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RETHINKING UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY
POLICY CONNECTIONS
Reframing
the Civic University
An Agenda for Impact
Edited by
Julian Dobson · Ed Ferrari
Rethinking University-Community Policy
Connections
Series Editors
Thomas Andrew Bryer
University of Central Florida
Orlando, USA
John Diamond
Edge Hill University
Ormskirk, UK
Carolyn Kagan
Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester, UK
Jolanta Vaičiūnienė
Kaunas University of Technology
Kaunas, Lithuania
Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections will publish
works by scholars, practitioners, and ‘prac-ademics’ across a range of
countries to explore substantive policy or management issues in the bring-
ing together of higher education institutions and community-based orga-
nizations, nongovernmental organizations, governments, and businesses.
Such partnerships afford unique opportunities to transform practice,
develop innovation, incubate entrepreneurship, strengthen communities,
and transform lives. Yet such potential is often not realized due to bureau-
cratic, cultural, or legal barriers erected between higher education institu-
tions and the wider community. The global experience is common, though
the precise mechanisms that prevent university-community collaboration
or that enable successful and sustainable partnership vary within and across
countries. Books in the series will facilitate dialogue across country experi-
ences, help identify cross-cutting best practices, and to enhance the theory
of university-community relations.
Julian Dobson • Ed Ferrari
Editors
Reframing the Civic

University
An Agenda for Impact
Editors
Julian Dobson Ed Ferrari
Centre for Regional Economic and Centre for Regional Economic and
Social Research Social Research
Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK Sheffield, UK
ISSN 2629-2432 ISSN 2629-2440 (electronic)

Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections
ISBN 978-3-031-17685-2 ISBN 978-3-031-17686-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Why
the Time Is Right for a Civic Turn 1
Julian Dobson and Ed Ferrari
2 A
Question of Leadership 25
Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain
3 How
Should Universities Understand Their Social Impact? 41
Sue Jarvis
4 Can
Universities be Climate Leaders? 63
Kirstie O’Neill
5 How
Universities Can Help to Build a Healthier Society 83
Liz Mear and Paul Johnstone
6 Civic
Universities and Culture: A Tilted View101
Amanda Crawley Jackson and Chris Baker
7 More-Than-Civic:
Higher Education and Civil Society in
Post-Industrial Localities121
Nicola Gratton and Martin Jones
v
vi Contents
8 Placemaking
for the Civic University: Interface Sites as
Spaces of Tension and Translation143
Julia Udall and Anna Wakeford Holder
9 Bringing Civic Impact to Life163

Index175
Notes on Contributors
Chris Baker grew up in the Northwest of England where he developed

his passion for creativity and innovation. He moved to Sheffield in the late
1990s to study design where he invented novel packaging systems to elim-
inate waste on a global scale, growing his own company which he then
sold in 2008. He has supported over 100 entrepreneurs with their ideas
and organisations, primarily in the creative industries. Chris developed his
career as a Knowledge Exchange professional as Head of Knowledge
Exchange and Innovation at the University of Sheffield and now supports
the advancement of Knowledge Exchange at Sheffield Hallam University.
Julian Dobson is a researcher and writer with a broad interest in place
and society, and a particular focus on the complex systemic changes
required to achieve environmentally and socially just approaches to urban
life. A senior research fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and
Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, he has written widely on
the topics of social and economic regeneration, urban greenspace, town
and city centres and the role of the voluntary and community sector. He
is especially interested in how and why change happens and the role of
evidence in shaping policy and practice.
Ed Ferrari is the Director of the Centre for Regional Economic and
Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University. He is an acknowl-
edged expert on strategic housing, planning and transport issues with over
20 years’ experience of leading and collaborating on dozens of research
and evaluation projects for local authorities, central government and char-
ities. He has skills in quantitative research, particularly in the spatial analy-
vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
sis of administrative data, and has authored several books alongside dozens
of reports and academic papers. He is currently managing editor of the
leading international journal Housing Studies.
Nicola Gratton is Associate Professor of Community and Civic
Engagement at Staffordshire University. She is a qualified Youth Worker
and has extensive experience in the public and community sectors as a
youth worker, community development worker and training development
manager. She has been instrumental in the development and implementa-
tion of Connected Communities, Staffordshire University’s approach to
community and civic impact. She specialises in participatory action research
and creative research techniques and her research interests focus on using
these to address social inequality.
Anna Wakeford Holder is a researcher, designer and educator, trained
in architecture and town and regional planning. She is a director of social
enterprise architecture practice Studio Polpo, and a Senior Lecturer in
Architecture at Sheffield Hallam University. She has experience in archi-
tectural and urban design practice in the UK and the Netherlands, and in
higher education in the UK and Denmark. Her research focuses on archi-
tectural knowledge, agency and ethics in the social production of the built
environment; the politics of urban projects instigated between state and
civil society actors; and feminist practices of participatory planning
and design.
Farah Hussain is a PhD researcher at Queen Mary University of London
and a Research Fellow at the Mile End Institute. Farah’s research concen-
trates on the relationship between political parties and their members with
a particular focus on race, religion and gender. Farah has also carried out
research on public policy, higher education and local government. She was
a local councillor for Valentines Ward, London Borough of Redbridge
from 2014 to 2022 where she served as Cabinet Member for Housing and
Homelessness for over four years.
Amanda Crawley Jackson is Associate Dean for Knowledge Exchange at
London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
Before that, she was Faculty Director of Knowledge Exchange and Impact
(Arts and Humanities) at the University of Sheffield. A scholar in the field
of French and Francophone Studies, she has published widely on place,
space and mobilities in contemporary art and photography from France,
Algeria and Morocco and has curated several exhibitions, the most recent -
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
Invisible Wounds - at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield (2020). She is cur-

rently completing a monograph on post-traumatic landscapes in
contemporary literature and photography.
Sue Jarvis is Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy,
Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool. She has a professional
background in local government practice, and public policy, and senior
leadership experience of delivering public services at council and com-
bined authority levels. At the Heseltine Institute, Sue leads engagement
across local and regional stakeholders to align academic research with
place-based policy outcomes to support sustainable cities and regions. Sue
also works with local partners on a portfolio of research focused on com-
munity assets, social infrastructure and public service to address policy
challenges in place.
Paul Johnstone is a public health practitioner and academic working
nationally and internationally. He has recently been National Director for
Regional Development for the Department of Health (England), and
National and Regional Director for Place and Regions at Public Health
England and NHS England. He has been a hospital doctor, GP and public
health director. Internationally he has worked for the World Health
Organization in Sierra Leone, in the West Indies and as a volunteer in
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.He is now Health Adviser for VSO
(Voluntary Services Overseas) and Honorary Professor of Global Health,
University of Manchester and Visiting Professor at Leeds Beckett University.
Martin Jones is the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire
University, a Professor of Human Geography and a researcher in urban
and regional political economy. Author or editor of 14 books, Martin is
internationally recognised for economic and political geography. His
book Cities and Regions in Crisis: The Political Economy of Sub-National
Economic Development was awarded the Regional Studies Association Best
Book award 2021. Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and The
Royal Society of Arts, Martin holds an honorary professorial position in
Oulu, Finland, was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography,
and is the originator and co-editor of the journal Territory, Politics,
Governance.
Liz Mear has extensive experience of leading across organisations and
systems. She was an NHS Foundation Trust Chief Executive, followed by
roles as the Chief Executive of an NHS Academic Health Science Network
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
and Managing Director for an Academic Health partnership. In these

roles she worked with health, local government, university, and voluntary
sector partners to improve residents’ lives. Liz chairs the national Small
Business Research Initiative healthcare funding panels, an Integrated
Health/Care Place Committee, and is business advisor. She was a Non-
Executive Director for Health Education England.
Kirstie O’Neill is a lecturer in environmental geography at Cardiff
University, having previously worked at the Universities of Hull and
Lancaster, and the London School of Economics. Her ESRC-CASE
funded PhD, at the University of Hull, explored the role of alternative
food networks in facilitating rural development. Subsequent research has
drawn on longstanding interests in sustainability, focusing on green build-
ing, green entrepreneurship and the green economy, urban sustainability
governance, and universities as spaces of, and actors within, sustainability
governance.
Jonathan Slater is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and
Queen Mary University of London. He sits on the boards of the Charter
Schools Educational Trust, Morley College, Sheffield Hallam University,
and the Institute of Government. Jonathan was Permanent Secretary of
the Department for Education until 2020, at the conclusion of a 20 year
civil service career that included Justice, Defence, the Cabinet Office and
No. 10 Downing Street. Before that Jonathan worked in local govern-
ment for over ten years, ending up as Director of Education and Deputy
Chief Executive at Islington Council.
Julia Udall is an educator, academic and practitioner, based at Sheffield
Hallam University, UK, working at the intersection of artistic spatial prac-
tice, critical architectural pedagogy and design activism. Her work seeks to
develop ways to make urban space otherwise by drawing attention to, and
supporting forms of collectivity, interdependence and mutuality, between
humans and non-humans, in the face of this precarious moment. Julia is a
director of architectural collective Studio Polpo, who contributed to the
British Pavilion ‘The Garden of Privatised Delights’ at the Venice
Architecture Biennale in 2021. She is Fellow of the Future Architecture
Platform (2021).
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Domains of civic activity and progress cycle 14

Fig. 2.1 The five steps of building institutional strategy and leadership
within the Civic Impact Framework 30
Fig. 3.1 Stakeholder intersecting interests 46
Fig. 5.1 Domains of civic activity and progress cycle 87
Fig. 6.1 The tilted view: A four-step process towards critical self-reflection 114
Fig. 7.1 The Connected Communities model 131
Fig. 7.2 Embedding Connected Communities 133
Fig. 7.3 Evaluating Connected Communities 134
Fig. 8.1 Refugee Rights Hub. In a contemporary university building, on
a neighbourhood campus, set within green space. This location
has the drawback of requiring two bus trips for most clients to
access. Image © the authors 150
Fig. 8.2 Live Works. A permanent urban room in a high street shop
unit. The project also hosts residencies and exhibitions in
suburban spaces such as local libraries and supermarkets. Image
© the authors 155
Fig. 8.3 CSM Rural. Bringing students from central London to North
Yorkshire poses a challenge but will also offer an immersive
complex and evolving site of experimentation. Image © the
authors158
xi
List of Tables
Table 1.1 The seven domains of civic impact 3

