During conflicts, ‘universities should serve the public good’

Is silence in the face of global injustice in the best interests of South African universities? That is one of the questions about the role of universities in geopolitical conflicts that South African academics from various universities have been engaging with.

This follows a commentary by Nithaya Chetty, a professor of physics and the dean of the faculty of science at the University of the Witwatersrand, titled ‘Should our universities respond to geopolitical conflicts around the world?’ published in the latest edition of the South African Journal of Science (SAJS). It proposes universities should proceed cautiously and resist pressure from making official statements of polarising and divisive global events.

He believes that the best approach for universities and their staff is to refrain from taking positions on issues of a geopolitical nature, thereby preserving the academic and institutional integrity.

His propositions are based on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip, an issue that has provoked debate in South African universities and led to campus protests in countries globally.

Serving the public good

Contrary to Chetty’s assumptions, eight academics led by Wits scholars, including Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven, a professor of family medicine, and Dr Kezia Lewins, a lecturer in sociology, asserted that public universities in South Africa should serve the public good and, therefore, should not remain silent.

Other academics in Baldwin-Ragaven’s group were Peter van Heusden of the University of the Western Cape, Nazeema Mohamed and Louis Reynolds of the University of Cape Town (UCT), Sanele Sibanda of the University of Pretoria, Rebecca Pointer of Stellenbosch University (SU), and Shabbir Wadee, an emeritus professor from SU.

In their response to Chetty’s propositions, the team collectively reflected on whether, having been beneficiaries of global outrage and action against apartheid, South African academics should now remain silent to avoid being perceived as taking sides in a volatile geopolitical conflict.

To the group, the issues being contested by Chetty and others are matters of human rights, social justice and human dignity, rather than issues of personal political convictions.

“The history and ongoing struggle to restore humanity to the victims of coloniality within higher education must be borne in mind when we examine events in Palestine,” stated the group in their joint analysis in the SAJS.

They highlighted the concern of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights about the ‘scholasticide’ in Gaza. The term referred to the obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, lecturers and students and the destruction of educational facilities that included schools, universities, libraries and scientific facilities.

In response to Chetty’s assertion that many South African universities have never previously established a principle of involvement in such geopolitical conflicts, the group observed that other ongoing global conflicts in Africa or other parts of the world equally deserve condemnation.

“However, rather than remain silent on the grounds of potential divisiveness, institutional and organisational failure to respond appropriately to other scholasticides necessitates institutional introspection and conscious self-study,” stated the Baldwin-Ragaven group.

They reasoned that what should be questioned is not the position taken by some South African higher educational institutions denouncing the ongoing destruction of education in Gaza but rather the insistence and defence of silence by others on the grounds of academic neutrality. To do so, they said, is to claim that South African universities can afford to be noncommittal in matters of life and death.

Neglect of the public good?

Sioux McKenna, the director of the Centre for Postgraduate Studies at Rhodes University, argued that the idea of the university as a public good serving people, including those who would never set foot on campus, was the central concern of the architects of post-apartheid education.

In a response titled, ‘Neoliberalism Constrains Academic Freedom’, McKenna stated that too much energy is spent in the neoliberal university on publishing articles that make little contribution to knowledge production but serve the interests of promotion, financial incentives, ratings, and rankings.

She stated that, in recent decades, the idea of post-apartheid universities becoming a public good has tumbled into a neoliberal ideology that reduces all human activity to an economic enterprise.

“The South African university has become a creature of the market, and it has neglected its responsibilities as a public good,” said McKenna, who is also a professor of higher education research.

In response to Chetty’s remarks that a university should consistently and sincerely speak up on human rights matters if it wants to become an institution that does so, McKenna responded: “That is not a matter of what we want or do not want to do. Universities have a responsibility to be spaces that make contributions to public discourse.”

While she agrees with Chetty that many South African universities have never previously established a principle of involvement in such geopolitical issues as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, McKenna says this has been a neglect of duty.

In this regard, McKenna believes that universities in South Africa and elsewhere have been chasing rankings and focusing on credentialing for industry at the expense of contributing to social equity and environmental sustainability.

Subsequently, while she believes that individual academics should enjoy academic freedom, she also argued that there is a need for a university to be a place of collective action. “If only academics exercised this responsibility as individuals, as Chetty suggests, then universities as institutions would be avoiding their responsibility to serve the public good,” says McKenna.

‘Evasive tactics’?

Also commenting on the issue, John Higgins, holder of the Arderne Chair in Literature UCT, argues that Chetty is employing evasive tactics by framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a matter only between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

In a response titled, ‘Evasive tactics’, Higgins argues that, instead of coming to terms with the reality of the events unfolding in the Gaza conflict, Chetty is suggesting that the ‘matter’ is an Israeli-Palestinian one and that no one else should or has the right to be involved in it.

He emphasised that Chetty’s propositions on the issue suggest that universities should remain silent. In this regard, Higgins faults Chetty for introducing the neutrality principle, which is based on unassailable scientific principles that cannot be questioned, thereby avoiding the possibility of deliberation.

According to Higgins, Chetty trivialises the issue by considering it to be merely a “political” matter that should not be brought into a university discussion as it would create unnecessary tensions.

He also noted that Chetty is avoiding key questions such as: “Are Palestinians in Gaza best understood as citizens or refugees? Is Gaza a state, a proto-state, a ghetto-state, or just ‘an open-air prison camp’?

Guided by humanity’s interconnectedness

As of now, the issue of whether a university in South Africa could issue an official statement or pass a resolution regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict is before the Western Cape High Court, and a ruling is awaited.

However, the issue is not an ordinary court case, as it has profound political and philosophical implications, not only for South African universities, but also for African politics and beyond.

In his commentary, ‘Should our universities respond to geopolitical conflicts around the world?’ Chetty has not only raised an academic storm in South Africa but also a broader political, historical, social, and philosophical tsunami by suggesting that bringing a political matter into a university discussion and forcing a decision when there is little consensus would create unnecessary tensions.

However, what comes to mind for Chetty’s critics is whether those in many universities in other African countries that raised their voices against apartheid were justified to do so – or whether they could have dismissed apartheid as merely a political matter specifically involving only blacks and whites in South Africa.

Inside South Africa, questions would also emerge as to whether Helen Suzman, Trevor Huddleston, Jack Simons, and other white anti-apartheid activists were correct in their actions in opposing apartheid rather than regarding it as a divisive political matter that did not involve them.

As a result of the current debate, academics and universities are likely to be divided on issues of gender equality and LGBTQ rights simply because they appear to be volatile issues in most African countries.

In this regard, the question is whether, in a traditional African society, neighbours would just have watched two villagers fighting until one is dead to avoid being involved.

However, in the ongoing debate, perhaps the opposing sides should be guided by the isiZulu proverb: ‘A person is a person because of other people’ (Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu), which is associated with the basic concept of interconnectedness and interdependence of ubuntu philosophy.