La Universidad y el desarrollo humano sostenible. Sobre la (inter) disciplinariedad y la (in) seguridad humana

This paper looks at the relation between universities and human development, first, in terms of what human development thinking—notably the contemporary ‘human development approach’ led by UNDP), Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum—can contribute to the university; and second, in terms of how the human development approach can be enriched by thinking about the nature and experience of universities, given their role as important agents of change or brakes on change. Universities have always been concerned with human development in a deeper sense which the UNDP etc.work needs to understand better. The paper asks in particular how universities could contribute to promote, support and defend sustainable human development. Section 2 characterises the contemporary line of thinking that calls itself a human development approach, as represented by the UN Human Development Reports. It relates that to older and broader lines of thought about human development. Section 3 looks at how the human development approach can provide a perspective to reorient performance evaluation in and of universities. The paper then applies these themes to the challenge of environmental sustainability. Section 4 draws out requirements for responding to this challenge: increased commitment to inter- and trans-disciplinarity, which must rest on serious attempts to understand disciplinarity too, and to understand the requirements for moving beyond it: notably, intellectual and organizational tools that provide bridges, and psychological security and mutual respect in order to be ready to leave disciplinary nests. Section 5 presents such one intellectual frame: it proposes that the ‘human security’ strand in the Sen-UNDP human development approach is a boundary-spanning framework that helps in inter- and trans-disciplinary understanding of environmental change, dangers, and responses. This perspective underlines that the systems we develop are often fragile and that we should attend to risks and the people who are most exposed to them. Section 6 argues for the potential centrality of the university in the changes needed to redirect modern socio-economic development into sustainable paths: universities can help to form the next generation of change-agents and they provide a societal forum for debate and learning, in spaces that combine the necessary unconstrained reflection, organized scepticism, rigour and cosmopolitan exchange. But to fulfil that potential requires many changes, to counter the reduction of the university from ‘the seat of universal learning’, to only a machinery for supporting profit generation and medium-term national self-interest