Tag: love

  • Euro visions: Austrian HE has much to give, but the love is wasted

    Euro visions: Austrian HE has much to give, but the love is wasted

    As I type, a UK-EU “reset” summit is due to be held in 24 hours’ time, and in the face of “Brexit betrayal” and “surrender summit” commentary from the likes of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the government is out on the media rounds talking up Europe.

    As such, it could probably have done without our Eurovision entry getting the dreaded “nul points” from televoters across the continent on Saturday night.

    The Swiss are especially upset about a voting system that saw them come second with juries but share our “nul points” with televoters – although the commentary there is characteristically introspective.

    It’s probably for the best that UK journalists filed all of their stories after the full UK televote was published in the night. We always tend to vote for Malta and Israel – but we also gave points to Poland, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia and Albania, which was almost certainly more about the size of their diaspora in the UK than the quality of their entries.

    Meanwhile our televoters managed to give “nul points” to eventual winners Austria – whose singer Johannes Pietsch is a “soprano” countertenor at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna.

    Rehearsals in Basel means that JJ missed out on placing his vote in last week’s Österreichische Hochschülerinnenschaft elections. In Austria, SU elections are held at the same time, using the same platform, nationwide at three levels – the federal level (BV), the university level (HV), and field of study (STV).

    Traditionally, the ÖH gets less interest in private universities, where significantly fewer students vote, and only one “list” tends to compete at the university level. In the federal election, political parties’ youth wings’ involvement means that the process picks up considerable national press coverage – and students’ participation in it at least involves national debates about higher education rather than who’s giving out the best lollipops.

    It also means that politicians are much more likely to have been involved in student representation and university governance than in the UK – a decade or so ago, current higher education minister Christoph Wiederkehr was chair of JUNOS (Junge liberale Studierende), the liberal student faction affiliated with NEOS, which is sort of like the Lib Dems, just without the weird stunts.

    But despite the level of influence, given the political situation in Austria, rectors likely feel like JJ in “Wasted Love” – despite having much to give, his love ultimately goes to waste because the recipient isn’t willing to fully engage.

    I reach out my hand

    Until a decade or so ago, the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) (the centre-right, Christian democratic party) was in a “grand coalition” with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) under Chancellor Werner Faymann, holding key ministries but facing criticism for slow reforms.

    The ÖVP’s approach to higher education had typically balanced market-oriented perspectives with traditionalist values. Under Education Minister Martin Polaschek (an ÖVP appointee), they had focused on “stabilising university funding” while simultaneously introducing more restrictive admissions policies.

    But like a lot of European countries, populism was on the march, and in 2017 it switched leader and formed a hardline coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) – although that collapsed in 2019 when the FPÖ’s leader was caught on camera discussing potentially corrupt deals with a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch (the so-called “Ibiza scandal”).

    Despite all of that, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) secured the largest vote share in last September’s federal election – and its stance on higher education was all about national identity, cultural conservatism, and scepticism towards progressive influences. Its manifesto was strong on the promotion of the German language and Austrian cultural values within universities, opposed “woke” ideology and “gender diktats”, and even proposed the reporting of mechanisms to flag “politically active educators”.

    It topped the polls with nearly 29 per cent of votes – not quite enough to form a government, so the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) attempted to form a government with the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the liberals (NEOS) to block the FPÖ.

    When those talks collapsed in January 2025, President Van der Bellen tasked FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl with forming a government – leading to five weeks of negotiations between FPÖ and ÖVP, during which leaked documents revealed plans to significantly increase tuition fees, slash student representation in university governance, and tighten controls on academic freedom – as well as plans to restrict international student admissions, prioritise “native Austrian” applicants in competitive fields like medicine, and impose stricter oversight of academic content to curb what the FPÖ described as “leftist indoctrination.”

    Eventually, Austria returned to a centrist coalition, with the ÖVP and SPÖ including NEOS in their new coalition, forming a government in March 2025 under Chancellor Christian Stocker (ÖVP). It’s quite a spread of views – the conservative ÖVP champions efficiency, market discipline and selective admissions with an eye toward business alignment, the centre-left SPÖ calls for open access, generous student grants and democratic governance as vehicles for social mobility, and the liberal NEOS promotes structural modernisation, flexible learning pathways and income-contingent loans to balance access with sustainability.

