What follows is a transcript of the seminar put on Youtube above. This is designed as a learning document so that you can listen and follow the text, and also navigate it by subject headings which have been introduced to aid the reader.  Extra documents and videos have been introduced to support deeper reading into the themes:

 

 

Introduction by Steve Jones

Thank you for joining us today. I’m really excited about this Sarah Fielding seminar, and I’m really delighted to welcome Professor Ronald Barnett of UCL, who is going to talk to us about his critical theory of higher education. I’ve been following Ron’s work for several decades; I’m afraid it is decades now. I’m thinking of a way to be, but it is decades. There’s a fantastic body of work which really, I think, culminates in Ron’s latest book, which is called “Realizing the Ecological University.”

 

 

Overview of the Book

One of the reasons I really like Ron’s work so much is that he’s able to make those connections between the things that a university is for at the local level and the bigger picture that operates. The book itself is quite complex in terms of its organization—super complexity in some ways. It’s called “Realizing the Ecological University.”

 

The subtitle is “Eight Ecosystems, Their Antagonisms, and a Manifesto.” Part one is an introduction; part two explains each of the eight ecosystems. There’s an interlude in the middle of those eight ecosystems where there’s a summary. Then it’s all pulled together, then there’s a manifesto, and then there’s a kind of revolution.

 

 

 

 

Key Concepts in the Book

I just want to read out one or two or three sentences from one paragraph that comes right in the middle of the book, just before the interlude. I think all books should have an interlude, by the way. If you’re working on a book, put an interlude in there. But just before the interlude, Ron develops his ecological culture in the shape of a pyramid.

 

Okay, so he’s trying to help us understand how all of these things connect together. He’s trying to join the dots. The pyramid’s got four sides, and the sides are known as a culture of planetary health, the culture of critical discourse, the culture of epistemic engagement, and the culture of selflessness. Those are the four sides of the pyramid.

 

 

The Culture of Selflessness

I’m just going to read to you about the last of those sides and how Ron describes it, because it captures how he moves from this very complex organization to being able to talk about universities in ways that I think are really humane and relatable to many of us who work in the sector. He says:

 

“The ecological university has a culture of selflessness. This is far from easy, for the world calls for show, for projection, for claims about excellence and world-classness, for evidence of impact, and for visibility. In taking on an ecological culture, the university rejects shyness and instead works its wonder and its magic quietly, carefully, diplomatically, and selflessly.”

 

I think statements like that really capture what the university is for and how that’s in tension with a lot of the organization of the higher education sector. So, I’m hoping Ron can talk about those things a little bit more over the next hour or so and explain these ideas even more. Ron’s going to talk for half an hour to 40 minutes, and there’ll be plenty of time for questions. That’s the structure. Thank you very much.

 

 

Ron’s Opening Remarks

Okay, well, thank you very much, Steve. Thanks for the great introduction. Without more ado, as they say—having said that, just strolling through, coming down Oxford Road, the sun is shining, students are out. Absolutely fantastic! I was just saying to Steve, as we were watching in the corridor, there’s increasing literature these days about the end of the campus university. We’re all online; we’re all ducking and diving. We don’t have to engage with each other face-to-face. It’s magic to me to see all of that fervent human interactivity. Perhaps I’ll pick up some of that as I go along.

 

 

Towards a Critical Theory of Higher Education

So, towards a critical theory of higher education, an ecosystem approach: My partner tells me my head’s in the clouds, okay, but I like to keep my feet on the ground.  I’ve worn most of the t-shirts, probably pretty much all the t-shirts there are in higher education over the years, from being a very junior administrator and working up the greasy pole.

 

I’ve spent my life in higher education, and I’ve been absolutely committed to it. But why? Why have I spent my life in higher education? Is there anything special about higher education and universities?

 

 

 

 

Personal Reflection on Higher Education

I distinguish, by the way, between higher education and universities. I probably say it like that, but here’s a little anecdote: at school and university, I failed all my exams over and over and over again. I don’t think that’s irrelevant to the way I’ve come to view higher education.

 

To me, there is a profound gap between the reality of higher education and its possibilities, and I’ve been trying to explore that gap over the last 50 years—can you believe it? I think that’s part of the background here that you might want to hang on to as I go along.

 

 

The Tension Between Pessimism and Optimism

It’s no problem at all. It’s very easy to become very pessimistic, and actually that tension between pessimism and optimism has been lurking there in most of my work over the years. I fluctuate; some days I feel miserable, you know. Other days, I feel that there are still possibilities in this crazy, difficult world for higher education.

 

 

International Perspectives on Higher Education

I just came back two or three weeks ago from a conference in India that I helped to run, and that’s an effort on the part of some of us. Now, we’re trying to develop into a huge worldwide movement to humanize education—not just higher education, but education in general.

 

We have people there who work in very difficult community and rural situations, in impoverished situations right across the world. I think the time has come to try to do something, at least. You know, I’m rolling up my sleeves with a few others to try to do something.

 

So, that’s the optimistic Ron. You may see signs of pessimism creeping in, but we’ve got to wrestle with the pessimism and see where we can go from there. Heckle, whatever! Have a conversation. But I will stop, and Steve is going to make me stop.

