a second soul,” said Charlemagne. During a stay in Ukraine, I asked Tetiana Kuchynska, then-Head of the international relations office at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, if she knew someone who could teach the basics of Russian to a total beginner with a brain slowed down by the weight of years. Nadiia Kravchenko, a young master’s student at KPI, allowed me to take the first steps in this new language in Kiev, the cradle of Orthodox civilization and the Rus’ people. Later, in Saint Petersburg, Irina Baranova, Professor and Head of the center for learning Russian as a foreign language at Polytech, patiently pursued my initiation in to the meanders of this beautiful Slavic language for nine months. A Chekhovian trilogy for a priceless gift. Tetiana entrusted me to Nadiia. Nadiia prepared me for Irina. The three of them opened the door for me to the Russian language and thus to the Russian soul. How can I thank them?
I’m at a loss for words.
1 1 DGESIP: Direction générale de l’enseignement supérieur et de l’insertion professionnelle – Directorate general for higher education and professional integration.
2 2 DGRI: Direction générale de la recherche et de l’innovation – Research and Innovation Branch.
1
The Origin of a Triptych
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke – “The Waking”
(Roethke 1966, p. 104)
1.1. The sun is shining in Berkeley
The sun is shining in Berkeley this September 2016. The presidents, vice presidents, and representatives of some of the world’s top universities, however, are not taking advantage of California’s fine weather. Gathered at the World Universities Summit, they are debating the challenges of higher education and high-level research in a pleasantly air-conditioned room with the curtains firmly drawn.
At around 5 p.m., a new round-table discussion ends in the tradition of all events organized by Times Higher Education. Argumentative, consensual and without great surprise. The chairman opens the question-and-answer session. They follow one another. Argumentative, consensual and without great surprise.
Until...
A finger rises in the audience. Its owner, an American professor, speaks. His address recalled that American universities had benefited greatly from public funding during the Cold War. Referring to a book published in 1997 (Chomsky et al. 1997), with chapters by nine academics, he pointed out that this funding, however, had a tendency to melt like snow in the sun, as East-West political relations had warmed up. As tensions between the United States and Russia or between the United States and China return – and are likely to continue in some form or another regardless of who becomes president1 of the United States – will history repeat itself? Will America’s public universities2 (whose direct federal resources have been in steady decline for decades) experience a new golden age and their researchers be given new levels of funding? The answer was as expected: cautious, consensus-seeking, and expressing virtuous hope for a renewal of government funding for American universities, independent of any international tension.
It is natural, however, to extend this question and the idea behind it: more generally, do the international tensions in the world have, or will they have, a global impact on universities, especially those who are global leaders3, some of which were gathered at the Berkeley Congress? Is there a geopolitical reading of the various excellence initiatives that a number of countries have launched in recent years? Beyond the nations themselves, can we go so far as to shed light, in terms of civilizations, on the global landscape of higher education and cutting-edge research? In other words, does the evolution of the ranking of the best universities say something about the vitality of the civilizations to which they belong? Are international rankings becoming a revealing thermometer of a geostrategy of knowledge?
These questions are, of course, so broad that it would be illusory to attempt to give a definitive answer, especially in this section, which is intended as an introductory overview.
1.2. Fukuyama versus Huntington: the revenge of civilizations in the 21st Century
Nevertheless, let us try to give an initial justification for their relevance. The question from the American professor at Berkeley first of all refers to a situation that emerged from the Cold War. This implicitly ended4 with the fall of the USSR in 1991, thus putting an end to the “short” 20th Century that began in 1914 with the First World War.
This end was seen as a deliverance that went far beyond what was perceived as the cessation of East-West tensions. For many observers, capitalist and liberal ideology had won, and communist ideology had lost. This victory of one ideology over the other was to mark, in their view, the end of the great conflicts and open an infinite period of near-planetary peace: “the end of history”, to quote Francis Fukuyama’s famous prophecy5 about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
However, as early as the summer of 1993, Samuel Huntington published an article in the Foreign Affairs journal entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?” (Huntington 1993). In view of the controversy generated by this article on all continents6, the Harvard professor decided to develop his analysis of the world in a more substantial work. He would do so again three years later with his now famous 500-page book: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (Huntington 1996). The reasonable doubt he had in 1993 is no longer relevant in 1996: the question mark at the top of his article disappeared from the title of his book.
The very rich substance of Huntington’s work goes far beyond7 the scope of this chapter in describing the genesis of a thought. Let us content ourselves by summarizing the main message