    But you watch me grow distant

    As in the UK, there are some major fiscal constraints. Austria’s budget deficit exceeded the EU’s 3 per cent limit in 2024 and is projected to reach 4 per cent in 2025, and so the coalition has agreed to implement cuts of €6.4 billion overall – with the ÖVP pushing for fiscal restraint, the SPÖ advocating for educational equality, and NEOS championing system reform.

    And there’s no indication that the government will address the increasing financial pressure on university operations that led providers like TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology) to close its campus for a month as a cost-saving measure in the winter of 2022/23.

    Students occupied the main auditorium under the banner “TUbesetzt” – calling it an unacceptable abdication of responsibility by both the government and the rectorate, given it denied students access to libraries, labs and study spaces right before exams.

    They also criticized what they saw as conservative, outdated teaching and highlighted the lack of coursework on “societally relevant topics like queer-feminism, the climate crisis, and ethics” in technical curricula.

    Occupiers demanded that the university recognize that “technology is not apolitical” and reform its teaching to prepare students for future challenges. On the same day, about 40 students at the University of Graz also occupied a lecture hall, focusing on campus sustainability (they demanded exclusively plant-based menus in cafeterias and more free student spaces) and mandatory climate-protection classes for all students.

    Since the protest, TU Wien has launched its “fuTUre fit” initiative, culminating in a 2024 convention on sustainability, student-centered learning, and innovation. Key new initiatives include new courses like “Sustainability in Computer Science” and a sustainable design focus within the Faculty of Architecture.

    You don’t want to go under

    More widely, in the face of rocketing inflation, Austrian public universities had requested an extra €525 million, but ultimately only got €205 million in the 2024 budget. The government had previously topped up the national university budget by a total of €850 million to buffer rising prices – now a new multi-year commitment will only offset inflation and provide a “solid basis” for the next three years.

    For students, an ÖH survey showed that students spend on average 43 per cent of their income on housing alone. Rising rents and utility costs are said to be pushing many into financial hardship, prompting calls for government intervention as private “luxury” student dorms proliferate but remain unaffordable.

    The ÖH has urged reintroduction of a nationwide subsidy for student dormitories – abolished in 2011 – noting that since 1994, student grants had risen only about 15 per cent while living costs jumped roughly 90 per cent.

    Even campus food has become a flashpoint. In 2024, student “mensas” (cafeterias) in Graz and Innsbruck shut down due to rising costs, while others hiked prices.

    It cannot be that students have to go to the nearest supermarket or fast food because the local Mensa is outrageously expensive or even closed.

    …argued ÖH chair Sarah Roßmann.

    So far the coalition has only committed to maintaining the indexation of student financial aid to inflation, with the additional income limit for student grants already increased, and the value of study grants set to be adjusted for inflation each September.

    When student numbers are capped, you can announce, take credit for and target investment – so it is growing study places in high-demand fields, particularly STEM subjects at Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS), with a goal of addressing skills shortages while also increasing the proportion of women in technical disciplines.

    Digital transformation is seen as one of the ways out of the financial crisis – and with funding from government, Austria’s Digital University Hub (DUH) is attempting to achieve it via a major expansion in shared infrastructure rather than spend on commercial platforms.

    There’s an Austrian University Toolkit (a modular IT toolkit for standard processes), a Digital Blueprint (a “toolbox for tech challenges”), ePAS+ (a national system for digital recruitment), HR4u (a national HR backbone), m:usi (a sports management platform), PASSt (a sector-owned student analytics platform), a Diversity Platform (a multilingual, interactive platform to enhance counseling and information processes), UVI-Sec (IT security enhancement) and uniCHAT (collaboration platform).

    How do you not see that?

    The FPÖ’s rise has been a challenge for a sector whose students are used to fighting far-right influence on campus. There have been ongoing protests, for example, against a University of Vienna professor (Lothar Höbelt) known for his far-right affiliations and favourable stance toward the FPÖ.

