and were involved in the anti-apartheid movement.

With the challenges of our times – austerity, the global dominance of corporate power, runaway climate change – being more pressing than the challenges of the past, what of the future if universities clip the wings of our budding world-changers and throw them off their courses for little more than challenging the world as it is?

About the author

Adam McGibbon is an activist working in environmentalism, trade unionism and tenants' rights. He is a former student activist and works for a charity in London. He has previously written for The Guardian, The Independent and The Huffington Post on politics and activism.

New Internationalist reports on issues of world poverty and inequality. We focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerlessPhilosophy

Soichiro Honda

Soichiro Honda was born on November 17, 1906, in Komyo Village (now Tenryu City), Iwata County, Shizuoka Prefecture, as the eldest son of Gihei Honda and his wife Mika. Gihei was a skilled and honest blacksmith \and Mika an accomplished weaver. The family was poor but Soichiro’s upbringing was happy, even though his parents were insistent about the need for basic discipline. It was thanks to the thorough education he received from his father that Mr. Honda, despite his freewheeling, irrepressible personality, hated nothing more than inconveniencing others and was always punctual about keeping appointments. He also inherited from his father his inborn manual dexterity and his curiosity about machines.

After a while Gihei opened a bicycle shop. Bicycles were at last starting to become really popular in