On Liberal Education and the Autopoiesis of Universities

Jakub Jirsa (ed.) On Liberal Education and the Autopoiesis of Universities KAROLINUM On Liberal Education and the Autopoiesis of Universities Jakub Jirsa (ed.) The last thirty years have seen a significant increase in the number of universities, instructors, and students alike, yet institutions of higher education currently face a number of problems and are plagued with uncertainty, pressure, and fear. Their status as ivory towers detached from the social and political environments of contemporary democracies creates an atmosphere of mutual distrust. This then leads to the imposition of regulatory measures incongruent with the workings of universities, which only deepens the prevailing issues. The essays in this publication explore these issues, focus on the self-constituting character of the university (the so-called autopoiesis) and present several detailed case studies. autopoiesis_mont.indd 1autopoiesis_mont.indd 1 18.01.2023 19:3618.01.2023 19:36 On Liberal Education and the Autopoiesis of Universities Jakub Jirsa (ed.) Reviewed by: Mgr. Juraj Hvorecký, Ph.D. Doc. PhDr. Eva Voldřichová-Beránková, Ph.D. NextGenerationEU Funded by the European Union This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (reg. no.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734) implemented at Charles University, Faculty of Arts. The project is carried out under the ERDF Call “Excellent Research” and its output is aimed at employees of research organizations and Ph.D. students. Published by Charles University Karolinum Press Prague 2022 Cover and design by Jan Šerých Typesetting by Karolinum Press First Edition This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. © Charles University, 2022 © Edited by Jakub Jirsa © Text by Peter Balazs, Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho, Alexander Görlach, Jones Irwin, Jakub Jirsa, Jimmy Lewis-Martin, Olga Lomová, Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, Ivana Noble, Milada Polišenská, Jiří Přibáň, Rob Riemen, Jiří Šubrt, 2022 ISBN 978-80-246-5475-1 ISBN 978-80-246-5486-7 (pdf) https://doi.org/10.14712/9788024654867 Charles University Karolinum Press www.karolinum.cz [email protected] Acknowledgements – Parts of the Introduction are taken from Jakub Jirsa, “On Universities and Trust,” IWM Post 124, 20. – Alexander Görlach, “The Common Good and the Ethic of Participation” appeared as chapter seven in Alexander Görlach, Homo Empathicus: On Scapegoats, Populists & Saving Democracy, Washington D.C.: Brookings Press, 2021. Contents Acknowledgements 5 About the Authors 9 Introduction Jakub Jirsa 11 Role of Universities in Contemporary Society The Common Good and the Ethic of Participation, Alexander Görlach 18 Some Reflections on Higher Education as the Origin of Higher Stupidity Rob Riemen 25 Universities as Places that Cultivate Hope: Relationship between Expertise, Education towards Human Maturity and Societal Responsibility Ivana Noble 33 What Do Universities Face in the 21st century? Neoliberalism and the Quantification of American Higher Education Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley 54 Whither the Situationist University after Late Capitalism?, Jones Irwin 70 The University and the New Problem(s) of Counsel Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho 82 Autopoiesis and Universities Diggers of Theoretical Principles and Healers of Constitutional Value Pluralism: On the Particular Function of University Legal Education Jiří Přibáň 109 Universities as Autonomously Individuated Systems Jimmy Lewis-Martin 129 The University System in the Perspective of the System Approach and Functional Analysis Jiří Šubrt 139 Historical Investigations: The Current Fate of the Universities Universities under Systemic Changes, the Way of CEU from Prague through Budapest to Vienna Peter Balazs 149 Idealism and Capitalism: Two Sides of the Beginnings of Private Higher Education in the Czech Republic (on the Example of Anglo-American College, 1990–2001) Milada Polišenská 157 Sinology and Area Studies: Recent (Con)fusions Olga Lomová 181 Bibliography 196 9 About the Authors Péter Balázs is director of the Center for European Neighborhood Studies at the Central European University. He has held several positions in the Hungarian government and the EU. Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Porto. Alexander Görlach is alinguist and theologian who works on narratives of identity, politics, religion, and liberal democracy, as well as secularism, pluralism, and cosmopolitanism. Jones Irwin is associate professorof philosophy and education at the School of Human Development, Dublin City University. Jakub Jirsa is associate professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. Jimmy Lewis-Martin is adoctoral student at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His research focuses on how our understanding of the ontology of group agency can in turn help us better understand our political and social realities. Olga Lomová is professor of sinology at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. Role of Universities in Contemporary Society 18 The Common Good and the Ethic of Participation Alexander Görlach The crisis of democracy is amoral crisis because it was caused by awounded sense of justice and fairness after the 2008 financial crisis. The crisis created its own narrative and thus attained apervasive force that is capable of causing lasting damage to the liberal world order. The narrative goes like this: corrupt elites share society’s goods among themselves. The order that these elites are defending thus serves only to reinforce the rule of the few over the many. Those in positions of authority in politics, business, and the media are working together and conspiring with each other. In this narrative, the elites’ most potent weapon is global migration. Through migration, elites are trying to entangle long-established residents in aconflict with the newcomers over resource allocation. In the end, this struggle for resources will turn into abattle to bring about– or to prevent– the replacement of the established residents, abattle they will lose if they do not act immediately. This narrative is so powerful because it employs the archetypes which René Girard discusses, just as it keeps the motif of loss of dignity, which Fukuyama sees as decisive, constantly simmering. Here acall for cooperation and collaboration is being issued that would fuse people who had formerly been strangers to each other into acommunity with ashared destiny. There is anew “us” that stands against “them.” Thus this narrative joins the phalanx of the great religious and ideological narratives. “The outraged,” “people whose dignity has been stolen,” “the 99 percent”– whatever this group is called by outsiders, inwardly it is linked together by acommon perception of reality and driven by the impetus to overthrow an order that, from their point of view, entails nothing good for them. 19 This is apopulism that arrays the Somewheres for battle against the Anywheres. It is the manifestation of aprotest that demands anew form of participation. Instead of being overlooked, the people want to stand at the centre of the order that is built around them. The idea of the liberal world order was nothing less than to build and maintain an economy oriented around human beings and atruly humane society. The constitutions enshrine an inborn right to participation– aparticipation that in turn finds expression in civil and social rights. It is disturbing that when the protest presented itself purely as aprotest against the economic system, it quickly receded into oblivion: just like the AfD in Germany, “Occupy” and “We are the 99%” were only able to ignite aflash in the pan. With only their– justified– critique of the economic system driving them, they soon lost steam. It was only when the perceived loss of dignity and the sense of having been left behind were linked that the spark of anger was able to turn into the flame of outrage through the use of the refugees and “powerful images.” The narrative at the base of this protest breaks with acentral and essential point of liberal society. Societies with more equitable access and ahigher degree of fairness have developed asense for the bonum commune (the common good). The question of what determines the common welfare can be answered only if all concerned have enough empathy to emotionally understand their fellow human beings’ realms of experience. It has already been mentioned that empathy is essential for the form of democracy we practice today. Anyone who thinks that arenovation of democracy could work without asurplus of empathy is mistaken. Not only is there no “illiberal democracy,” there can also never be ademocracy without empathy. When we say that democratic representation and participation will be modified in the future to take into account new technological possibilities, it is worth looking at attempts that have already