    In 2020 left-wing and anti-fascist student groups repeatedly disrupted Höbelt’s lectures, eventually forcing the cancellation of one under slogans like “No room for Nazis at the university” – as well as protesting student fraternity (Burschenschaft) groups that they say use academic spaces to spread racist or antisemitic ideas.

    More controversially, in late 2023 a “Pro-Palästina” protest camp was set up at the University of Vienna’s Altes AKH courtyard, demanding universities cut ties with institutions linked to military funding, including the European Defence Fund and the national defence program FORTE. Eventually, the police were sent in. Given Austria’s complex historical relationship with antisemitism and its post-World War II commitment to supporting Jewish communities and Israel, encampments were much more controversial than in the UK.

    Both the university administration and the ÖH strongly condemned the protests, citing concerns over antisemitism, extremism, and the involvement of the BDS movement, and stressed the need for free but respectful discourse. Education Minister Martin Polaschek also called for “zero tolerance” towards hate, arguing that academic freedom should not shield extremism. FPÖ figures cheered the crackdown on the camp, claiming it validated their warnings about imported extremism on campuses – demanding harsher consequences for student protestors who “disrupt teaching” or “insult Austria”.

    This wasted love

    But probably the most interesting policy shift is one that is starting to recognise some of the limits of massification. While the universities of applied sciences are expanding, traditional universities have been told to tighten admissions for postgraduate courses and introduce more selective entry criteria.

    It’s being discussed as a more “managed” expansion, in areas deemed to be economically strategic – and while government has tried to balance it all by indexing student grants to inflation and expanding support for underrepresented groups in STEM, the critique is that vocational will seen as the more accessible option, while traditional academic routes become even more exclusive than they are now.

    That debate can be obscured in the UK, given the way in which we swedged together everything and called it a “university” back in 1992. But the coalition in Austria is grappling with the same problems that Labour is – Austria needs more graduates, just not that sort and not there. Coalition politics there may well mean it’s more likely to deliver it.

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  • Love, loyalty, and liberty: ASU alumni unite to defend free speech

    Love, loyalty, and liberty: ASU alumni unite to defend free speech

    Late last year, a group of Arizona State University alumni gathered on the rooftop of the Canopy Hotel — high enough to see the headlights snake through the city of Tempe, but low enough to feel the pounding bass line of Mill Avenue’s nightlife. 

    Though the setting was casual, the conversation was anything but. A simple question had brought them together: What obligations do alumni have to their alma mater? 

    For most graduates, the answer is simple. Come back for Homecoming, buy the sweatshirt, scribble a check when the fundraising office calls. Thanks for your generosity! Click. 

    But for the assembled Sun Devils — spanning the classes of ’85 to ’24 — their connection to ASU is more than rah–rah nostalgia. They feel a duty to protect what made the university worth attending in the first place. 

    And so, that evening, they formed ASU Alumni for Free Speech. Their mission? “To promote and strengthen free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity, both on campus and throughout the global ASU community.” 

    The group’s inaugural chairman is Joe Pitts, ASU class of ’23 — whose beard, broad shoulders, and sage intellect belie his youth. For him, alumni should be more than mere spectators or “walking check books,” as he puts it, “endlessly giving and expecting little in return.” Instead, they should be invested stakeholders. 

    Pitts says it’s now fashionable to view a college diploma as little more than a fancy receipt. People think, I paid my tuition, endured the required courses, and behold: I’m credentialed! A neat little market transaction — no lingering ties, no ongoing investment.

    But this mindset, Pitts argues, is both morally bankrupt and pragmatically wrong-headed. As a practical matter, he says, “the value of your degree is tied to the reputation of your school — if your alma mater improves over time, your degree becomes more prestigious. If it declines, so does the respect it commands.” 

    And in the cutthroat world of status-signaling and social capital that matters — a lot. 

    ASU alumni have already petitioned the Arizona Board of Regents, urging them to adopt a policy of institutional neutrality, which would prevent the university from taking positions on current political issues and weighing in on the cause-du-jour.

    As a moral matter, “spending four years (or even more) at a university inevitably shapes you in some way,” Pitts says. “And in most cases, it’s for the better — even if we don’t exactly realize it at the time.” Think about it: how many unexpected friendships or serendipitous moments of clarity, insight, rebellion, and revelation do we owe our alma mater? 

