13 March 2022  Issue No: 683

As 1.5 million refugees pour into Poland to escape the shelling and bombing of Ukraine, Polish universities are offering dormitories, sports halls and cultural centres as shelter, and parliament has permitted them to find ways for Ukrainian refugee academics and students to continue their work and study.

The evacuation of about 700 Indian students trapped in Ukraine’s besieged city of Sumy, pummelled by Russian shells, was completed on Tuesday 8 March with all the students reaching Poltava in Central Ukraine, 150km from Sumy, before being taken to Western Ukraine to be flown home.

A definitive new global higher education report providing detailed transnational data on a sector that is notoriously difficult to quantify shows that the Global South is dramatically altering global higher education patterns but that few trends in the sector are truly global.

Big differences in priorities for tackling gender equality in universities around the world emerged, with Australia and New Zealand leading the way, in a new report and online discussion involving experts from five higher education systems, held on 8 March to mark International Women’s Day.

With the right team, a culture that supports the sharing of differing points of view, and a process that enables the team to move beyond the react-respond mode, crises can be managed effectively and institutions can come out stronger as a result.

Universities are global centres of knowledge and learning but only a highly filtered section of our global communities can enjoy their benefits and contribute to their powerful knowledge systems. It is time to democratise knowledge and move towards more inclusive participatory universities for all.

Disinformation and fake news are being used not only by individuals and organisations, but also by state actors to destabilise entire societies. Several institutes, some linked to universities, are working to expose disinformation. Importantly, they are also training the next generation of disinformation analysts.

In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Commission has announced a suspension of cooperation with Russian entities in research, including payments under existing contracts, as have several EU governments, but some European university organisations and experts favour a more nuanced approach.