Table 1.2 The civic framework in a nutshell 15
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Why the Time Is Right for a Civic Turn
In April 2022, two months after Russian armed forces blasted their way
into Ukraine, a professor at the Kyiv School of Economics shone a spot-
light on a dilemma facing universities globally: are they there to make
societies wealthier, or better? And if the latter, what does ‘better’ look like?
Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian MP who was deputy education minister
between 2014 and 2016, told a Times Higher Education conference in
Stockholm that the role of universities was to make societies ‘more open,
more inclusive, and more tolerant and more caring about each other’
(Morgan, 2022). She claimed research developed at German and French
universities had helped Russia develop military capabilities: while the
research had made those institutions better off, had it made society better?
Professor Sovsun’s intervention was a visceral response to a humanitar-
ian, political and ethical crisis. But it reflected and underlined a more
widespread heart-searching in and around higher education. If universities
are a public good, who and what are they good for? Are they an expensive
irrelevance at a time of global crisis—a crisis that extends far beyond the
J. Dobson (*) • Ed Ferrari

Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University,
Sheffield, UK
e-mail: julian.dobson@shu.ac.uk; e.ferrari@shu.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University,
Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_1
2 J. DOBSON AND ED FERRARI
Ukraine conflict to include rising costs of living, growing wealth dispari-

ties, long-term impacts of Covid-19, food insecurity, climate change and
drastic biodiversity loss? Higher education is not only seeking to define its
contribution in an era of crisis. Increasingly it is also adopting a defensive
stance in which its own existence is deemed to require explanation and
justification to governments and publics in an era in which trust in elites,
experts and institutions has been badly eroded. Part of this stance has
involved universities searching for a convincing and engaging mission that
connects them to the communities and places they serve.
This book examines and explores an emergent narrative that promises
to fulfil such a role for many institutions: the tradition of the civic univer-
sity. Its overarching argument is that, given the right resources and com-
mitment, a civic orientation has the potential to produce deeper, broader
and more lasting benefits for communities than we have seen in recent
decades. During this time universities have increasingly come to look and
behave like private corporations, serving ‘customers’ in students and
research partners who may have only the most tangential connection to
the locality. In the UK in particular, the idea of the civic university offers a
driving logic that can frame strategies and decisions across all the domains
in which universities are active, from learning and teaching to economic,
environmental and wellbeing impacts within the communities that univer-
sities serve. This requires a searching analysis of who universities are good
for in addition to what they are good at.
This book stems from and builds on work undertaken by the editors
with the Civic Universities Network in the UK in 2020–2021, and this
book focuses on the UK experience except where otherwise stated.
Working with senior university leaders, we prototyped a framework to
assess civic impact. The Civic Impact Framework1—which we published in
its ‘beta’ form for discussion in 2021—is designed to enable universities
and their partners to understand the difference they are making and chal-
lenge themselves to do better. It identifies seven domains through which
universities may have civic impacts (Table 1.1) and stresses the importance
of understanding the geography over which universities may seek to have
such impacts. Importantly, rather than offering a unified set of metrics to
measure impact, the framework emphasises institutional reflection and
learning by adopting a ‘maturity matrix’ model for understanding
1
https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/resources/civic-impact-framework/.
1 WHY THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR A CIVIC TURN 3
Table 1.1 The seven domains of civic impact
Social impact How do we want our university to bridge and reduce social divides
and improve the quality of life of our communities, including the
most disadvantaged? How can our university help our places move
from ‘functioning’ to ‘flourishing’? What part can our students play in
this?
Environment, How could our university play a leading role in mitigating and
climate and adapting to climate change, reversing biodiversity loss, and educating
biodiversity students for sustainability? How will it influence environmental
behaviours throughout our city or region?
Health and How does our institution support the health and wellbeing of our
wellbeing localities and communities? What does a flourishing community look
like to us?
Our cultural How does our university celebrate and enrich the cultural life of our
contribution localities and communities? How do we create vibrant, creative and
playful places?
Economic impact How could our university’s work create more prosperous places and
address and reduce economic inequality? What impacts is it having
now? Can we articulate and promote a coherent vision of a flourishing
local economy in partnership with local stakeholders?
Estates, facilities How can our facilities be used for the benefit of the whole
and placemaking community? Do all members of the community feel welcome? How
do our facilities set the standard for placemaking and sustainability in
our city or region? How can our digital infrastructure benefit our
communities?
Institutional How will top-level governance and strategies at our institution reflect
strategy and our civic commitment to ensure we make the difference we want?
leadership Which partners are we working with and to what ends, and what are
their priorities? What would it look like if our civic priorities were
embedded throughout our core activities of teaching, learning and
research?
Source: Dobson, J., & Ferrari, E. (2021). A framework for civic impact: A way to assess universities’ activi-
ties and progress. Sheffield: Civic Universities Network. https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2022/04/Civic-Activity-Framework.pdf
strategic progress and encouraging peer learning. We return to the frame-

work and how it may be applied later in this chapter.
This edited collection extends the initial work that the Civic Impact
Framework represents to offer a broader perspective, with expert con-
tributors exploring and teasing out just what it might mean to be civic in
current circumstances. While the book’s structure broadly echoes the
domains of impact identified in the framework, it uses this scaffolding to
foreground wider challenges, concerns and opportunities for higher edu-
cation in the twenty first century.
Why Now? Higher Education Under Scrutiny

Universities in the UK have faced a torrent of criticism in recent years.
Some of it has played on current ‘culture wars’, often imported from pub-
lic discourse in the United States, in which liberal universities are depicted
as standard-bearers for ‘wokeness’. The Higher Education (Freedom of
Speech) Bill, which is working its way through Parliament at the time of
writing, is seen as an example of government entering this particular fray,
sometimes accompanied by veiled threats to reconsider the funding of
institutions that sign up to benchmarking schemes such as the Race
Equality Charter.2
Of greater long-term concern, however, is the argument that universi-
ties are not delivering skills and opportunities for the people who most
need them. The commodification of higher education through the intro-
duction of fees and loans, especially in England, has shifted the relation-
ship between students and their lecturers: students are seen, and often see
themselves, as customers who have bought a product designed to meet a
particular consumer need (a degree and access to a well-paid career). If
graduates do not enter the labour market at the expected level, they—and
the governments that oversee higher education policy—hold the universi-
ties responsible.
The need to attract and retain ‘customers’—especially at postgraduate
level—has created continuing tensions between income generation and
sustaining academic excellence, and has eroded the standing of humanities
degrees once viewed as hallmarks of a liberal education. Many universities
have invested in their estates and courses as a marketing exercise, wooing
students with shiny state-of-the-art buildings and satellite campuses. In
the words of the Civic University Commission (UPP Foundation, 2019):
…as universities have become magnets for global students and massive
research programmes, their connection to their place … can sometimes be
called into question: how are the people in a place benefiting from the uni-
versity success story?
The commission goes on to note that this disconnection from their

localities leaves universities ‘with fewer friends at a time of unprecedented
challenge’. Most recently, a cap on maximum fees in England and
2
See https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/equality-charters/race-equality-charter.
proposals for ‘minimum eligibility requirements’ suggests that a university

education is no longer perceived within government as a privileged path-
way into the labour market. Having bought into the principles of market
competition, universities are now being accused of failing to deliver public
goods. The traditional university experience—delivered within large,
broad-based campus-focused institutions—is also increasingly competing
within a more fragmented, diversified and specialised set of educational
and vocational marketplaces which includes further education colleges,
modern apprenticeships, distance learning (delivered both by traditional
and new entrants), smaller private universities, and an explosion of online
content (both free and paid-for) on platforms like Coursera and Udemy.
So the universities that for decades rode a wave of public policy geared
to increasing participation in higher education are now having their status
called into question. This context has created fertile ground for a new
debate on universities’ ‘civic mission’, but also risks reducing that mission
to an exercise in self-justification.
Restoring the Vision: From Anchor Institutions

to Civic Mission
The notion of the civic university has a long history, stretching back to the
land-grant universities of the US established under the Morrill Act of
1852, and the ‘redbrick’ universities that sprouted in manufacturing cities
in the UK in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In both
cases there was an understanding that these new institutions would directly
contribute to the economic, intellectual and social development of their
localities.
While there has always been a strong economic narrative to discourses
of the civic in higher education, this has come to the fore in recent decades.
The Dearing Report (1997, p. 90), for example, viewed universities as
central to a ‘learning society’, noting that they ‘make a significant eco-
nomic contribution simply by their existence in a locality, whether or not
they adopt an explicit mission to generate local or regional economic
activity or to play a part in the cultural life of their locality or region’. This
role has often been framed in terms of a ‘third mission’ of economic devel-
opment under the label of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ (Vorley &
Nelles, 2008).
The start of the twenty first century has seen a flurry of intellectual
activity around the idea of the civic university. There has been a recogni-
tion that universities have significant impacts within their localities: they
are often among the largest employers in an area, among the biggest hold-
ers of real estate, and have make a difference to local prosperity through
their spending and effects on housing markets. In the United States, the
Obama administration picked up the idea of universities as ‘anchor institu-
tions’ (Taylor & Luter, 2013), supporting the work of the Anchor
Institutions Task Force. Reflecting on the value of universities to place-
based leadership, Robin Hambleton notes that
‘The American public university has, from the outset, aimed to fuse schol-
arly inspiration with a strong commitment to practical implementation. This
value stance has advanced the quality of American scholarship, while also
benefitting the cities where these universities are located’ (Hambleton,
2020, pp. 123–124) while also observing that ‘British universities have,
until recently, been relatively detached from their surroundings’.
(Ibid., p. 124)
This tradition has spawned much of the recent thinking in the US and
beyond around ‘community wealth building’—the promotion of shared
prosperity ‘through the reconfiguration of institutions and local econo-
mies on the basis of greater democratic ownership, participation, and con-
trol’ (Democracy Collaborative, 2020). In the UK, fresh debate on
universities’ civic role has been stimulated through the work of academic
leaders such as John Goddard at the University of Newcastle (Goddard &
Vallance, 2013), again focusing especially on how universities can support
local and regional economies. Goddard and Kempton (2016, p. 2) envis-
age mutually beneficial economic and social relationships between univer-
sities and the communities they serve:
The civic university can be characterised by its ability to integrate its teach-
ing, research and engagement with the outside world in such a way that each
enhances the other without diminishing their quality. Research has socio-
economic impact designed in from the start and teaching has a strong com-
munity involvement with the long term objective of widening participation
in higher education and producing well rounded citizens as graduates.
Building on this work, the Civic University Commission describes a

civic university as having ‘a clear strategy, rooted in analysis, which explains
what, why and how its activity adds up to a civic role’. While it doesn’t
impose a definition, leaving this to individual universities to devise accord-
ing to their circumstances, it does suggest there should be four key tests of
a civic university:
• A public test, covering participation, understanding of local needs

and public pride in the institution
• A place test, covering alignment with local labour markets and serv-
ing diverse local populations
• A strategic test, covering universities’ analysis of local needs, links
with local leadership and definition of its geographies of interest
• An impact test, covering both how universities achieve impacts
through relationships with other institutions, and how they measure
the effects of their work
In practice, there will be many overlaps between these elements.

