Universities can help staunch growing populism in Europe by opening up a space for ¡°legitimate dissent¡± on campus for concerns about the European Union and immigration, according to a prominent thinker on the EU.

So far, many researchers and institutions have tended to support the EU unconditionally, argued Luuk van Middelaar, previously a speechwriter and adviser to former European Council president Herman Van Rompuy and now a professor of EU law and European studies at Leiden University and the?Universit¨¦ Catholique de Louvain.

Critics of the EU have been smeared as hostile to the entire project, he told A Vision for Europe? Research, Innovation and the Democratic Deficit, a debate on how universities should respond to populist politics held in Brussels on 7 March.

¡°Universities should take care to avoid...a Brussels monopoly on the way the EU is conceived and researched and discussed,¡± Professor van Middelaar, the author of The?Passage to Europe: How a Continent Became a Union, a history of the EU,?explained to Times Higher Education after the debate.

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The EU puts ¡°a lot of money¡± into researching Europe, he said, for example through its network of Jean Monnet chairs. Brexit campaigners have alleged that these academic positions have been used to spread pro-EU ideology, something that post-holders deny.

A homogeneity of views was dangerous, because it would mean denying populists a space for what Professor van Middelaar called ¡°legitimate¡± opposition to the EU ¨C or on other issues like immigration ¨C which would in turn drive them towards opposing the legitimacy of the entire political order.

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¡°Populism is not a nature-given phenomenon, it¡¯s also the result of a lack of opposition and the possibility for dissent,¡± he argued.

Universities¡¯ democratic mission is therefore to allow ¡°legitimate dissent¡± on these issues to be voiced, he argued during the debate.

His comments come as universities in Europe and the US have been accused of liberal bias; for example, right-wing parties in the Dutch parliament recently passed a motion asking the government to investigate whether there is ¡°self-censorship¡± and a ¡°limitation of diversity of perspectives¡± in the Netherlands¡¯ universities.

Jan Palmowski, secretary general of the Guild of European Research Intensive Universities and moderator of the Brussels debate, acknowledged that it was ¡°fair to say that leadership [of Euroscepticism] hasn¡¯t come out of universities¡± and that universities need to become ¡°much more comfortable¡± about engaging with those who hold ¡°fundamentally¡± different views. But he also argued that universities are also ¡°naturally more cosmopolitan¡± places.

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Another theme that emerged in the debate was the need to move away from an exclusive focus on universities helping to provide jobs, growth and innovation, in favour of ¡°European universities as truth-seeking and trust-building institutions¡±, he explained.

This is something the guild hopes will influence the EU¡¯s Ninth Framework Programme, which will replace the current Horizon 2020 research and innovation funding package in 2021. In a , it argued that ¡°enhanced knowledge not only sustains economic growth; it provides sorely needed understanding of social change and cultural uncertainty, and it facilitates trust in the very essence of public life and its institutions¡±.

david.matthews@tesglobal.com