All is right on the night. The naysayers are dispersed. As the Olympics roll on, London and the Brits are cresting the wave with a superb backdrop of history, humanity and style.

The atmosphere in London is electric as the jigsaw pieces mesh, the stars shine, and even the rain is refreshing. The night streets mix Brazilians and Kenyans, Canadians and Chinese.

Hopes are high that the influence of Olympic teamwork will be national and inclusive, wiping out the deep disaster of last year’s riots. The medal count shows that the Brits, once just good losers, are now good winners. And the Army is now part of the team and the community. And the lightning Bolt makes us all proud. And London, as the most diverse and multicultural city in the world, shows we can get along just fine – until the next time.

Mayor Boris is everywhere, but the Australians for once are on the wrong end of the jokes. Everyone remembers the great Sydney Olympics, but that was long ago and nobody’s looking back.

Before the start the Press reported breathlessly on the Australians’ noisy arrival in town, full of “We’ll thrash the Poms” bravado. The Chair of the Australian Olympic Committee was given multiple reminders of his infamous comment in Beijing, that Britain is a nation with few pools and not much soap. It was hardly original, but it hasn’t been forgotten.

Then the Aussies disappeared as the Brits ignored them and gathered up cascades of gold. Worse, the Brits even drew admiration for their failure to gloat, although they couldn’t resist a few digs at their French neighbours.

Luckily, after a week, the young Australian team burst through with brilliance, rescuing the reputation and climbing in the rankings from 19th to 11th – ahead (phew!) of New Zealand but not of Yorkshire or Kazakhstan.

After sitting up for several nights watching replays and reflections from the good, the bad and the ugly, I found the games a moving evocation of hope in globalisation and teamwork. The individual superstars were revered but mainly modest. The teams were deeply impressive in their camaraderie, collegiality and consequent sustainability.

As in most spheres of life, much was made of the rankings. The medal count metrics are impossible to dispute. Individual sports from jumping to judo get gold, silver and bronze. Nations quake as the slot machines crank and the daily linear listing is launched.

Alongside the metrics is the competitiveness. Specialist teams dissect the anatomy, physiology, capacity and mentality of the athletes, with special trainers for each facet. 

The international university rankings that are published each year are more ambiguous. Small, sharp universities with few disciplines are pitted against massive behemoths. Battleships are ranked with ballet dancers. Plato is ranked with Confucius.

The rankings games have resulted in an unseemly encouragement to uniformity in meeting externally imposed criteria. Universities have joined in and even pay the rankers for the pleasure of being drawn and quartered. Many try to exploit the rules, including some who rent redundant or retired Nobels for the extra rankings points they carry in their baggage. 

While the rankings are becoming more informed and intelligent and will continue to do so, their growing impact is of concern. This is especially so when the core elements and values of autonomy, enquiry, diversity and quality are sacrificed for rankings roulette and greed. Governments, academies, parents and students all watch the rankings. Follow the money.

It is a brave university President who can ignore the rankings to build brilliance, although the two are not always incompatible. There is also a risk that universities in emerging economies walk in the footsteps of the gods but lose their souls.

I suggest that the answers are in the risks. It is teamwork time for learning and its application to global challenges. Universities must work together across national, cultural and developmental divides. As London swings us toward international hope and a wellspring of harmony and goodwill, it begs a key question: Can we use academic diplomacy and opportunity to build lasting bridges and to learn from each other?

This article was first Published in The Australian online.

The University of Sydney is extending its scholarship scheme for high-achieving international students.

The Sydney Achievers International Scholarship scheme provides $10,000 per year for successful candidates, and up to 100 scholarships will be offered to students starting in 2013.

Professor Derrick Armstrong, the University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) and Registrar, said:  “The University continues to attract exceptional students from a range of countries, adding diversity to its international student population. By awarding these scholarships, we aim to enable promising students to come to Sydney and acquire skills which are closely aligned with their own aspirations for personal growth and career development.”

The scholarships are available for the CRICOS registered duration of a recipient’s program of study, for any undergraduate or postgraduate program offered at the University of Sydney.

The University of Sydney currently has 10,000 international students from 147 countries among its 50,000 students.

