Special Edition No. 1 · Ronald Barnett Lecture
Civic, Global, Ecological: Towards a Collaborative Mission for the University
Discussion (Q&A)
Moderator
We are running out of time, but in any case, we are now moving to the question-and-answer session. If you have any questions, please raise your hand, state your name, and say where you are from.
Professor Kazunori Sunagawa (Chuo University)
Thank you for your presentation.
I’m Kazunori Sunagawa from Chuo University.
This is just a question for clarification.
You separate two things.
Tensions can be resolved.
Antagonisms cannot.
And you base your new ethos on Honneth, on recognition and respect.
But recognition usually calls for reconciliation in the end.
Your antagonism without resolution sounds more like Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics—living with demands that never go away.
So, which is your ethos?
Reconciliation that aims for unity, or accepting a conflict that will never be resolved?
That is my question.
Professor Ronald Barnett
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you very much for the question. I could answer it immediately and simply. My head is with Adorno and my heart is with Honneth. But let me say a little more and see if I can have my cake and eat it—to do justice to both positions.
The question can be put in this way:
Is there an end point under conditions of severe disagreement?
Can we simply go on talking to each other, debating with each other?
Or is there some kind of resolution available to us?
This is, of course, a very important matter when the university is faced with many and conflicting challenges on a daily basis.
How do we go forward when the world is uncertain and we are unclear within ourselves?
This is a profoundly important question.
If we were to listen particularly to some of the theorists, one would have to say that there is no resolution to this problem.
The debate must go on.
The criticisms must be heard.
The conflicts must be aired.
There has to be room for that conversation to keep going.
That is why I am profoundly impressed, if I may say so, that my own university established the Disagreeing Well initiative many years after I left.
Can we set up spaces in which we can go on talking to each other, to air our differences and our disputes?
This is why I want to distinguish between leadership and management.
Both are crucial, but they are different.
Leadership has this challenge of opening up this conversation, and management has the task of making decisions.
Both are crucial.
We can’t have one without the other.
Again, I was profoundly impressed by the Japanese policy document that was sent to me, which contains the word wisdom.
Your government is talking about wisdom in relation to universities.
But we can only have wise universities if we have open conversation within universities.
Wisdom implies conversation and an opening up of horizons.
That means different ideas, views, visions, hopes and aspirations coming together and being aired.
And that’s part of the role of leadership: to lead that conversation, to be a translator of the different cultures outside the university into the university, and to help the different cultures within the university understand each other.
These are incredibly sophisticated and challenging roles for leadership.
And it’s against that horizon that management comes into play, making difficult decisions.
You have a committee meeting, and academics are wonderful at having conversations and never making a decision.
Normally, after a committee meeting, there is a record of the committee meeting.
For each agenda item, those minutes—that record—should state the decision that was reached.
That should be very clear.
What was decided?
What is the decision that has been reached?
And not: “No decision has been reached.”
And it’s very important that decisions are reached against the background of a very difficult situation.
We need both.
We need horizons.
We need conversation.
We need disagreement.
And we need decision-making.
We need both.
So that is the challenge of universities: making decisions while recognising the difficult, turbulent, challenging and antagonistic situation in which they find themselves.
And this has to happen at every level of the university:
from the President and the senior management team in their weekly meetings,
to the programme team, and to the junior lecturer beginning to assemble a small course team for a course unit.
Decisions have to be made.
And let us make them with full recognition of these challenging issues.
Thank you.
Moderator
Thank you.
Actually, we have passed the scheduled time, so we must now conclude this session.
Thank you, Professor Barnett.
Please join me in giving him a warm round of applause.