 

 

Current Perceptions of Higher Education

So what image will come into the mind if we think about higher education these days? Or if you stop politicians in the streets, so to speak, what image now forms about higher education? Is it a sorrowful line of academics having been given their redundancy notices, carrying away their belongings? Or is it an encampment of students?

 

I was in Spain recently at a university on the outskirts of Barcelona; they had an enormous encampment demonstrating against Gaza. Or is it, as you might see, glossy white papers coming out of Westminster, with scientists in their labs with a breakthrough innovation? Or my concern is, is it the course documents with their learning outcomes, absolutely anathema to the kind of higher education I’ve been trying to promote?

 

 

 

 

The Complexity of Higher Education

Or think of America: think of university principals being summoned in front of Senate committees and being given virtually their marching orders. Or is it now the student producing their essays largely with the help of ChatGPT? So, different images of higher education—what forms in your mind? But notice in those images I haven’t mentioned teaching, learning, truths, knowledge, which seems to be an old-fashioned vocabulary now for enabling us to understand higher education. How are we going to understand these transformations?

 

 

The Problematic Nature of Higher Education

I always impress my students with the question: “What’s your problem? What’s my problem here today?” Well, as you might have gathered, I’ve been toying with this idea, promoting the idea that I put into the world, I think back in 2012, the idea of the ecological university. I wrote a book on it in 2018, came back to it, and I’m pressing it even more now. I think it’s really valuable, and I’m going to press it today with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Defining Critical Theory

It’s a critical idea of higher education that I want to develop, and I want to establish the status of it as a critical idea, as a critical theory indeed—that’s what I’m trying to do. But then what does that mean? What do we understand by critical theory today? But still preliminary: why does this matter? Why devote oneself to higher education? I remember dreaming at Harvard, can you believe it? I mean, there’s something wrong with me!

 

 

 

 

Historical Context of Higher Education

So I’ve actually devoted my whole life—I started, would you believe, I started to think about higher education when I was a teenager in the 1960s. We began to establish the mass higher education system. There was a big expansion of new universities formed in 1963—both Greenfield universities and technological universities. We had a polytechnic system; we had the binary system developing, ferment of ideas, thought, even letters in The Times about what a university was. So I started thinking about it even then. But why? What is so special? Why are we here?

 

 

The Emancipatory Role of Higher Education

For me, I still want to cling on romantically, stupidly, to the idea of higher education as an emancipatory space in society and the world, and we can talk about that. It’s very interesting how the concept of emancipation is disappearing now, but I want to hang on to it.

 

I mean, you look at the mission statements, you look at the course white papers—where do you see even a passing mention of critical thinking these days? But I want to hang on to the idea that a university is a space of thought, and all of this seems to be compromised in the crazy world that we’re in.

 

 

The Crisis of Understanding in Higher Education

Do you feel that? Don’t you feel that? It seems to me that around the world, for all sorts of reasons, the room for this kind of higher education, this kind of university, is now posing in so many ways. I try to articulate some of those. So the question is, the problem is: do we have the possibility of possibilities? How about that for the possibility of possibilities? I want to try and establish what it means to address that question.

 

 

 

 

The Reflective Practitioner

Do you remember in the 1970s we had Donald Schön with his idea of the reflective practitioner? He didn’t get it quite right, in my judgment, but it’s still a nice phrase. And the question is, therefore, do we have the space to be encouraged to be reflective practitioners anymore? Or do we just get with the program, just get through the day, get through the emails, and so on and so forth?

 

Is this the question I’m raising? Are they good questions for odd characters like me, the philosophers and theorists of higher education? Or are they really biting questions that we should all be addressing, which is what I think they are? These questions should concern everybody in higher education.

 

 

 

 

The Role of Educators

I’ve worn pretty much all the t-shirts there are: academic developer, learning developer, curriculum assessment, institutional leader, institutional manager—everybody should be interested in these ideas because they connect up, as I want to say, with the matter of responsibility. What is a university responsible for, and what are teachers responsible for? Responsibilities and possibilities—how are we doing so far? Does any of this sound interesting?

 

 

A Landscape of Critical Theories

Critical perspectives, critical theories—we’ve got bags of critical theories these days; we can’t move for critical theories of feminism, of colonialism. Then there are all sorts of debates within feminism, within colonialism, post-colonialism, issues about identity, nature, ecology—they go on and on.

 

These like to see themselves as critical theories, and they come armed very often with whole banks of concepts, sub-theories. They have conferences, spawn their journals. I want to advance ecological theory, or what I would now term ecosystem theory.

 

 

 

So the question arises: well, is this just another one? In serious, is it different from any of the others? Why pick this one rather than the others? What I want to suggest is that ecosystem theory is very powerful, and I want to try and say why I think it’s powerful. I think it’s got more power than the other critical theories. How about that? I would say it’s superior to the other critical theories.

 

 

Defining Critical Theory

[Mark Johnson in audience]: Right, can I ask you how you would define critical? I don’t know if you’re going to come on to that.

Ron Barnett: I’m going to come on to that, so hold your horses. But you’re right to ask a question because I can’t duck it; I must address that question. That is central, and I’m not going to satisfy everybody in the space of 20 minutes that remains, but let’s see how we get on. That’s absolutely fundamental.

 

 

The Essence of Critical Theory

So the general problem: what is a critical theory? What makes a theory critical? I’m still a devotee of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. A lot of people have tried to kick it into touch. Metaphor: Frankfurters were men; they were from the global north; they wrote within a certain set of perspectives and concepts.