Further details on the scholarship scheme are available here on the University website.

 

A spate of recent announcements from large national development agencies that they will disperse more funds through global organisations like the UN has led many people to question whether we are witnessing the quiet disposal of the go-it-alone approach triumphed by the UK, USA and Australia in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Certainly the figures paint a rosy picture for globally co-ordinated aid.

Between 2005/06 and 2010/11, the UK’s Department for International Development increased spending on its multilateral aid program by almost 50 per cent. In 2011, it elected to eliminate bilateral funding for twenty-two countries just as Australia was preparing to increase its total multilateral expenditure to more than a third of total overseas development assistance.

Next year, Australia is poised to become the second largest funder of UN Women in the world while in the United States, President Barack Obama has asked Congress to increase multilateral aid funding  to $3.67 billion, more than half as much again as last year's figure of $2.3 billion.

But does this really signal a newfound harmony in our international affairs? It seems unlikely.

In the UK and USA, the channeling of funds through multilateral institutions probably has more to do with trying to maintain the breadth of global programs in the face of dwindling public funding for development programs than a sudden embrace of world government.

While Australia has largely avoided the worst effects of a global financial crisis, the Government’s commitment to substantial increases in multilateral aid is also the cornerstone of Australia’s bid for a seat at the United Nations Security Council.

There is no doubt that many of the strident objections to the concept of global decision-making seem to have disappeared from the daily news but reports of pragmatism’s death are greatly exaggerated.

The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) has announced a new initiative, the Government Partnerships for Development (GPFD) program. The GPFD will replace both AusAID Public Sector Linkages Programs in 2012-13 (PSLP and Pacific PSLP).

Thomas Soem, Development Manager in the International Portfolio, attended a one-day workshop in Canberra on behalf of the University to provide feedback on our experience with the PSLP and to learn more about the GPFD. Hosted by the Whole of Government Branch, AusAID confirmed the University of Sydney as one of its most successful university partners in the scheme. As we reported last month, the University has secured 10 PSLP projects this year alone and 22 in total since the scheme was introduced in 2007.   

The introduction of the GPFD is a result of the recommendations in the Independent Aid Review to deliver aid more effectively. Consistent with the Review, the GPFD will enable AusAID to continue to use the aid program to build stronger linkages between Australian institutions and their counterparts in support of the objectives outlined in the Comprehensive Aid Policy Framework (CAPF).

The use of Australian universities to provide tertiary qualifications and training has been a cornerstone of Australian aid delivery for decades. The GPFD will continue this tradition. 

The Government will provide $52.8 million over four years to the program to fund a range of projects in developing countries that draw on the expertise of Commonwealth government agencies, state government agencies, and universities. Activities funded through the GPFD must have a focus on assisting the development of the partner country, including internships and placements, training and capacity building workshops, twinning arrangements, and policy research.

The guidelines for the new initiative are currently being finalised and it is expected that the first round will be held in early 2013. All University submissions will be coordinated by the International Portfolio.

Associate Professor Ariadne Vromen from the Department of Government and International Relations has won a $312,000 grant to study whether social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter can help to reduce young people’s disenchantment with politics.

Associate Professor Vromen is principal investigator in The Civic Network, a research project looking at the interaction between social media, political youth culture and civic engagement.

She is also part of the Worldwide University Network’s Networking Young Citizens Study Group, bringing together academics from the University of Leeds, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of York.

The project will involve a comparative study in Australia, the UK and America on young people’s use of social media for civic purposes, analysing its capacity to reduce political disenchantment and foster wider civic participation.

Funding for the research is being provided by the Spencer Foundation, a private foundation that supports research contributing to the understanding and improvement of education.

Six University of Sydney students have been awarded Chinese Government Scholarships for short-term study at some of China’s leading universities.   Chinese Government Scholarships are offered annually to Australian students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and to students of the Chinese language. The successful applicants were: 

Simone van Nieuwenhuizen – Peking University

Daniel Kim – Tsinghua University

Jackson Kwok – Nanjing University

Sophie Lancaster – Tsinghua University

Robin Jordan – Nanjing University

Daniel Smith – Beijing Language and Culture University 

The China Scholarship Council and the University of Sydney also offer jointly-funded scholarships for Chinese researchers undertaking a PhD or early career research at the University of Sydney.  Updated information for the 2013 intake will be published on the International Portfolio website very shortly.

