Beware overhead cables

When Michael Spence joined UCL as president, he addressed the issue of cancel culture with great clarity, saying that universities had to focus on enabling all sides to “disagree well”.

“The core issue is that we have forgotten about how to do that,” he said. “Part of what we have a responsibility at universities to do is to model and to teach students how to disagree well across really sometimes quite profound barriers of disagreement.”

This means “not making an enemy of other people, trying to work out where there is common ground”, which he said were “core intellectual skills”.

He is right, of course, but scroll through Twitter and it is evident how far we are from that ideal.

In our cover story, we talk to some of academia’s most active Twitterati about the way in which the site has evolved, and the influential role it has in academic circles in particular.

There is much to celebrate about Twitter but much to concern, too, and that includes the potential deterioration of debate following its takeover by self-professed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk.

The sense that dramatic and unwelcome change may be on the way was captured well by the former politician Rory Stewart in a recent episode of his podcast The Rest is Politics.

“I have a little Hobbit world on Twitter, where I have cheerful people sharing pictures of Roman glass or jokes about Stonehenge,” he said. “But suddenly Elon Musk is all over my feed, and it’s as though I’ve gone to stay in a hotel and the owner is trying to break into my bedroom. I feel totally violated.”

One of the most striking facets of social media is that way in which it has been woven inextricably into our private as well as professional lives, another aspect that is explored in our feature.

On the topic of low levels of public debate, a spectacularly ill-advised bit of political kite-flying last month brought to mind Barack Obama’s reported foreign policy mantra: “Don’t do stupid shit.”

The maxim was revived by the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf (who happens to be married to Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, one of the UK’s leading thinkers on higher education policy) in an FT column in which he suggested that it might usefully be adopted by the UK government in relation to such things as “not promising control over migration you cannot deliver” and “trying hard to preserve the ability of our scientists to co-operate closely with their European peers”.

Hear hear. We could add to that list “not threatening to block international students from attending UK universities”, were it not for the fact that this rank stupidity was already in play.

A report in The Times that a ban could be considered for “low-quality courses” provoked a suitably hard pushback from a sector that would, in many parts, cease to be financially viable were that kite to remain airborne.

Indeed, it prompted Steve West, the normally diplomatic president of Universities UK, to respond (on Twitter, naturally): “This is the most stupid piece of thinking yet. Does the government really think it can afford to lose £30 billion income per annum, access to a global talent pipeline, soft power and influence across the globe and exchange of ideas and cultural understanding for all students?”

Does this response live up to Dr Spence’s ideal of “modelling how to disagree well”? Perhaps not, but there are occasions when an idea is so risible that it deserves to be given short shrift, and Professor West is living up to another ideal set for vice-chancellors: that they do more to speak out on issues that really matter (something discussed this week in our opinion pages).

As for Professor West’s question, maybe some in government really do think this is a genuine policy option.

More likely, though, whoever floated the idea in The Times was doing a couple of different things: firing a warning shot across the bows of universities that were starting to feel a little too comfortable with the arrival of a sensible ministerial team and the unexpected largesse for research in the Autumn Statement; and doing the only thing they could to look and sound like the government had a plan to bring down the high net migration figures released the previous day.

But even if it is unlikely to be implemented, the very act of suggesting it sent a disagreeable message to potential international students that will have been heard loud and clear. That alone will put pressure on this vital component of UK higher education’s future success.

Kite-flying sounds fun, but doing it under overheard power lines while an electric storm rages more than qualifies as the sort of thing that Obama’s mantra advises governments not to do.

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com