BY HANK REICHMAN
At the AAUP’s biennial meeting last month I had occasion to pick up a copy of Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education, by UC Berkeley education professor John Aubrey Douglass and a group of other contributors. The book is a collection of essays treating the impact on higher education of “the rise, and in some cases revival, of extreme right-wing movements in key areas of the world” (p. vii). Following a preface and two conceptual chapters by Douglass, there are chapters on Brexit; the Trump administration; universities in Germany, Hungary, and Poland; the European Union, with emphasis on the Netherlands and Denmark; Erdogan’s Turkey; China; Singapore and Hong Kong; Putin’s Russia; and Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
Though inevitably repetitive, the chapters are informative and each of the national surveys provides a helpful introduction to the recent history of higher education in those countries. But I want to focus in this post on some of the general points that Douglass makes in his more theoretical contributions. These are quite illuminating.
Douglass begins with an hypothesis that will be tested through most of the volume, which he calls a political determinist view:
the national political environment, past and present, is perhaps the most powerful influence on the mission, role, and effectiveness of universities, and the higher education system to which they belong–more than internally derived academic cultures, labor market demands, or the desires of students. Further, the particular national political norms and environment largely, but not completely, determine the internal organization and academic culture of universities and their interface with the larger world. Their level of autonomy, in governance and internal academic management, for example, is to a great extent dependent on the political culture and determinants of national governments. (p. 23)
I’m not prepared to argue that this hypothesis is entirely proven by the case studies in the book or that there are not countervailing influences in any society or educational system that must always be taken into account, but I do think this is an important point that many of us in US higher education fail to sufficiently recognize. It is neither a compliment nor a criticism to acknowledge that the state of US colleges and universities is to a great extent a product of and reflects the political traditions, for good and evil, and the present-day balance of political forces in our country or, in many cases, in an individual state or locale. But this is surely the reality and too often we act as if universities–and their faculties–can somehow be insulated from it.
Douglass then asks whether universities will be “followers or leaders” in their respective societies.
Universities can be, and have been, the locus for not only educating enlightened future leaders but also for opposing oppression and dictators. But universities have also proved over their history to be tools for serving the privileged and reinforcing the class divisions of a society. . . . There are places where universities pushed the boundaries of knowledge and generated societal disruption. But in others they have also been factories for errant theories that reinforce the worst of nationalist tendencies. (p. 34-5)
Of course, universities can be and most often are all these things, in varying proportion. Indeed, I would argue, it may be necessary for us to accept even troubling elements of universities’ more conservative societal role in order to sustain those positive elements that help lead to greater enlightenment and democracy. Still, I think Douglass is more right than wrong to conclude that
The past and current national political environment is perhaps the most powerful influence on the mission, role, and effectiveness of universities and the higher education system to which they belong. The national political environment, arguably, has a determining influence on whether universities are leaders or followers–or something in between. (p. 39)
This means, of course, that if we are to defend academic freedom and encourage the leadership role of universities in protecting and expanding both knowledge and its democratic use, we cannot achieve this on a narrowly professional basis. As the subsequent chapters in the book detail, universities are under assault across the globe, but if that assault is to be resisted effectively (or at least more effectively), scholars must step down from the proverbial ivory tower and engage with the broader political environment in new and better ways. Hence, Wilhelm Krull and Thomas Brunotte, authors of the chapter on Germany, Hungary, and Poland, conclude that European universities are based on
a social contract in which the state and society give universities their freedom and autonomy so that they, in turn, can benefit as much as possible from them. For universities, though, this means that their actions cannot be guided by academic interests alone. Universities must be open to society and its concerns and questions. They must be responsible actors in society and educate concerned citizens, who are not only focused on academic issues but also social, environmental, and global challenges. . . .
It is evident that universities can no longer be considered neutral institutions at the margins of the political sphere–if they ever were. For quite some time we have focused on institutional autonomy and perhaps forgotten that universities are institutions that are deeply rooted in civil society and their local environment. . . .
