Post-Cold-War governance arrangements in Europe: the university, the nation state, and international polities

This paper explores the contested neo-nationalist trends in Europe and its impact on European higher education (Bieber 2018, Brack, Coman & Crespy 2019, Chernilo 2020, Gingrich & Banks 2006, Delanty 2021, López-Alves & Johnson 2019). It also examines recent actions taken by the EU to counteract these current trends. The presentation of this paper and the panel as such, is based on preliminary studies that allow us to see the emerging contours of how practices concerning the nation-state such as ‘timely risk-management’, ‘economic nationalism’ and ‘welfare state protectionism’ are involved in the creation and shaping of what may perhaps become a new ontology of the university. The EU increased its strength with the Maastricht Treaty, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and one year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This tightening of the European integration process plays a crucial role for universities. On one hand, the tightening launched extensive higher education reforms (Brøgger 2019), and on the other hand became a breeding ground for new nationalisms opposing ‘the European project’, including the Brussels-based EU authorities of federal Europe. Born as international/European institutions in the Catholic Middle Ages and reborn as significant building blocks for the establishment of nation states and vehicles for forming national bureaucracies in the 19th century, Western universities have been at the forefront of both national development and European integration. This paper argues that the rise of new nationalisms in higher education (Brøgger 2021, Van der Wende 2021) is affiliated with post-Cold War readjustments occupied with asserting the nation’s right to intervene in and limit the agency of so-called autonomous and self-governing institutions under the nation-state. Taking a point of departure in an introduction to the research project ‘Asserting the nation. Comparative studies on the rise of neo-nationalism in higher education’ funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, this paper explores and discusses the various domains in which the new nationalisms seem to manifest in higher education. Overall, the domains seem to concern the autonomy and governance of the university and includes new practices in domains such as freedom of research and international engagement, practices concerning how and to what degree national politicians or governments influence, intervene in or restrict i) the freedom of research and ii) universities’ ability to engage with the international community. The presentation will reflect on both aspects drawing on studies on Danish higher education and the EU. The studies are still ongoing and based on extensive document analysis and interviews with policy officials from the Directorate General for Education and Culture, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, the Eurydice network, members of the European Parliament, the European Commission and NGO’s such as the EUA, officials of various ranks from the department and agency level of The Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, and management and faculty members from two Danish universities.