Reclaiming the University in Critical Times

Over the last three decades or so, Western countries, and other countries around the world, have been priding themselves on becoming ‘knowledge societies’ by investing heavily in research, allowing extensive access to higher education systems, and expanding spectacularly the use of information and communication technologies. In these three decades, ‘knowledge societies’ along with newly industrialised nations, to which much of their manufacturing was outsourced, have produced more than half of all greenhouse emissions. Recently, these societies were those that were most stricken by a pandemic.