Any definition or test runs the risk of excluding institutions that do not
fit a mould, or offering validation to activities that may be little more than
token gestures. The descriptions that exist are largely variations on a theme
of what ‘good’ looks like. Goddard et al. (2016), for example, identify
seven characteristics of a civic university: a sense of purpose; active engage-
ment with the wider world; a holistic approach to engagement; a strong
sense of place; investment in impact beyond the academy; transparency
and accountability; and innovative methods of communicating with pub-
lics and stakeholders. One may justifiably ask why these descriptors were
advanced and not others; and what is it about these that is specifically civic
rather than a generic quality associated with effective management and
public engagement in a place-based institution.
There is no escaping the fact that ‘civic’ is a normative concept, with an
implicit political economy baked-in to the idea as we discuss in the next
section. Arguably this opens up as many debates as it seeks to capture.
Neither should we fail to notice that most descriptions of ‘civic’ have been
constructed within the academy. Little of the literature seeks to explore
how localities and communities might define civic from their perspectives,
or whose perspectives are given prominence and why; Gratton and Jones,
in their contribution in Chap. 7, pick up this baton as university leaders.
There is thus a tension at the heart of the civic university agenda. Is
‘civic’ simply a positioning and orientation fashioned by universities to
explain or justify their role, or a set of behaviours co-designed between
universities and the wider community? And who constitutes the ‘commu-
nity’ for each institution?
For all the work that has been done on developing ideas of civic univer-
sities, the concept continues to raise as many questions as answers. But
that is to be welcomed. Far from being a shibboleth to divide insiders from
outsiders, ‘civic’ at its best is a catalyst for strategy, engagement, and
action. It offers an opportunity for fresh thinking about place and pur-
pose, and for entering constructively into the contests that such thinking
will inevitably stimulate.
Place and Purpose: The Current Challenge

and Opportunity
The notion of civic implies a polity within which the common good tran-
scends the advancement of individuals. It attaches worth to the collective,
often in institutionalised form (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). Benefits are
valued insofar as they accrue to and across communities. This challenges
the individualistic orientation of academia, where value is often perceived
as the aggregation of individual student achievements and outcomes and
reduced to crude economic indicators, such as average graduate salaries or
the monetisation of knowledge transfer. A civic university, by implication,
holds itself to account according to its contribution to the collective good
(which can include the earning power of graduates, but also much more
that cannot be measured simply in market terms).
This requires a judgement about where the collective is situated (a spa-
tial orientation) and about whose needs are prioritised within that collec-
tive (a purposive orientation).
Both questions are tricky, although the place issue is perhaps more
straightforward. Most universities have historic connections with a city or
locality: in the UK, these are usually enshrined in the institution’s name
and identity. British universities are very much of particular places, even it
is not always clear that they are for those places. However, these place con-
nections have been progressively weakened. Undergraduate recruitment
has been into the university’s location rather than from it more often than
not; at postgraduate level, universities compete in a global market and rely
on international students as a key source of income. As their reach has
expanded, universities have opened satellite campuses both within the UK
and internationally. A student can study at the University of Nottingham
at its campus in Ningbo, China, or at Glasgow Caledonian University’s

postgraduate campus in Shoreditch, east London. But when the University
of Nottingham considers its civic role its focus is on the city of Nottingham,
not Ningbo (although this volume also highlights some unexpected spa-
tial relationships: between Coventry and Scarborough in Chap. 5, or
Central St Martins in London and Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire in
Chap. 8).
This question of where universities locate their civic identity and activ-
ity has been inflected by a new parochialism in British politics (Vail, 2021),
encapsulated by the Brexit referendum in 2016 and an anti-urban rhetoric
in England in which ‘towns’, rather than cities, are for the first time in
decades the focus of political attention. Anti-urban can also sometimes
embrace anti-intellectual: politicians (generally university-educated) have
maintained a background rumble of anti-expert rhetoric and adopted
populist tones pitched to resonate with working-class voters whose com-
munities and industries have been displaced in the globalist, capitalist proj-
ect of (re)making the city. Universities that once considered themselves a
fount of policy expertise for political leaders have found themselves side-
lined, and universities that consider themselves global players are having to
reconsider what ‘local’ might mean to them.
The ‘local’ will inevitably vary. For the University of the Highlands and
Islands, the scale of operation is necessarily huge and sparsely populated.
Queen Mary University of London, by contrast, despite its international
profile, is localised within a packed corner of London’s East End. History,
campus locations and partnerships all tug at the boundaries of place, teas-
ing them in different directions.
Partnerships can often be a defining factor. In the UK, the local author-
ity may provide the most obvious scale of engagement between the uni-
versity and the public. It is through the local authority that citizens exercise
their local democratic rights and experience many public services. The
democratic mandate of local authorities gives them a legitimacy as the col-
lective voice of citizens within their boundaries: they embody the civic in
ways that universities, as currently configured within the UK, cannot do
through their governance arrangements and organisational status.
The local authority, though, is often not coterminous with urban settle-
ments: a university may be active in only a small pocket of a local author-
ity’s area, or a local authority may cover only part of a university’s
‘catchment’ (indeed, for leading research-intensive universities ‘catch-
ment’ is probably more accurately a social rather than spatial concept).
However, the local authority offers a scale at which university leaders can
engage with their peers in local government at a strategic level, at least
within the UK context. But frequently a local authority—Leeds or
Birmingham, for example—will host several universities. In the worst case,
‘civic’ can then become a source of potential competition between institu-
tions and risks being reduced to a branding exercise.
While place presents challenges of how and where to draw spatial
boundaries, ‘purpose’ challenges the direction of travel. To what end do
universities see themselves as civic? Historically, discussion has focused on
universities’ economic impacts. These are often couched in terms of sup-
port for business and enterprise, especially at a regional scale. Benneworth
(2019) argues: ‘Universities’ main role is as a connection point to global
knowledge resources in ways that make that knowledge more easily avail-
able to local partners.’ Others see economic impacts more in terms of
direct employment and supporting local supply chains through procure-
ment (Devins et al., 2017; Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2019).
Alongside support for business, there is a growing view that universities
have a specific mission to raise attainment and skills within their local pop-
ulations. The Civic University Commission asserts that ‘while civic agree-
ments must be decided locally, we would be surprised if adult education
did not form a core plank of the majority of agreements and make up one
of the biggest shifts in university behaviour’. This may include contribut-
ing to areas of skill shortage or supporting key workforce groups such as
healthcare staff (Frostick, 2016).
But there is also recognition that the civic mission may be put into
effect through contributions to local regeneration and public engagement
(as highlighted by Research England’s emerging Knowledge Exchange
Framework); cultural input (Riviezzo et al., 2019), strategic foresight
(Goddard, 2018) and place-based leadership (Hambleton, 2018). This
public engagement work can take a wide variety of forms, including festi-
vals and cultural events, support for neighbourhood-based initiatives in
disadvantaged communities, and engagement activities undertaken during
the course of research projects.
There are questions over the impact these activities have beyond the
realm of those who are already engaged with higher education institu-
tions, including isolated or minoritised communities. Recent research
commissioned by the UPP Foundation (2020) highlights the limitations
of this engagement: its study of post-industrial towns found that one third
of respondents had never visited their local university, even though more
than half (59%) believed universities should play a greater role in the local
economy. There is currently no consensus about what combination or bal-
ance of activities distinguishes the ‘civic university’ from one that is simply
fulfilling its core tertiary education role. The UPP Foundation report rec-
ommended that universities should focus in particular on supporting town
centre regeneration; jobs and economic localism; local educational attain-
ment; local innovation and R&D; and the NHS.
Civic universities, though, need to do more than simply attach their
own tag to such lists of current political priorities if they are to become—
in the UPP Foundation’s words—‘truly civic’. In the United States, this
has been expressed as a ‘larger purpose … to play a vital role in the build-
ing of a better, more democratic, equitable and just society’ (Taylor &
Luter, 2013).
This civic mission could dovetail with a number of emerging agendas in
the UK. Nationally, the concern with ‘levelling up’ articulated since the
2019 General Election and in the Levelling Up White Paper (HM
Government, 2022) reflects a recognition that some places have been ‘left
behind’ and marginalised in terms of opportunities and economic bene-
fits. While the Westminster government has not acknowledged its own
role in creating and aggravating the conditions it now proclaims a need to
reverse, its recognition of the persistent inequalities facing many commu-
nities is welcome and opens some space for discussion of causes and poten-
tial remedies. The White Paper, for the first time since the Blair era of the
late 1990s and early 2000s, calls for coordinated action to address disad-
vantage across a range of policy domains, with the Levelling Up and
Regeneration Bill promising to extend local government devolution to all
areas of England and impose a legal duty on government departments to
demonstrate progress towards 12 levelling up ‘missions’.
At a local level, there is increasing interest in emerging frameworks for
thinking about local economic development. The community wealth-
building agenda, pioneered in the UK through the work of Preston City
Council, seeks to channel local institutional spending and strategy to sup-
port local economies and communities, retaining wealth within localities
(Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2019). Organisations such as the
Joseph Rowntree Foundation have advanced arguments for ‘inclusive
growth’ that spreads the benefits of economic success more evenly, both
socially and spatially (RSA, 2017). Kate Raworth’s notion of ‘doughnut
economics’ (Raworth, 2020) highlights the need to conceptualise pros-
perity in terms of thriving while also supporting social and ecological
goals, living within the ‘doughnut’ of sustainable consumption, an

approach that has been trialled in Amsterdam. In such a context, the idea
of civic universities can become much more than simply a protective cover
for higher education institutions that now see themselves as under threat:
instead, it can be part of a wider movement for economic and social change.
Framing Civic Action