    To discard that connection the moment you graduate — to treat it like an expired gym membership — isn’t just ungrateful. It’s a rejection of one’s own formation.

    But beyond these considerations, Pitts insists that what united them on the Canopy Hotel rooftop last year was — love, actually. Not the saccharine, Hallmark kind or the fleeting thrill of a Tinder rendezvous, but the sort of love that drives men to build cathedrals and forge legacies.

    Echoing St. Thomas Aquinas, Pitts says, “We love ASU, and to love is to will the good of the other — not to sit idly by.” And what is the good? It’s a campus where students unapologetically speak their minds; where professors dare to probe the perilous and the provocative; where administrators resist the temptation to do their best Big Brother impression! 

    Fortunately for ASU Alumni for Free Speech, their alma mater is already a national leader when it comes to free speech on campus — though, as Pitts notes, that’s “a damn low bar.”

    ASU ranks 14 out of 251 schools in FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, and has maintained a “green light” rating from FIRE since 2011, meaning its official policies don’t seriously imperil free expression. In 2018, ASU adopted the Chicago principles, committing to the “free, robust, and uninhibited sharing of ideas” on campus.

    The university didn’t stop there. This spring, ASU will launch a Center for Free Speech alongside an annual Free Speech Forum. 

    But despite these credentials, the specter of censorship still lingers at ASU, and the numbers tell the tale:

    • 68% of ASU students believe shouting down a speaker is at least rarely acceptable.
    • 35% believe violence can sometimes be justified to silence speech.
    • 37% self-censor at least once or twice a month. 
    • Over one-third of surveyed ASU faculty admit to self-censorship in their writing.

    And so — like the cavalry cresting the hill — ASU Alumni for Free Speech arrives just in time.

    “When controversy inevitably arises on a campus of 100,000 students,” Pitts argues, “the defense of free expression shouldn’t be left solely to outside organizations or political bodies. Instead, those speaking up should be people who genuinely care about ASU and have its best interests at heart.”

    ASU Alumni for Free Speech aims to be that voice. “In the long run, we want to have a seat at the table,” Pitts explains. “We want to build relationships not just with the ASU administration but also with the Arizona Board of Regents.”

    Along with FIRE, ASU alumni have already petitioned the Arizona Board of Regents, urging them to adopt a policy of institutional neutrality, which would prevent the university from taking positions on current political issues and weighing in on the cause-du-jour.

    SIGN THE PETITION TO ADOPT INSTITUTIONAL NEUTRALITY!

    Pitts and the rest of ASU Alumni for Free Speech are tired of playing cheerleader. They’re here to ensure that ASU flourishes not just today, but for every Sun Devil yet to step onto Palm Walk for the first time.

    “Sometimes that may look like applause,” Pitts says. “Other times, that may look like criticism.” 

    In either case, he insists, it’s an act of love.

    If you’re ready to join ASU Alumni for Free Speech, or if you’re interested in forming a free speech alumni alliance at your alma mater, contact Bobby Ramkissoon at bobby.ramkissoon@thefire.org. We’ll connect you with like-minded alumni and offer guidance on how to effectively protect free speech and academic freedom for all. 

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  • What’s love got to do with neurodiversity and HE art and design?

    What’s love got to do with neurodiversity and HE art and design?

    by Kai Syng Tan

    A loveless storm and a love-filled symposium

    On 18 November I was ill. I recovered in time to travel to Helsinki for a symposium two days later, but winter storms shut down the airport, delayed flights and lost luggage, including mine. The symposium director Dr Timothy Smith (image 2 below, to the left) had to step in to act as my wardrobe assistant. Like many neurodivergent academics, Tim works across an astonishing range of knowledges, including political science, fine art, public policy and pedagogy. But I’m quite certain that sourcing for clothes to fit 155cm grumpy people isn’t part of their typical repertoire.  

    Image 2
    Image 3: Fidget toys placed on top of a paper file that reads ‘UNIARTS HELSINKI’, with a name tag with a lime green strap and name ‘KAI’. 
    Image 3

    Image 2: A symposium with person standing to the left holding a microphone; another in the middle, seated, in front of a projection with book cover and QR codes and next to a screen showing live captioning; more people in the foreground on different forms of seating and being

    Image 3: Fidget toys placed on top of a paper file that reads ‘UNIARTS HELSINKI’, with a name tag with a lime green strap and name ‘KAI’. 