 

They were of their time; the world has moved on, so we could really forget about them and leave them behind. I don’t think so. But you’ve got to understand where they were coming from. They saw profound flaws in Marxism, but Marxism hadn’t been able to tell a story—or a story that’s adequate to the way the world would seem to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Flaws in Enlightenment Thought

For the Frankfurters, society had developed other dimensions that either weren’t apparent or had arisen since Marx. Society was oppressive for the Frankfurters, especially through its ways of knowing and being in the world. We were told particularly through educational institutions that we lived in an enlightened age.

 

 

 

 

The whole idea of the Enlightenment came to us over 200 years, and we believed that we were enlightened. The manifesto of the Frankfurt School, in a sense, was: no, we’re not enlightened. That enlightenment doesn’t live up to its promise. Society is sabotaged, undermined in all sorts of ways, and far from being enlightened, the reason that it said it valued was itself oppressive.

 

 

The Nature of Critical Theory

Indeed, our reason had become instrumental; it had become a particular kind of reason. The Frankfurters have tried to shore it out and tried to identify different strains of reason that are less instrumental. But the point is that reason, understanding the world, no longer offered enlightenment, and it wasn’t at all clear that any kind of enlightened understanding of the world was possible anymore.

But standing back to answer the question, to try to begin to answer the question, what is critical theory? It’s trying to do a number of things. It’s analytical; it tries to take a serious account of the way the world is, and it wants to inject values into those accounts. It wants to offer a kind of beginning of a program for action. So you’ve got those four elements all scudding around there in the idea of a critical theory. I know that won’t satisfy everybody, but I’m conscious of time. I want to make an argument, but we can come back to any of this. Everything, as I say, is a debate.

 

 

The Ambition of Critical Theory

As I say, we have a string of critical theories which will claim to be doing all of that, but note that the Frankfurt School saw itself as offering a total understanding of the world. Of course, we can criticize them for being partial in all sorts of ways, but that’s what they saw themselves doing. Even though – to pick up Steve’s very generous introduction – they felt that their analyses had local application.

 

And as I say, all of that is now critiqued. The Frankfurt School has its many successes, and we see many of those successes being picked up in the literature about higher education. Quite right, nothing problematic about that at all; on the contrary, they’ve helped us, helped me understand myself better as a critical man.

 

 

 

They are particular theories, though. I want to say they constitute theories or particular theories, and I want to try and press the character of the ecosystem approach as against all of that. Just by the way, although it’s beginning to make a bit of a comeback, we went through 20, 30, 40 years without any mention of social class, but that’s by the way.

 

 

A Critical Theory of Higher Education

So what would a critical theory of higher education look like? Given what I’ve said about the character of critical theory, it should be able to depict higher education as such in its totality. It’s got to be ambitious, and there’s every good reason to be ambitious in that way because higher education now has geopolitical dimensions to it. It is a total formation. Here you are; you walk down Oxford Road, you see the students from all over the world ducking and diving, coming in and out and all that kind of thing. So we’ve got to depict higher education in its totality.

 

 

 

 

Impairments in Higher Education

We’ve got to indicate its impairments. The Frankfurters were concerned to identify the malign aspects of life, of modernity, and that’s what we have to do here in the broad display. We’ve got to offer a theory of the place of higher education, universities in the world, and we’ve got to be critical and evaluative.

 

But our critiques have to be founded on what the Frankfurters would have called the objective conditions of the world. I still want to hang on to an old-fashioned phrase like that—the objective conditions of the world—and that raises, of course, all sorts of fancy questions about epistemology and ontology, which we won’t get into this afternoon, I’m afraid.

 

 

The State of Higher Education

And it invites responses; it invites responses from everybody through the higher education system or poses questions to everybody at every level in higher education. Intimate responses. So, what is the state of higher education then in the contemporary world? Here are just six reflections: it’s hyper-fast, it’s economically driven, it’s slipping and sliding, incredible volatility.

 

 

 

 

The Volatility of Higher Education

This is what happens when you get to my age—an incredible volatility! Don’t we feel this? I feel this. You go around the world, and things are ducking and changing so rapidly, and all our assumptions suddenly disappear overnight. Lots of debate. Yann Moulier-Boutang wrote a book called “Cognitive Capitalism” in 2010, but it seems to me already that’s been overtaken.

 

We’re now into even faster, a new kind of what I call Electronic Capitalism. Others use algorithmic capitalism, digital capitalism—I quite like the phrase. I don’t see anybody else use it yet: electronic capitalism.

 

 

 

 

 

The Impact of Labor Markets

And we have to, you know, we’re told we’ve got to get with the program. Students have got to get with it, become digitally literate. Volatile labor markets disturb the relationship between higher education and work. What is it to prepare students for work in a world in which we can no longer understand what work is? Certainly not what it’s going to be, even in a year’s time.

 

The fragmenting state of what it is to be a student. What the heck is it like to be a 19-year-old person in this crazy world? The politicians wonder why they’re not going to work; it’s evident. Who would go to work under these conditions? No house, no secure employment, no prospects of anything—ducking and diving in an incredibly complex world that keeps throwing stuff at you.

