GLOBAL: Academic Impact tackles 'unchartered waters'

The first ever meeting of United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) 'hub' universities examined projects and themes being tackled by academics around the world that can feed into the UN system, and ultimately find solutions to world problems.

The meeting in the South Korean capital Seoul from 9-12 August was opened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who launched the UN Academic Impact last November.

It brought together 670 member universities from around the world grouped into 10 'hubs', each tackling a major global issue derived from the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium Development goals. They include poverty, capacity building, human rights, conflict resolution and sustainable development

Imraan Valodia, Acting Head of the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, which is the 'hub' university for the theme of poverty, said the Seoul forum was aimed at better integrating the activities of academics into the United Nations system.

"UNAI has great potential to serve as a contact point for academics engaged in research aimed at improving development policies and outcomes," he told University World News.

Michael Adams, President of the International Association of University Presidents, which is partnering the UN in pushing out the Academic Impact among universities, said there was a lot of emphasis on economic development.

"Academics who did not have the same focus have come together. The purpose of the university hubs is to create that focus," said Adams, who is President of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, US.

"This meeting created a model of regional UNAI meetings around the world attracting regional leaders. You can see the regional enthusiasm," Adams added.

For many it was more than just a regional or global university network. Chung-sok Suh, Executive Director of the Korea Research Institute at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said universities had been collaborating regionally for some time.

But there needed to be something more, such as a broader common purpose than just coming together for research collaboration. "I strongly believe that the Academic Impact will lead to changes in the future," he told University World News.

"A lot of these schools [universities] are already taking very tangible action," said Gihong George Kim, of Korea's Handong Global University, which hosted the event and is the hub for the capacity building theme. He said the forum allowed for 'cross-pollination', building on what the universities were already doing.

For the UN, less than a year after the launch of the Academic Impact, the Seoul meeting "enabled us to understand that this is a process that can viably be driven by universities," said Ramu Damodaran, head of the UNAI and Deputy Director for Partnerships and Public Engagement in the UN's public information outreach division

"We are in fairly unchartered waters and need to let our academic membership guide us. We don't want to give the impression that the UN is trying to instruct institutions on how they should realise UN principles," he said.

As Ban said in his 10 August speech opening the meeting, governments cannot solve the world's problems alone "and that extends to the UN," said Damodaran, adding that with the complexity and number of issues that the UN system has to deal with, it is difficult to plan staffing and human resources to keep up with the demand for solutions to global problems.

"UNAI is a way of having more structured engagement with the academic community," Damodaran said.

For example, the Black Sea network of universities has initiated 30 projects on coastal development that will require the backing of multilateral agencies and the governments concerned.

"This is where the UN comes in," according to Damodaran. He said the next step could be a meeting of the diplomatic missions to the UN with Black Sea universities to find ways of working with the universities to carry out the projects.

"These are ideas developed by [the region's] own universities and these ideas are part of what the UN is mandated to do. Essentially that's the logic of the hubs and early meetings."

"What will be of critical importance in 2012 is that the results of UNAI activities will have to infuse into the UN system," Damodaran told University World News. "We will want to build upon the energy of the Seoul conference, trying to see which ideas and projects can be taken up by the United Nations."

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