    Tim’s Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium, which took two years of advocacy and planning, and draws on several more of research across neurodiversity and art education, took place at the University of the Arts Helsinki, modelling best practices for inclusivity, not just for neurodivergent folx. Universities, watch and learn. Yes it can be done. So, what does a symposium led by love look like in action? Let’s spell out a few ways how:   

    • Programming not to neo-liberalist but ‘crip time’ (Kafer 2013), enabling us to process our thoughts, with 30 minute breaks between sessions, and a 2-hour lunch break;
    • Employment of live professional CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning – not the still racist AI captioning that does not grasp ‘non-standard’ accents (image 2, to the right);
    • Where divergent modes of being – including horizontally, in motion etc, not just seated or erect – are affirmed (image 2, foreground);
    • Inclusion of fidget toys in the goody bag (image 3);
    • Provision of quiet spaces – no, we’re not talking about a broom cupboard or first aid room doubling, but a (care-)fully decked out sensory rooms for group or solo use, with low lighting, different soft furnishings as well as more sensory objects for people to shut off, calm down and/or regroup (image 4);
    • Detailed maps, diagrams and instructions for ‘walking or wheeling’ to venues; including for a dinner, at a five-star hotel, which was a delicious vegan spread – and entirely free of charge;    
    • Priced at less than one-third the fee of a usual conference at €100 – and that’s for ‘participants receiving full institutional financial support’; otherwise, ‘please select the €0 fee option’;
    • Elevating and celebrating diverse body-minds-worlds whose research, creative and professional practice gather, collide and transcend disciplines, fields of knowledge, cultures, geopolitical borders, and specialisms and in the lineup. This includes shy*play, a pedagogical platform, collective, and art practice comprising teacher-researchers from Netherlands-Spain Antje Nestel and Aion Arribas, who invite us to ‘do neurodiversity’ (images 5a-5b); Estonian-UK PhD candidate Iris Sirendi discussing their Curating for Change curatorial fellowship at the Museum of Liverpool and urging – no, daring – the arts and cultural sector to step up and ‘crip the museum’ (image 6); US-Canadian-Polish feminist researcher and author of several books including Asexual Erotics Professor Ela Przybylo disclosing their new identity/positionality of being autistic, and inviting responses Towards a Neuroqueer Conference Manifesto/a/x.
    Image 4: Sensory room, with low blue-green lighting, soft furnishings and soft toys
    Image 4
    Image 5a: shy*play’s Antje Nestel and Aion Arribas, both holding microphones and reading from papers strewn on a long table
    Image 5a
    Image 5b: people ‘doing neurodiversity’ in different ways, including by displaying their creations on a wall that acts as a shared canvas
    Image 5b
    Image 6: Estonian-UK PhD candidate Iris Sirendi at a long desk speaking to a projection with a slide with the heading ‘What’s Next?’ and a logo that reads ‘The Neurodiverse Museum’.
    Image 6

    Image 4: Sensory room, with low blue-green lighting, soft furnishings and soft toys

    Image 5a: shy*play’s Antje Nestel and Aion Arribas, both holding microphones and reading from papers strewn on a long table

    Image 5b: people ‘doing neurodiversity’ in different ways, including by displaying their creations on a wall that acts as a shared canvas

    Image 6: Estonian-UK PhD candidate Iris Sirendi at a long desk speaking to a projection with a slide with the heading ‘What’s Next?’ and a logo that reads ‘The Neurodiverse Museum’

    The above are just a few of the highlights from the in-person session on 22 November 2024, which complements an online symposium with a different programme a week prior on 15 November 2024 for those who prefer the digital interface, both of which are recorded with transcripts which all participants can freely access. 

    I’m not singing the praises of the Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium because I was the keynote speaker.

    I’m saying the above as I’ve been a keynote as well as participant in more than 100 conferences – and I’m still allergic to them, not least as someone who is hyperactive and literally cannot sit still. I’m also saying this as someone who’s curated several, including one on running as an arts and humanities discourse that a 2014 Guardian article said ‘other conferences could take a leaf out of’, for its 8-minute sprint formats and multi-modal approaches including film screening, meditation sessions and run-chats.

