Does higher education politicise today’s students?

This webinar will launch the ESRC-funded ‘Students and Politics’ project, run by Rachel Brooks (University of Oxford), Tom Fryer (University of Manchester) and Rille Raaper (Durham University).

It will comprise short talks from four scholars working in this area – Rob Ford (University of Manchester), Ralph Scott (University of Bristol), Gritt Nielsen (Aarhus University) and Jan MacArthur (Lancaster University) – as well as an introduction to the ‘Students and Politics’ project by members of the research team. There will also be plenty of time for audience discussion and questions.

Talk 1

Degrees of separation: The rise of education as a political divide

Rob Ford (University of Manchester)

In this talk I will briefly chart the emergence of educational qualifications as a significant dividing line in electoral politics, both in Britain and beyond, and look as some of the factors driving this – issue priorities, social values, social identities and the role of Brexit. I will conclude with some thoughts on the role of education in the 2024 general election and the possible future trajectories of education divides in Britain.

Talk 2

Is higher education a new political cleavage in British politics?

Ralph Scott (University of Bristol), with co-authors Hannah Bunting (University of Exeter), Rob Ford (University of Manchester) and Maria Sobolewska (University of Manchester)

The role that education plays in shaping an individual’s political attitudes and behaviour is increasingly well-observed across established democracies, including in Great Britain (Apfeld et al., 2024). Graduate status divides British voters on issues (such as immigration) and has led to the emergence of new parties (Reform UK) and the transformation of existing ones (Conservatives after Brexit). Some argue that it represents a new cleavage across Western Europe (Ford and Jennings, 2020). Extrapolating from the Danish case (Stubager, 2010), we test whether higher education constitutes a new political cleavage in Great Britain. We use a new representative survey of the British public, including survey experiments, to develop a measure of education-based social identity among British voters. Next, we examine the political effects of this identity, finding that it motivates political attitudes, vote choice and candidate preference, suggesting that the education divide will continue to restructure party competition.

Talk 3

Policing student protests: safety, free speech and calls for ‘stocking foot activism’ at Danish universities

Gritt Nielsen (Aarhus University)

If universities function as a mirror of democracy and a window into its future (Ben-Porath 2017: 8), then our time is one of fundamental transformation. In Denmark, in recent years, students’ political engagement and activism have caused intense public debate about the limits of free speech and what it means for students to be safe at their university. In 2018-23 debates revolved around whether (some) students were being over-sensitive and conveying a growing ‘readiness for taking offence’ that could stifle free speech, among other by calling for the university to be a safe(r) space. With recent pro-Palestinian protests, however, the meaning of safety and free speech, and accordingly of democracy, seem to be undergoing changes. Building on a strong post-68 tradition for student participation and democracy, Danish university leaders usually engage in dialogue with students who protest or occupy parts of the university. However, for the first time in more than half a century, leaders at a Danish university recently called upon the police to remove activists who attempted to occupy a university building, arguing that they caused other students and staff to feel unsafe. Instead, the leader said, students should engage in what he called more caring and respectful forms of ‘stocking foot activism’. The different efforts to govern and police students as political actors, I argue, offers important insights into processes of de/politicisation of the public university and its changing role in developing democracy within the frames of the Danish nation state.

Talk 4

Higher education’s responsibility to nurture political sensibilities

Jan McArthur (Lancaster University)

It is very difficult to understand how higher education can realise its responsibilities without clear links to the ongoing development of students’ political understandings and commitments.  At its heart, higher education is about engagement with the minds of others, and as such is an inherently political, social and historical process. The world of higher education is a world of generating, curating and disseminating complex, dynamic and contested bodies of knowledge. The idea that the development of political sensibilities may be questionable, even inappropriate within an educational context harks back to some serious distortions in understanding the nature of knowledge;  ironically of course, these are themselves deeply political, if not actually ideological. Firstly, they reflect an idea of knowledge as static and uncontextualized. As Brown and Duguid, in their wonderful book The Social Life of Information, outline, that may well be a fair description of information, but knowledge by distinction is deeply interconnected with the knower and is a fully socially-embedded process. Secondly, and not un-related, is a view that politics is a naturally oppositional activity, a grubby sport based on entrenched positions and conflict. In contrast, politics is as naturally a social activity as is engagement with knowledge. They are both about understanding the minds of others, and understanding how different minds and people interact. Politics is natural; we may be reminded here of the Aristotelean idea of zoon politik. In this session I will draw on critical theory to demonstrate that the nurturing of a political sensibility is one of the core responsibilities of higher education.