The critical task of universities

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the educational task of universities is fundamentally twofold: first, to train and prepare students for a specific profession, or at least to develop capacities and skills on their part with the purpose of enabling them to play a constructive role in a country’s economy — as the Iranian-American political thinker, Farhang Erfani, would say, to be “labourers” in the economy. While some would limit universities’ educational task to this function, justifying it by an appeal to the need for universities to “engage” with society’s needs, Erfani counsels that it would be shortsighted. According to him there is a second, equally (if not more) important task facing universities, namely to prepare students for their role of being “citizens” of a country — individuals who are capable of taking an informed stand on matters of political, social, cultural and economic importance when called upon to do so.

Importantly, economically active “citizens” are also “labourers” in the broad sense of the term, but the reverse is not the case — a “labourer” is not necessarily also a “citizen”. One could add to these a third task to which universities are dedicated, namely to extend, expand, and where necessary, revise knowledge in all the disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary, through sustained research.

Like the first task — that of turning out “labourers” (which include “professionals”) for the economy — the research task facing universities is uncontroversial.

Not so the second, however, according to which students in all disciplines should be educated to be “citizens”. After all, this implies a dimension which cuts transversally through the other two and which, although dependent on them, adds something which is indispensable for the university and for society, namely a society-critical register.

Along this avenue students would learn how to be responsible citizens in a democratic society, because critical, reflective thought is a prerequisite for responsible choice and action. This is why such a critical task is controversial: it has the consequence, that no government can rest on its laurels, safely ensconced in the supposedly unassailable democratic space enshrined in its Constitution.

Democracy has to be kept alive, constantly, through critical vigilance — as Derrida says, democracy is “always to come” — and universities comprise the institutional domain where students learn what this means.

Obviously universities cannot function without the people who work there, and carrying out the three tasks referred to above is entirely dependent on the degree to which especially academic staff, but also university management, are prepared to tackle all of them fearlessly, even in the face of political censure.

One can only be thankful that there were such fearless individuals at some South African universities during the apartheid era, whose explicit stance of rejecting apartheid uncompromisingly on moral grounds was an inspiration for the rest of us. (I am thinking of people like Johan Degenaar and André du Toit, among others.) There is no doubt that the philosophical articulation of their criticism of apartheid in the context of universities as institutions of “higher” learning contributed to the eventual collapse of that unjustifiable system, even if the large majority of academics, to be “safe”, concentrated on their academic concerns in a narrower sense. (At the university where I work one could count those among us who were outspoken against apartheid on the fingers of one hand.)

And yet, although the obliteration of apartheid is cause for continued celebration, this does not mean that the critical task of universities, which surpasses the narrower focus of teaching and research — and which the critical work of philosophers like those mentioned earlier exemplifies — should come to an end. On the contrary: every era brings its own issues that must be scrutinised critically and uncompromisingly, especially in the post-apartheid era where political correctness has become so pervasive that it seems to have smothered a good deal of what should continue to function as the critical, analytical appropriation of important events and tendencies in contemporary society, here and internationally.

Fortunately, there are at least some Vice-Chancellors at South African universities (Professors Rensburg of the University of Johannesurg, Mthembu of the Central University of Technology, Fourie of UF, and Badat of Rhodes come to mind, among others) who are equal to the task of actively encouraging and promoting open, critical investigation of the kind that transcends teaching and research in a narrower sense, and which is essential for what I have described as the society-critical task of universities. The major task they (and academics at all institutions) face, is that of effectively subverting the widespread view, that after the fall of apartheid, and in a global context, of communism, all that remains to be done is to resolve problems of a technical nature.

Nothing could be further from the truth — to mention but one thing: we live in the age of the ascendancy of technology as the mondially transformative power, and we have but a partial understanding of the impact of pervasive technological changes on humans’ self-conception and behaviour.

The international literature in this field — both social-scientific and fictional — is already substantial, and growing. (See a previous posting on this site in this regard: The changing face of identity.) What all this work has in common, is the premise that technology does not reflect on itself and its effects; only human beings can do that, and thinkers from Freud (who already wrote on this topic) through Martin Heidegger and Theodor Adorno to Theodore Roszak, Sherry Turkle, Nicholas Negroponte, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have pursued the inquiry concerning technology in such a manner as to quash the widespread complacency about its supposed “neutrality”. Hardt and Negri, for example, have investigated the relations between advanced communications technology and the political, cultural and economic aspects of people’s lives in the age of globalisation, and have shown that such technology is a crucial means of consolidating the power of Empire (as they call the globally dominant power-complex), and also of combatting it on the part of what they call Multitude.

Hence, it is all the more lamentable that some academics today — for instance, some colleagues of mine — claim that “theory is dead”, and that the only task remaining for universities is one of “application”, instead of any meaningful fundamental theoretical research. Accordingly, my colleagues would limit universities’ task to that of training students to enter the “professions” (what was called the task of producing “labourers for the economy” above). I would remind such short-sighted fellows that there have been other times in the history of the world when a comparable complacency existed on the part of humankind — 19th-century European thought teemed with signs of it, manifested in various kinds of self-congratulation on having reached such an “advanced state of civilization”, symbolised by the famous exhibition at Crystal Palace. Sadly, this collective mindset of unbelievable optimism was shattered by the two world wars, which induced one, in turn, variously characterised by (sometimes heroic) pessimism and cynicism about the human condition — something visible in art movements such as Dada and in philosophies such as existentialism.

In a similar vein, if those intellectuals who concern themselves with an analysis of contemporary social life in all its variegatedness, were to capitulate to “political correctness” here as well as globally, the complacent, prevailing world order would continue to assert, reinforce and consolidate itself dogmatically and cynically at every level by means of the lie, that the only thing which remains to be done is of a “technical” nature. If universities fall for such deceit, they are likely to become (or remain, where this is already the case) the mere instruments of governments in power, and at a further remove, of those global powers that hold governments in thrall through (mainly) economic means.