 

 

The Concept of Super Complexity

I invented a term, “super complexity,” to try and get a handle on this crazy world that we’re in. And students, of course, inevitably and terribly anxious about the world they’re facing. Problems about self-identity, understanding themselves, their possibilities, their responsibilities in the world—they’re being bombarded with different images of what they should be, what their responsibilities and possibilities should be.

 

Geopolitical shifts: will Manchester next year have its Chinese students coming to it? Who knows? We may not know what happens to Manchester. Huge geopolitical shifts are going on now all across the world. Some good is actually coming through as a result of all of this. I mean, countries in Africa are working together in ways they didn’t used to, trying to establish different relationships with universities in the global north, so on and so forth.

But anyway, amid geopolitical shifts, there’s a new complex of human needs. What is it to be a person, to be a human being in the 21st century, in the mid-21st century, with all of those challenges—physical, cognitive, experiential—coming at you? And then what I call a violent instrumentalism. I haven’t seen that term used, but to me it’s violent—the instrumentalism of our age, and it affects everything: nature, people.

 

 

Nature and Higher Education

I’m very lucky at home; I’ve got Richmond Park. I don’t know whether any of you know Richmond Park. It’s on my doorstep; it’s a massive, massive park in London. It’s got 600 wild deer in it, and it’s right on my doorstep. I’m able to, as it were, escape. And it sets up nice problems that when I have a deer in front of me on the path, I feel I’m invading the space of the deer. But how many people feel like that these days in an instrumental age?

 

 

 

 

The Ecosystem Approach to Higher Education

So I’ve developed what I call an ecosystem approach to higher education, understanding higher education. The book of 2018 had seven ecosystems; this one’s got eight, and now you get value for money—you got ten! This has only really come to me, and I feel I can’t escape these two extra ones that I put in, and I’ve now segregated them. But I just wave it at you. I’m sorry; I’m a dinosaur. I wish I could put up a lovely diagram, but nevertheless, you will be able to see that I think it’s basically the ten ecosystems all ducking and diving, swimming in and out of each other in great ferment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding the Ecosystems

Okay, that’s all it is. I’m trying to get a sense of the difficulty of being a university amid all these different ecosystems. Okay? And I carve them up, and I distinguish between, in this book, what I call four ecosystems of the interior—those that are particularly associated with universities: learning, being, knowledge, and culture—and then four ecosystems of the exterior: the economy, society, the polity, and nature. But, as I say, you get value for money; I don’t just go on reproducing old stuff, although that only came out three months ago. You get new stuff, and now I distinguish them in this way.

 

 

Interior Ecosystems of Higher Education

It’s quite interesting how my thinking is going on right now that I’ve come to this structure: knowledge, learning, and the individual student, if you like, the individual member of staff. Call them ecosystems of the interior. They’re here now visibly. Culture is a very interesting concept that I’ve been playing with all my life; very complex. I wrote a book about it with some colleagues, which is kind of hybrid.

 

When I grew up, we understood universities as institutions of culture. Can you imagine that? Of course, all that’s gone, but still, we barely think about or talk about culture in any serious way. Nevertheless, they are cultural institutions, whether we like it or not, whether we’re prepared to accept it or not.

 

 

 

 

Exterior Ecosystems of Higher Education

But culture has a hybrid kind of status. It seems to be about what we do, how we relate to each other in this extraordinary institution we call a university, but it’s also out there in the wider world. And then you’ve got these five ecosystems of the exterior: society, economy, polity, digitalization, and nature. Those last two are new in this series. I can’t escape the digital world.

 

I wanted to pretend that it was just a means, but now it’s become an end in itself, and it has to, I think, come in here as a major ecosystem in its own right. Law has to be there. Remember, I speak sniffily about learning objectives. Learning objectives are part of the law that we have to submit to, and you get a whole panoply of rules and regulations that are endorsed by the state, so it’s all part of the law.

Then you’ve got nature beyond all of that, which I’ve now hedged off into a segment of its own. But anyway, just get the sense that this is what it is to be a university these days. Any senior leader of a university—they might not have this vocabulary, they might not see it in this way—but they’re having to duck and dive amidst all of these ecosystems.

 

 

Power Dynamics in Ecosystems

Of course, it’s very interesting. I say that those five down there—five is a greater number than three. The ecosystems of the exterior are bigger and more powerful than the ecosystems of the interior. There’s a theory for you; and that helps to understand the way we are now as universities in the world. We’ve been sucked up into the apparatuses. Here, I tell you, ideological apparatuses—the university has been increasingly sucked up into these external apparatuses, or as I call them, ecosystems. Heckle alright, do your work…

 

 

Interdisciplinary Connections

Mark Johnson: Biology; I was just thinking, where does physiology reside? Is that within your learner? Is that what you’re thinking? Well, I mean, we’re made of cells, and the cells have a very old history. We now know from biology that we are affected by cellular evolution; we are affected by genetic factors in the environment. So we’re sort of wired into each other. This seems to be important.

 

 

The Connection Between Humanity and Nature

So I don’t know. I mean, thank you very much. That’s fascinating. I mean, you’re offering us a kind of theory of the individual self and reminding us that we are material; we are part of nature, and that’s really important here. And it’s an issue or theme, although not as sophisticated as that, that I’ve been ducking and diving with in some of my work. What is it to be a person, to be a student? I think, as I say in one of my books in a humorous aside at the end, the fate of the modern world started with Descartes, who pretended that we were just this stuff up here [points at head]. Absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, I’m going to say a bit more about Descartes in a book I’m writing.

