There’s general consternation at the way the Trump government is treating some American universities by drastically reducing funding. Its sharp attack on Columbia University from which it withdrew several hundred million dollars and the latter’s capitulation are a case in point. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
A European academic friend recently wrote to me saying that if things went on like this it might soon come to pass that Austria and Germany, who under Hitler had chased away their top brains, soon start playing host to America’s academic refugees!
That would truly be an irony. But it’s most unlikely that academics will want to leave America. They will wait for Trump to retire.
My friend also sent me an essay on how universities could stand up to authoritarian regimes. It was written by a former rector (vice-chancellor) of a European university.
His efforts to stand up to the government came to nothing. The university was forced to relocate to another European country because of the restrictions the government put on it. It is another irony that the university is actually American in that it’s registered in the US.
We in India are not new to this tension between academia and government. But we have had a different solution to the problem.
Since universities in India are almost entirely owned by governments — around 1,100 public vs 400 private — they control the appointments of academic and senior administrative staff. They can also influence what’s taught at the universities. As long as the curriculum and textbooks are ideologically acceptable, content doesn’t matter.
Some social sciences at JNU are a good example. There you have to think in the officially sanctioned way. It is irrelevant whether you are Right or Left. The ruling dispensation decides what’s acceptable. It was Left for half a century. Now it’s Right.
The same thing has been true at many State government owned universities. Tamil Nadu has shown the way, as have Kerala, Gujarat and West Bengal to name just three.
In these and other similar cases the language of instruction has played a crucial role. It limits peer scrutiny. That means you can ignore facts altogether if they don’t suit your ideology.
What is academic freedom?
But what’s academic freedom, anyway? One answer is that it’s the freedom to pursue interests regardless of their usefulness to society. This is fine as long as it’s not taxpayer money that’s funding such ‘research’. But alas all too often it is.
Another definition is the right to take a different view from the government. This is a more difficult problem because it arises from constitutional rights and impacts on it.
This aspect is more about politics than academics. Neither the Left nor the Right refrain from mixing up the two because clarity doesn’t suit either of them.
That apart, some research showing the government in poor light — like say a former chief economist on the Indian economy — is treated very differently from something like research on Aurangzeb by some little known American historian. The economist’s research which was very damaging to the Modi government was ignored. But the historian’s research, on the other hand, that too on a man who died 318 years ago, became an issue of serious condemnation by the Right. Best that for folly.
This kind of differential treatment is true of the Trump government also. Its policies vis-a-vis universities and academics are silly to the point of being stupid.
The reputational damage of this to the American government is huge and, as the Modi government has been discovering, not worth anything at all. Voters don’t care about academics.
Leave them alone
A major reason for the conflict between governments and academia is that while the former mostly comprise persons who are uncomfortable in the world of learning, the latter comprise persons who are uncomfortable in the practical world.
One lot knows very little but can get things done. The other lot knows a lot but can’t get anything done. Both treat the other with contempt.
The only sensible thing to do is to leave academics be. They do absolutely no harm and sometimes even do some good. Even the ones who think Aurangzeb was all right or that it was Gandhiji who caused India’s partition.
People who hold these views simply don’t matter. It’s best to ignore them.
This is true even when there’s an overall ideological agenda to be implemented, like insisting that socialism is good or that group interests must take precedence over individual rights and vice versa.
As Henry Kissinger once said, they fight their worst battles over the most inconsequential things. Legend has it he was referring to parking rights at Harvard.