envisioned this. The concept of deliberative democracy, the “well-advised democracy” formulated by Stanford professor James Fishkin, works as follows: imagine acity arguing about the optimal water supply or anew large-scale project. If there is abody whose composition is precisely determined by algorithm to represent the interests of all groups in the city, Fishkin’s research suggests that participants in the debate will be inclined to listen to each other’s opinions and to reach out to each other in making compromises. The inference is that acommon good can be discussed and defined if all those who belong to the community are allowed to bring the specific characteristics that constitute their identity (men, women, migrants, 20 religious minorities, LGBT groups) to the discussion and be treated as equals in value and dignity. The novelty of Fishkin’s concept lies in using algorithms to determine who belongs to these groups and what their numbers should be in acity meeting specially arranged for aparticular topic. It can be argued that this would have been possible long before now with the aid of census data. The concept of deliberative democracy, however, recognizes and understands that political communication and issues-based organization today occurs through other mechanisms, and is thus able to transcend what was formerly possible. In Germany, the turbulent process surrounding the launch of the “Stuttgart 21” railway project would have gone differently with the methods of deliberative democracy. For all its technological innovation, the core of this updated democracy is still empathy: the willingness to talk to and accommodate each other. It is therefore questionable whether, under the polarized circumstances in which many democratic societies find themselves today, the deliberative model could bring about change. The bonum commune can be jointly envisioned by people who consider themselves equal in value and dignity. Otherwise, it will be apolicy imposed from above, driven by self-interest, or determined by the stronger party on the basis of its dominance. In the Rhineland, asaying goes, “Sometimes you have to indulge people’s victories.” People can display this intellectual and material generosity only if they feel that things are reasonably fair and just, and that prejudice against or preferential treatment of particular groups stays within arange that is constantly placed under inspection by society, and when necessary brought up for discussion through elections and by the active participants in civil society. As the context of the American dream shows, societies, in accordance with their ethos, are willing to accept certain inequalities if they appear justified within aframework that is perceived to be superior. The same is true of aprimacy of exaggerated equality. In the societies of Europe, there are different types of consensus about the social contract. The welfare state, which is the predominant concept, varies in its manifestations; underlying the concept in these societies is an agreement in each one about the common good. Just like the American idea of the land of unlimited opportunities, the narrative of the western European welfare state, according to which stronger members should shoulder more of the burden than weaker ones, was severely weakened by the financial crisis. Thus, in surveys, amajority of people in Italy and France endorsed atravel ban for foreigners from Muslim-majority countries– closed borders rather than freedom of 21 movement. The attitude toward migration is agauge of “what victories one is ready to indulge.” It is also the focal point where rejection of the old, liberal order is manifested. In societies that are economically flourishing, the bonum commune can only be achieved as agoal and as an obligation through migration. This admittedly expands the “circle of relevance,” the circle of those to whom this bonum also applies. Origin, ethnicity, and religion do not play any role in it, or at least they shouldn’t. Outside the fantasies of impending subjugation to outsiders, popular with fanatic groups and individuals, economic aspects are at the forefront of present-day migration flows. The success of this model of migration, which is based on interaction due to economic needs and technological innovation, is particularly evident in the European Union, agigantic common market that allows its participants to work anywhere. Ideas and goods move freely within it. Here, economic and human factors are so interconnected that for alarge number of market participants, opportunities are multiplied. What has been achieved through it in Europe is the overcoming of tribal and confessional thinking. If ageneration ago an Italian or Spaniard was still regarded as aforeigner in Germany, the idea now largely prevails that every EU citizen working and paying taxes in Germany “belongs,” is apart of the community. This is asensational success, as aglimpse at European history with its multiplicity of territorial and religious wars attests. The last seventy years have been the longest period of peace in European history, and it has made possible an immense improvement in the standard of living of the vast majority of people. The same is true of East Asia– Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan– which have followed the same model of cooperation through integration, are today economically successful democracies. That said, the new populists of ingroups and outgroups and the search for scapegoats in economically difficult times not only calls this success into question but also endangers it and puts it at risk. The bonum commune is changing from the common good to the good of particular groups, that is, if in doubt, the good of the majority or the stronger and dominant group. If migration is halted, there are consequences for the vitality and innovation of societies.Consequently, among populists the demand to stop migration is accompanied by adesire to restrict the movement of goods across the board or to alarge extent. The trade wars currently flaring up on every side clearly attest this. In particular, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America has accelerated this process. Advocates of popularism like Trump, however, primarily 22 find willing listeners in many of their voters because they address existing injustices and channel them: against the media at home, against migrants from Latin America, against Muslims all over the world. Images of the enemy are required to establish and sustain such an isolationist worldview. In this respect, the retribalization of societies is the product of people’s perceived loss of economic dignity. Mobility and purchasing power are limited, the young today are worse off than their parents, promises of advancement now seem empty and unbelievable. The resulting exclusion of people from society leads to anger and resentment. Conversely, where people areable to live their lives in dignity, the common good, the bonum commune plays an important role. Part of the common good is that all members of society share in the benefits of prosperity. The transmitter for the balancing of interests and the medium of any public debate is empathy, which allows others to appear in their own light and does not seek to belittle or degrade them. Empathy, properly understood, means humanity, human compassion. Creating aworldview around ahumanism such as this is acharacteristic of European intellectual and cultural history. Erasmus of Rotterdam was already dreaming of aunited Europe built on the foundation of aChristian humanism. The Reformation and the ensuing wars of religion, the epitome of “us against them,” were ultimately the graveyard of this dream. The same thing occurred during the era of the World Wars and the Holocaust. Exclusionary nationalism and an imperialism expanding beyond Europe’s borders led to anew and harsher “us versus them.” Those who read Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday can return with the author to the time before this calamity when, as Zweig writes, no one even remotely imagined that in aworld where prosperity and security were gradually being established (Zweig describes how people had started paying into insurance and pension funds), such adevastating event as the First World War could ever take place. Are we now entering anew era of intensified conflict according to the paradigm of “us against them” due to economic inequality and ecological imbalance? Then as now, affronts to humanity are the cause of arebellion that looks for ascapegoat among fellow human beings. Alvin Toffler described these affronts in his book Future Shock, published half acentury ago. His thesis is that there are moments in history when progress is so rapid that even elites can no longer understand it. When that happens, afeeling of grievance and powerlessness arises, even among elites. If we think back to the time of the euro crisis, when legislators had to decide at lightning 23 speed on measures to stabilize