    But Tim’s conference was way better. The symposium is prioritising not just neurodivergent and queer – neuroqueer (Walker 2021) – perspectives. Following the positionality of multiply-minoritised researchers in higher education Angel L. Miles, Akemi Nishida and Anjali J. Forber-Pratt at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Vanderbilt University as expressed in their powerful open letter to White disability studies and ableist institutions of higher education (2017), the symposium focuses on research that counter ‘white supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia; ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia; and heteronormativity and heterosexism’.

    And I’m sure that Tim, like me, wants other conferences to come, to even better ours. 

    So, take our baton. Run with it.

    Why neurodiversity? Why now?

    ‘Neurodiversity’ – broadly the coexistence of different ways of processing information, learning and being – has exploded as a buzzword in the past few years. If you didn’t know that 15-20% (Doyle 2020) of humans are autistic, with dyslexia, Tourettes, ADHD and other forms of neurodevelopmental processes, you will have run into the extensive media coverage, or seen your Gen-Z students or kids declaring their ‘neuro-spiciness’ on Tik Tok.

    It is well-established that neurocognitive variants like dyslexia, ADHD and autism are over-represented in the arts and culture (above 30%, eg RCA 2001; Bacon and Bennett (2013); Universal Music (2020)). This is unsurprising, given how neurodiversity, innovation and change-making are powerfully entangled, being essential for human’s evolution, inventiveness, creativity and more. Networks, academic publications, research centres, educational research centres and conferences by/with/for neurodivergent creative researchers have been emerging in the last years too.

    This year alone, I was external examiner for two creative PhDs by/for/with neurodivergence, and helped deliver one PhD candidate to the finish line and whom, since 28 November, can now add ‘Dr’ to their name, likely to the chagrin of those who think that only clinicians are ‘real’ doctors and experts. Collectively, these efforts are countering medicalised and deficit approaches to cognitive difference. By 2050, 1.94 billion of the 9.4 billion population will be neurodivergent – making neurodivergence far from a ‘niche’ phenomena or area of research, but one with substantive critical mass.

    Those with social capital wear their difference as proud badges of honour. So far so ‘authentic’. 

    But surprise, surprise – for the multiply-minoritised, their difference continues to be demonised, pathologised, infantilised, and/or policed. This includes teachers and researchers who draw on their neurodivergence in their teaching and research. That’s also why many aren’t out – or have/want access to diagnosis (which themselves have long waiting lists, are costly and more), etc, and often aren’t reflected in the official figures and studies. It’s also only recently been understood in leadership studies that when a white heterosexual cis-man expresses his ‘true self’, it’s just not acceptable, or even laudable. For those who are not straight, not white, not of the right class, or the right skin tone etc – authenticity comes at a high cost – including literally so. Being dyslexic, I struggle with normative approaches to reading and writing – but reading and writing are literally bread and butter for an academic! Disclosing that you cannot read or write would be tantamount to career-suicide, especially if you are on a fixed-term contract – if you have been able to survive the ableist, racist and sexist HE system at all, that is.    

    Harvard, World Economic Forum, NESTA and other global bodies have been selling neurodivergence as the ‘next talent opportunity in the workplace’, ‘competitive advantage’ and a ‘neuroleadership’ antidote to in tackling wicked challenges for the Fourth Industrial Revolution — but without neurodivergent voices in this discussion, isn’t this objectifying and othering?

    Then, there’s a certain cartoon-tycoon who has been dominating the headlines. When not firing their critics from their factories and firms, or firing rockets to colonise the moon and Mars, this person is firing spats on social media — before buying up the site to make it their temple for ‘unmoderated toxicity’. After firing pot-shots at child-free cat ladies, they’re asking ‘high-IQ revolutionaries’ to work for no pay for an incumbent government. The latter call is interesting because this person had announced that they are ‘with Aspergers’, using the outdated terminology still instrumentalised by certain ‘high-functioning’ autistic people, to denote that they are a genius — ie a high-IQ revolutionary themselves!    