 

 

 

 

Features of the Ecosystem Approach

The features of the ecosystem approach—it’s structural. I believe in structures. They’re not figments of the imagination; they’re very powerful. The global whole is here implicated in this global system theory. Humanity is there, but it now has its place not only amidst global ecosystems but also nature comes in in a very powerful way. We can only understand the difficulties that we’re in now because nature is presenting its calling card back to us. We have affected such terrible deformations of nature; it’s coming back to haunt us.

 

 

 

 

The Fluidity of Ecosystems

And then it’s fluid. Everything’s in motion. We don’t know what the world’s going to bring us any day. People say, “Well, the world’s always been in change.” It hasn’t! Actually, I remember when I was young hearing on the radio—do you have that word in England?—an interview with an older person who could remember what life was like pre-First World War. You had a sense of unchanging.

 

The world has suddenly speeded up, and all the data show it since the Second World War. The world is going crazy now with digitalization, and we see the effects daily with all the instability that that and other things are bringing.

 

 

Understanding Impairments in Ecosystems

Impairments are real here, but they need to be untangled, and each ecosystem will have its own kinds of impairment. There is hierarchy here. I don’t know if any of you have come across crazy philosophers and are interested in the so-called flat ontology theory that’s been developing. I say absolutely not. Ecosystems are internally hierarchical, and ecosystems one to another are hierarchical. The world is saturated with power, and this theory raises the question as to the distinction between crisis and catastrophe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Crisis in Higher Education

We have crisis, and there’s literature on crisis in higher education. I’ve just contributed a paper on the topic into a special issue on crisis in higher education. But I want to say, over and above that, we are now in a catastrophic situation in which the whole world together is presenting us with a mega problem space. And all of this then, in turn, raises questions for universities about responsibility. You’ll know that there is developing literature on that very notion of responsibility.

 

 

Implications of the Ecosystem Approach

The advantages of this ecosystem approach—it’s structure and agency. Some people just want to talk about agency now. Absolutely not! We can only understand agency if we have a sense of the structures in which we’re working. It’s realist; there are objective conditions out there, and we need to get real in a deep sense.

 

I was lucky enough to become a friend of Roy Bhaskar, who created the philosophy of critical realism. In his philosophy, the world is layered; there are structures, and they are layered. His whole philosophy was about trying to understand the world ontologically as laminated with structures.

 

 

 

 

 

The Interconnection of Nature and Humanity

So, structure and agency, realism, objective conditions—there are impairments in each of these ecosystems. We need to try to understand them and how they’re affecting universities. It’s analytical and it’s value-oriented. I’m still an old-fashioned liberal at heart, still trying to move things forward, to see possibilities, to discern little gaps where we might do something or think of something, act in some ways. Nature and humanity—not either/or but both—and a theory of their relationships.

 

 

The Centrality of Critique

And here, in all of this, critique is central. You’ve got to have the sense of what the idea of critique is. This is a framework born out of critique, a sense that things are going wrong, but we’ve got to be serious about it and try to understand in what way. I say this sense of the situation we’re in now is catastrophic, but still, there might be possibilities, at least of mitigating the problems and difficulties. I want to say higher education, universities have responsibilities.

 

 

The Distinctions between Higher Education and Universities

There are practical implications of all of this. I said I want to distinguish between higher education and universities. All my books—each one of my books is oriented either to universities or to higher education. Why do I make that distinction? Each is profoundly important, but there are different concepts. For those of us who have had the challenge of leading and managing at very senior levels in these crazy institutions we call universities, I tell you, universities produce their own challenges.

Universities are incredible institutions, and we’ve got no way of really understanding now—actually, if we’re honest, they are so complex. So higher education is those educational processes which we often find, hopefully find, in universities. But that’s the issue as to what counts as genuine higher education in this crazy world we’re living in. What would it mean to follow through on this kind of ecosystem approach?

 

 

The Challenge of a Fragmented World

What it means, as I say, first of all, is you deal with learning objectives. You have to do that. Why? Because if the world is open, fragmented, and presenting multiple, proliferating, antagonistic frames of understanding and being—which it is—then our educational processes and our pedagogical situations themselves have to be open and have to face students with challenges, with difficulties, without resolution.

 

We’re not going to be able to prepare them for this crazy world that they’re going to find themselves in unless our pedagogical situations in some way match the craziness of the world they’re going to find. Pretty obvious.

 

 

 

 

Responding to Learning Objectives

Do away with the learning objectives—that’s the first thing. Open learning situations: you put students into learning situations where there are no obvious answers. So when I teach—I don’t do so much of it now—but I did a lecture very recently. I’m still doing some supervision at a university. I went down there and gave a talk to DBA students.

 

I started off with a question which has no answer. Oh, what you—well, it has multiple answers, and it’s going to generate multiple answers in the classroom straight away. Then you get a discussion going, and you expose different responses to a big question. I’m fond of saying that I’ve never taught students at all in my life, and I don’t expect them to learn anything from me.