or even save the common currency, statements come to mind from various members of parliament who reported feeling insufficiently informed about what the potential outcomes of the severe crisis were. The “loss of dignity” Fukuyama speaks of is therefore not asingular, dramatic act, but rather aprocess in which asociety’s axes of authority shift. The gatekeepers– those who hold in their hands the keys to understanding reality– are unsettled by the innovations and will ultimately be ousted from power if they, as shapers of the transformation, do not decisively counteract them. Europe in the modern era has experienced three of these elementary and existential affronts to humanity. They are associated with the names Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud: Copernicus banished man from the centre of the universe, while Darwin pulled the throne out from under the self-styled pinnacle of creation. Finally, Freud stated that man is not even the master of his own house, but, rather, is ruled by the forces of the subconscious and the indignities that are the legacy of his upbringing. Will the fourth affront be that in the course of world history, human beings have ultimately become superfluous, ameans to an end in aself-perpetuating economy? With storm warnings sounding all over the Western world, this assumption is, at the very least, not pulled completely out of thin air. The historical depth from which times of upheaval confront us shows that anew law here and afew cosmetic changes there will not be enough. Harari correctly points to narratives as drivers of collaboration. But collaboration always needs a“to what purpose,” abonum commune that it aims for. In times of uncertainty, this goal is undefined, and if something ceased being agoal yesterday, it will not sustain anything tomorrow. We are living in such atime of upheaval; therefore, the sole deciding factor is whether or not we will be able to define anew goal, abonum commune, provide it with anarrative, and in this way equip it with powerful images. This is our only chance. Only where human beings are at the centre is there any sense in thinking and talking about the bonum commune. The fact that the number of people who have been economically outpaced is growing in large parts of the democratic world shows that in the economy in which we currently operate, human beings are not the primary concern. This observation is not accompanied by ageneral demonization of all things digital or the new possibilities for economic activity. As with all other previous leaps forward in modernization, the task and objective are to make the benefits of innovation productive for the greatest possible number of people, 24 and to avoid negative side effects at the same time. This will never be 100 percent successful. But before one can even think about success, the problem must be formulated and become apart of the general consciousness. We are currently at this point. The harms that can result from the data collection practices of major Internet corporations are only now being identified. The scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica is asad sign of this development. The company boasted of having changed the outcome of the US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour by means of Russian-bought ads on the social-media giant Facebook. The criminal energy (which has always existed) on the one side finds its counterpart in Facebook’s attitude on the other. It took the company avery, very long time to recognize what it was doing wrong– if it ever recognized it at all. When human beings, as human beings, are the focus, narratives of cooperation will be able to flourish and thrive again. But when dignity has been lost, human beings perceive themselves as abandoned; they are transported back to the archaic struggle of all against all, to atime when no one could trust in anything except one’s own abilities. This too is corroborated by the rampant scepticism and loss of confidence in established institutions, such as the media, political parties, and churches. The narrative of the American dream is as dead as the myth of an all-encompassing social safety net that the European welfare state once promised. The economic reasons for this are not found solely in the financial crisis of 2008, but the moral reasons are. Because since that event, the chasm between those who have much (and are constantly gaining more) and those who have little (and from whom even that meagre amount is being taken) cannot be bridged any longer. Societies with their various groups and factions have to reunite, but so too do the many isolated individuals who are compelled in disturbing fashion to join in citing Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that there is no such thing as society. The Iron Lady, midwife of neoliberalism, may have been expressing her wishes in verbal form in this case. Half acentury later, however, the ideology she helped to expand has begun to erode the social balance and any consciousness of responsibilities that extend beyond aquarterly bonus and the rapid closing of abusiness transaction. The question facing all societies of the democratic world today is one that once appeared as the first question in Martin Ramm’s little catechism for Catholics: “Why are we on earth?” The question itself, and the answers that emerge, from it must be so real and so robust that they can form and sustain the narrative during the new era. 25 Some Reflections on Higher Education as the Origin of Higher Stupidity Rob Riemen Confucius was once asked where he would begin when he had acountry to rule. “Iwould improve my language skills,” the master answered. His audience was amazed. “That has nothing to do with our question,” they said, “what is the point of improving the use of language?” The master replied: “If the language is wrong, what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, the works do not come about; if the works do not materialize, then morality and art do not flourish; if morality and art do not prosper, the justice system does not apply; if the judiciary fails, the nation does not know where to go. So do not tolerate arbitrariness in the words. That’s what it all comes down to.” University, Université, Universität is a“proud word” as George Steiner put it, since its basic meaning is “the totality,” namely the totality of knowledge.1 Yet, it is not totality in terms of quantity, but it is totality of quality. The totality of knowledge– of understanding– the totality of what we have to know for our pursuit of truth within our quest for an answer to the two most fundamental questions we have to ask ourselves according to Socrates to be able to deal with our lives: the first, what is the right way to live? And the second one, what is agood society? To find an answer to these questions, we have to know the truth, we have to have an understanding about the world (the kosmos as Greeks would call it), about us human beings and our human society. For this reason, an education in the universitas was an education in: 1 George Steiner, Universitas?, Nexus Bibliotheek 9 (Tilburg: Nexus Institute, 2013). 32 included, have aset limit for their duration, the only way to make them endure is if their institutions can renew themselves. The best way to save and revive an aging institution and to prevent its decay is to call it back to its first principles, as there must have been in them acertain excellence by virtue of which they once gained their first reputation and growth.8 That principle of education is known: it is called universitas. We know what that is. The only thing we have to do is to have the courage to revive it and make it again the heart and soul of our higher education, and this for the sake of having aworld where liberal democracies thrive and people can live their lives in dignity. 8 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press) (Oxford: University Press, 2008), chap. 3.1. 33 Universities as Places that Cultivate Hope: Relationship between Expertise, Education towards Human Maturity and Societal Responsibility Ivana Noble Most commonly the origin of universities is traced to the European Middle Ages, although some would argue that they originated in Byzantium or in the Muslim world.1 In any case, through asignificant part of their history universities very heavily relied on aChristian culture, including its systems of virtues and vices, its ideals of knowledge and wisdom, its desires to cultivate aholistic human person and society. Their subsequent development during the Early Modern Age gave them asense of autonomy both from rulers and religious bodies, although they were still dependent on the support and protection of both. The fundamental idea is embodied in the word “university”– the “uni” encapsulates the desire for ageneral education, aholistic overview, interdisciplinary communication and cooperation across the disciplines. In what follows Itake John Henry Newman and his seminal work The Idea of aUniversity2 as aconversation partner, as it explores how 1 See, for example, Laura Tucker, “10 of the Oldest Universities in the World,” Top Universities, October 21, 2022, https://www.topuniversities.com/blog/10-oldest-universities-world/. 