Within this context, a way of framing civic activity is needed that is flexible
enough to cover the wide range of activities and circumstances across the
higher education sector, while being rigorous enough to act as a robust
self-assessment tool and a stimulus for further action. This challenge
informed the authors’ work in 2020/2021 to develop a framework for
civic impact (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021a). Much of the context and back-
ground for this work is detailed in a paper on ‘capturing and enhancing
the impact of the civic university’ (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021b) and need
not be repeated here.
It is worth reiterating the rationale for this work, though. First, a civic
impact framework can help universities to build on what they have done
so far and shows them what evidence they need to gather to inform better
practice—ideally through a system of peer review rather than self-
assessment alone. Second, it provides a way of sharing and comparing
between universities, allowing comparisons between different domains of
activity.
What the framework does not set out to do is to propose another uni-
versity ranking system based on quantitative metrics. Such a move risks
reducing civic activity to a public relations exercise, prioritising box-ticking
over genuine reflection and engagement. This is not to deny the genuine
need for university and civic leaders to understand their relative position in
relation to sensibly constructed peer groups and comparators; but to select
particular metrics to represent civic activity privileges what is measurable
and excludes what may be messier but of more value to the communities
universities serve. The attitudes and behaviours of senior university lead-
ers, for example, including their willingness to listen to community voices
and openness to ideas from beyond the campus, are crucial to the success
of civic activity but impossible to capture adequately in a simple metric.
The civic framework was developed through a process of workshopping
with members of the Civic University Network, sense-checking the
domains we identified and the questions we were posing. The outcome is
a tool that universities can use to identify, analyse, coordinate and improve
their civic activities. It is not the same as a Civic University Agreement,
which sets out priorities for civic action that have (usually) been identified
in partnership with local institutions and community representatives, but
it can be used as part of the development of such agreements and to test
how effective they are in practice. The framework does not seek to impose
a new set of obligations or a particular model, but instead asks how uni-
versities can build the wellbeing of their communities through their every-
day activities and core business of learning, teaching and research.
Domains of Civic Action

The framework identifies seven domains of universities’ civic commit-
ment—the core areas in which universities can and do affect their places
and communities. These are: social impact; environment, climate and bio-
diversity; health and wellbeing; culture; economic impact; estates, facilities
and placemaking; and institutional strategy and leadership. In each of
these domains, attention should be paid to how a university’s core work of
teaching and research helps to further its civic ambitions.
The framework also identifies six phases of progress. These start with
mapping what is happening already, moving on to partnering with other
organisations and stakeholders; agreeing priorities and actions; resourcing
the agreed activities; evaluating how well they are working; and applying
the learning from that evaluation process. Progress is conceptualised as
cyclical rather than linear: ‘civic’ is not a goal to be achieved but a mode
of existence that should be regularly reviewed and adapted as circum-
stances change (Fig. 1.1).
The domains and phases emerged from a review of previous literature,
examination of other relevant initiatives (such as the Knowledge Exchange
Framework in the UK) and from discussions within the Civic University
Network and with its partners.
Table 1.2 provides an illustrative summary of the domains of activity
and progress, with examples of overarching questions to be addressed in
each phase and potential indicators. It outlines how universities can begin
to develop a comprehensive approach to their civic activities, generating a
whole-place and whole-system approach. We would expect universities to
work across these domains simultaneously as well as sequentially, informed
by their relationships with local partners.
Fig. 1.1 Domains of civic activity and progress cycle
In practical terms, this framework is envisaged as a discussion-starter

and checklist that can be applied across a range of institutional activities,
either within one domain or all together.
Overview of Chapters
In this book we have used the framework as a conversation-starter with
our co-authors, and invited them to respond, each starting with one of the
domains of civic action but using it as a platform to develop their own
ideas and share their experiences. We then conclude with further thoughts
on how the civic agenda could help to take the work of higher education
forward at a time of multiple global and local challenges—bringing civic
Table 1.2 The civic framework in a nutshell
Progress levels 1 Mapping: where 2 Partnering: 3 Agreeing: who 4 Resourcing: how 5 Evaluating: how 6 Learning: What
are we now? where do we want will do what, are activities are we doing? will we change,
to go, and with and when? supported? and how?
whom?
Domains Core questions and potential indicators

Social impact Key questions: How do we want our university to bridge and reduce social divides and improve the quality of life of
our communities, including the most disadvantaged? How can our university help our places move from ‘functioning’
to ‘flourishing’? What part can our students play in this?
We know how well We are working Within our own We have set aside We are measuring We capture and
our workforce and with partners to institution, we resources to our social impact share learning
student intake create a shared have action support our and we have across our
reflects local vision of a plans for change public worked with local university and
populations, and flourishing in line with our engagement and communities to with key partners,
the extent of our society, with full shared priorities. can show how this make sure our and identify areas
community and involvement of all will benefit indicators are for improvement.
public engagement. our communities. marginalised and meaningful to
excluded groups. them.
(continued)
1 WHY THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR A CIVIC TURN
15
Table 1.2 (continued)
16
whom?
Environment, Key questions: How could our university play a leading role in mitigating and adapting to climate change, reversing
climate and biodiversity loss, and educating students for sustainability? How will it influence environmental behaviours
biodiversity throughout our city or region?
We can fully We engage with We have agreed We have identified We measure the We are
account for our local partners to priority targets resources to wider implementing
J. DOBSON AND ED FERRARI
carbon emissions create a shared for improvement support our environmental education for
and we measure vision of a and consulted environmental footprint of the sustainable
progress on carbon sustainable our partners and ambitions. We university within development
reduction. We have locality and the wider support staff and and beyond our across the
done an university. We are community on students in locality. We hold curriculum. We
environmental and working with our their needs and modelling the ourselves to share our learning
biodiversity audit suppliers, staff aspirations. environmental account by with peers and
of our estate. We and students to behaviours we publicising our use our academic
know what we improve our want to performance and expertise to
waste. environmental encourage (such inviting support our
impacts. as active travel). suggestions for partners in
improvement. improving our
local places.
Health and Key questions: How does our institution support the health and wellbeing of our localities and communities? What
wellbeing does a flourishing community look like to us?
We are aware of the We partner with We have targets We have identified Our priorities are We are listening
health healthcare for beneficial resources to informed by local to our
characteristics of organisations and impact on our support our communities, communities to
our communities, communities to communities’ communities’ public health understand what
staff and students, promote local wellbeing and wellbeing. We teams and wellbeing means
and know how our wellbeing. we are working take time to listen healthcare for them and
activities impact on with partners to and value organisations. We adjusting our
them. take appropriate communities’ know what we can activities and
action. knowledge and do differently and priorities in
experience. what impact it can response.
make.
(continued)
17
18
whom?
Our cultural Key questions: How does our university celebrate and enrich the cultural life of our localities and communities? How
contribution do we create vibrant, creative and playful places?
We know what We engage with a We have We promote and We have asked We actively
contribution we wide range of identified fund events and our communities consider how our
make to local local cultural priorities for activities that what they think of activities can be
cultural life. We organisations. We support and enrich and the activities we better. In doing
have mapped this ensure local know which celebrate the support and have so we value and
against local communities are communities we cultural life of our listened to their learn from the
demographics and welcomed and need to work localities, and views. expertise and
identified gaps and included in our with more support staff and knowledge within
opportunities. events and (including our students to do our localities.
activities. own staff and this.
students).
Economic Key questions: How could our university’s work create more prosperous places and address and reduce economic
impact inequality? What impacts is it having now? Can we articulate and promote a coherent vision of a flourishing local
economy in partnership with local stakeholders?
We know our We have joint We have agreed We are using our We have agreed We review our
economic footprint economic indicators of employment and economic impact impacts with key
and our impact on strategies with progress, with spending power targets and we are partners,
local communities local partners, achievable to support our measuring including the
and the lives of our which reflect our targets for local economy progress on groups most
learners. shared priorities. change. and people. reducing affected by
inequalities. inequalities.
Estates, Key questions: How can our facilities be used for the benefit of the whole community? Do all members of the
facilities and community feel welcome? How do our facilities set the standard for placemaking and sustainability in our city or
placemaking region? How can our digital infrastructure benefit our communities?
We have agreed We work with We work with Our design, We work with We review the use
design, quality, local communities civic partners to procurement, peer organisations and development
environmental and and planning ensure our maintenance and to critique and of our estates to
accessibility authorities to estates management improve our ensure they
standards and ensure our estates management practices support practices. We support our civic
benchmark our meet their needs supports our an open and invite local mission.
estates and aspirations. civic ambitions. inclusive attitude communities to
management We are open and We have agreed and we are tell us how we can
against the best in transparent in our priorities for making our estate do better.
our class. We know plans and action and suitable for
who uses our developments. improvement. community uses
buildings and as well as for our
spaces, how and staff and students.
when.
(continued)
19
20
whom?
Institutional Key questions: How will top-level governance and strategies at our institution reflect our civic commitment to ensure
strategy and we make the difference we want? Which partners are we working with and to what ends, and what are their priorities?
leadership What would it look like if our civic priorities were embedded throughout our core activities of teaching, learning and
research?
We have drafted, We know the We have We have identified We regularly Our senior staff
consulted on and number, remit committed to resources to monitor and are involved in
approved a Civic and make-up of SMART targets support the civic evaluate the civic peer
University the partnerships within civic agenda. effects of our civic networks or
Agreement. we’re involved in. strategies and strategies, and communities of
agreements. review them with practice.
peers.
impact to life by pushing the sector and universities individually to chal-