 

 

The Role of Educators in a Complex World

Our job as educators in the craziness of the world I’m trying to portray is to provoke, to unsettle, to enthuse, to inspire, to give people the resources to go on in this world. Most of the students coming to us now will be alive in the 22nd century. Are we educating them for the world that’s going to be opposing them with incredible challenges? What are our responsibilities? What are their responsibilities?

 

 

The Development of Course Documents

When I became a course leader in my university, can you believe there was no course document? I said, “Well, what are we trying to do here?” So we produced a course document, and there were two facing pages. There were the students’ responsibilities, and there were our responsibilities, and magically both pages had 12 bullet points. In other words, students have responsibilities; we have responsibilities, and they’re more or less equal. What are we going to bring to the task, to this challenge?

 

 

The Need for Open Dialogue

So, open situations and encourage them to critique them. I could see much more, but universities—there is no blueprint given the romantic ecosystem approach. No blueprint! Every university has got to sort it out for itself. Why? Because every university has got its own profile amidst the ecosystems of the world. I’m pressed. Well, tell me, Ron, what are we going to do here now? You’ve got to sort it out for yourself. You’ve got to sort out your possibilities in relation to each one of the ten ecosystems.

 

What are your resources?

What are your possibilities?

What’s your situation?

 

 

The Importance of Disagreeing Well

Spaces of open dialogue. I hope—I want to share an example with you, but I’m conscious of time. I hoped I would get a chance to share an example with you. Disagreeing well—no platforming. Absolutely disgraceful that we are no-platforming people in universities. Reaching out in dialogue. I’ll tell you about that in a moment if I have time.

 

 

 

 

The Superiority of Ecosystem Theory

The superiority of this ecosystem approach over modern critical theories—nothing wrong with any of them; they’re particular; they deal with particular problems. My ecosystem theory and approach is total in every sense: ontology, epistemology, global. It actually deals with this little planet Earth in the universe. It’s systematic—the universe and the individual. Bertrand Russell said of himself he was a citizen of the universe.

 

 

 

 

Realism in Ecosystem Theory

It’s realist—really realist. It recognizes the world is saturated with power but gives us resources to keep going because these are spaces—little spaces—where we can do things. No utopia, just a dogged determination to keep going together. The world is in peril, but universities are incredible institutions with incredible resources. We have responsibilities, therefore, to do what we can as the system presents itself. So let’s keep going. Thank you very much!

 

 

 

 

Conclusion and Invitation for Discussion

Audience member: Well, thank you so much. That was really, really interesting, and it’s great that you end with something like, “Let’s keep going.” So, let’s keep the conversation going! Are there any comments, questions, heckles?

 

 

 

 

The Blankness of the University Context

Audience member: Thank you so much, Ron; it’s been a pleasure to read your work. On the ecological university, I was wondering—reading about the ecological university cited a number of times, it sounds futuristic, like even you just mentioned that a university has got collective responsibility.

 

It doesn’t set its self-interest but sets collective interest as the conscience. Yeah, and I was wondering how you would define the present university in the context of this, as I see it, futuristic because the present university is not an ecological university.

 

Ron Barnett: Well, it exhibits a blankness about the world. It’s understandable because, as I say, those ecosystems press in upon the university with such force. I mean, most university leaders and senior managers have enough on their plate just getting through the day without worrying about these high-fallutin’ ideas, which to me are incredibly practical, actually. So that’s what I would say, and that’s part of the critical theory—part of the Frankfurtian critical theory—that we no longer have the resources and space to understand ourselves properly.

 

But it’s particularly clear in a way—depressing, disappointing—find what words you like when we understand that that’s the situation with universities. The very institutions in society that should be self-reflexive, should try to understand themselves, are not seriously trying to do so. What can I say? We just got to try to keep open a conversation and widen the pool of ideas.

 

One shouldn’t be too pessimistic, as I keep trying to say, keep trying to say to myself, because there are university leaders, particularly in some parts of the world—in Africa, in South America, in India—who do have a sense of some of these dimensions. They haven’t got this vocabulary, but they are really trying to work hard to realize the resources, the possibilities in their resources to engage with the world in quite sophisticated ways in some cases.

 

 

The Importance of Utopian Thinking

Ron Barnett: So we shouldn’t be too pessimistic. I mean just a quick word on utopia and all of that. I blow hot and cold with myself over the use of the term utopia. My first book on the ecological university, the subtitle was “A Feasible Utopia.” I played around with that tension of it being a utopian but feasible. What I’m saying is—or what I was saying—is that this is a problematic situation.

 

We can envisage that it’s possible to do something about it. The university has resources; therefore, it’s feasible that it could do something about it, but it probably is the case that they’re not going to. So it’s utopian in that sense, but utopia could be realized, could be realized, and we’ve got to hang on to that idea.

 

But my more recent reading, going back to the Frankfurtian and Adorno, who was very pessimistic, makes me wonder about the use of utopia. I think I can do what I need to do with this theory without raiding the concept of utopia, which just muddies the water.

 

 

 

 

Instrumental Rationality and Space for Educators

Audience Member: Thank you so much for your talk, Ron. I’m a fan of your work as well. I share your frustration with the instrumental rationale that is learning outcomes, and I was just wondering if you had, from your experiences, any tips on how to fight that battle within the institution because I find it quite challenging.