2 The Idea of aUniversity is based on aseries of lectures Newman delivered in Dublin in the 1850s. It is divided into two books. The first book, originally entitled Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education: Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin, published in 1852, addresses the following themes that Newman in his time saw as vital for university life: (1) the assumed nature of knowledge; (2) the relation of higher education to religious belief; and (3) adefence of aliberal approach to education. The second book treated these themes in anew depth. Newman completed it when acting as the inaugural rector of the Catholic University of Ireland (today University College, Dublin). Entitled Lectures and Essays on University Subjects it was published in 1859. Both books were first published in one volume under the current title, The Idea of aUniversity, in 1873. Newman, however, continued to edit this work till his death in 1890. See Michael Lanford, “The Idea of aUniversity,” The Literary Encyclopedia, April 2, 34 such universality can be achieved, what notion of knowledge it needs to draw on and how personal formation and societal formation need to be included in ahealthy university culture. Newman’s approach, in which universities are seen as places cultivating hope, helps in moving towards the next step, in which challenges to university autonomy and mission in the new millennium are explored, before asking how hope is to be distinguished from its caricature. This is done by reflecting on the current geopolitical situation and the role of universities in it, and then by analysing complex relationships and differences between hopes, utopias and ideologies. In the concluding remarks Isketch how the relationship between expertise and education towards human maturity and societal responsibility can be maintained, together with afocus on the common good, whilst living with experiences of harm and trauma, risk and danger. The Type of Place Universities Should Aspire to Be In his famous lectures contained in the book The Idea of aUniversity, John Henry Newman stated that the primary role of auniversity is to teach people how to think and to properly grasp reality, how to make ahabit of seeking for illumination and loving the truth. According to Newman, the other roles such as the development of scientific knowledge, the transference of skills to enable people to succeed in the labour market, the formation of ideas to help ground and develop their political and religious lives, all derived from the university’s primary role and were dependent on it. During atime when education systems face enormous pressure to demonstrate the immediate “usefulness” of knowledge and its quantifiable nature, and to provide specialization as quickly and cheaply as possible– in short, various methods of reductionism– then universities should represent acenturies-old tried and tested alternative: free and critical thought, and profound knowledge with wide-ranging scope. Newman presents aseries of characteristics of the place universities should aspire to be which remain worthy of attention today. They will help us as we seek to emerge from the divisions in our societies experienced 2019, https://www.litencyc.com/. This text uses the following edition: John Henry Newman, The Idea of aUniversity (London: Longmans, Green & co., 1907). 35 due to the Covid-19 crisis, overshadowed now by the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine and the rising totalitarian practices in Russia. Universities can respond to these crises adequately if they draw on the very foundations of their mission. Newman speaks about the role of universities as places cultivating hope. Their notion of knowledge, according to him, is not reduced to acommodity, but is seen “as alight in the mind that gradually informs and transforms the attitudes and aspirations of the whole person.”3 Moreover, Newman is aware that no person lives in isolation from others. We are relational beings, and as such parts of asociety. He emphasizes the need for health “at the level of mind as we have the word ‘health’ at the level of body and ‘virtue’ at the level of morality.”4 He speaks here about the “enlargement of mind, illumination, intellectual culture,” ahabit of mind that enables the subject of it “to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.” 5 Such aprocess has anecessary social impact. For Newman “talent, ability, genius” are not ends in themselves. They “belong distinctly to the raw material, which is the subject-matter, not to that excellence which is the result of exercise and training.” Turning to “judgment, taste, and skill,” he says that “even these belong, for the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon practice or upon art, and not to any perfect condition of the intellect, considered in itself.” 6 University education needs to provide asetting as well as particular ways for these gifts to be directed towards “wisdom,” which “has adirect relation to conduct, and to human life.” 7 Universities as homes of knowledge and science need to teach both how to arrive at and how to express “intellectual ideas” and how to cultivate a“quality of the intellect,” so that the students as well as teachers of auniversity would always see themselves as pilgrims on that journey on which they strive to make desire for illumination and love for truth their 3 Noel Dermot O’ Donoghue, “Newman’s ‘Idea’ and the Irish Reality,” The Furrow 42, no.7/8 (1991): 438. 4 Ibid. 5 See Newman, The Idea of aUniversity, Discourse VI, 1, in O’Donoghue, “Newman’s ‘Idea’ and the Irish Reality,” 438. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. It is interesting that Newman in his time and position did not ascribe this role of cultivating human conduct only to the church. He was aware that it was necessary for universities to participate in such amission, as he claimed that it was “possible to belong to the soul of the Church without belonging to the body.” See John Henry Newman, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), xxv, 71. 36 habit.8 For Newman “the cultivation of the intellect is an end distinct and sufficient in itself,” because it is its “enlargement or illumination,” “mental breadth, or power, or light.”9 He goes on to say: “AHospital heals abroken limb or cures afever: what does an Institution effect, which professes the health, not of the body, not of the soul, but of the intellect? What is this good, which in former times, as well as our own, has been found worth the notice?”10 Newman’s provoking and inspiring reflection on the nature of knowledge that universities should stand for is helpful for our further reflection on hope, that, like knowledge, needs to be both personal and collective at the same time.11 Challenges to University Autonomy and Mission in the New Millennium Such understanding of hope has an impact on how we are to understand the autonomy of universities on the one hand, and their formative role and engagement in societies on the other. We derive the freedom of research and the self-governance of universities partly from their medieval foundations and partly from Enlightenment ideals. Both form what 8 Newman, The Idea of aUniversity, Discourse VI, 1. 9 Newman, The Idea of aUniversity, Discourse VI, 2. Newman emphasized the vital role of conscience and its cultivation. See, for example, John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua (London: Dent & sons, 1955), 192, 210. 10 Newman, The Idea of aUniversity, Discourse VI, 2. In his work An Essay in Aid of aGrammar of Assent, Newman spoke of an “illative sense” as something that opened ahuman person upwards while helping to build grounds for responsible living. It opened up an assent in which accumulated probabilities of what is true and good were seen as cumulative authorities granting people certitude on which it was possible to act, not without apossibility of error, but with integrity and wisdom. See John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of aGrammar of Assent (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 408. 11 Michael Lanford appreciates that Newman’s depiction of auniversity culture has atransformative potential that has had an impact on educational administrators, policymakers, and scholars, despite the increased neoliberalism and corporatization in higher education. See Michael Lanford, “The Idea of aUniversity,” The Literary Encyclopedia, April 2, 2019, https://www. litencyc.com/. For the appreciation of the holistic nature of education and its relevance for contemporary university formation he refers, for example, to Eddie Blass, “What’s in aName? AComparative Study of the Traditional Public University and the Corporate University,” Human Resource Development International 4, no.2 (2001): 153–172; Jackie Dunne, “Newman Now: Re-examining the Concepts of ‘Philosophical’ and ‘Liberal’ in ‘The Idea of aUniversity,’” British Journal of Educational Studies 54, no.4 (2006): 412-428; Alister MacIntyre, “The Very Idea of aUniversity: Aristotle, Newman, and Us,” British Journal of Educational Studies 57, no. 4 (2009): 347-362. 