lenge and reinvent themselves for their places and communities.
In Chap. 2, Jonathan Slater (former permanent secretary at the
Department of Education) and Farah Hussain (a local councillor in
London), both affiliated to Queen Mary University of London, focus on
the implications of the civic agenda for university leadership and for the
higher education sector more broadly. Drawing on their policy and politi-
cal experience, they outline what it could mean to have a civic focus across
an entire institution, and address the current gap between universities’
rhetoric on civic impact (as expressed in their civic university agreements)
and their achievements.
Chap. 3 turns the spotlight onto universities’ social impacts. Institutions
often celebrate the social benefits they bring to communities, but it is rarer
for them to ask their communities how effectively they think the university
is contributing to their wellbeing. Here Sue Jarvis, co-director of the
Heseltine Institute at the University of Liverpool, draws on examples both
from the University of Liverpool and from local government to show how
institutions can become more responsive to the resources, aspirations,
needs and inequalities within their localities while drawing on their
innate assets.
We then address the question of universities’ climate and environmen-
tal impacts and ask whether they can act as leaders of a just transition to a
‘net zero’ economy and society. Kirstie O’Neill, lecturer in environmental
geography at the University of Cardiff, considers how universities can
reorient their work to put climate impacts at the heart of their civic role,
setting the standard within their communities and encouraging others to
take action. This chapter is both an assessment of the opportunity and a
critique of universities’ frequent failure to take meaningful action in the
context of climate crisis.
In Chap. 5 we consider how universities can begin to take health and
wellbeing seriously, not only among their own staff and students, but
across the communities they serve. Liz Mear, managing director of Leeds
Academic Health Partnership until 2021, and Paul Johnstone, Public
Health England’s former national director for regions and places and visit-
ing professor at Leeds Beckett University, outline how universities can
work more closely with healthcare institutions to tackle entrenched health
inequalities within the localities they serve and directly improve the health
of their communities.
The next chapter considers universities’ cultural impacts. Universities

are major investors in culture, training and teaching the cultural leaders of
tomorrow. But they can also offer platforms to celebrate their communi-
ties’ cultural achievements and amplify the cultures of diverse communi-
ties in their localities. Amanda Crawley Jackson, associate dean for
knowledge exchange at the University of the Arts London, and Chris
Baker, knowledge exchange policy and economic development manager at
Sheffield Hallam University, draw on perspectives from practice and aca-
demic leadership to highlight the opportunities for more connected equi-
table and inventive cultural collaborations, informed by grassroots rather
than panoptical perspectives.
Chapter 7 turns to questions of economic development. While these
have traditionally been at the heart of the civic and ‘anchor institution’
agendas, we see economic impacts as intertwined with every other ele-
ment of a university’s work. Universities are major investors in their locali-
ties—not only through their campus developments and by attracting
students, but by working with their communities to address issues of pov-
erty and inequality. In this chapter Nicola Gratton and Martin Jones, asso-
ciate professor of civic and community engagement and vice-chancellor
respectively at the University of Staffordshire, share their experience of
how universities can work with communities affected by multiple disad-
vantages and act positively to raise community voices and improve local
people’s life chances.
Another way universities affect their communities, often without being
fully aware of it, is through their physical footprint within places. Campuses
and facilities are the most visible symbols of these effects, but universities
also shape the use of buildings and spaces in the wider urban milieu—cre-
ating ‘interface sites’ in which power is manifest, sometimes progressively
but not always so. In addressing the question of placemaking in Chap. 8,
architects and academics Julia Udall and Anna Wakeford Holder illustrate
how universities can develop an imaginative and inclusive agenda for creat-
ing places that nurture both human and more-than-human communities.
Finally, in Chap. 9, we return to the overarching question of what is at
stake as universities develop their civic engagement. Reflecting on univer-
sities’ civic engagement to date, we argue that universities need to become
champions of their localities, acting beyond their immediate institutional
interests to make a long-term difference to the prospects of their places.
This demands a deeply reflective approach, which looks critically into and
beyond academia, holding the questions of the relevance and purpose of
universities constantly to the fore.
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CHAPTER 2
A Question of Leadership
Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain
Introduction
During the summer and autumn of 2021, the Mile End Institute at Queen
Mary, University of London asked us to review the progress made since
the 2019 launch of the UPP Commission Report into the civic role of
universities in the UK. The Commission’s report recommended the devel-
opment of Civic University Agreements (CUAs) by universities looking to
play active roles in their local places. With Jonathan’s long career in the
civil service, including as Permanent Secretary at the Department for
Education, and Farah’s dual roles as a local councillor in London and a
PhD researcher at Queen Mary, it was thought that we had the expertise
and knowledge to make a meaningful contribution to the understanding
of how well the higher education sector was embedding the concept of the
civic university into how it works and interacts with the public.
J. Slater (*)
King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
F. Hussain
Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
e-mail: f.k.hussain@qmul.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Switzerland AG 2023
J. Dobson, Ed Ferrari (eds.), Reframing the Civic University,
Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17686-9_2
26 J. SLATER AND F. HUSSAIN
The focus of our work, at the request of the Civic University Network
(which coordinates the efforts of all universities developing CUAs), was to
explore the issue of evaluation: how to measure whether civic activity is
making a difference. This seemed to us a worthy line of enquiry. After all,
with our backgrounds in local and national government we know how
easy it is to convince oneself that working very hard, attending lots of
meetings, and publishing well-written documents are all signs of progress.
In reality, it is very difficult when you’re in the thick of it to work out what
difference is actually being achieved. It is even more challenging to predict
the public impact. We certainly had lots of experience in our working lives
of wondering after the event if the efforts put into certain initiatives were
really worth it in the end.
We also felt it would be valuable for the universities interested in this
work to have some support in measuring impact, as this is not always easy
to quantify. It is easy to fall into the trap of measuring the wrong outcome
of a project just because those figures or measures are the ones that are
available, rather than the ones that make the most sense and help you to
get the best picture of what is going on.
Through our interviews, we found a lot of enthusiasm from people
working on the civic agenda within universities across the country. But the
reality was that their work was a much earlier stage of development than
we had expected. Only one of the 12 we spoke to had published a CUA,
and there was very little evaluation going on at all. In fact, most of even
the most advanced universities were just getting started on their journeys
to develop civic university agreements. So we refocused on the question of
why this was, and whether it mattered. We had very interesting conversa-
tions with people committed to making a difference within their univer-
sity’s local area and were able to produce a report (Slater & Hussain,
2022) which gave a snapshot of progress on the civic agenda in the higher
education sector.
And at the end of the report, we set out a challenge to the sector, in
light of the limited progress we had found:
Through this project, we have found that it is perfectly possible for universities to
do the necessary work in this area - to listen to local people and partners, to
decide what to do as a result, either in consultation or in formal partnership,
to set some measurable objectives, and to get on with it. And though there is
clearly a whole range of significant challenges facing the sector, the case for
universities to work with directly elected mayors, with local government more
2 A QUESTION OF LEADERSHIP 27
generally, and with other partners to play a strategic role in their locality is
strong. As to whether or not this becomes more than a minority sport, that’s a
question for universities themselves to answer. But if not, why not?
We concluded that this is essentially a leadership question. If a univer-

sity’s leaders choose to prioritise their institution’s civic role, they can
make a big difference. But if they don’t make this choice, then the impact
on the ground of the efforts of individuals, however enthusiastic, will be
limited: at best, ‘bitty’ and tactical; at worst, an exercise in little more than
public relations.
So what’s going on?
To help us answer this question, we need to start with some easier ones
and, in doing so, repeat some of what we said in our earlier report.
What Are Civic University Agreements

and Why Bother?
The concept of the civic university gained prominence in the UK higher

education sector with the establishment of the UPP Foundation’s Civic
University Commission in 2018. Its purpose was to determine the key
challenges faced by universities in pursuing their civic roles and to make
recommendations to the sector and government about what could be
done to strengthen universities’ place-based roles.
The Commission recommended that universities keen to cultivate con-
nections with their local places should co-create Civic University
Agreements (CUAs) with other civic partners (UPP, 2019). It set out four
broad areas that these agreements should follow:
1. An understanding of local populations and asking them what

they want.
2. Understanding of the university itself, reflecting on the historical
strategic and geopolitical nuances that have shaped the institution.
3. Working with other anchor institutions, businesses and community
organisations to agree what opportunities and problems exist
in the area.
4. A clear set of priorities aligned with the plans and resources of other
stakeholders in the area such as LEPs (Local Enterprise Partnerships),
NHS bodies and local authorities.
The UPP Commission’s report was received positively by government.

Chris Skidmore, the then universities minister, spoke at the report’s launch
saying: ‘I’m truly grateful to the UPP Foundation for commissioning this
important project, and I hope that the Foundation will continue to lead
the agenda and debate on the civic university going forwards. I particu-
larly welcome the suggestion for new initiatives such as civic agreements,
which aim to encourage universities to take a more strategic approach to
their civic activity. It will be important that universities do not create these
in isolation, and that we consider further how universities can be encour-
aged to join up with other key actors in their local areas to create agree-
ments that best serve their entire community.’
The sector was equally enthusiastic: according to the UPP, nearly 60
institutions soon committed themselves to developing their own CUAs.
These are strategic documents designed to shape, prioritise and measure
universities’ civic activities. The idea for them came about through the
UPP Commission’s research which found that, although many universities
were committed to their civic roles and actively engaging with their local
communities, there was a lack of strategic thinking to ensure this work
met the needs of the place (UPP, 2019).
The commission made the creation of CUAs its first recommendation
for universities looking to play more active roles in their places. The com-
mission was not prescriptive about what these agreements should look
like, but did list a number of elements they should incorporate to have the
best chance of success (UPP, 2019). These four elements, as listed above,
were recommended to form the basis of the work that universities should
put in to creating their CUAs.
The CUAs that we looked at as part of our research project came in a
variety of guises and forms. Sheffield Hallam University’s CUA places a lot
of emphasis on consultation with local communities across the region in
which it works, centring on the voice of the people. It has four clear priori-
ties and lists a number of quantifiable commitments under each. The
Greater Manchester CUA brings together five higher education institu-
tions in the city and the office of the Mayor of Greater Manchester as
signatories. Its six priorities are wide-ranging and ambitious, although not
as a specific or measurable as those set out by Sheffield Hallam. This range
of approaches by universities to the idea of CUAs is a strength of the civic
approach, allowing institutions to work with their partners and local com-
munities to implement the kind of agreements they can and want to.
What Is the Civic University Network and What