    Why neurodiversity, love and HE art and design?

    As an autistic child-free cat lady, it’s my duty to ask other neurodivergent artists, academics, activists and allies within Higher Education (HE) to do more and do better, to call out on dangerous neurodivergent figures and approaches, and to counter that with love. If Machiavellian misfits and messiahs weaponise their neurodivergence, so must neurodivergent movers and shakers dis-arm them.  

    Image 7

    Caption: Love-led guidelines for to make spaces more inclusive, in diagram form with 8 blocks of texts. From Tan, Kai Syng. Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network shared, LIVE, CO-CREATED Community Guidelines since 2022

    For several years, I’ve researched into and discussed the need to dismantle harmful narratives of neurodiversity. Through an art-psychiatry project, founding of a global 435-member network for neurodivergent innovators, I’ve urged for a decolonial  — ie shift of focus away from knowledge and practices in the West and global north — and intersectional — ie consideration of a how multiple, complex contexts interact and intersect  — approach. We’ve come up with love-led guidelines for activities (image 7). I’m editing a publication with a major academic publisher, which is possibly the first book with openly neurodivergent academics ranging from early career researchers to established, newly-‘out’ professors, to discuss our research through the prisms of neurodivergence and creativity (c2027). Along the way, we are introducing and foregrounding neurodivergent approaches to knowledge, creative research and writing with play, lived experience and more, thus challenging the dominant, normative habits demanded by the academic publishing industrial complex that emphasise the linear, causal, and ‘neutral’.   

    On this SRHE platform, I’ve previously discussed a neurodivergence-inspired pedagogical approach to transform HE culture, illustrating how this isn’t just an armchair exercise or a theoretical pontification from the ivory tower, with examples I have led, such as a four-day festival for Black History Month 2020 in Manchester. To mark Valentines’ day this year, I discussed the need to build love into HE curricula – standing on the shoulders of great artists, activists and teachers before us, like bell hooks, Paulo Friere and James Baldwin.

    My keynote at the Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium was entitled ‘Neuro-Futurism and Reimagining Leadership’.  My performance-lecture was based on my book of the same title, subtitled ‘An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation’. Grasping how systemic oppressions are interconnected and how liberatory approaches to education must be joined up is vital in this discussion. I postulate a new intellectual agenda and action plan for ‘leadership’ as discourse and practice anchored in visual arts and arts education. Re-claiming the subject from business or arts management, and away from a trait/talent hinged on individualism, hierarchy, genes or luck, the book – and my performance – entangles critical leadership studies with socially-engaged art and relational aesthetics, embedding neuro-queering, futurity, and Chinese Daoist cosmology for the first time, to introduce ‘neuro-futurism’ as a beyond-colonial, (co-)creative change-making framework.

    The participants of the symposium grasped this, responding by describing the performance-lecture as ‘phenomenal’. Brazilian artist-researcher Fran Trento, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the University of Helsinki, even took live notes and pictures to add to their mobile participatory art installation, and wheeled it around, further spreading love in HE – literally (Image 8). If it hadn’t been snowing so heavily, Fran would have wheeled their installation outside, beyond the ivory tower, to make visible what the abstract yet very simple four-letter word – love – can look like.  

    Image 8: Dr Fran Trento standing next to their mobile installation that comprises a jacket onto which participants can make marks onto, scrolls of film, and a pail with cameras and other creative and critical tools to dismantle harmful narratives and approaches
    Image 8
    Image 9: A signboard ‘Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium’ covered in snow, in a street raging with a snow-storm with cars passing by in front of a building across the road.
    Image 9

    Image 8: Dr Fran Trento standing next to their mobile installation that comprises a jacket onto which participants can make marks onto, scrolls of film, and a pail with cameras and other creative and critical tools to dismantle harmful narratives and approaches

    Image 9: A signboard ‘Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium’ covered in snow, in a street raging with a snow-storm with cars passing by in front of a building across the road

    And love is critical if we want to dis-arm and dismantle violent master (sic) narratives and approaches of neurodivergence. If neurodivergence is a superpower — a trope I have also critiqued as, while useful, it can be reductive/fetishistic, and capitalised by the ‘high-functioning’ to self-select into an elitist club that excludes others — then there are also villains and Machiavellian messiahs who abuse their (super)power. The irony is — and yes, autistic people can grasp irony — is that these self-proclaimed ‘anti-establishment’ ‘outsiders’ are often the very personification and product of the system,as poster boys of capitalism and more. Remember the call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ outside the Oxbridge set to join Number 10 – by figures whose pedigrees were archetypal of the ruling class — private education, Oxford degree, political strategist to a prime minister similarly outfitted?