37 we understand as the autonomy and mission of universities. Since then universities in Europe have undergone the torment of two world wars, the impact of Nazism and Communism, over three decades of new possibilities since the Iron Curtain collapsed, but also, especially towards the end of that period, the rise of populism, nationalism and new forms of putting divisions and animosities back in place. Even before Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, European countries experienced aseries of crises. The financial crisis that began in 2008 shook long-term certainties at avery practical and tangible level. Anumber of faculties, colleges and other university institutions closed down during or shortly after that period, including very prestigious ones, such as Heythrop College in the University of London.12 Students, graduates, and university staff experienced growing insecurity with regard to the numbers of new students, employability for young people, access to housing, getting and paying mortgages, employment stability and security of pensions and savings. What Zygmunt Bauman described as characteristics of the “liquid” society13 became tangible in everyday experience. University autonomy needed, then, to find new expressions that would bring hope to situations where people no longer have fixed traditions and values, whether religious or secular, as was the case in early modernity. As Isee it, universities often went with the wave of society, and the more broadly experienced loss of fixed economic certainties since 2008 that has impacted on the possibilities of longer-term projects, both at the work level and at the personal level, became along-term problem even in their settings. Internationalisation was supported, but especially in humanities the situation of the young gifted local academics was often not asufficiently high priority. Ihave often recalled Lyotard’s book The Postmodern Condition, in which he highlights ideologies which continue to dominate even though no-one believes in them any longer, and how to agreat extent knowledge is “regulated” by those who have access to 12 The College’s roots go back to 1614, when it was founded by the English Province of the Society of Jesus operating in exile in Belgium. In 1926 the college moved to Heythrop Hall in Oxfordshire. In 1970 the college moved to London and ayear later was incorporated into the University of London. The closure was announced in 2015 and completed in 2019, despite many national and international interventions and offers of help. For the petitions list, see “Petition: Stop the Closure of Heythrop College,” https://netivist.org/campaign/stop-the-closure -of-heythrop-college/. 13 For the concept of “liquid society,” see Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007). 38 finance.14 Ithink that these two supranational issues greatly affected the autonomy, independence and legal status of universities, but at the same time they challenged us to defend these values. Now universities need to find their voice and adequate practices when facing political crises. In 2014 anew wave of political instability arrived through the crisis over Ukraine. The annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, war in Donbass, and the rise of Putin’s power woke us up from the dream of peaceful coexistence in post-totalitarian Europe. Indeed, the very notion of post-totalitarianism began to be further questioned. Many Ukrainians already then felt betrayed by those Europeans for whom not wanting to interfere could be translated as unwillingness to help. Universities in the neighbouring countries responded by creating new places for Ukrainian students and researchers who could not finish their education at home, as well as accepting wounded people into their hospitals. In the same year the Islamic State declared the establishment of acaliphate and claimed responsibility for anumber of terrorist attacks in Europe. While terrorism is not anew phenomenon, either in the Middle East or in Europe, the intensity of attacks experienced in Europe and the U.S. brought panic and aneed for new measures to the public sphere. Universities needed to participate in taking safety measures, in investigating whether and if so where and how their structures were open to propagating such actions or gaining young people for extremist groups. Freedom of speech as an abstract absolute needed to be challenged and re-defined in the new situation, especially in relation to new media, so that universities would not allow the spread of that which could be linked to terrorist propaganda and remain safe places for students. Their autonomy could not be expressed independently of their safety and the safety of the broader society. Only acouple of years later the wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq confronted Europe with its inability to find acommon solution to the rapid rise of refugees coming from these countries. Different groups of university students organised anti-war protests and educational activities aimed at combatting conspiracy theories in the broader society by presenting factual information. They also created “hate-free zones,” where cultural and religious differences did not serve as ajustification 14 See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. AReport on Knowledge (Manchester: MUP, 1994), 3. 39 for exclusion.15 In Central Europe, the same countries that were willing to accept Ukrainians had only recently closed their doors, refusing European Union quotas and speaking about defending their autonomy, using the rhetoric of “Christian values,” whether in predominantly religious countries (like Poland or Slovakia) or secular ones (like the Czech Republic or Hungary).16 There was achange in the political climate and in governments. Central European universities were confronted with rising nationalism in their own as well as in the surrounding countries, and with the dilemma of the extent to which they would go along with the new ideology and restrictive practices it brought. In our region this was most visible in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán imposed serious restrictions on university autonomy and academic freedoms, with the argument that he was purifying them of “internationalist” or “globalist” tendencies.17 As Brexit has shown, nationalism drawing on populist ideologies and practices is not restricted to post-Communist countries. Brexit imposed new forms of isolation on British universities, as it cut them off from anumber of shared European programmes and projects, including Erasmus+ and possibly also Horizon Europe.18 So as we can see, nationalism presents athreat both to the very foundations of the European Union, and to the freedom of universities to develop their partnerships, shared research projects, and student and staff exchanges. These limits are expressed both politically and economically (see, e.g., Orbán’s impact in Hungary or Brexit). 15 In the Czech Republic, the strongest voice was the Student Movement for Solidarity at Charles University in Prague that organised both practical help and put together afree access online Encyclopedia of Migration. See Student Solidarity Movement, https://studentizasolidaritu .ff.cuni.cz/. 16 For the abuse of Christian values rhetoric, see, for example, Vlastenecké noviny, /www .vlasteneckenoviny.cz/. In December 2017 the European Commission decided to take action against Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary for refusing to participate in the refugee relocation scheme, and referred these three countries to the European Court of Justice. See “Poland,” Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia /poland/report-poland/. Ihave dealt with this theme in more detail in Ivana Noble, “Contemporary Religiosity and the Absence of Solidarity with Those in Need, “Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13, no.2 (2019): 224-238. 17 See, for example, Gábor Halmai, “The End of Academic Freedom in Hungary,” Droit & Societé, October 21, 2019, https://ds.hypotheses.org/6368; Éva S. Balogh, “The Agony of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,” Hungarian Spectrum, February 6, 2019, https://hungarianspectrum .org/2019/02/06/the-agony-of-the-hungarian-academy-of-sciences/. 18 See Ludovic Highman, “Repositioning UK Partnerships Post-Brexit,” International Higher Education, no.95 (2018): 19-21. 