Does it Advise?
Those universities committed to developing CUAs chose to collectively
fund a network, hosted by Sheffield Hallam, to develop best practice and
help universities share experiences and ideas. One of the tools they have
developed is a Civic Impact Framework (Dobson & Ferrari, 2021): a com-
prehensive document that aims to assist universities in assessing the effect
of their civic work. The framework was designed with university leaders
through an iterative process. This broad document covers seven domains
of local university impact: social impact; environment, climate and biodi-
versity; health and wellbeing; cultural contribution; economic impact;
estates, facilities and placemaking; and institutional strategy and leadership.
The last of these domains explicitly invites universities to address the
leadership question. Universities are tasked with asking themselves three
questions:
1. How will top-level governance and strategies at our institution

reflect our civic commitment to ensure we make the differ-
ence we want?
2. Which partners are we working with and to what ends, and what are
their priorities?
3. What would it look like if our civic priorities were embedded
through our core activities of teaching, learning and research?
The framework also proposes several steps that universities should take
to ensure they are embedding civic work and civic thinking into the way
they do things as an organisation. The steps are designed to be part of a
cyclical and iterative process but do follow logical steps which build upon
one another. They support an institution in its journey from mapping
where it is now, to partnership working, agreeing who will do what and
when, the resourcing of these activities, evaluation and learning. The doc-
ument encourages and offers a helping hand to universities throughout
the process, from the creation of a CUA to monitoring the agreement’s
impact and later down the line, encouraging senior staff with experience
in this area of work to support other institutions embarking on similar
journeys (Fig. 2.1).
Sitting below each of these headlines are questions which are designed
to prompt universities to achieve these six goals. Universities are
We have drafted, We know the number, We have committed to

consulted on and remit and make-up of SMART targets within
approved a Civic the partnerships we're civic strategies and
University Agreement involved in agreements
Our senior staff are We regularly monitor

involved in civic peer and evaluate the We have identified
networks or effects of our civic resources to support
communities of strategies, and review the civic agenda
practice them with peers
Fig. 2.1 The five steps of building institutional strategy and leadership within
the Civic Impact Framework
encouraged throughout the process to ensure that civic work is rooted

within all the work they do, from the knowledge of the local area that they
hold to consultation with community groups and financial investment.
The last strand of the institutional strategy and leadership domain is a
two-way learning process. Universities are encouraged to get senior staff
involved in peer networks to support other institutions while at the same
time asking themselves self-reflective questions such as ‘is there scope for
us to do better?’ and ‘how are we judging how well we are doing?’.
How Did We Find Out What Was Going

on in Practice?
Working within the confines of the Covid-19 pandemic meant that the
methods that we could use in carrying out our research were severely cur-
tailed. Workshops, roundtables and face-to-face interviews were just not
possible during the height of the pandemic, which meant that we relied on
video conferencing and sometimes the telephone to conduct our
interviews.
These interviews were semi-structured. We used a list of questions and
topics as a framework but were able to adapt these depending on how
interviewees answered and allowed ourselves to be led by the

conversation.
We were very grateful to the people who gave up their time to speak to
us during what was a busy and turbulent period for everyone. They not
only joined yet another video call to discuss their work with us, but also
sent us documents, webpage links and additional information that we
requested, sometimes sharing unpublished drafts or works in progress.
This more informal interview structure also allowed us to have mean-
ingful two-way conversations with the people we spoke to. When they
raised challenges or issues they faced, we (anonymously) shared relevant
ideas we had gathered from other institutions we had spoken to and were
able to offer our own insights. Of course, no one was under any pressure
to take on our suggestions, but we did feel able to have mutually beneficial
conversations.
In terms of who we spoke to, we were led by the experts at the Civic
University Network and the National Coordinating Centre for Public
Engagement. They provided us with a list of universities which they
thought were among the most advanced in civic engagement and would
have something interesting to say about CUAs, and which spanned all
four nations of the UK.
Therefore, the sample of people we spoke to was not random and our
results cannot be read across to the entire UK higher education sector.
Instead, they should be viewed as a snapshot of where the most advanced
or committed institutions were in terms of implementing the UPP recom-
mendations during the summer and autumn of 2021. This sample allowed
us to identify good practice, share this with universities just starting out on
their civic journeys, and learn if there were aspects where institutions were
still struggling in relation to this agenda.
We contacted 12 universities in total: Queen Mary, University of
London, Manchester, Staffordshire, Solent, Sheffield Hallam, Bath,
Aberdeen, St Andrews, Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham and Ulster. Out of
these institutions, we were able to speak to representatives from nine of
them. A small process of snowball sampling also meant that we were also
able to speak to representatives of three other universities who were rec-
ommended by other interviewees. They were from London Metropolitan
University, King’s College London and the University of London.
Therefore, we eventually interviewed twelve university teams from across
the four nations, although with more of a London focus than we had
originally envisaged.
What Did We Learn?

We were struck by the wide variety of approaches being taken by different
universities. Some were developing Civic University Agreements, others
weren’t. Some had already got draft agreements, others were at the begin-
ning of the journey. Some were aiming for something specific and quanti-
fiable, others for something more ‘visionary’. Some were collaborating
with other universities in their region with a view to a joint CUA, others
were going it alone. Some were seeking formal agreement of the docu-
ment with strategic partners like the local authority, others weren’t.
There seems nothing wrong in principle with a great deal of variety.
Indeed, there are obvious benefits in learning from different approaches.
And the context facing individual institutions clearly varies significantly,
from universities which stand alone as higher education institutions in
their local area, to others (most obviously in London, but also in Greater
Manchester and elsewhere) which are part of a much more complicated
network. And, of course, some universities have been working on their
civic role for a lot longer than others.
However, we were disappointed to find only a small number of univer-
sities which seemed to have set themselves the objective of producing a
CUA which goes beyond a series of declaratory sentences with ambitious
adjectives, into the space of well-defined activities which members of the
public would be able to relate to. It would certainly be possible to inter-
pret some universities’ actions as more of a public relations or reputation-
management exercise than as a way of delivering genuine improvement in
the lives of local people. In our sample of 12, only a minority of universi-
ties had spelt out clearly what they were going to do differently and why,
whether they had decided to encapsulate this in a formal CUA or not.
We were also disappointed that only a minority of universities we talked
to had taken a strategic approach to the development of their CUAs. Some
had conducted an overall assessment of their current civic activities, con-
sulted with local partners and people about what they thought of this and
what they would like to be different, and set clear priorities for change as
a result. This seemed to us very much to be desired. But it was not typical.
It is possible that, at least for some of the universities we spoke to who
weren’t following each of these steps, this was simply because it is work in
progress. However, this was not the sense we got in most of our conversa-
tions. It seemed to us that there was often something of a disconnect
between the enthusiastic work of the civic engagement leads we were
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of En Pénitence
chez les Jésuites: Correspondance d'un lycéen
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
Title: En Pénitence chez les Jésuites: Correspondance d'un lycéen
Author: Pierre-Paul Brucker
Release date: July 23, 2022 [eBook #68591]
Language: French
Original publication: France: Pierre Téqui, 1910
Credits: René Galluvot (This file was produced from images

generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de
France (BnF/Gallica))
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EN

PÉNITENCE CHEZ LES JÉSUITES: CORRESPONDANCE D'UN
LYCÉEN ***
PAUL KER
En Pénitence chez les Jésuites
CORRESPONDANCE D’UN LYCÉEN
TROISIÈME ÉDITION
PARIS
PIERRE TÉQUI, LIBRAIRE-ÉDITEUR
82, RUE BONAPARTE, 82
1910
Tous droits réservés.
Ceci n’est pas un roman : c’est une histoire vécue.
Je n’ai pas été élevé sur les genoux de la Compagnie de Jésus.
C’est l’Université qui s’est appliquée la première à dégrossir ma
jeune intelligence et à la former. Je lui sais gré de ses louables
intentions. Mais la vérité m’oblige à dire que, si je vaux quelque
chose, ce n’est pas à elle que je le dois. Je l’ai, bien
qu’involontairement, quittée d’assez bonne heure pour avoir le
temps de faire peau neuve sous une autre influence. Les pages
qu’on va lire marquent les diverses phases de mon évolution.
Elles sont d’un jeune homme qui dit, au jour le jour, ce qu’il a
senti, ce qu’il a vu, et qui le dit sans arrière-pensée. J’aurais pu leur
donner un tour moins juvénile, les corriger : je les aurais gâtées. Je
les livre au public telles que je les ai retrouvées, un peu jaunies déjà
par l’âge, dans des tiroirs longtemps oubliés. A une époque où le
mot d’ordre est de courir sus aux Jésuites, ce témoignage
primesautier d’un lycéen devenu leur élève pourra, sinon guérir les
aveugles volontaires — miracle difficile — du moins ouvrir quelques
yeux qui cherchent sincèrement la lumière.
Il y a de par le monde des égarés intelligents qui, après avoir
reçu chez les Jésuites, quelquefois pour l’amour de Dieu, le pain du
corps et celui de l’âme, le leur ont, depuis, vilainement craché au
visage. J’en appelle à ceux-là : ils ne sont pas sujets à caution.
Qu’ils soient francs, et je les défie de me taxer d’exagération ou de
mensonge.
Néanmoins, on est tellement habitué dans certains milieux à
regarder les Jésuites, qu’on n’a d’ailleurs jamais vus de près,
comme des êtres à part, ténébreux, insaisissables, essentiellement
retors et louches, que je ne me flatte pas outre mesure d’être cru sur
parole. On dira que je suis un jésuite masqué. Il ne me restera
qu’une ressource : c’est de répondre à ces incrédules : « Allez, une
bonne fois, y voir vous-mêmes. »
Il s’en trouvera peut-être qui auront assez de courage et de
loyauté pour faire cet essai, quand les Jésuites seront rentrés chez
eux — ce qui ne peut tarder bien longtemps, s’il est vrai, comme on
le dit volontiers, qu’étant sortis par les portes, ils ont l’habitude de
rentrer par les fenêtres.
En Pénitence chez les Jésuites
LETTRE 1
A
mon condisciple et ami Louis X., élève de
Rhétorique au lycée de Z.
1er octobre 187…
Mon cher Louis,
Je t’annonce une nouvelle que tu ne voudras pas croire. J’y crois

