GRM 2010 Report - Centre of Islamic Studies - University of ...

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In recent decades, led by the sciences, the research budgets of most research-intensive universities grew quickly. The fraction of the operating budget that supports educational activities is fast diminishing as a result. In the UK these activities are still under-funded, and in research-intensive universities everywhere they receive less academic acclaim and reward. This combination of circumstances is a cause for concern, because it risks a subtle but real drift away from the educational mission of universities that is an ever more vital contribution to the world. Where new universities and higher education programmes are created in the Gulf, I observe, there is an opportunity to reset the balance. Autonomy For universities, there must be freedom in the air: the freedom to explore new pathways, to think, write and argue beyond that which is conventional or comfortable, to teach students to think for themselves and not as others would have them think. In some societies, asserting these freedoms is enough to land you in prison. The challenges most of usconfront, though, are different, much more subtle, and come as much from within as from without. Academic freedom of the kind I have described is inherently inefficient: it is the freedom to take risks and fail, the freedom to go up blind alleys for months or years on end. Isaac Newton, whose studies at Trinity College a few hundred metres from here transformed mechanics and optics, and laid the foundations of modern mathematics, also spent a great deal of time on alchemy. From today’s perspective, we might consider that time wasted – but in the orthodoxy of the Gulf Research Meeting – July 2010 21
22 The 2010 Gulf Research Meeting mid 17th century, alchemy was not an unusual intellectual pursuit, and it had a clear and beneficial goal that attracted some of the finest minds of the day: it was not Newton’s alchemy but his mechanics that constituted the risky new territory, the potential dead end. Pressures - self-imposed as well as externally imposed - to be efficient, productive, and “successful” are no bad thing in some measure. But there are risks to relevance and self-imposed efficiency: that we end up constraining the grand inefficiencies of free inquiry – and snuff out the spark that is at the heart of creativity, discovery and innovation. We must be vigilant in celebrating and protecting these great strengths – the trust of society, the unity of teaching and research, the pursuit of breadth with excellence, freedom of inquiry. But surely it helps to articulate the value and importance of these strengths and find every opportunity to uphold and defend them. I shall spend a little more time on the fifth quality that universities bring to help us meet the world’s challenges. I have already touched on it a little – our capacity to cross boundaries. Crossing Boundaries Universities are crossing international boundaries with increasing frequency. There are many good reasons for this. Let me propose just three, all of them evident in your programme over these next few days. The first is education. We are educating citizens and leaders for an increasingly interconnected world, in which many of today’s students will go on to live and work in a variety of national and cultural settings in the course of their lives. The second is the search for solutions to the challenges of our modern world. The third is to be of service, helping build capacity where little presently exists – though make no mistake, when Cambridge helps build capacity elsewhere, we learn a very great deal from the exchange. Cambridge is in transition, I believe, moving from one distinct mode of internationalism to having two. The first centres on the individual. Cambridge has been welcoming visiting
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THE GULF RESEARCH CENTER “Knowled
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