40 Amassive use of “fake news,” manipulating public opinion and election results, emerged in Belarus in 2020, provoking unprecedented waves of protests throughout the country. Since his rise to power Alexander Lukashenko has used an ideology seemingly opposite to nationalism, which, however, had strong family resemblances to it. He argued that his country should place hope and invest energy into creating anew union of Slavic states associated with Russia. Since his early days as president, Lukashenko has used authoritarian practices, and sought to take control over other legal bodies and autonomous organisations such as universities. He worked towards enforcing areferendum on an agenda severely limiting Belorussian independence and making the country basically avassal to the Russian Federation.19 In the fight to keep his presidency after 2020 and the brutal suppression of the protesters and of the remains of the civic society, he used rhetoric that we are familiar with today when Putin defends his so-called “military operation” in Ukraine, that of denazification, and preserving the pure Slavic traditional values from the violent West.20 Two concurrent sets of circumstances– Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine– have had amajor impact on universities ad intra as well as ad extra. They have dominated the ways in which universities organize life for students and staff. The war in Ukraine has led them to create new places for refugees, caring for them, and helping them to be integrated and to cope with trauma and loss. Universities have also had to reflect on the situation, learn better how to communicate with the broader public, look at what innovative approaches can be introduced, and accept measures that have an impact beyond the universities themselves. Iwill address the impact of these crises in the next part. The overview presented here has aimed at offering abroader perspective on the struggle for discerning, supporting and living out hope that makes universities places where people teach and learn how to think critically and act responsibly, how to grasp reality properly and make seeking for illumination 19 The referendum took place in 1995, and included four points: (1) accepting Russian as astate language; (2) changing state symbols in order to include reference to the Great Patriotic War which Belorussians fought as part of the Soviet Union; (3) integrating the Belorussian economy with that of Russia; (4) granting the president the right to dissolve parliament if parliament stood in his way. At that time only the third point passed through the Chamber of Deputies. 20 See Kiryl Kascian, “Society in the authoritarian discourse: The case of the 2020 presidential election in Belarus,” Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics 7, no.4 (2021): 124–138. For more background, see Ronan Hervouet, ATaste for Oppression. APolitical Ethnography of Everyday Life in Belarus (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2021). 41 and loving the truth their habit. This section has pointed out how this aspiration of universities has been severely challenged in the recent past. Later, when examining relationships and differences between hope, utopia and ideology, we will also return to the question of what we can learn from these challenges in the new situations that arise today, when the autonomy and mission of universities is confronted with values opposite to those on which the universities are built. What Hope to Stand for when Confronted with Its Caricatures Recent controversies have demonstrated that hope in public discourse can be used as part of the argument for the elimination of any measures protecting the health of the more vulnerable members of the society,21 as it can be used for amilitary campaign drawing on the idea of the “Russian world” and amessianic understanding of nationhood.22 If universities are to be places of hope that contribute to aholistic personal formation and societal responsibility, the explicit and the implicit work with hope needs to undergo critical scrutiny. Newman’s emphasis on illumination and love for truth may be useful in this regard, as long as we are aware that such references are also used by those who hold visions of hope that members of democratic societies who value human freedom, solidarity and peace among nations would not want to share. As an 21 Here Ifocus on hope. The broader debate also includes the understanding of freedom and solidarity, and the manipulation of which facts are “allowed” in the so-called post-truth society. See, for example, Kevin M. Cahill, Perspectives in aPandemic (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020); Gerard Delanty, ed., Pandemics, Politics, and Society: Critical Perspectives on the Covid-19 Crisis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021); Fay Niker and Aveek Bhattacharya (eds.), Political Philosophy in aPandemic: Routes to aMore Just Future (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021); Dino Numerato, Lenka Vochocová, Václav Štětka, Alena Macková, “The Vaccination Debate in the ‘Post-Truth’ Era: Social Media as Sites of Multi-Layered Reflexivity,” Sociology of Health & Illness 41, no.1 (2019): 82-97. 22 Agood analysis of the current ideological terrain is in Thomas Bremer, “Ukrainian Nationhood, ‘Russkii Mir,’ and the Abuse of History,” Public Orthodoxy, March 22, 2022, https:// publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/22/ukrainian-nationhood-russkii-mir/; Jaroslav Skira, “Patriarch Kirill, the ‘Russian World’ Myth, and Genocide,” Public Orthodoxy, March 22, 2022, https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/15/patriarch-kirill-russian-world-genocide/. For earlier analyses, see, for example, Cyril Hovorun, “Interpreting of the ‘Russian World,’” in AndriiKrawchuk and ThomasBremer, Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis (Cham– London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 163–171. 48 ideas and visions of the hoped-for world are in operation, they are needed and they must leave some room for distance, for their relativisation, for allowing hope to come despite them and not only through them. Without that dimension utopian projects turn into closed ideological constructs. Ihave used the concept of ideology with anegative meaning several times. Even here it is necessary to be aware that it is not the only meaning. In social sciences ideology is perceived as the lens through which people view the world. It is seen neutrally, as asystem of assumptions, convictions and concepts that stands behind how human relations in society are organized, and how society works, or at least should work. It is recognised that ideology has ties to both the social structure, economic system, and political structure emerging from them and supporting them.45 It is made clear that ideology is not just something “nasty” that others have and we do not. If universities are to cultivate free critical thinking, such thinking must include an awareness of how ideologies draw on utopias and through utopias on hope, how the links are made, and where and why ideologies can lead to mortal danger or the death of utopias. They need to explain how and why particular ideologies have formed their agendas, and how and why they used utopian images of hope for the justification of their aims. In one of the classical definitions of ideology given by J. B. Thompson we read that ideologies are providers of “the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination.”46 Terry Eagleton highlights that the use of the expression “ideology” has several negative and positive, explicit and implicit meanings that might not necessarily be compatible with each other.47 While Eagleton repeatedly makes it clear that we all need narratives “providing the non-exhaustive matrix for our actions,”48 he points out some of the negative and distortive features of ideologies, how they operate as control systems over the process of production and exchange of goods as well as meanings, signs, and values 45 See Nicki Lisa Cole, “Theories of Ideology,” ThoughtCo, February 16, 2021, https://www .thoughtco.com/ideology-definition-3026356/. 46 J. B. Thompson, Study in the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), 4. 47 “The word ‘ideology,’ one might say, is atext, woven of awhole tissue of different conceptual strands; it is traced through by divergent histories, and it is probably more important to assess what is valuable or can be discarded in each of these lineages than to merge them forcibly into some grand global theory.” Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London and New York: Verso, 1994), 1. In the following text, Eagleton distinguishes between sixteen areas in which ideology can appear. 48 Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 111. 49 in social life, how they create and sustain ideas that help to legitimate adominant power, often at the expense of distorting communication. 