à peine moi-même… Hélas !
Tu me connais de longue date et tu sais que, si je ne suis pas un
mauvais cœur, sans me vanter, je n’ai jamais été un modèle de
travail, de discipline et de sérieux. Ah, le sérieux ! Voilà un mot qui
m’horripile ! On me le répète le matin, on me le répète le soir, on me
le fait manger à toutes les sauces : j’en étouffe. Que diable ! Je ne
suis pas un bénédictin pour sécher sur des bouquins savants, ni un
chartreux pour moisir en cellule et me nourrir de silence, d’eau claire
et de pénitence. Je vais avoir seize ans ; j’ai dans les veines du sang
qui bout, dans la cervelle quelques idées pas plus sottes que
d’autres, dans le cœur… Ma foi, est-ce qu’on sait, à nos âges, ce
qu’on a dans le cœur ? Tout, par le désir ; en réalité, rien, rien que le
vide, la faim, la soif d’un idéal qui est dans les étoiles, à des milliers
de lieues… Oh ! j’en pleurerais une journée !
Mais tout cela ne t’apprend pas la chose étonnante, stupéfiante.
La voici toute crue. Mon père vient de me déclarer qu’il me retire du
lycée pour me mettre chez les Jésuites.
Tu as bien entendu : CHEZ LES JÉSUITES. En pénitence,
naturellement.
A première vue, ça paraît monstrueux, n’est-ce pas ? A la
seconde, à la troisième, à la vingtième fois, c’est toujours pire. A la
fin, c’est comme dans les romans, tu sais ? — un tel saisissement de
douleur inattendue que, ne pouvant pleurer, on se met à rire, comme
à Charenton.
J’en suis là, mon ami. Je n’ai fait aucune objection à mon père :
ce qu’il veut, je sais qu’il le veut. Ma mère le regarde, me regarde et
ne dit rien : je vois qu’elle attend l’œuvre du temps.
A demain. Plains-moi.
Ton malheureux ami,
Paul.
2. Au même.
2 octobre.
Mon cher Louis,
La nuit porte conseil, dit-on : je ne m’en aperçois guère. J’en ai

passé une horrible. Un cauchemar continu. Sur mon estomac je
sentais les deux larges pieds d’un Jésuite, énorme comme un saint
Christophe, qui avec la hampe pointue de sa lourde croix de
procession me fouillait le cœur. Un autre m’étranglait avec un
immense chapelet, roulé en forme de serpent autour de mon cou.
Un troisième me grillait les pieds, comme au temps de l’Inquisition,
pendant qu’une douzaine d’autres, jeunes et vieux, avec des
grimaces de démon, dansaient autour de mon lit une sarabande
insensée.
Il paraît que j’ai crié au secours : ma mère est venue et, me
trouvant la tête en feu, m’a mis des compresses qui ont peu à peu
calmé la fièvre. Alors j’ai dormi tranquillement jusqu’à dix heures du
matin. Au déjeuner, mon père me dit : « Tu as eu trop d’appétit hier
soir ; le régime des Jésuites te fera du bien : ils mangent peu au
souper. C’est de l’hygiène bien comprise. »
Remarque, mon ami, comme les résolutions arrêtées d’un
homme changent ses opinions. Mon père n’aime pas plus que moi
les Jésuites et, s’il les connaît, c’est par ouï-dire, sans être sûr de
rien. Néanmoins, depuis qu’il a résolu de me livrer à eux, tu vas voir
qu’il leur prêtera toutes les qualités qu’il désire trouver chez eux pour
ma correction. Il entre dans l’aveuglement incurable — et moi, par le
fait, j’entre dans la fatalité…
J’ai été interrompu dans ma chambre. Deux coups discrets à la

porte. C’était ma sœur Jeanne, qui a ton âge, un an de plus que moi.
Elle m’embrassa plus fort que d’habitude, en m’appelant son petit
Paul. Cela me mit en défiance :
« C’est maman qui t’envoie ?
— Non, c’est moi qui viens te consoler.
— Vrai ?
— Vrai. »
Une petite larme perla au coin de ses yeux parfaitement limpides.
Mon cœur fit un bond. Après un silence :
« Tu as gros cœur, dit-elle, de ne pas rentrer au lycée ?
— Oui, répondis-je péniblement.
— Tu avais là des amis ?
— Plusieurs, un surtout : je lui écrivais, quand tu es entrée.
— Celui-là, je le connais ; il est bon. Mais, les autres, l’étaient-ils
tous ? »
Je la regardai avec quelque surprise : elle ne m’avait jamais
encore fait cette question. Elle la répéta de sa voix la plus douce, et
son œil scrutateur plongeait au fond du mien : il fallut répondre :
« Bons… comme moi », fis-je un peu troublé. « Pourquoi cette
question ?
— Parce que, s’ils avaient été tout à fait bons, notre père n’aurait
pas eu besoin de chercher pour toi un autre milieu. C’est leur faute,
si l’on t’envoie chez les Jésuites.
— Mes amis actuels valent peut-être bien ceux que j’aurai.
— Peut-être est le vrai mot ; car nous n’en savons rien encore, ni
toi ni moi. Tu vas en faire l’expérience, mon petit Paul, dans
quelques jours : si elle réussit, tu seras moins malheureux.
— Et si elle ne réussit pas ?
— Tu reviendras.
— Mais les élèves ne sont pas tout, repris-je. Il y a surtout les
maîtres, que j’ai la tentation d’en voyer promener à tous les…
— Chut ! Les connais-tu ?
— Je les vois d’ici :
Hommes noirs, d’où sortez-vous ?

Nous sortons de dessous terre…
Si je te chantais le reste, tu serais édifiée sur leur compte.

— Mal édifiée, j’imagine. Chanson n’est pas raison. Il faut voir
avant de juger.
— Jeanne, je te trouve aujourd’hui extraordinairement
raisonnable.
— C’est que je souhaite très vivement, cher petit frère, que tu le
sois toi-même, et que tu prennes du bon côté l’épreuve à laquelle tu
vas être soumis. Dis, le veux-tu, pour faire plaisir à ta grande sœur
qui t’aime bien ? Me promets-tu d’accepter franchement ta situation,
de ne pas donner du chagrin à maman et à moi, et d’être sage chez
les Jésuites ? »
Qu’aurais-tu fait à ma place, mon ami ? Je n’en sais rien. Moi, j’ai
le cœur bête. Je me suis jeté en pleurant dans les bras de ma
grande sœur Jeanne et je lui ai promis tout ce qu’elle a voulu.
A ce propos, je vais te faire une confidence. Vois-tu, moi, avec le
tempérament que j’ai, je ne me marierai jamais. La raison, c’est que,
si j’avais une femme revêche, je la battrais comme plâtre, jusqu’à
extinction ; si j’en avais une comme ma sœur Jeanne, elle
m’enroulerait autour de son petit doigt, et alors, adieu toute dignité !
Or, je tiens à ma dignité.
Il est vrai que j’aime follement ma sœur Jeanne, bien qu’élevée
chez des nonnes par la volonté de ma sainte femme de mère, que
mon père n’a jamais osé contrarier. Elle m’a empêché de faire plus
d’une sottise, depuis que j’en suis capable. Ça vaut un peu de
reconnaissance et je tiendrai la parole donnée : s’ensuivra que
pourra.
Nous partons après-demain pour la jésuitière. J’en ai froid dans
le dos. Tu sauras dans quelques jours mes premières impressions.
Adieu, mon ami ; sois plus heureux que moi.
Paul.
3. Au même.
H., le 7 octobre.
Mon cher ami,
Eh bien, j’y suis : c’est invraisemblable et pourtant vrai. Mais ce

qui te paraîtra tout à fait drôle, comme à moi, c’est que — je ne sais
comment te dire cela — je ne m’y trouve qu’à moitié mal. J’en suis
furieux : j’espérais autre chose. Ces Jésuites ne sont pas si noirs
que je croyais et je n’en ai pas vu un qui ait des pieds de bouc.
Quant à leurs élèves, dame !… Tu sais que je n’oublierai jamais les
camarades du lycée, et toi, d’abord, tu es hors de pair. Ceux-ci ont
une tournure différente.
Mais commençons par le commencement. Mon nouveau
professeur, entre autres conseils, nous a recommandé hier de ne
jamais torcher nos lettres, quel qu’en soit le destinataire, par respect
pour nous-mêmes et pour notre belle langue française. Je vais
m’appliquer sans me torturer, comme il nous disait encore. Tu vois
que je deviens docile.
Donc, il y a trois jours, mon père conduisit le malheureux mouton
à la boucherie. Une belle boucherie, ma foi, et bien achalandée, à ce
que j’ai vu depuis. Un long frater en redingote noire nous ouvrit, avec
un sourire qui disait clairement : « Encore un de pris au piège ! »
Vaste parloir très gai, sans nul doute pour narguer la tristesse des
rares et courtes entrevues de famille, avec des bustes de grands
hommes et des tableaux d’honneur pour les petits enfants sages…
Mais en voilà un pour la rhétorique ! C’est là-dessus que j’ai à me
faire afficher pour le plaisir de ma sœur ? Tout est prévu : les fiches
blanches sont déjà prêtes dans leurs coulisses en ferblanterie dorée,
qu’ils veulent faire passer pour de l’or.
Arrive le Père Recteur, comme qui dirait le proviseur de l’endroit,
un bel homme, air et tenue graves, rien d’administratif. Quand mon
père me présenta à lui, son regard s’épanouit. Il me prit la main et, la
sentant un peu trembler, il me baisa au front, comme un innocent :
« Soyez le bienvenu, mon enfant, dit-il. Nous tâcherons de faire
de vous, si vous le voulez bien, un élève meilleur encore que vous
ne l’êtes déjà. »
Rouerie jésuitique, pensai-je. Il sait parfaitement que je suis une
manière de cancre : mon père le lui a écrit et va le répéter devant
moi. C’est en effet ce qui eut lieu.
Quand l’abatage fut fini, le Père Recteur dit simplement :
« Monsieur, le passé est passé ; personne ici ne le reprochera à
votre fils. Il aura la réputation qu’il va se faire par ses actes, et je suis
sûr qu’elle sera bonne : n’est-ce pas, Paul ? »
Ce ton et cette confiance dans ma bonne volonté future
m’entrèrent dans le cœur, malgré moi. Je répondis, sans trop
hésiter :
« Oui, monsieur.
— Dites mon Père », reprit-il en souriant : « c’est le nom qu’on
donne ici aux maîtres et qu’ils tâchent de mériter. »
Je répétai docilement : « Oui, mon Père, » — et je sentis que le
filet m’envahissait.
On me présenta ensuite au Père Préfet (c’est le censeur) : il me
plut moins que l’autre. Celui-ci personnifie le règlement : je m’en
passerais volontiers. Pourtant il fut aimable et nous promena par tout
l’établissement, nous expliquant tous les détails qui pouvaient nous
intéresser, sans le fastidieux boniment auquel je m’attendais.
La boîte n’est vraiment pas vilaine. Il y a de l’air et du jour
partout, même dans les sous-sols, où se trouvent les réfectoires. Les
classes, les études sont spacieuses, les murs peints en couleur
claire. La monotonie des longs corridors est égayée par des statues,
par de jolies gravures historiques, militaires, artistiques, qui en font
de véritables galeries. Dortoirs d’une propreté irréprochable, cirés,
hauts et larges, avec des lavabos et des sommiers perfectionnés.
Mais pas d’alcôves : les lits, à distance convenable, sont en vue les
uns des autres. Le Père Préfet nous dit : « C’est pour apprendre aux
enfants à se respecter, et l’air circule plus librement. » J’aurais
préféré un coin fermé, pour pouvoir pleurer à mon aise » Mais il faut
bien se plier. D’ailleurs, depuis trois jours que je fais comme tout le
monde, l’habitude vient.
Je sens qu’elle viendra pour bien d’autres choses, dont je n’avais
pas idée jusqu’à présent. C’est comme si j’avais changé de pays. A
plus tard le reste. Je te serre la main.
Ton ami toujours,
Paul.
4. Au même.
9 octobre.
Mon cher Louis,
Ta lettre de condoléance, qui m’a tortillé le cœur, me prouve que