 

Ron Barnett: Undermine it by just ignoring it. I mean, as I say, I never went into any clubs or courses that I taught with an eye on the learning outcomes, even if I’d written them. And, by the way, I’ve worn all the t-shirts. I’ve written the regulations, and I’ve written the pro forma in the attachments that we have to read these days to our emails. I’ve done that, so I know—I’ve seen it from all sorts of different angles.

Ron Barnett: But we’re clever enough to sidestep all of that. As I say, by and large, the state police are not coming—not much is coming into our classrooms. We do have much more space than we sometimes think we do. We have ways of constructing our pedagogys, and even our curricula – curricula is a bit more difficult – particularly in some of the professional areas. But even there, we’ve got space in most systems of higher education to do things. So we’ve got responsibilities! I keep coming back to this term responsibility. We could use the resources and the spaces we have.

Audience Question on Change Strategies

Audience Member: Yeah, thank you for that. I wonder—you said that universities should pursue their own kind of change strategies, which is fine. But are there any implications of your particular view of critical theory for higher education for how change might happen? For example, Stephen Brookfield, in his book on critical theory, talks—he puts his kind of position in ideology critique and hence the emphasis on exchange value rather than use value.

 

In particular, in England, now we’ve got a Labour government that wants to see universities as engines of economic growth.  So I just wondered how that kind of situation positions itself against the implications of what change might happen, given your particular view of critical theory. Sorry for being so long-winded!

 

 

 

 

The Role of Ideology Critique

Ron Barnett: No, no! Well, I wish we had more time to tease all of that out. I have to go back and remind myself of what Stephen has said, having again read his work over the years. I’m not sure from what your helpful summary you’ve just given us whether there are tensions there between what Stephen is saying and what I’m saying.

 

I mean, the whole notion of ideology critique is not one that you’d want to throw at senior managers and leaders unreflectively. We have to choose our language very carefully if we’re going to take people with us. I mean, if I can just say this about—it’s kind enough to quote something, you know, I’m very careful about what I say and what I write. As I say, my books are always oriented to particular sets of audiences. It’s plural, and I know it’s not an answer to your question directly, but I’m very careful in how I try and present myself depending on the audience I feel that I’m engaging with.

 

And, you know, it’s a great delight to me, you know, senior people around the world, magically, amazingly, say, “Well, I’ve been reading your work for years.” You know, so perhaps I’m getting through without realizing it. So this is very important, it seems to me, if we want to carry forward some kind of conversation.

 

But the conversation is not only about substance; it’s about processes. Very important. That’s why I talked about, right at the end, the universities’ open dialogue—reaching out in dialogue. The 50% problem, what’s that mean? It’s simply referring to the fact that in most countries roughly 50% of the people have had higher education; 50% have not. So what are we going to do about the 50% who have not had higher education? That question is never raised. I’m sorry I’m not answering your question directly; I’m trying to get around the question.

 

Audience member: I suppose part of it is it’s about challenging the discourse in terms of that dialogue, which is kind of present in Stephen’s book. As in Stephen’s book, and I think having that space—but I don’t think, in some respects, that those spaces, those free spaces, aren’t that prevalent.

 

 

The Diminishing Spaces for Conversation

Ron Barnett: …No, no, they’re not, and that’s what I say, they’re closing. They’re closing in all sorts of ways, and we hardly recognize how they are closing. You look at systems around the world, and you see the way the politicians and the corporations, the digital revolution—all sorts of things are now closing, closing the space of conversation.

 

 

The Importance of Opening Conversation

Ron Barnett: So, I mean, just as I say on ideology critique, I mean, we’ve got to be careful about how we critique. I like to feel that my work is highly critical, but I’m going to take you with me without you realizing – that’s the trick. I write my books so that the managers and senior leaders, as they’re dashing off to go off to China, and their PA says, “Well, I’ve just come across this book by this character Ron Barnett. Just have a dip into it.”

 

I’m trying to write in such a way that I will hook them for a page or two. That’s all we can do, but we’re only opening up conversation. We combat the system by being crafty!

 

 

The Logic of Ecology in Higher Education

Mark Johnson: I’m wondering, there is a different kind of logic working in your idea of ecology from the kind of logic that might work or you might see working in the critical theories that you’re trying to transcend in some way. The biological analogy is interesting because biological systems do not follow Aristotelian logic, you know, not P or not P; it’s P and not P.

 

 

 

 

As that seems to be an ecological principle, you know, because my word is systems and cybernetics, and, you know, people like Warren McCulloch were pointing this out in the 1940s. So there is a logic to ecology which is not the logic that we normally think when we organize ourselves in institutions and disciplines. I’d get rid of the curriculum as well as learning outcomes, by the way!

 

 

The Myth of Frameworks

Ron Barnett: Well, thank you very much for that. I’m heartened to hear what you’re saying in a way. As I say, I read and hesitate to use the phrase, but I read those literatures. I go with them as far as I can, but they do seem to me to be rather precious, and they seem to be working within frameworks of their own, and I’m trying to open frameworks. I’m trying to destabilize frameworks. I just wrote a chapter about the myth of the framework, a phrase from Popper.

 

 

 

 

Operating in the Unstable Space

Ron Barnett: So I’m trying to have my cake and eat it. I’m trying to say things in a space that is unstable, where we can’t say anything with any definitiveness because things, as you’re implying, are unstable and are going in all sorts of contradictory directions all at once. And that’s the character of the world, and we’ve got to help our students understand that, but also our universities. And this gives me a space.

