Toward an Innovative University in the South?

Abstract

This paper deals with the strategies of institutionalising scientific, technological and educational co-operation in the context of recent Euro-Mediterranean relations. In order to understand the process of creating a new kind of Euro-Mediterranean co-operation policy in those areas of activity, it is necessary to have a broad view of the social contexts that determine that same process. The newest phase of socio-economic modernisation, what is often referred to as the ‘information era’, is responsible for changing both the concept and the institutional structures of international co-operation between universities and in the science and technology sectors. One of the key aims of the renewal of the co-operation policy before and after the ministerial conference held in Barcelona in 1995 is the promotion of the vision of the innovative university in the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries, one that actively responds to the needs of the new political economy and new strategies of scientific, technological and educational co-operation, in the Euro-Mediterranean region. This paper critically addresses this ideal for the southern university, taking into account the fundamental issue of socio-cultural sensitivity, as this is manifest or absent in the Barcelona framework. It is argued that the broad consensus that was present among the various European and non-European participants of the working groups at the Fórum Civil Euromed—a consensus that emphasised the gap in the southern Mediterranean countries with respect to technology and university-based research—could be said to be the direct result of the way in which these fora were organised. It is claimed that different voices might emerge, and therefore the conceptual basis of co-operation broadened, if participants from other sectors of civil society were to be involved.