From Cape Town to Chemnitz, higher education is shaped by global hierarchies. Institutions in the Global South often feel pressure to emulate those in the Global North—adopting ranking systems, productivity targets, and competitive frameworks that can sideline local needs. Meanwhile, political polarisation and the rise of right-wing movements in many Northern countries feed into neocolonial dynamics, making the pursuit of global educational justice an uphill battle. Moreover, global warming has become an urgent issue for all contexts, as our world is interconnected and interdependent.

In the context of increased globalisation, neoliberalism, stark inequality, factionist behaviours, and the climate crisis, the position of the modern university is once again being questioned.

What is the role, purpose, and function of a public university in the 21st century?

Universities are both products of these forces and shapers of them. That dual role gives them a unique power—and responsibility—to conceptualise and enact alternatives.

Globally, universities are recognized as hubs of knowledge production, innovation, and advancement, benefiting society. More dynamically, they also serve as an ideological mirror reflecting the political and economic realities of their nations, ratifying their positions as extensions of the prevailing political economy.

Universities occupy a unique position in society, serving both as guardians of knowledge and as powerful institutions that produce and perpetuate social inequalities. As sites of education, research, and public discourse, they have the potential to either challenge or reinforce inequalities. In the process of neoliberalisation of higher education, universities have become entrepreneurial organisations, incorporating diversity as a management strategy and presenting themselves as actors for social justice.

At the ECER 2025 conference, our symposium, “Positioning Universities as Conduits for Social Justice,” brought together researchers from Germany, South Africa, and the Netherlands to tackle this question head-on. We explored how higher education institutions (HEIs) could be reimagined—not just as knowledge factories—but as active agents of social justice.
We drew on discourse-analytical and postcolonial perspectives in the context of organisational education—the idea that institutions are not static but can learn, adapt, and transform. This lens pushed us to ask:

• What kind of society should universities help create?
• What kind of citizens should they nurture?

We start from two different pressure points to reflect on the responsibility of universities to chart the way forward for social justice.

Polarisation and migration are reshaping societies—and universities are right in the middle of it. Insights from a critical analysis of South Africa and the Netherlands reveal how political tensions and demographic shifts challenge the inclusivity and purpose of higher education in these regions. By juxtaposing headline news, NGO reports, official country statistics, and university mouthpieces, the presentation highlights the prevailing narratives and counternarratives of migration debates affecting higher education institutions. It is suggested that if political interference is not curtailed, it will result in erosion of institutional autonomy, instrumentalisation, research constraints, increased silencing and censorship, and the complete evisceration of higher education as a public good.

In response to global warming, social movements such as Fridays for Future have emerged within the last five to 10 years (Revsbæk, 2014). In German higher education, we observe an increasing number of study programmes integrating sustainability as a transversal topic, especially but not exclusively in technical study programmes. As part of a BMFTR-funded project involving two higher education institutions in Germany, the study identifies contrasting strategies for addressing gender and sustainability through a comparative case study.

Rather than demonstrating a homogenous picture of how gender and sustainability are discursivied and subjectivised in the context of future and innovation labs, contradictory positions emerge in both cases. This study finds that future and innovation labs have the potential to widen participation for non-traditional students and therefore offer more opportunities for social justice. Simultaneously, they also face the risk of closures, as they may reproduce privileges through self-selection and reinforce institutional power asymmetries.

The specific challenges universities face lead to questions about their role, purpose, and function, and, linked to this, what their societal responsibility is, as further explored below, in the context of the project “Responsible Science?!”funded by the German Research Council.

What is the responsibility of a public university in the 21st century 

Charting the way forward

Charting the way forward in a manner that repositions universities as bastions of democratic and inclusive knowledge producers will require strengthening institutional governance, developing legal and financial safeguards, protecting tenure systems and creating systems that can withstand political pressure. To move forward, we need to ask ourselves as universities, what is our responsibility and our response–ability in the current climate? (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2023).

We put forward that universities can be drivers for social change when they:

• Confront their historical complicity and their Euro-centric standpoint, including the colonial and exclusionary roots of their institutional identities;
• Shift from individual to structural accountability, ensuring that policies address institutional discrimination and exclusion rather than merely assigning blame;
• Resist and challenge the neoliberal framing of social justice, where diversity and inclusion are treated as metrics for success rather than ethical imperatives.

Why this matters

In times of climate change, migration, and deepening inequality, universities can either reinforce existing hierarchies or work towards dismantling them. By rethinking their structures, missions, and responsibilities, they can chart a different course—one that’s socially just and globally relevant. At our symposium, we did not just diagnose the problems—we shared possible pathways forward for shaping and transforming the long-term organisational culture of HEIs. Because if universities can learn and change, they can help societies do the same.

Key Messages

• Universities aren’t neutral spaces. They mirror political and economic realities — and have the power to either challenge or reinforce inequality.
• From Cape Town to Chemnitz, global hierarchies shape who gets to learn — and how. Researchers are asking: what does a truly just university look like in the 21st century?
• When “diversity” becomes a management metric and “social justice” a branding tool, universities risk practising privileged irresponsibility. Structural change — not tokenism — is what’s needed.
• Climate change, migration, polarisation: universities sit at the heart of today’s biggest challenges. They can either reinforce existing hierarchies — or help dismantle them.
• Universities must confront their colonial roots, shift from individual to structural accountability, and resist treating inclusion as a KPI. Because if institutions can learn and change, so can societies.

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References and Further Reading

Adler, Annett; Weber, Susanne Maria (2019): Future and Innovation Labs as heterotopic Spaces. In: S. Weber, I. Truschkat, C. Schröder, L. Peters und A. Herz (Hg.): Organisation und Netzwerke. Organisation und Pädagogik, Bd. 26. Wiesbaden: Springer VS (26), S. 375–383. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-20372-6_34

Bhabha, H. K. 1994. The Location of Culture. Routledge classics. London, New York, London: Routledge; Taylor & Francis.

Borgonovi,  F. & Pokropek,  A. (2019) Education and Attitudes Toward Migration in a Cross-Country Perspective. Front. Psychol. 10:2224. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02224

Bozalek, V., Zembylas, M. (2023). Response-Ability. In: Responsibility, privileged irresponsibility and response-ability. Palgrave Critical University Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34996-6_4

Fanon, F. (1961) The Wretched of the Earth. Paris: Éditions Maspero.

Revsbæk, Line (2014): Adjusting to the Emergent. A Process Theory Perspective on Organizational Socialization and Newcomer Innovation. Aalborg University. Denmark. Online verfügbar unter https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/549518070/Line_Revsb_k_EPUB.pdf, zuletzt geprüft am 05.01.2025.

Schmidt-Catran, A. W., & Czymara, C. S. (2022). Political elite discourses polarize attitudes toward immigration along ideological lines. A comparative longitudinal analysis of Europe in the twenty-first century. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 49(1), 85–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2132222

Spangenberger, P. (2016): Zum Einfluss eines Nachhaltigkeitsbezugs auf die Wahl technischer Berufe durch Frauen. Eine Analyse am Beispiel des Windenergiesektors. Detmold: Eusl.

Spivak, G.C. (1988) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (eds) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271–313.