Word from the Chair: “What do undergraduates do with their natural energy to make the world a better place?”
This question was asked by Simon Anholt in an interview with Times Higher Education in January 2021. Simon who? Maybe not a household name, but Anholt is something of a ‘celeb’ within the broad field that stretches from corporate PR and marketing to inter-state public diplomacy and nation branding. More a policy advisor than an academic, and always operating on that interesting borderline between profound foresight and superficial entertainment, he’s been something of an intellectual shape-shifter for more than two decades. So what does he mean here?
Anholt, (the interview can be found here) made his name as a consultant on nation branding – advising nation-states how to change their policies and outlook in order to ‘score better’ in the global environment. He created the Nation Branding Index to back this up, as a way to ‘name and shame’ nations by using a league table to display their performance in specific policy sectors. Disillusioned that this became used to simply create an attractive image instead of actually improving behaviour, Anholt moved on the Good Country Index that ranked nations according to what they contribute to the global community. And then he made a bigger leap. Maybe nation-states are the problem, not the solution. Maybe the Good Country is not a specific location on the map, but a linked community of concerned, active citizens all over the globe. Maybe the Good Country is everyone who believes in it, who wants to join it. As he said in a 2014 interview, “There is only one global superpower: public opinion.”
In 2019 he gave a lecture in Wijnhaven, on the Spanish Steps. He spoke that day about the Good Country project and his search for participants. The idea was that everyone would donate £5 towards the better global future that he would subsequently decide on, based on public opinion of course. His lecture was well attended, but I’m not sure if he got many takers (I remember being surprised he was using HSBC for these financial transactions, an entity with a somewhat rocky record in terms of financial probity, if you know what I mean).
But ok, that’s the borderline again. He’s now defined better what he’s after, and universities are now central to the plan. His website claims: “We have a vaccine for the pandemic, but where's the vaccine for climate change, pollution, racism, corruption, violence, poverty & inequality? A highly effective vaccine already exists, and has been tested for generations. It's called education.”
This is his idea of the Good Generation, which he’s described in his latest book The Good Country Equation, and you can follow him talking about it here. Universities “model the best of globalization,” forming “a kind of para-diplomatic network for spreading ideas.” As always with Anholt, he’s got a point, he’s thinking outside the box, and he’s searching for ways to direct energy towards making things better. Sure, he’s also claiming that he alone sees this opportunity, which will annoy many. Social activism has long been part of university life. But what he’s saying now is that universities could play more of a role in stimulating and directing it, based on what he calls the ‘dual mandate’: “In this global age, anybody who has any power or responsibility over any group of people has responsibility not only for them but also for all the other people on the planet. That might sound absurd but to a degree climate change has begun to teach us how to do that….It is not just energy and pollution, it is also poverty, it is also peace. In the way that we have learned not to have any conversation that might be even accidentally sexist or racist, so we need at every level of organisation, to be thinking globally, to be that instinctive.”
To give this substance, for a few years he ran a Global Vote platform that allowed anyone to judge electoral candidates all over the world based on their global integrity. As with everything he does, the results are both fun and food for thought.
These kinds of practical issues are part of the International Studies programme, and you will encounter them and debate them as you move through the curriculum. They also form the basis for Practising International Studies in the third year – how can we bring our Humanities-based knowledge to bear on specific problems of today?
We are currently in a low concerning Covid-19 – the vaccines are slowly being rolled out, but the virus merrily mutates and the lockdown drags on and it’ll be quite some months yet before we can say some kind of goodbye to it all (probably more ‘au revoir’ than ‘adieu’, unfortunately). But there’ll be plenty of challenges in its wake. UN Envoy for Climate Change Mark Carney has flared up the missed opportunity of pouring trillions into sustaining economies without ensuring that it also secures reduced carbon emissions. As he put it, “you cannot self-isolate from climate.” Short-term efforts to save livelihoods are essential – but so is long-term thinking on how to make it sustainable. In this sense COVID-19 is a threat but it is also giving the world an opportunity. Maybe Anholt has a point.