Securitisation theory and the securitised university: Europe and the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital

Abstract

Background: This article explores the increasing prevalence of security themes in higher education policy.Aim: Addressing neglect in security studies on the role of the university in the processes of securitisation, this article shows the integral relationship between securitisation theory and the securitised university.Setting: Drawing on exemplars from European higher education, the article argues that this complex epistemological transformation is part of a new and as yet little understood new colonisation of global intellectual capital. Methods:The argument is in three stages: (1) that securitisation theory can account for the emergence of the securitised university; (2) that this securitisation of universities is integral to the political process of Europeanisation; and (3) that from this European context we may glimpse a nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital.Results: This analysis of securitisation has, therefore, deep if as yet little explored epistemological implications for the transformation of universities worldwide, particularly because of this epistemological dimension, a de facto securitisation of knowledge. Conclusion:This article concludes that these transformations are also important if at present neglected element to historic and contemporary debates on decolonising the curriculum, which frequently highlight the postcolonial relations and culturally still powerful relations between continents, for example between Europe and Africa.

Religious education and the pandemic: postcolonial perspectives

“…Cultural and racial tension have more than complicated the clarity of the subject's objectives and its disciplinary positioning (Conroy et al 2015;Cush and Robinson 2014;Davis and Miroshnikova 2017). Over recent years, the cultural concerns have elided in security preoccupations, integrating as I have shown (again following Arendt 2017) how these changes in religious education's aims and purposes have (and increasingly now) blended, too, with diverse narratives of colonialism, imperialism and even of totalitarianism (Gearon 2019a(Gearon , 2019b. These pedagogical changes always need to be seen in historical context, as indeed I had argued in a guest editorial for this journal for a special issue on human rights, and they represent a major shift of religious education to politics and security.…”

The ethics of securitisation: an interview with Rita Floyd

“…Prevent raises a number of ethical questions; for example, freedom of speech at Universities, appropriate duties of care for staff and the sanctity of academic freedom. (Gearon 2019) In security studies itself, the trigger for thinking about the ethics of securitisation precedes the global war on terror (GWOT). It began with the discovery of the concept of identity-or societal security in the 1990s and research on the securitisation of immigration.…”

A reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of Transformation in Higher Education (2016–2020): Beyond transformation?

“…Decolonisation and decolonising became key to, or even equal to, transformation in higher education during and after the #mustfall protests in 2015-2016. Decolonisation and decolonising are explicit or implicit in titles, abstracts and keywords related to notions such as epistemic violence and Eurocentric hegemony (Heleta 2016), Africanisation (Horsthemke 2017), colonial and decolonial identity and subjectivity (Bazana & Mogatsi 2017;Becker 2017;Mabille 2019), black consciousness and black studies (Bazana & Mogatsi 2017;Lamola 2018), indigenisation and indigenous knowledge (Eybers 2019;Horsthemke 2017), decolonial curriculum (Nyoni 2019), postcolonialism (Gearon 2019;Nell 2020) and decolonial philosophy (Matolino 2020). This reflection is done through a decolonial lens.…”

“…Interrogating epistemology, epistemological practices and curricula are crucial to transformation in higher education. Authors in this journal have robust engagements with epistemology, epistemological practices and curriculum (Eybers 2019;Gearon 2017Gearon , 2019Heleta 2016 Ramrathan (2016) explains how transformation in higher education since 1994 has mostly taken on a number-counting, instrumentalised modality. The saturation of neo-liberalism and capitalism remains embedded in South African curricula practices.…”