 

The University as a Space for Respectful Engagement

If we’ve got time, I just wanted to share an anecdote with you. Why am I so concerned about the university being a space of disagreeing well and no platforming? Here’s an anecdote for you: when I was an undergraduate, it was at the time of the apartheid regime in South Africa. We had an extraordinarily powerful South African sociology professor come to Durham, where I was, to take up the chair of sociology from South Africa. An incredibly strong critic of apartheid.

 

One evening, he invited a white apologist, another professor from South Africa, a white apologist of the apartheid regime, to engage in a big lecture together. You had the two of them, and that still sticks with me profoundly. Two powerfully opposed positions engaging with each other respectfully. Very interesting to see [Axel] Honneth’s philosophy of recognition now taking off. We develop our universities so that there are really spaces for antagonistic conversation. How about that? A phrase: antagonist.

 

 

 

 

The Ownership of Resources in Higher Education

Steve Jones: Can I just link that to some of the other points that you made? You talk about the immense resource of the university, and you’re absolutely right. And you talk about our responsibility to try to make use of that immense resource in responsible ways, but increasingly it feels like that resource is out of our hands.

 

So the decision to put on that debate between those two people—in having the right to correct position, but would we have the power to—it’s about ownership of the resource as well, and that does seem to have slipped in directions which are problematic, and it’s probably going to slip more in those directions.

 

 

The Diminishing Power of Universities

Ron Barnett: Well, as I say, that’s why I raise it, because I’m very concerned about the way in which universities as spaces for more serious conversation and conflict that are diminishing. Under those conditions, we’re losing what it is to be a university because if a university cannot do those things, then it’s no longer a university. And the university, for me, has to do those things in order to get to grips with its position in the world in which it is assailed by contradictory forces.

 

How can the university work out its possibilities, its self-understanding, unless it allows those contradictory forces into itself? So this is a real problem that we have these days, but we undermine our sense in universities.

 

It’s not just the ghastly vice-chancellors and senior managers and leaders; we do it ourselves. We get into little huddles; we form our little communities; we create our little journals and our conferences, seminars; we talk to each other. You know, we have a community of four or five hundred people in the world, and we’d rather talk to those people than the person next door in the corridor.  Am I treading on toes ?  I hope so !

 

 

The Power of Subversion in Education

Audience Member: I couldn’t agree with you more about so many things, and I haven’t really formulated a question. But I just wanted to say I think it is possible to be subversive. You know, I do think that it’s difficult, but I don’t think it’s impossible. You know, I am an academic developer, so I have to observe all kinds of sessions and talk about learning outcomes, but part of being able to do that, I think, means that you’re able to say, “Well, you master the tool, so no one can wrong foot you,” and you then subvert it in whatever way you like, you know…

 

So I do think it’s still possible, you know, to do that. And I think that we kind of, like you said, defeat ourselves by assuming that it’s not. And just to say, you know, about the debate, sometimes you can do things like that. You know, I mean, our university – the MET down the road, we had a debate about whether it’s ethical to tell students about the ethnicity awarding gaps.

 

We got the students to debate whether it was ethical to tell them about ethnicity awarding gaps. So is it ethical to tell them, or is it ethical not to tell them? And the students debated that, and they had staff on both sides, and they had students on both sides making the argument that it was unethical not to tell them or that it was unethical to tell them, because obviously it could be very disempowering. You know, you go to a university and you realize you might be less likely to leave with a good degree just because of the color of your skin or your heritage or your background.

 

And that was actually endorsed by the Pro Vice-Chancellor because he said he wanted them to know more about the ethnicity awarding gap. So I do think you can sometimes make the argument. I mean, that was an explosive thing to do. And I think you still, you know, you still can do those things.

 

 

The Importance of Disagreeing Well

Audience Member: And just the disagreeing well, you know, I really couldn’t agree more, and there’s a resource—I’m sure you know about it—UCL published a resource on disagreeing well, and we copied it. And again, you can, you know, you can use the digital. Sometimes, you know, I don’t know; I find it easier to put things on a webpage. So I just wanted to support you with that.

 

Ron Barnett: Thank you! Thank you! Yeah, just by the way, the provost of UCL is a person called Michael Spence, and this is a big theme for him. He’s really trying to drive UCL forward as a space in which people can disagree well, and they’re really picking this up and engaging with the theme itself in all sorts of projects going on in the university, as I understand it.

 

 

 

 

We Should not be too Pessimistic

Ron Barnett: So I think, as I say, there are spaces for us to work at all levels in university, and as I say, we shouldn’t be too pessimistic. I’m often struck—I don’t do it so much now—but you know, when you’re in your own university, go around being a guest at other universities. Graduation day is very interesting.

 

You got the formality but the informality, and very often if things have gone well—if you listen, you can hear the excited students saying to proud parents in the tea and buns after the formalities in front of professors and lecturers, “Being here has changed my life!” You hear that said more, quite often—something like that.  We are having profound effects of the most beneficial kind on students without realizing it, and we’ve got no theory as to how we’ve done it. I’ve got a theory, but anyway, that’s another day!

 

ronaldbarnett.co.uk