The Rise of Neonationalism and its Impact on European Higher Education

Abstract

The panel explores the different ways in which rising new nationalisms in Europe affect higher education policy and considers implications for the future of the European Higher Education Area. In recent decades, post war ideals of harmonization and integration in the European space have been increasingly challenged by the resurgence of nationalist ideals and ensuing Eurosceptic/anti-European sentiment. The significance of international alliances and cooperation at the very heart of the European integration project is challenged by growing isolationist and protectionist agendas emphasizing the primacy of the nation state as the locus of political sovereignty, affiliation, and identity. These developments are prompting critical transformations to the higher education domain and rendering university internationalization, university autonomy and freedom of research increasingly vulnerable. Central to the discussion is the freedom of research and a growing willingness of governments to intervene in or influence this freedom, and the tensions arising between the aspirations for enhanced internationalization/integration and the trends towards re-nationalisation. Of note are the recent attacks on academic freedom surfacing in EU member states, including the Hungarian government’s 2016 decision to outlaw the Central European University, and Polish government pressures against holocaust research which implicates Poland. These and related trends have evoked heightened concern among EU officials for the safeguarding of academic freedom as a core value of the Union. Most recently, both the EHEA and European Research Area’s (ERA) 2020 ministerial meetings introduced declarations calling for the protection of academic freedom and freedom of research in Europe (Rome and Bonn Communiqué respectively). The turn inwards to ‘national solutions’ also poses a threat to academic cooperation and mobility as exemplified with the repercussions of Brexit on the ability of UK universities to collaborate and exchange on the European stage. Europe’s universities today find themselves in a tug of war between ideals of integration and internationalization on the one hand, and parochial notions of safeguarding the “nation’s” wellbeing on the other. The University provides an unparalleled lens to explore the impacts of neonationalism on the European project. Universities were instrumental in the nation-building efforts of 19th century Europe and are to this day difficult to decouple from political institutions and processes within the state. At the same time, Universities have also been viewed as critical agents in supporting and deepening the European integration project, through programs like Erasmus and the Bologna Process reforms. Based on fieldwork in different European countries and drawing on a combination of higher education policy studies and nationalisms studies, the panel aims to highlight the context-specific ways in which neonationalism affects higher education policy and practice. Developing concepts and sharing findings and insights from varying national contexts, the papers will highlight the different domains around which higher education and new nationalisms interact and offer a critical reflection on the institutional role of the University in European society.

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