Keith Burnett: It’s university life, but not quite as we knew it

It is the university’s conviction that being part of an international community is itself an education, and that when students make the most of opportunities to learn from those who are different to themselves they gain insights they would not experience any other way. For us, diversity is an asset. We cite the number of countries on campus – more than 130 at the last count – as a source of pride.

Yet it is easy to forget that such pride is not universal. There is a sense that a tide is turning in British public opinion. In articles about schools and higher education, there are concerns about local resources and the impact of diversity on the host community.

Our experience of the great benefits brought by colleagues and students from around the world is absent from this discourse, and the foreigner is all too easily seen as alien.These thoughts played on my mind when I joined my son last week on a trip to the cinema to watch the new Star Trek movie. I enjoyed it, but it also awakened in me a sense of nostalgia for an ideal which feels under threat. To my generation, Star Trek’s famous crew represented something new. It held the promise of a future in which national boundaries had been eroded and become long lost cultural absurdities. Watching it now, it is easy to underestimate how radical it was then. I also realise that it represents a dream that seems to be moving further away from us as many blame other countries and cultures for our difficulties.

As I left the cinema, memories of my own encounters with internationalism came flooding back.

I remember giving a speech at a European research collaboration meeting which surprised and seemed to delight the scientists there. I talked about the role of science in building a new international community of academics whose home was not only the nation state, but Europe and indeed the world. The young optimist who hoped for an academia without borders is still there within me, still hoping, but feeling more threatened. I am perturbed by the apparent growth of the view that we in the United Kingdom are essentially different and need to be kept that way.

It is no good responding to people’s genuine concerns with accusations of bigotry alone. The role of a university is to acknowledge that people have genuine concerns and difficulties – and to work on solutions to these – but also to be a place of diversity, openness and inclusion.

As a university, we are in many ways an experimental country, one with citizens of every nation on a mission to make a difference in our world for all our home communities, wherever they may be.

Ours is in this sense a moral voyage with an emphasis on innovation and putting knowledge to service. And if it isn’t, we will fall far short of what we can be and fail to answer questions from students and society about what a university is for at a time of change and limited resource.

The other day, as the country’s media debated immigration, our own students put on an International Cultural Evening in Sheffield City Hall – a feast of music and dance, laughter and talent, with proceeds raised enriching needy local charities. The event was hosted by our International Student Officer Fadi Dakkak, who is leading the campaign to ensure that all students – from the UK or overseas – feel the benefits of being part of a vibrant international community.

This cultural richness was increasingly visible as the week went on. At the Celebration of Enterprise Dinner, student finalists inspired judges and guests with their superb business start-ups and concepts. A large number were international students who were bringing to life concepts involving social enterprise and job creation.

And at the launch of our Insigneo Institute – a partnership between research in Medicine and Engineering and the clinical skills within the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust – we saw Professor Marco Viceconti lead a team of researchers whose names display their many nationalities, united around an ambitious goal to deliver healthcare in new, personal and life-changing ways. This is just one of numerous ways in which colleagues across the university are working on international collaborations and to bring international perspectives into the educational experience.

Our university shows what an international community can and should be. A place of diversity in which talents are brought together to do good in our world. Some of the leaders of the future are with us at Sheffield now, and our task is to make the very most of them being amongst us. Let’s learn from and teach one another about our hope for a future society typified by talent, respect and international collaboration.