Created in 1895, the LSE drew on ideas of the Fabian Society which saw education as a central route to more equal, empowered and prosperous communities
What is the core of your work — and its greatest challenges? I’m an American constitutional historian. I think of my own work as being fundamentally about the conditions needed for popular government and democracy to succeed. Now, as Vice Chancellor of the LSE, my work has three components. The first is to articulate the School’s intellectual vision in the world. Second, we are a social sciences university — we emphasise the disciplines that help people understand how society works and can be improved. Third, we recognise six major challenges the world faces now, all of which lie in the social sciences. The first is, what is the future of democracy? Second, how should we think about political eco-nomy or use the tools we have, like government, markets and private capital, to improve people’s lives? Third, how do we do this within ecological limitations or sustainability? Fourth, how can we correct systemic inequalities? Fifth, how shall we deal with the incredibly powerful emerging technologies of our times, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, nanotechnology and robotics? Finally, with the reality of a collapsing multilateral world order, how can we help nations work together and not just become opponents?
When I was 9 years old, we moved and I didn’t have any new friends yet. When you learn this, it won’t change your mind — but it’ll bring down the temperature. The returns on that education are more than worth the expense. The question for a student should be — where can I study to get the most exposure to different ideas, diverse cultures and new ways of thinking? This helps people navigate the world better. Students studying in their home country should also spend time away to get exposure to other cultures — that proves unique for your own growth. We’ve seen recent student protests globally against the Gaza genocide, global warming, etc. — but very little change occurs. Should students protest, even risk their careers — for marginal change? These issues are complicated — and change on intricate issues is always gradual. Students need to learn that. I don’t want to discourage them — it’s great to feel passionately about issues and alongside, naïve to demand instant change without understanding complexity or why others disagree, using their own reasoning. I’d never stop students from seeking change — I’d say it’s our obligation, as they do that, to help them understand what it takes to actually make things happen. At the LSE, students often see things in the world that are not right in their viewpoint and they seek transformation. Hopefully, while encouraging their good intentions, we can help them get a sense of how to operate in this world and make effective progress. We dealt with the Gaza-Israel protests a couple of years ago, keeping the experience of US campuses in mind. There too, there was tremendous diversity between universities — Northwestern and Brown handled these very differently from, say, Harvard and UCLA. I talked to leaders at such places, tried to understand the dynamics they faced and thought deeply about our own campus, our history and community. So, our response was tailored to the LSE but informed by world campuses. I’ll share a funny experience While there are many books. I went to the school library and borrowed a book called ‘A Dog on Barkham Street’, where a kid my age was the protagonist. He desperately wanted a dog, which his parents were refusing, while he was being bullied by the boy next door. By the end of it, I was crying my eyes out for him. The next book I read was called ‘The Bully of Barkham Street’ which moved me too — but for the bully! The other kid was doing better now, had a dog and was taunting the bully who was in fact very lonely. The lesson was, the same story could look different from diverse perspectives — and be quite reasonable in each. That ability — to see different positions — informed my life. I’ve encouraged my law students to see the other side’s argument in its most powerful light — until you understand that position, you can’t understand your own. This is a skill which takes effort and self-honesty. A US constitutional law scholar, Kramer studies democracy — and enhancing it Is it difficult to teach this in a Trumpian ‘bully-takes-all’ world? Yes. We try to encourage this on campus. We acknowledge this is a challenge but there are incredible benefits of doing so. The world is filled with what I call ‘no loaf-ers’, people for whom having no loaf is better than having half. They’d rather see no progress achieved than make a compromise. I believe making some progress — having half a loaf — is better than none and we should educate people to understand this and accommodate differences. It’s important to tell students the issues that are so important, they offer no space to adjust, leaving things worse, are few — in most situations, try to help us move forward together. Views expressed are personal Times Evoke ‘Eruditos’ presents insights from leaders of global educational institutions Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.
George Bernard Shaw Is there a seminal book you’d advise young people to read today?
Because my generation created these issues but young people have to solve them, in a commencement talk recently, I apologised to the graduating class. Because of that experience, we now recognise the problem and can undo it, we’ve allowed mobile phones, for instance, to invade our time and space — but,. Because these new technologies pose possibilities which, if mishandled, could be catastrophic, the humanities and social sciences are more important than ever before now. My biggest fear for education is that increasingly, due to costs, etc., the field is becoming about nothing but career preparation — that spells doom for society which needs people to think about more than just making money.
All these problems impact young people worldwide. These are major challenges — a huge risk is young people feeling powerless and checking out when they need to feel involved and deal with these. You mentioned AI — can human ingenuity survive the ‘soft thinking’ this often encourages? Even the most powerful version of AI will have human creativity — that will never be displaced. Importantly, the extent to which AI presents such problems reflects what we choose — AI is not a force of nature which will invariably do what it does. Technology is not fate — it’s how we choose to use it that shapes things. Like any other tool, the extent to which AI becomes a problem for us is the extent to which we let it. This will always be our own choice, individually and collectively. Like other campuses, the LSE saw student protests on Gaza recently be our own choice, individually and collectively. AI is supposed to alter entire fields, from finance to law — what would you tell students considering a future in these areas? The extent to which that is true is still unclear. The best research on AI and its effects on labour markets shows it’s too soon to know if it will have cataclysmic effects — or net generative impacts by creating new work and abilities. So, my suggestion to a young person would be — don’t change your goals around an area you are passionate about. Go into it with an open mind — one that is adaptable and adjusts nimbly as this new technology unfolds, giving you the power to use it in ways that enhance, rather than displace, your work. In the age of technology, why are social sciences and humanities important? These fields are eternally important — it’s interesting to explore why we forgot that. I think we got so caught up in the drama and excitement of new technologies, we overlooked how whether these make our lives better or worse isn’t a function of the tech. It’s a product of how we choose to use it — and the humanities and social sciences educate people about such questions. They help us understand what we create. Alumni include Dr BR Ambedkar (L) and Ursula von der Leyen (R) These disciplines are the product of thousands of years of people thinking about problems in many different circumstances. Such circumstances are not natural for many — you must be educated to understand how to deal with it. Yet, we stopped teaching that – the result is, polarised politics where we struggle to live with those we disagree with. We need skills which help us live productively in complex times. Cost is important though — with hardening work restrictions in the West, why should Indian students consider an expensive education abroad?
Hopefully, it will be enhanced by AI, which helps us think faster and consider an array of possibilities we couldn’t access earlier. If you look, for instance, at the United States today, the spiralling-down of politics is a product of not having educated enough people to think liberally and understand how to live in a society with people who think differently from you.
