ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the need for compassion in higher education, set against the backdrop of neoliberal ideology and the need for mentally healthy universities and sustainable societies. The premise of the chapter—and indeed the book—is one of ‘hope without illusion’, and both will take readers on a journey through the interdisciplinary landscape of compassion that includes neuroscience, social science, philosophy, religion, and pedagogy. It takes as a starting point the assumption that compassion is a discrete and evolved emotional experience that must be acknowledged and acted upon in higher education organizations. In essence, compassion is about the concern for the suffering of another person, coupled with a desire to alleviate that suffering. Drawing upon perspectives from the field of organization studies, the chapter looks critically at compassion as through the lenses of interpersonal work and compassion as narrative. It also looks at compassion through student lenses, challenging neoliberal policy discourse that puts being and learning at university under the banner of ‘the student experience’. Seeing compassion through student lenses also allows us to reconceptualize suffering in terms of recognizing and noticing difference, discrimination and bias, which, in turn, opens up spaces to explore intersectional pedagogy.