je n’ai pas encore le pied aussi marin que je croyais. Oui, c’est l’exil ;
oui, c’est une vie nouvelle à apprendre ; oui, c’est rude par moments.
Mais déjà je n’ose plus trop parler de mon malheur. Pourquoi ?
Écoute la suite de mes débuts.
Quand on m’eut indiqué ma place à l’étude et au dortoir, mon
père me dit que j’aurais mauvaise grâce à ne pas être satisfait, qu’il
l’était, lui, pleinement, et qu’il comptait sur moi. Après quoi, il
m’embrassa et partit. La dernière amarre était coupée ; je revins du
parloir le cœur serré à m’étouffer, et je lus devant moi, en l’air, écrite
avec des lettres de feu, la terrible inscription du Dante :
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’ entrate [1] !

[1] Laissez toute espérance, vous qui entrez !
La portion d’enfer où l’on me conduisit d’abord, ce fut la cour de

récréation. Une quinzaine d’élèves déjà rentrés y causaient entre
eux, groupés autour d’un surveillant en soutane. J’eus un frisson, en
me rappelant comment j’avais été accueilli, lors de mon entrée au
lycée, par mes camarades de cinquième : la connaissance s’était
faite à coups de poing et à coups de pied, aussi généreusement
donnés que vivement rendus, et je ne fus sauvé d’une déconfiture
complète que par l’intervention compatissante d’un vieux camarade
dont tu sais le nom. Je t’en reste reconnaissant. Ici, qu’allait-il
m’advenir, à moi lycéen ?
Le surveillant s’avança :
« Paul Ker, élève de rhétorique », lui dit le Père Préfet, qui
m’accompagnait. « Ayez soin de lui ; ce sera un de vos bons
élèves. »
Le surveillant me tendit la main et me mena au groupe :
« Un nouveau rhétoricien », dit-il. « Qui se charge de le piloter ?
— Moi, moi », répondirent deux des plus jeunes, qui me prirent
chacun sous un bras, sans façons. « Allons faire un tour de
promenade. Tu sais, nous en sommes aussi, de la rhéto : une classe
de bons enfants, tu vas voir, et un chic professeur. Tu ne t’ennuieras
pas. »
J’étais ahuri de cet accueil inattendu, mais me laissai aller.
« D’où viens-tu ? » me dit l’un.
— De tel endroit.
— Un collège de prêtres ?
— Non, de laïques.
— Alors, tu seras mieux ici.
— Es-tu fort ? » demanda l’autre.
— Ça dépend. »
Et nous voilà partis à causer, à tort et à travers, de nos études,
de nos espérances, de nos craintes pour l’avenir, comme si nous
nous étions toujours connus. De temps à autre, l’un des deux se
détachait pour aller serrer la main d’un nouvel arrivant, qu’il amenait
ensuite avec lui. En moins d’une heure, j’avais fait vingt-cinq
connaissances et j’étais de la famille.
J’ai entendu parler quelquefois de l’esprit de corps qui règne
chez les Jésuites : si leurs élèves l’entendent de cette façon-là, je ne
m’en plaindrai point. Tu conviendras qu’elle est plus encourageante
que celle de mes anciens camarades de cinquième.
Le soir de la rentrée, je soupai bien, je ne dormis pas mal, et
comme on se leva tard, ce premier jour scolaire, et que le soleil
entrait à flots joyeux par les grandes fenêtres, je faillis oublier que
j’étais en prison.
Dans la matinée, messe du Saint-Esprit et sermon. J’avais un
peu désappris mes prières et me suis trouvé dépaysé dans un milieu
qui me parut assez dévot, trop dévot. Il y a là un point noir, qui
m’inquiète : les Jésuites respecteront-ils ma liberté de conscience ?
Ce soir-là et le lendemain matin, compositions de passage. J’ai
trimé comme un nègre. Tu comprends que mon honneur est engagé
à ce que, n’ayant pas été tout à fait dernier de classe au lycée, je ne
le sois pas ici. J’ai peur que les études ne soient fortes. Si je dois
être remercié, je ne voudrais pas l’être pour crime de bêtise.
Adieu, Louis.
Ton ami,
Paul.
5. Au même.
10 octobre.
Mon cher Louis,
Je suis définitivement reçu en rhétorique ; c’est un gros pavé de

moins sur le cœur. J’avais une peur bleue de descendre en
humanités : outre l’humiliation, cette dégringolade eût amené un
changement de division et la perte de mes premiers camarades, qui,
décidément, sont de braves garçons.
Ils ne m’ont pas trompé en me disant que j’aurais un chic
professeur. Chic, il l’est, d’abord, parce qu’il a bien voulu me garder
dans sa classe. Il faut que je te raconte, puisque je veux te raconter
tout, comment la chose s’est faite.
Il y a ici, et, paraît-il, dans tous les collèges des Jésuites, un
usage qui n’a rien de correspondant au lycée et qui suffirait à mettre
un abîme entre mes anciens professeurs et ceux-ci. Chaque jour,
pendant l’étude de onze heures à midi, le corridor qui longe les
salles d’étude se transforme en salle des pas-perdus. Les
professeurs viennent frapper à la porte et, par l’entremise de l’élève
portier, gros personnage aimable et discret, appellent tour à tour
leurs élèves, surtout les plus faibles, et, tout en arpentant avec eux
le parquet, revoient les copies, font rendre compte des fautes,
donnent des conseils appropriés à chacun, quelquefois un reproche
qui, fulminé en pleine classe, aurait été trop mortifiant, et puis les
renvoient à leur travail, joyeux ou contrits, toujours encouragés à
mieux faire.
Le lendemain de nos compositions de passage, assis à mon
pupitre, j’observais depuis quelque temps ce va-et-vient, et
cherchais à en lire la signification sur la physionomie diversement
émue de ceux qui rentraient, quand on vint aussi m’appeler. Mon
professeur était là, qui me demanda tout d’abord si je ne m’ennuyais
pas trop, puis si j’étais un travailleur. Comme, à cette dernière
question, je répondais d’un ton que ma conscience rendait assez
mal assuré, il me dit :
« Je ne sais si, dans vos deux compositions de passage, vous
avez donné tout ce que vous pouviez. La composition française
témoigne d’une certaine facilité : les deux autres sont faibles. »
Je me crus perdu ; il le vit dans mes yeux, qui durent se troubler.
Son regard se fixa sur moi durant quelques secondes, comme pour
sonder mes dispositions ; puis il me demanda :
« Seriez-vous content de rester en rhétorique ? »

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Reframing the Civic University: An

Agenda for Impact Julian Dobson

Nature-based Solutions and Water Security: An Action

Reframing Beauty Anita Selzer

Promoting Civic Health Through University-Community

A Research Agenda for: Skills and Inequality Michael

Digital Solutions: Reframing Leadership Olivier Serrat

Working-Class Environmentalism: An Agenda for a Just

A Research Agenda for Sustainability and Business Sally

The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for

Reframing the Civic

ISSN 2629-2432 ISSN 2629-2440 (electronic)

9 Bringing Civic Impact to Life163

Chris Baker grew up in the Northwest of England where he developed

Invisible Wounds - at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield (2020). She is cur-

and Managing Director for an Academic Health partnership. In these

Fig. 1.1 Domains of civic activity and progress cycle 14

Table 1.1 The seven domains of civic impact 3

Why the Time Is Right for a Civic Turn

Julian Dobson and Ed Ferrari

J. Dobson (*) • Ed Ferrari

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Ukraine conflict to include rising costs of living, growing wealth dispari-

Table 1.1 The seven domains of civic impact

strategic progress and encouraging peer learning. We return to the frame-

Why Now? Higher Education Under Scrutiny

The commission goes on to note that this disconnection from their

proposals for ‘minimum eligibility requirements’ suggests that a university

Restoring the Vision: From Anchor Institutions

Building on this work, the Civic University Commission describes a

• A public test, covering participation, understanding of local needs

In practice, there will be many overlaps between these elements.

Place and Purpose: The Current Challenge

at its campus in Ningbo, China, or at Glasgow Caledonian University’s

goals, living within the ‘doughnut’ of sustainable consumption, an

Framing Civic Action

Domains of Civic Action

Fig. 1.1 Domains of civic activity and progress cycle

In practical terms, this framework is envisaged as a discussion-starter

Domains Core questions and potential indicators

impact to life by pushing the sector and universities individually to chal-

The next chapter considers universities’ cultural impacts. Universities

Hambleton, R. (2018). British universities - The sleeping giants of place-based

Jonathan Slater and Farah Hussain

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

We concluded that this is essentially a leadership question. If a univer-

What Are Civic University Agreements

The concept of the civic university gained prominence in the UK higher

1. An understanding of local populations and asking them what

The UPP Commission’s report was received positively by government.

What Is the Civic University Network and What

1. How will top-level governance and strategies at our institution

We have drafted, We know the number, We have committed to

Our senior staff are We regularly monitor

encouraged throughout the process to ensure that civic work is rooted

How Did We Find Out What Was Going

interviewees answered and allowed ourselves to be led by the

What Did We Learn?

Title: En Pénitence chez les Jésuites: Correspondance d'un lycéen

Author: Pierre-Paul Brucker

Release date: July 23, 2022 [eBook #68591]

Original publication: France: Pierre Téqui, 1910

Credits: René Galluvot (This file was produced from images

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EN

9 Bringing Civic Impact to Life163

Fig. 1.1 Domains of civic activity and progress cycle 14

Table 1.1 The seven domains of civic impact 3