Doyens of 'smart power' steer change

UNIVERSITIES are playing an international game of chess to determine which country will become the smart superpower of the 21st century.

Jennifer Oriel

UNIVERSITIES are playing an international game of chess to determine which country will become the smart superpower of the 21st century.

The top 50 most influential thinkers in Australian higher education typify a new class of leaders in the knowledge era.

They're university educated, politically savvy, networked with government and media, and ultimately willing to risk public furore in the pursuit of their ideas.

But unlike the mandarins of old, these honey-tongued diplomats won't bomb your village or curse your crops if you happen to disagree with them.

They are the doyens of a very modern strategy called "smart power".

Harvard University professor Joseph Nye has launched smart power as the lingua franca of contemporary global influence.

It infuses the hard negotiating tools of money, the military and coercion with the softer instruments of culture, diplomacy and persuasion. Smart power is a little like a courtier who dispatches charm as his frontline offensive but packs a pistol in his garter should the frontline fail.

Universities were once held aloft in the cumulus of soft influence, resplendent with liberal ideas and ideals, book-writing vice-chancellors and Ivy League cloisters of contemplation.

But in the past 20 years, the opening up of higher education to the masses in the US, Britain, Australia and Asia has thrust universities into a cut-throat court of profit, power and politics.

The top 50 list reveals for the first time the new world of Australian smart power. It unveils the architects of our modern tertiary system and the policy kingpins who have been playing a strategic long game that has made higher education the country's third-largest export industry.

The top 50 is a story of friends, foes and frenemies, an old boys' club with women on top. A tale of kids who were first in family to tread the hallowed halls of the ivory tower and ended up running the show. It features the late 1980s bromance between education minister John Dawkins and Bruce Chapman that spawned HECS, student equity and a forced truce between the traditional sandstones and the upstart red bricks.

It puts a spotlight on sisters who did it for themselves - see Julia Gillard and Denise Bradley transforming Australian universities for a new century.

It has conservatives, cosmopolites, socialists and squares.

Most of all, it has smarts.

Smart power is a strategy as well as an outcome of higher education. From a higher average income to greater social mobility, the capacity to reduce overpopulation and crime, universities have become a beacon for social reform.

The top 50 most influential thinkers in Australian higher education are creating a new nation equipped for the 21st century.

Have a look inside, where we unveil the hidden world of Australian smart power - and the people who are at its helm.

Would you trust these faces with our nation's future?

Dr Jennifer Oriel is a Melbourne-based writer and higher education commentator