Skills, Economic Mobility and the Global Fight Against Fascism
A new two-year project funded by the European Union’s ERASMUS+ agency, D-Reskill@University, is an important front in the global battle between democracy and authoritarianism. The big question: will the United States of America step up to help?
In early October 2022, I will be in Paris to give a talk at Sorbonne University in connection with the European Union funded D-Reskill@University project. The project is led by Sorbonne University and includes participants from the University of Milan, the University of Barcelona, the University of Budapest, the Paris-based Foundation Maison des sciences de l’homme (FMSH), which was established after WWII to promote democratic values and academic freedom, the Italian-born entrepreneur Francesco Bullini, and ALFHEIM Consulting.
The project’s goal: designing a new, more flexible, and inclusive method of skills assessment and job-training to improve economic mobility within Europe. The project addresses an important need, not only for individual workers in Europe, but also for the preservation of democracy and freedom itself. The project is initially focused on careers in chemistry and data sciences, but the larger goal is the creation of a modernized technology mediated system of lifelong learning that can be applied to other occupations over time. As this work unfolds, one key question is how, or even if, U.S.-based higher education institutions, businesses, and the U.S. government will participate in and support the effort. The stakes are enormous because the answer to this question will help determine the outcome of the global fight between democracy, freedom, and fascism.
The alarming, growing global conflict between fascist, authoritarian forms of government versus freedom and democracy is typically seen primarily through the lens of its associated military conflicts, as witnessed by Russia’s unjustified war on Ukraine, along with escalating fears that Russia’s ally, China, may soon invade Taiwan under a similar Putinesque guise of national reunification. In response, freedom loving countries led by the U.S. are pouring billions of dollars into providing weapons, ammunition, and other military resources to keep the fascist threat on its heels or, at least, as far away from the U.S. as possible.
But there is another usually unmentioned front in this unwelcome conflict, one that involves soft power, that in the end will do much to determine whether the populations at risk can maintain the will to stand up to what may be a durable long-term onslaught from the forces of fascism. That front is rooted in the realities of practical economics and implicates a profoundly important dilemma: how will free societies in the digital era preserve and extend the opportunities for upward economic mobility that characterized and strengthened free societies in the predigital age?
The prospect of strongman rule grows ever more appealing to populations dispossessed of hope. That includes countries, including our own, addled by the devastating effects of the covid pandemic, climate change, associated uncontrolled migration, and levels of economic suffering and deprivation unseen in several generations.
This is the backdrop of Europe’s nascent D-Reskill@University project, which is funded by the European Commission’s ERASMUS+, in defense of Europe’s common interest in preserving and extending the benefits of freedom. The project’s overall objective, in addition to helping individuals secure jobs at increasingly better wages, is to widen the circle of those who see their personal interests tied to the preservation of democracy and its embedded values of free enterprise, freedom of expression, and human rights. History, however, teaches us that these freedom-based values are at risk in societies that can’t provide anything other than downward economic mobility for their citizens. A free society will not remain free forever if its citizens are not able to secure at least the hope of a better life for themselves and their children.
The European community begins this project at a substantial disadvantage to the United States, where our more dynamic economy, while still stressed, appears to be proving itself capable of an accelerated and more inclusive economic recovery. Europe faces challenges that don’t exist in the U.S., not only by virtue of its proximity to the fascist threat and the effects of the pandemic and climate change on the Global South, but also because of its reliance on structures of higher education and job training that exclude more than they include at a time when inclusion and flexible responses are urgently required. Europe is also struggling to apply its pre-existing multilingual European skills, competencies, qualifications, and occupations (ESCO) framework to the present situation while confronting a world economy where meaningful job opportunities often evolve faster than multistate alliances can influence, measure, or even comprehend. To Europe’s understandable consternation, this is all taking place within a global economy where a relative handful of technology firms located primarily in the U.S. and Asia are dominating the evolution of industry and commerce.
As I prepare to travel to Europe next month, I am impressed with the intellectual rigor, practical skills, and ambitions of my colleagues at the four participating universities in Europe whose representatives invited me to join in their work. More than a dozen leading European scholars are involved, along with a European software firm, as the team works to collaboratively prototype a new system for skills assessment, job-training, and lifelong learning matched to this critical time. The project also includes an international advisory board with several representatives from the United States. But success at the scale required neccesitates a much deeper partnership with major corporations in the United States and with our U.S. federal and potentially state governments. Sometime next year the project will release its final report which will arrive, in part, as an invitation to the free world to rethink the question of how we match people with accessible economic opportunities in ways that demonstrate the power of freedom to improve lives.
The United States of America, higher education institutions here and elsewhere, and our business community all have a substantial interest in the outcome. Our future here in the U.S. is bound up with the future of free societies elsewhere, and particularly in Europe. Now is the time to think about how we Americans can contribute to the success of this project in partnership with our European allies who, once again, find themselves situated at the center of the struggle to preserve the benefits of democracy and freedom for all their citizens regardless of their race, gender, background, social standing, or national origin.
Hal Plotkin is a former senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama administration (2009–2014). He is presently a senior scholar at the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) based in Half Moon Bay, California. Individuals can track the progress of the D-Reskill@Universities project on its LinkedIn page.