    Now that’s weird!

    Braving storms ahead

    My luggage got lost – again – on my way back to the UK, but academic and arts and cultural workers must lose neither our focus or hope. As hatred becomes even more mainstreamed and normalised, minoritised body-minds and approaches will remain hardest hit. There will be storms ahead (image 9). We – and that includes you – must step forward and step up. As US author Octavia E Butler (1947–2006) warns, unless we build ‘different leadership’ by ‘people with more courage and vision’, we’ll ‘all go down the toilet’. That’s why the Black science-fiction bestseller, who was also dyslexic, wrote story after story that reimagined different, better realities. 

    To not go down the toilet, we must disarm those who weaponise their neurodivergence. Here are some of the things that neurodivergent academics, artists, activists and allies can do:  

    • Shift your curricula to elevate and celebrate efforts that are truly leader-ful, joy-ful and equitable, and directed towards collective liberation. I’ve named several in this article. No excuses.  
    • Stop the hierarchy of normality – within neurodiversity groups in and beyond HE too – that props up antics that are white supremacist, patriarchal, misogynist, racist, transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, colonialist, capitalist, ableist and extractive. Stop fuelling the misfits and messiahs with ill-intentions. 
    • Instead, invest in and donate your time, energy and skills to support love-led efforts. If you have a voice/ platform and can afford to, mobilise it to push back against the violence. People in senior management paygrades, make use of your position/proximity to the top of the food-chain to action positive change beyond lip service or generic policy statements about the civic duty of HE, and bring to life its promises about equity, social justice and inclusion.

    On that latter note, I’m seeking to curate a 3-day international summit in 2026 that re-imagines HE art and design as a change-making and future-making force through neuroqueer, social justice and leadership prisms. This welcomes anyone with a stake in the arts and culture, higher education, social change and inclusive futures, to get together to explore the coexistence of different ways to (un-)learning and being in the world, to share best practices about inclusion, and to collectivise and co-create action plans for more inclusive futures within and beyond the art school and HE. Through quickfire provocations, transdisciplinary speed-dating, reverse-mentoring, co-creation of toolkits, skateboarding tours, running-discourses and other embodied forms of engagement, we will not just learn about ways to make ‘reasonable’ adjustments for neuro-divergent students and staff, but to learn about their innovative approaches, and thus reimagine ways to understand and do ‘leadership’, so as to make positive changes, within and beyond art and design and HE. This shift in paradigm to position art and design higher education is aligned with – and can amplify – other ongoing efforts in the sector, such as the Creative Education Manifesto. Get in touch if you’re keen to help do the work.

    All that said, clearly, neither Tim’s symposium or my proposed summit are the only or last word in this matter. You, too, can lead with love, if you don’t already. Prioritise an intersectional approach to neuroqueer the curricula, towards dis-arming stories and approaches that are white supremacist, racist, colonialist, xenophobic, ageist, sexist, misogynistic, classcist, transphobic and heteronormative.

    CREDITS: Photographs by Kai. Photograph of Kai by neurodivergent artist-curator-activist-PhD-candidate Aidan Moseby

    Kai Syng Tan is an artist, academic, author, and agitator who adores cats and alliteration. Their book Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation re-imagines leadership as a co-creative, neuro-queered practice centring anti-oppression and futurity: it was published in Summer 2024. See here to join the book tour. Sign up here to participate in the CHEAD Leadership Programme taster entitled What’s love got to do with leadership? led by Kai as a new CHEAD Trustee, which will feature a response by Pascal Matthias, Associate Vice President EDI and Social Justice, University of Southampton and Co-Founder at FACE (Fashion Academics Creating Equality). Kai is Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership, University of Southampton, UK. All views here are their own.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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