For enquiries about the China Scholarship Council programmes, please contact David Boyd in the Office of the DVC International.

International History, one of the oldest historical fields, is now back in vogue, exploring new themes in history, and new ways of doing history.

This year, International Portfolio IPDF funding contributed to the highly successful Fourth University of Sydney International History Graduate Intensive, on the theme of Empire and International History. Held over two days in July, the conference brought faculty and graduate students from our partners Harvard University, the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), Cambridge University, Queen Mary College, University of London, University of Texas (Austin), SUNY, Ontario, from around Australia, and our own academic staff and students.

Among the highlights was a keynote address by Professor Sir Christopher Bayly (Cambridge) on Partition in India, as well as the generous reflections of Professor David Armitage (Harvard), who is also Honorary Professor at the Department of History, University of Sydney.

Students presented papers on the significance of empire in modern history, in international and transnational contexts.  Each of their papers was individually discussed by a member of the international faculty present, in front of a dedicated audience from the universities in the Sydney region.

As always the response was enthusiastic and excited. Graduate intensives such as these give our students the opportunity to present their work in an international context, to compare and connect it with the research of students from the best universities around the world, and to receive feedback from international experts.

The feedback from the international students was overwhelming. This was an opportunity for them that both exposed them to new ways of thinking about international history and to an intense level of discussion unique to this kind of setting. As one faculty member commented, this is the future of graduate training.

Mr Zhou, who was Ambassador to Australia from 1998 to 2001 and Ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2010, is one of China’s most experienced senior diplomats.

From 2003 to 2005 he served as China's Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In 2010 he was appointed Secretary General of the Boao Forum for Asia, and Vice-President of the China-US People’s Friendship Association.

The Boao Forum was established in 1998 and is often referred to as the Asian version of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It is a non-profit organisation committed to enhancing cooperation between, and integration of Asian economies

Mr Zhou was among the pioneering younger generation of Chinese students who were among the first to study overseas in the 1970s. He went on to become a leading diplomat of his generation. Over the past two decades his work has paralleled China’s opening up, and its period of major reform and rapid development.

Mr Zhou will deliver a public lecture at the University of Sydney on Wednesday 22 August on the theme of the intersection of Politics and Economics in the 40 year relationship between Australia and China. 

He will offer his outlook on the future bilateral relationship in the context of the contemporary international and regional situation, as well as the development goals of China and Australia. 

On September 5 the University will host a Gulf Forum, bringing together experts and leaders from across the Gulf region to exchange information on seven major themes of interest.

The forum is an opportunity to develop projects and initiatives in education, science and research, and to raise awareness of the growing relationship between Australia and the countries of the Gulf region.

Themes include food and water security; energy; health; Islamic finance; robotics; supporting international students from the Gulf Region; and women in leadership in science, business and education.

Registration is essential. For further information and registration details contact Sandra Margon, International Development Manager for Europe and Middle East.

The event is part of the Sydney World Program International Forum series.

The University’s Pacific Expert Group is hosting a forum on 7 September to examine our current Pacific initiatives and to forge partnerships that will help the Pacific region tackle the challenges of the 21st century (see program details).

Part of the Sydney World Program International Forum series, the event will be held in the New Law Building from 9am.

Keynote speakers will be the Hon Richard Marles (tbc), Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, and Dr Jimmie Rodgers, Director-General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. Thematic seminars will focus on Law and Economic Development, Health Needs and Priorities, Sustainable Resources and Education Partnerships.

This is a free event - save the date in your diary!

Registration details to follow shortly. For more information contact:

Kate Lollback (+61 2 9114 1153).

Applications for University of Sydney World Scholars awards for commencement in Semester 1 2013 are now open. The World Scholars awards are offered to PhD candidates from selected countries.

From this round, applications are accepted online.

For further information, please contact David Boyd in the Office of the DVC International.