Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Wolf of Dulwich Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is an enormous honour and privilege to join your Lordships' House and speak in this debate. I would like to express my gratitude for the welcome and kindness shown to me by everyone here since my arrival. Preparing for today I was also greatly relieved to discover that a large number of other people also spent their first few weeks discovering that they had no sense of direction. If it were not for the outstanding staff here, I would probably be wandering the corridors still.

I also thank my two distinguished supporters, the noble Lords, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood and Lord Rees of Ludlow, for their help and support. Both, as I am sure noble Lords know, are eminent academics. I should explain perhaps that I am also an academic and a social scientist. My own work is largely on vocational education and training, and higher education.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for securing and introducing this debate and for giving me the opportunity to say a little about universities and soft power. Professor Joseph Nye, whose work first defined the idea of soft power, believes that the role that Britain plays in educating people in British universities is a major soft power resource for this country. The committee agrees, and I am more than happy to agree myself. However, I was surprised at how little was said by witnesses to the committee about what universities actually do that translates into soft power in this way. A few—very few—individual witnesses talked of how our universities exposed students to British values and shaped the thoughts of the world’s future elites. However, the research councils mostly emphasised international research collaborations, and the membership organisations tended to dwell more on numbers, money and, of course, visas.

Universities UK offered one anecdote about a Chinese central banker with a Cambridge PhD, who said that in negotiations with the Bank of England he was “emotionally bonded” to the UK. That is wonderful, but I think most noble Lords would agree that this could reflect memories of happy days on the river and friendships made, rather than anything important that we, the universities, actually did. And so I should like to take this opportunity to spell out in a little more detail what goes on in universities—week after week, year after year—that can make them an important source of soft power for this country.

I know that many noble Lords are, like me, academics by trade, and what I say will therefore sound very familiar. I should like to start with my own recent week. Last week was when our course teams at my university, King’s College London, finalised and agreed the questions on summer examination papers and drew up indicative answers that would go out to external examiners. In doing so, it was striking how often we would require students to “examine critically” a particular statement or question. We would demand that they contrast and evaluate opposing views. We would reiterate in our notes the importance for a good answer of both tight theoretical argument and the marshalling of empirical evidence.

Last week, I was also marking and commenting on coursework—that is, the long written papers that in almost every university now contribute substantially to a final degree. Among the most important coursework marking criteria in every British university I know are, first, a full bibliography, properly set out; and, secondly, that all assertions made are properly and fully referenced and supported. Any quote must be easily traced by provision of the exact page or other reference marker. Our students, understandably, often find us compulsive and nitpicking on this point. But this is fundamentally how we convey and hopefully instil some core values. This is about respect for evidence—all evidence, not just the evidence in one’s own comfort zone. It is about accuracy, scrupulous attention to detail and transparency. We also reward independent judgment, but provided it takes place within those bounds. This, I have to say, is far from universally true across the world.

In UK universities today, there is a real tension between the demands of research, the pressure to expand numbers and the labour-intensive process of teaching, marking and feedback that I have just described. But this latter process is central to how we instil norms and values. They, in turn, are a critical part of our universities’ potential for soft power.

We tend to talk about power as a zero-sum game—“If I have some, you have less”. But there are important aspects of the world where things are not zero-sum but, on the contrary, can make life better for everyone. I do not think that I am contravening the rule for maiden speeches in suggesting that that is true of the values that I have described. They are good for the whole planet. They are good for everyone. If people respect evidence, can formulate a logical argument and take for granted the importance of considering opposing views and justifying their disagreement, this has to be a good thing for the world.

Professor Mary Kaldor of the LSE, in her written evidence, told the committee that British universities “are global institutions” that “contribute to global debates about the construction of rules and norms”. It would clearly be naive to think that by educating many of the world’s future elite here, as we do, we would automatically spread peace, good will and collaboration across the planet. However, conveying academic values by the way we teach, assess and respond to students is a core part of what all British academics are, and should be, about. It is very important, and I hope that in any discussion of university soft power noble Lords will duly give it centre stage.

In conclusion, I again thank noble Lords for their welcome and support, and I look forward very much to contributing to the work of this House in years to come.