Dear Colleagues

I am writing this letter to you in deep anguish, as I read and hear about the numerous allegations and comments on ‘foreign funding’ of NGOs during the last couple of days.

News has just come in from UNESCO, Paris that a new UNESCO Chair on “Community-based Research and Social Responsibility of Higher Education” has been sanctioned. Dr Budd Hall of University of Victoria, Canada and Dr Rajesh Tandon of Society for Participatory Research in Asia, India have been nominated as Co-Chairs of this new initiative.

By approving the setting up of this UNESCO Chair, the global inter-governmental agency responsible for the promotion of higher education has publicly acknowledged the need for strengthening the practices of community-based research in institutions of higher education. It has also signaled the importance of higher education as a public good that must be sensitive to its larger social responsibility. This is the first time in the history of global policy-making on higher education that UNESCO has approved the creation of a stream of work on community-based research and social responsibility on higher education.