Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency could be devastating for higher education in Brazil

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. Academic Freedom is again under the spotlight in this week’s edition. Marion Lloyd warns about the serious threats posed to higher education and academic freedom in Brazil by the election of the new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. And Yojana Sharma writes that a change of presidency at China’s flagship Peking University is being seen by academics as a new tightening of control over dissenting thought among scholars.
   In Commentary, Diana Oblinger says we need to rethink, redesign and reset our expectations for learning throughout our lives as artificial intelligence and other technologies will offer an opportunity to create new ways of learning. Eric Fredua-Kwarteng and Samuel Kwaku Ofosu suggest issues that Ghana’s National Accreditation Board could focus on to increase its relevance as an external quality agent for higher education, rather than focusing on relatively trivial issues such as honorary titles. And Hakan Ergin acknowledges that the Turkish authorities have made an effort to hire Syrian academics at Turkish universities but says it is not enough and urges Turkey to adopt a long-term strategy to harness Syrian brain power.
   In our World Blog, Fiona Hunter, Elspeth Jones and Hans de Wit explain why giving responsibility back to academics and administrators in the internationalisation process is essential for the future of internationalisation.
   In our series on Transformative Leadership, Brendan O’Malley interviews Mastercard Foundation Scholar Ubah Ali, who is fighting to end the hazardous cultural practice of female genital mutilation in her homeland, Somaliland.
   In Features, Alex Abutu reports on claims by the head of Nigeria’s Tertiary Education Trust Fund that the funding agency has left behind its corruption-plagued past, while academics complain that it is still strengthening universities abroad instead of locally. And Shadi Khan Saif reports that a new group of educators stood as candidates in the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, and the millions of voters who defied grim security risks to take part are now awaiting the election results. More...