Scholarly freedom under political attack

Scholarly freedom under political attack

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): The Aug. 6, 1997 edition of The Jakarta Post
carried an article by Andrew Higgins discussing a possible threat
to academic freedom in Hong Kong. Higgins mentioned two events
which denoted this possibility.

The first was the forced departure of Prof. Nihal
Jayawickarama, the only expert in international human rights law,
from the law faculty at the University of Hong Kong. This
happened on June 30, one day before the transfer of sovereignty
took place.

The second event was a political attack launched by David Chu,
a prominent member of the legislative council, and directed at
two visiting scholars at Hong Kong's Chinese University and
Baptist University. Chu attacked them because they criticized the
Hong Kong government's policy of rewriting school textbooks and
other steps to promote "patriotism" among students.

It should be noted here that this particular policy has been
resisted by many teachers and scholars in Hong Kong who argue
that, in mainland China, patriotism is defined as "loving the
Communist Party".

These events are only an example of attempts to constrain
scholarly inquiry through political means. Throughout the world
such practices are abound. Even in societies with mature
democracies evidence concerning such practices can easily be
found.

According to French professor Jean-Claude Pecker, political
constraints on scientific inquiries placed on French scientists
has reached an alarming level. The French Academy of Science felt
it necessary to create a committee in 1978 to defend the rights
of scientists.

Political impediments are not the only constraints facing
scholars. The Committee on Freedom of Scholarship and Science of
the Royal Society of Canada lists four main categories of
constraint: political; economic; a very broad category
encompassing social, cultural, religious and ethnic constraints;
another broad category relating to scholarly and scientific
communities, accepted methodologies and dominant paradigms.

Each of us has more or less a clear idea of what political and
economic constraints are. We also know more or less what is meant
by social, cultural, religious, and ethnic constraints. But what
exactly are "constraints due to scholarly and scientific
communities"? How can such things become obstacles to scientific
inquiries? And how can methodologies and paradigms constitute
constraints to scholarly activity?

Keith Griffin from the United States mentions three
developments which have generated what can be called
"associational" or "professional" constraints to freedom in
scientific inquiry. These three developments are the
professionalization of scholarship, the growth of academic
bureaucracies and the globalization of the knowledge industry.

These developments have led to institutions with a capability
of exerting subtle constraints on free inquiry. They have also
brought about accepted mechanisms and conventions which made
individual scholars feel compelled to conform to "mainstream
ideas", "mainstream opinion", and "mainstream interpretation" to
avoid marginalization. This also enabled them to protect
themselves from being branded and treated as "eccentrics",
"skeptics" or "dissidents".

This kind of social pressure has forced individual scholars to
restrain themselves -- don't think too much; better to be engaged
in research than to think; and better to participate in research
on topics approved and recommended by the establishment. These
responses have resulted in the "domestication" of scholarly life.

Big ideas are no longer the driving force of scholarly
pursuit. Instead, the scientific chase has been directed at big
grants. Controversies that occur within academic communities are
merely "a storm in a teacup" and "genuine intellectual storms"
occur elsewhere.

Are the constraints due to accepted methodologies and dominant
paradigm? Adebayo Adedeji from Nigeria provides an interesting
example in his paper which was presented at a Royal Society of
Canada seminar on scientific constraints. He mentioned that in
Africa, Nigeria in particular, the tendency among social
scientists and development economists was to imitate methods from
the natural sciences. This has created: "too much economism, too
many dogmas and too great a tendency to globalize local
experiences and turn particularistic and ethno-centric situations
into universal truisms."

The dominance of this paradigm has made social scientists and
development economists in Africa ignore the principle that
"development is a multivariate, quantitative and qualitative
process in which the so-called economic and non-economic factors
interact equally with each other". The result, according to
Adebayo Adedeji, is that the problems of Africa's development is
greatly misperceived, misunderstood and maltreated.

It has been shown that during any period in human history
there were always scientists, scholars and intellectuals who
refused to surrender to these constraints and fought to maintain
and enhance freedom in their pursuit for truth. These fights were
sometimes waged at great personal costs.

Why do scholars persist in conducting this taxing fight to
preserve freedom? I think it is because scholars and thinkers
just love freedom and tend to reject authority imposed upon them
in violation of their reason.

John C. Polanyi, a Canadian physicist and a Nobel laureate,
said scholars are very aware of "the corrupting effects of power
-- the natural tendency for yesterday's democrat to become
today's autocrat."

"Freedom, with its attendant confusion of competing claims, is
the price we pay for a society that is responsive and creative,"
he said.

The fight to preserve freedom in scholarly pursuit is part of
the fight to bring about the proper relationship between the
government and the governed.

Prof. Polanyi said: "To be a good citizen requires more than
loyalty to the state." To which he added: "We should not be too
ready to cast the state in the role of villain."

The matter is, of course, one of striking a balance. And in
our efforts to strike this balance, it is always wiser "to err on
the side of freedom".

How does Indonesia measure up in this respect? Are we also
facing constraints in our scholarly life? And have we put up
enough of a fight to maintain and enhance the freedom of
scholarly inquiry? Somehow I feel this is not the right question
to ask. The words "fight" and "freedom of scholarly inquiry"
somehow do not seem to fit into our present political reality.

Perhaps all this talk about scholarly freedom is a foreign
language that has to be translated into an Indonesian idiom to be
properly understood. In 1991, in Ottawa, I could talk this
language. Now in 1997 I feel constrained.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.