In the light of increasing skepticism toward elites, the interaction between academia, politicians, and the public at large must be reviewed critically and realigned. Researchers need to enter into an open, transparent, participative, mutual, and critical dialogue with society. (p. 108, 111, 114-15)
At the same time, it is critical to recognize, as does Marijk Van Der Wende, professor of higher education at Utrecht University, in the chapter on the European Union that “universities cannot assume that nationalistic anti-internationalization or anti-globalization trends are exclusively manifest outside their walls” (p. 131) He continues, “Many universities in Europe focused their attention on being globally competitive while at the same time often neglecting the consequences of globalization, including growing inequality and diversity in their local communities.” Hence, he concludes, “The rise of neo-nationalist movements is a wake-up call.” (p. 135)
As an aside, those who believe that an anti-hate speech legal regime, largely impermissible at universities in the US under the First Amendment but operative in Germany, where Nazi expression has long been banned, offers protection from a revived racist/fascist campus assault, should consider this tidbit from the volume’s chapter on Germany:
The populist and neo-nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) . . . propagates a hostile policy toward refugees [and much worse-HR]. Ironically, shortly after being founded in 2013, this party was often called a Professoren-Partei because many of its active members were established academics at German universities who were skeptical of the euro.(p. 97)
Of course “neo-nationalism,” which as the book demonstrates is a loose category with considerable internal variation, is also not immune from contradiction. The chapters on China and Russia underscore a growing tension, if not yet conflict, between efforts by these two authoritarian regimes to develop “world-class” educational systems–at least in scientific and technological fields–and at the same time politically control faculty and students, not only in the social sciences and other more ideologically sensitive areas but in the STEM disciplines themselves. So, Berkeley-based journalist Karin Fischer writes in an extremely thorough chapter on China (which also discusses the impact of US restrictions on Chinese students and researchers and on the role of the controversial Confucius Institutes),
China’s march to educational and technological greatness had a perverse effect of politicizing the one area of academe that historically was a refuge from politics, the sciences. Although there may be nothing inherently political in the nature of hard science research, . . . using science as a tool to advance the interests of a single authoritarian nation seems at odds with its foundational principles of openness and cosmopolitan collaboration. . . .
China’s greatest challenge may well be internal: the government’s nationalistic impulse to restrict dissent and speech in academe could be the very thing that ends up undercutting its nationalistic ambition to become a world-class higher educational system. (p. 198, 201)
It almost goes without saying–although Fischer certainly suggests it–that Western, especially US, institutions are also hardly immune from the impact of this contradiction, as evidenced by the Trump administration’s campaign to restrict the freedoms of Chinese students in this country and of Chinese-born scholars to the detriment, many argue, of US economic and scientific interests.
“Like in China, Russian universities are increasingly being used to police student and faculty behavior and to suppress independent activism,” write Igor Chirikov and Igor Fedyukin in their chapter, completed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Students are discouraged from addressing politically sensitive topics, such as corruption or local economic problems, and they are often threatened with expulsion for taking part in unauthorized political protests. . . . Even testifying as an expert in court in politically sensitive cases can lead to dismissal” (p. 229). Like in Florida?
Lastly, Brazil under Bolsonaro provides a cautionary tale about the limits of university autonomy. As Elizabeth Balbachevsky and Jose Augusto Guilhon Albuquerque explain, faculty and students played prominent parts in the 1970s and ’80s struggle against military dictatorship in that country. Hence, in 1986 the new constitution “enshrined a peculiar Brazilian understanding of university autonomy: university governance and management failed to include external stakeholders.” The hope was that making the universities not only autonomous but virtually sovereign would insulate them “from future political actors. The constitution protected universities, but in turn it separated universities from the wants of their constituents and reinforced their sense of isolation from a rapidly changing Brazilian society” p. 242).
In short, the essays in this collection suggest that any efforts to defend the intellectual freedom and institutional independence of scholars and the colleges and universities in which they work will fall short if they are divorced from constructive and active engagement in the political environment that ultimately plays an all but determining role in the shape of higher education, here in the US and world-wide.
Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and president of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019. His Understanding Academic Freedom has recently been published.