49 Ideologies, according to Eagleton, have atendency to confuse linguistic and phenomenal reality: what is being said with what is the case. He is aware that such distortions are easier to identify in others than in myself/ourselves.50 But as no society and no group, not even auniversity, is ever free of such distortions, it is important to direct the critical analysis of the relations between what is being said and what emerges at the phenomenal level to all parts of discussions, even of conflicts. This does not exclude those times when asharp judgment and clear word are needed. Ido not want to defend here either relativism or alibism. Coming back to the examples used in this chapter, the requirement of acritical analysis should not serve as ajustification for downplaying the importance of health measures and social solidarity in times of apandemic or identifying who is an aggressor and who is invaded in times of war. Rather, it leads to arecognition of long present ideological clashes and possibly of hopes that have been exploited via the underpinning remains of utopias. That is something that can make an indispensable contribution when renewal of contacts and of relationships of trust can take place. Concluding Remarks The relationship between expertise and education experienced at our universities is multifaceted. It pleases me to see our universities criticize xenophobia, nationalism, enforced pan-Slavism, when they oppose war, as well as when students and staff work against the destruction of the environment. Unfortunately, however, counterexamples can also be found. The autocratic totalitarian practices returning to Russia, Belarus, and partly also to Hungary, as well as the separatist tendencies coming to the fore in Brexit, have an impact even on the wide-ranging expertise of universities, their international cooperation or good contacts with graduates. As the recent document of the Council ofthe Russian Union ofRectors supporting Putin’s war has shown, hope, like human maturity and societal responsibility, has been ridiculed by the universities 49 See Eagleton, Ideology, 1–2. 50 Ibid. 50 themselves. Living with risk and danger is difficult for individuals as well as institutions. Like the rest of the society students, teachers and academic representatives and bodies are prone to legitimize their lack of resilience, their inability to resist opposing claims and values to those on which universities are built by referring to what may be called an “ethic of control,” sometimes hidden in “an ethic of self-sacrifice.”51 But then, people skilled in critical thinking and capable of compassion should differentiate between the excuses, the covering up of what is going on, the participation in rhetoric divorced from reality, and the actual situation of human and institutional vulnerability in situations of persecution, violence, harm and trauma. Not only war and totalitarian autocracy, but also the Covid-19 pandemic have taught us that students and staff members could break under pressure, fall into depression, develop phobias, create isolation and believe all kinds of fake news. When universities work well with situations of vulnerability, they include such experiences both in their multidisciplinary critical analysis, and projects of care and of strengthening resilience. This also belongs to education towards human maturity and societal responsibility. Accepting that they work not only with human strength but also with human weakness is one of the ways universities can distance themselves from unhealthy elitism. By this Ido not mean resigning themselves to the fact that elites will be and should be formed by the universities, for these are not the type of elites that assume asuperiority complex or expect priority treatment compared to the rest of the society. Such attitudes are often commented upon in anti-intellectualist populist propaganda, often wrongly attributed to universities, but sometimes rightly. Moreover, universities need to work well with aparadox that while populist politicians and their anti-intellectual voters publicly criticize universities, they make sure in private that their children attend the best ones. In European societies we face not only elitism, but also adeeply rooted scepticism towards the elites. This is linked to their disrupted roots and the fact that the new “elites” are presented more like football stars or show business celebrities. Universities are, therefore, faced with some very important challenges involving communication of their values, 51 See Mikkel Gabriel Christoffersen, Living with Risk and Danger: Studies in Interdisciplinary Systematic Theology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), 42. He draws on Sharon Welch, AFeminist Ethics of Risk (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress, 2000). 51 views and findings to the general public, including that section of the public which has aparadoxical relationship to them. Knowing the weakness within university circles themselves and of the shadows accompanying universities throughout history up to present times should not make universities give up on the fundamental ideas of ageneral education, aholistic overview, interdisciplinary communication and cooperation across the disciplines encapsulated in the project of universities. Rather such knowledge, together with so many examples of good practise, should help their mission. Such amission is not reducible to the immediate “usefulness” of knowledge, even if this element also needs to be present. After all, even initiatives for helping refugees, challenging nationalism and attacks on anation’s sovereignty, challenging post-truth politics, creating Hate Free Zones, draw, at least partly, on such usefulness too. Free and critical thought, and holistic human formation, however, have awider-ranging scope. The hope for universities, Ithink, still lies in rediscovering the centuries-long tradition of struggles for and achievements of the “enlargement of mind, illumination, intellectual culture,” in which people and institutions are encouraged, accompanied and interconnected in reaching towards the truth and grasping it.52 52 See Newman, The Idea of aUniversity, Discourse VI, 1. What Do Universities Face in the 21st century? 54 Neoliberalism and the Quantification of American Higher Education Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley Recently, Istarted anew position after seven years at my previous institution. Nominally, Itraded one “R1” (research-intensive) institution for another– for example, Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley are both R1 institutions. In reality, Imoved from one entire educational paradigm to another. As my colleagues are fond of reminding me, Icame from aschool with adedicated college of education to one lacking that type of unit altogether. My current institution offers no “of arts” or even “of education” degrees, only “of science” degrees. As you might imagine, this designation reflects the institution’s priorities. This professional change has inspired me to reflect on, among other things, the purpose of education and the role of quantifiable truth in aneoliberal world. In this chapter, after briefly discussing American higher education systems and defining neoliberalism, Ishall write about the higher education funding crisis in America and offer thoughts about its neoliberal causes. Then, Iwill move to adiscussion of my individual experiences of neoliberalism at work in one functional area of higher education, Student Conduct, and how the philosophy impacts faculty. Iwill conclude with thoughts about what to change. An Overview of American Higher Education First, let me give abrief overview of American higher education systems. There are multiple institutional types and funding streams for those institutions, including for-profit and not-for-profit educational institutions. There are institutions with different purposes, such as technical 55 and vocational colleges and four-year institutions that grant bachelor’s degrees; see Figure 1 for an illustration. The federal government counted 3,982 public and private institutions in 2019-2020.1 Briefly, American public institutions get more of their funding from federal and state governments than private institutions.2 Stefan Collini reminds us, however, that “we should…not let the familiar distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ money pass unchallenged, especially given the extent to which so-called ‘private finance’ is in practice also sustained by ‘public’ infrastructure and subsidy.”3 The American higher education system is characterized by its seeming porousness.4 Theoretically, astudent could enter the system at any point in the hierarchy of institutional quality and then graduate from ahigh-prestige institution with an undergraduate or graduate credential. Actually, that recently happened with acolleague of mine, who received an alternative education diploma from secondary education and graduated with aPh.D. from ahigh-prestige institution. What determines institutional quality is wrapped up in neoliberal aims. While the reality is quite abit more complicated and more in favour of the rich getting richer and/or preserving their wealth and social status, the expansion of higher education systems 1 Josh Moody, “AGuide to the Changing Number of U.S. Universities,” U.S. News and World Report, last modified April 27, 2021, https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles /how-many-universities-are-in-the-us-and-why-that-number-is-changing/. 