Universities and Civilizations. Franck Leprevost

me to get back in touch with the higher education and research landscape of France, and to better perceive its evolutions. I would like to thank Brigitte Plateau and Anne-Sophie Barthez, the successive Directors-General of DGESIP during this period, as well as Danièle Kerneis, Head of the MEC, and all the advisers and experts both from this structure and from the Ministry more broadly, in particular Jean Bouvier d’Yvoire. This dive into France was invigorating. It provided material for a reflection still in the making on the place of academic France in international competition, but which began to be expressed in my conferences in Toulouse (annual congress of directors of services of French universities) in June 2019, and in Paris (joint DGESIP-DGRI² conference of the Ministry) in November of the same year. May their organizers be warmly thanked here.

Thanks to my family for their help. In integrating the graphs and tables, particularly in Chapter 3 and the Appendices, my wife has taken on a dry and technical task, compensated for by the satisfaction of being at the forefront of the trends of the world’s academic elite. The sharp and uncompromising gazes of my mother and aunt reduced several adventurous initiatives in syntax, grammar and spelling to nothing.

      Successive versions of this work have benefited from discussions with Phil Altbach and the attentive reading of Nicolas Bernard, Jean Bouvier d’Yvoire, Pierre-Armand Michel, Virginie Mucciante, Antoine Petit, Guy Poos, Jamil Salmi, Rolf Tarrach and Hilligje van’t Land. They are warmly thanked for the discussions about this text.

      The opinions given here are, however, solely binding to the author. Including possible errors.

      “To have another language is to possess a second soul,” said Charlemagne. During a stay in Ukraine, I asked Tetiana Kuchynska, then-Head of the international relations office at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, if she knew someone who could teach the basics of Russian to a total beginner with a brain slowed down by the weight of years. Nadiia Kravchenko, a young master’s student at KPI, allowed me to take the first steps in this new language in Kiev, the cradle of Orthodox civilization and the Rus’ people. Later, in Saint Petersburg, Irina Baranova, Professor and Head of the center for learning Russian as a foreign language at Polytech, patiently pursued my initiation in to the meanders of this beautiful Slavic language for nine months. A Chekhovian trilogy for a priceless gift. Tetiana entrusted me to Nadiia. Nadiia prepared me for Irina. The three of them opened the door for me to the Russian language and thus to the Russian soul. How can I thank them?

      I’m at a loss for words.

      1 1 DGESIP: Direction générale de l’enseignement supérieur et de l’insertion professionnelle – Directorate general for higher education and professional integration.

      2 2 DGRI: Direction générale de la recherche et de l’innovation – Research and Innovation Branch.

1

      The Origin of a Triptych

      I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

      I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

      I learn by going where I have to go.

      We think by feeling. What is there to know?

      I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

      I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

      Of those so close beside me, which are you?

      God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

      And learn by going where I have to go.

      Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

      The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

      I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

      Great Nature has another thing to do

      To you and me; so take the lively air,

      And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

      This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

      What falls away is always. And is near.

      I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

      I learn by going where I have to go.

      Theodore Roethke – “The Waking”

      (Roethke 1966, p. 104)

1.1. The sun is shining in Berkeley

      The sun is shining in Berkeley this September 2016. The presidents, vice presidents, and representatives of some of the world’s top universities, however, are not taking advantage of California’s fine weather. Gathered at the World Universities Summit, they are debating the challenges of higher education and high-level research in a pleasantly air-conditioned room with the curtains firmly drawn.

      At around 5 p.m., a new round-table discussion ends in the tradition of all events organized by Times Higher Education. Argumentative, consensual and without great surprise. The chairman opens the question-and-answer session. They follow one another. Argumentative, consensual and without great surprise.

      Until...

      A finger rises in the audience. Its owner, an American professor, speaks. His address recalled that American universities had benefited greatly from public funding during the Cold War. Referring to a book published in 1997 (Chomsky et al. 1997), with chapters by nine academics, he pointed out that this funding, however, had a tendency to melt like snow in the sun, as East-West political relations had warmed up. As tensions between the United States and Russia or between the United States and China return – and are likely to continue in some form or another regardless of who becomes president¹ of the United States – will history repeat itself? Will America’s public universities² (whose direct federal resources have been in steady decline for decades) experience a new golden age and their researchers be given new levels of funding? The answer was as expected: cautious, consensus-seeking, and expressing virtuous hope for a renewal of government funding for American universities, independent of any international tension.

It is natural, however, to extend this question and the idea behind it: more generally, do the international tensions in the world have, or will they have, a global impact on universities, especially those who are global leaders³, some of which were gathered at the Berkeley Congress? Is there a geopolitical reading of the various excellence initiatives that a number of countries have launched in recent years? Beyond the nations themselves, can we go so far as to shed light, in terms of civilizations, on the global landscape of higher education and cutting-edge research? In other words, does the evolution of the ranking of the best universities say something about the vitality of the civilizations to which they belong? Are international rankings becoming a revealing thermometer of a geostrategy of knowledge?

      These questions are, of course, so broad that it would be illusory to attempt to give a definitive answer, especially in this section, which is intended as an introductory overview.

1.2. Fukuyama versus Huntington: the revenge of civilizations in the 21st Century

      Nevertheless, let us try to give an initial justification for their relevance. The question from the American professor at Berkeley first of all refers to a situation that emerged from the Cold War. This implicitly ended⁴ with the fall of the USSR in 1991, thus putting an end to the “short” 20th Century that began in 1914 with the First World War.

      This end was seen as a deliverance that went far beyond what was perceived as the cessation of East-West tensions.