26 January 2020 Issue No: 582
GLOBAL
Trent Batson
 As Australia burns and the global climate emergency proceeds, now is the time for universities to become leaders for global action against climate change by pledging to teach students to prepare humanity to mitigate the effects of the wave of extinction events to come.
GLOBAL
Stephen Thompson Disability-inclusive higher education will be essential for universities to contribute to addressing societal inequalities and global challenges. Despite calls for inclusion, the implementation of disability-inclusive higher education has remained limited. So what are the barriers and what would overcoming them mean? |
GLOBAL-SOUTH AFRICA
Nico Cloete The formation and diffusion of ideology, particularly as it relates to the development of citizenship and state formation, is still a fundamental function of universities, which we neglect at our peril, particularly at a time marked by the rise of populist and autocratic regimes around the world. |
UNITED KINGDOM
Brendan O’Malley
GLOBAL
Brendan O’Malley
 George Soros, the global financier and philanthropist, has announced that he is donating US$1 billion to create a new global university network to foster critical thinking and open inquiry and better prepare students for current and future challenges “amid the current resurgence of authoritarianism”.
SWEDEN
Jan Petter Myklebust
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CHINA
Yojana Sharma
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IRAN-UNITED STATES
Shadi Khan Saif
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INDIA
Shuriah Niazi
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KENYA
Gilbert Nakweya
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ALGERIA
Azzeddine Bensouiah
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AUSTRIA
Michael Gardner
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ZIMBABWE
Kudzai Mashininga
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GLOBAL
Patrick Blessinger, Enakshi Sengupta and Mandla Makhanya
 The needs of contemporary society are changing and so must higher education. It must adapt to the bio-tech revolution, for instance, and find ways to make innovation work for all people, as well as teaching creative thinking, which now is as important as knowledge acquisition.
GLOBAL
Ibrar Bhatt and Alison MacKenzie
 As exploitation of new media makes it harder to distinguish between truth and lies, and fact and fiction, higher education needs to teach students digital literacy and convey the importance of interrogating the different ways that authority and power hide, get hidden and subvert knowledge creation and truth.
GHANA
Fidelia Fredua-Kwarteng
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CANADA
Evadne Kelly and Carla Rice
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CANADA
Nathan Greenfield
 Canada’s University of Ottawa is helping to build capacity in African universities through a dozen African partnerships and by founding an innovation network, but it also sees an opportunity to strengthen its bilingual mission in a continent where French-speaking populations are growing fast.
JAPAN
Suvendrini Kakuchi
 Natural disaster-prone Japan, which focuses heavily on earthquake-prediction research, technologies and countermeasures, is allocating new funds for building resilience against climate change-related typhoons and flooding, and will also boost flood and earthquake resistance measures as host to the Olympic Games this year.
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