What can you do when you think nothing can be done? This question, raised at a recent conference organized by gender studies scholars at Columbia University, expresses a feeling familiar to most academics today: a feeling of powerlessness amid the global transformation of higher education. Successful university courses are closed by well-paid administrators; Accredited gender studies programs are removed without explanation; In one case, the country's most successful higher education institution (CEU University in Hungary) was forced into exile.
If all this is not enough, there is another worrying development, this time regarding the physical safety of academics itself. Throughout history, scientific work has been accompanied by daily threats: just think of Giordano Bruno or Spinoza. But these days, we scientists like to think that we work in safe academic environments. Increasingly, this is no longer the case. When university administration informs you that a bulletproof window will be installed in your office for your safety (as happened to an American colleague working in far-right movements in the United States), you may be asked to rethink the impact of this. You work. When (as happened to me) your university assigns you a bodyguard after you receive a death threat that the police refuse to investigate, you have to ask: What can one do when teaching and research becomes a life-threatening profession? Is there an alternative to securitization in response?
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Previously, one might have hoped that academics confined within the ivory towers of science would be able to fend off the populist forces of alternative science discourse. The weapons they had in this battle were the concept of distinctiveness, high leverage factors and indicators against neoliberal reconstruction. It is now clear that this strategy is not only unsustainable, but also harmful. It is a self-deception that justifies inaction and gives the green light to two imminent dangers.
The first is that in an increasing number of countries the state has become captive to illiberal tendencies. The relationship between liberalism and academic work has been questioned. It is a mistake to think that this new mode of governance will not impact scientific life more broadly, or that questioning institutions and the social importance and thus state funding of knowledge will stop at the borders (or only at your borders). In many countries, the very foundations of science – freedom of expression and the search for truth – are criminalized or delegitimized by the state.
The second danger is that, despite being able to do many things, our hyper-bureaucratic neoliberal universities, with their obsession with influence and conveyor-belt teaching, are no longer capable of cultivating responsible and critical thinkers. By adhering to this system, one contributes to its success. While more and more personal investment is needed, even at the cost of burnout, the results are becoming less and less significant.
The situation we see today is not a temporary backlash, but rather a fundamentally new phenomenon set in motion to create a new order. It is a struggle for socialization in the Gramscian sense, a neoconservative nationalist response to the global crisis of neoliberalism. This is a war being waged in the field of science. Whether we want it or not, we are all involved. The attack sometimes uses well-established neoliberal terminology to measure academic excellence, but sometimes reaches into nineteenth-century terminology.y twentieth century, promoting the “national interest” and Christianity as the standard for good science.
In countries where illiberal forces have taken over the state, the entire university system is under attack. A fundamentally new relationship emerged between the state and tax-paying citizens. In countries that have gone through the neoliberal phase, strong states have been created for the strong and weak states for the weak. Here the state decides who the worthy citizens are and whom it serves. Higher education has been transformed in the process: the proportion of public institutions has declined and access to higher education has once again become a privilege, rather than a basic right.
The entire higher education system in Hungary was privatized within two weeks. In that short time, she lost her independence and freedom to decide what to teach and how. In parallel, faculty salaries tripled, contributing to the normalization of the loss of academic independence and compliance with illiberal science policy.
The story of CEU, a private university in Hungary that was forced to move to Vienna, Austria, raises the question of whether only public universities can serve the public good. If the mafia took over the state and operated as a mafia, a private university could serve as a beacon of academic freedom. That is why the Central European University had to leave.
Of course, this process is not only about the European transformation. Paradigm change cannot be pinned to one person. Rather, the illiberal state has hijacked the neoliberal language of distinction, competitiveness, influence, reach, and indicators, while its female leaders speak of women's rights.
In “illiberal pragmatism,” anything goes: if one argument does not work, another is applied that may be just the opposite. Content doesn't matter. Progressive intellectuals, scientists, and politicians spend time and energy analyzing and understanding a phenomenon that is impossible to analyze and understand. This impossible task contributes to exhaustion and depression among progressive forces.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
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So we return to the question: what to do when nothing is done?
The return of historical measurements shows that there is real uncertainty about this transitional period we are living through. Some compare the United States today to Weimar Germany, and others claim that fascists have returned to power in Italy. I want to give another historical example: Germaine de Stael, historian and political theorist of the Enlightenment. She was committed to her country, to freedom, patriotism and equality. It condemned Napoleon for misappropriating these values and sending millions to die on the battlefield.
What did Madame de Stael do when it seemed that nothing could be done? “I can feel an almost physical joy when I oppose an unjust power,” she wrote.
Bringing the magic back to political battle beyond polling data and policy proposals is the first step. Strength can be derived from the individual physical joy of fighting the good fight. We need strength in our fight, because it will be long. But there's one thing we can't avoid: fighting. Not to fight means losing our right to free science, which is the basis of all scientific work.
How do you get this physical pleasure from academic work? This will be the kind of education based on rigorous intellectual inquiry, passion and volunteer work, which I myself received at the seminars held by the Budapest Aeronautical University during Communism. This is the tradition represented by the Central European University, where I was a professor for thirty-two years. This passionate and free-spirited approach to science necessarily conflicts with the hierarchical control of education that views citizens as subjects to be kept under surveillance.
Together, the freedom of science and the passion for doing science open up the possibility of intellectual resistance. But this freedom is not self-evident. There are moments when you have to fight for it, when the fight seems hopeless and you feel exhausted. What you really need then is “physical joy.” So, go ahead and fight the good fight. It's the only chance we have left.
