Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Responding to natural disasters and complex emergencies: A crisis of higher education and public health

Tue, April 16, 5:00 to 6:30pm, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Atrium (Level 2), Garden Room A

Proposal

Background
The term humanitarian crisis often conjures images of suffering in a faraway location with people who are, in many ways, different from ourselves. Perhaps among the victims are children affected by famine in Africa and families in refugee camps who have been displaced by war in the Middle East. Far less often, in the Western world, do we conceive of humanitarian crises as occurring in our very own backyards. A closer examination may reveal the ubiquity of such crises and provoke a reconsideration of how we should respond to these phenomena both at home and abroad.

Importantly, our (mis)conceptions of humanitarian crises may be due, in part, to gaps in our own knowledge about what they are and how they are precipitated. Thus, an emerging debate is the role of higher education in promoting humanitarian principles in education to close the knowledge gap and bring about acknowledgement of such issues. An additional question surrounds whether all people should have the right to higher education, including those facing humanitarian crises. It is suggested that in addition to providing technical and content expertise, higher education can be both a socializing instrument and a liberalizing agent. As such, institutions of higher education are in a unique position to help shape the future of the humanitarian response.

Aim
The paper recasts humanitarian crises as not simply an international issue, but also as residing domestically; and with increasing frequency and intensity.

Research Questions
Should higher education institutions have a humanitarian mission? What should it be? Do medical schools have a greater than usual burden in disasters and other complex emergencies?

Institutions of higher education (IHEs) have various missions and ways they seek to fulfil their missions (Harris, 2002). Though institutions vary greatly, they tend to be equipped with the expertise, capacity, and responsibility to serve the public through humanitarian efforts.

Expertise. In addition to serving as a place for scholastic inquiry and discovery, campuses have also been places of hostility, epidemics, and mass destruction as a result of active shooters, infectious diseases, and natural disasters, respectfully. Institutions have developed procedures that serve as preventive measures and detailed plans they enact in reaction to complex emergencies and natural disasters.

Capacity. One of the most prominent aspects to higher education is the academic trio – teaching, research, and service – and the expectations for faculty serve through their discipline specific lens. Faculty members seek to engage in service with a particular eagerness during evaluative times for promotion and tenure (Mamiseishvili, Miller, & Lee, 2016). In addition, institutions have physical capacity to provide shelter in times of emergencies.

Responsibility. Beyond an institution’s obligation to serve the public due to the linkage between IHEs and tax payers’ dollars, there are other reasons that institutions should have a commitment to humanitarian efforts. One reason is the academy’s exposed values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. More specifically, institutional leaders include signaling words that covertly or overtly allude to multiculturalism, global citizenry, and humanity (Smith, 2015).



References

Harris, M. (2002). Understanding institutional diversity in American higher education.
Mamiseishvili, K., Miller, M. T., & Lee, D. (2016). Beyond Teaching and Research: Faculty Perceptions of Service Roles at Research Universities. Innovative Higher Education, 41(4), 273–285. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-015-9354-3
Smith, D. G. (2015). Diversity’s promise for higher education: Making it work (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Authors