight by a fraudulent complaint, are we not building our houses on sand?

Andrés Castro Samayoa

In the decline in black student enrolment we see the convergence of multiple assaults on educational access, a relentless perfect storm of policy failures, political dysfunction and deliberate dismantling that is reversing decades of progress towards improving racial equity in higher education in the United States.

Scovian Lillian

With state systems strained, universities have become vital players in training the professionals responsible for ensuring that children’s rights laws are protected, academics said ahead of a meeting of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child at the end of November.

Desmond Thompson

As pressure mounts globally on the humanities, Africa’s leading writers and scholars used this week’s Nobel Symposium in Literature to argue that the arts are still vital to the world’s intellectual and moral life and should be part of the continent’s wider knowledge ecology.