2 Nathan E. Lassila, “Effects of Tuition Price, Grant Aid, and Institutional Revenue on Low-Income Student Enrollment,” Journal of Student Financial Aid 41, no.3 (2011): 33, https://ir.library .louisville.edu/jsfa/vol41/iss3/2/. 3 Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 90. 4 David B. Monaghan and Paul Attewell, “The Community College Route to the Bachelor’s Degree,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 37, no.1 (2015): 70–73, https:// doi.org/10.3102/0162373714521865/. Private Public For-Profit Not-forProfit Community Colleges ResearchIntensive/R1s High ResearchActivity/R2s Teaching Institutions Granting Associate’s degrees (2-years) Granting Bachelor’s degrees (4-years) 56 in America from elite ones– the province of the wealthy few– to mass or even universal ones in which anyone could enter at any point and receive atheoretical boost to their lifetime monetary earnings as aresult of their degree is one of the hallmarks of the system.5 It is certainly controversial to discern what the purpose of American higher education actually is,6 but economic benefit to the individual is indeed apurpose of higher education, perhaps amplified by the common statistic that those with bachelor’s (4-year) degrees earn amillion dollars more on average over their lifetimes compared to those without.7 In my read, the purpose of higher education in America is wrapped up in neoliberalism. Neoliberalism and American Higher Education As we are likely all aware, neoliberalism is acommonly-used and often imprecisely-defined term in academia and the broader world.8 My favorite definition comes from Wendy Brown: “the rationality through which capitalism finally swallows humanity.”9 Broadly, Iview neoliberalism as aseries of policy priorities, institutional structures, and overall discourse in aFoucauldian sense10 that has far-reaching implications for all governmental and other operations. As Ihave written elsewhere, neoliberalism is “the dominant philosophical orientation that deploys the logic of the free market and requires individuals and other entities to be maximally productive and self-sufficient in order to justify their existence in an economic system built upon precarity.”11 As Iwill discuss later, the discourse of neoliberalism has wormed its way into other areas of 5 Collini, What Are Universities For?, 41; Martin Trow, “Reflections on the Transition from Mass to Universal Higher Education,” Daedalus 99, no.1 (Winter, 1970): 3–7. 6 Eliza Epstein and Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, “(D)riven by Neoliberalism: Exploring Alternative Purposes for Higher Education,” Texas Education Review 8, no.2 (2020): 6, 13, http:// dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/9206/. 7 Michael Hout, “Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 38, (2012): 387. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102503/. 8 Epstein and McKinnon-Crowley, “(D)riven by Neoliberalism,” 8. 9 Wendy Brown, “Undoing Democracy: Neoliberalism’s Remaking of State and Subject,” in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2015), 8. 10 Michel Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, trans. and ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 196–198, 203; Aaron Voyles, Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, and Beth Bukoski, “Absolution and Participation in Privilege: The False Fronts of Men Student Affairs Professionals,” Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education 1, no.2 (2019): 97–99, https://doi.org/10.3726 /ptihe.2019.02.05/. 11 Epstein and McKinnon-Crowley, “(D)riven by Neoliberalism,” 8. 57 contemporary life. The neoliberal discourse ensures that any governmental or public funds be deployed in justifiable ways. The justifiable ways must be numerical to have meaning and to be comprehensible to the decision-makers and stakeholders guiding decisions, even though “not everything that counts can be counted,” in Collini’s words.12 Progress is meaningless without numbers. In the United States– and in the United Kingdom13– neoliberalism had its initial heyday in the Thatcher/Reagan era of the 1980s, though it is certainly arguable to see its roots in earlier policy developments. Friedrich Hayek set the philosophical groundwork for neoliberalism.14 He was an economist from the early twentieth century and argued that the market should be the sole regulator of private business dealings.15 The government had no place there, in Hayek’s view. The hugely influential if not particularly famous George Mason University American economist, James M. Buchanan, was responsible for the application of Hayek’s notions in the private sector to the public sector.16 Moving back to the present day, Iwill briefly outline how neoliberalism manifests in American higher education. Prior to World War II, Americans thought that higher education was aprivate good, aconcept that changed during the war.17 As the historian of education David F. Labaree argued, during World War II and the subsequent Space Race, the United States federal government concluded that the best way to gain an advantage in the rush to get to outer space first was to pour funding into colleges and universities.18 The increased funding and government support for research conducted in higher education (particularly public institutions) framed the attainment of acollege degree as both acivic duty and acivic boon.19 The benefits of higher education are borne out by 12 Collini¸ What Are Universities For?, 120. 13 James Esson and Hubert Ertl, “No Point Worrying? Potential Undergraduates, Study-Related Debt, and the Financial Allure of Higher Education,” Studies in Higher Education 41, no.7 (2016): 1266–1268, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.968542/. 14 Mark Olssen and Michael A. Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education, and the Knowledge Economy: From the Free Market to Knowledge Capitalism,” Journal of Education Policy 20, no.3 (2005): 316–319, https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930500108718/. 15 Olssen and Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education, and the Knowledge Economy,” 317. 16 Ibid., 317–319. 17 David F. Labaree “An Affair to Remember: America’s Brief Fling with the University as aPublic Good,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 50, no.1 (2016): 26, https://doi .org/10.1111/1467-9752.12170/. 18 Labaree, “An Affair to Remember,” 29, 33. 19 Ibid., 26–30. 64 the grade that meant they had achieved success. Sometimes the desire for high grades was tied up in wanting to go to graduate-level medical school to be awealthy medical doctor, or graduate-level law school to be an affluent lawyer, or get amaster’s or Ph.D. in engineering to get awell-paying job, or get agood internship that would set them up for career success. Good grades were the only ticket to awell-paying profession and economic security rather than precarity.46 Students were willing to take any measures necessary to get that grade. One semester, there was an adjunct– contingent, non-tenured or tenure-line faculty member– who taught arequired introductory Chemistry laboratory course. The course on the whole likely had hundreds if not athousand or more students, since it was required for nearly all students getting science bachelor’s degrees or pursuing admission to medical school. This faculty member decided that she would use plagiarism detection software in all of the lab reports students wrote for her classes. She then sent any that shared at least 20% of content to any other lab report to our Conduct office for referral, investigation, and adjudication. Ipersonally reviewed 50 lab reports from her class alone in one academic year, and that is aconservative estimate. Most, as Irecall, had at least some evidence of plagiarism, meaning that they shared an improbable amount of text with another student’s lab report or alab report widely available on the Internet. Plagiarism Acommon misconception about plagiarism is that it is done out of some deliberate desire to be malfeasant on the student’s part. In this view, the student deliberately sets out to cheat, to shortcut their learning, and to take advantage of trusting teaching staff. They do not want to learn– they just want agood grade. It has been my experience that the desire for agood grade motivates student cheating. Irarely met students who deliberately set out to cheat. Again, the increasing costs of higher education and the state funding crisis falls on individual students and their families. College is very expensive! Faced with insufficient time due to, for example, working ajob outside of school or family responsibilities 46 Julia A. Wilson and Emily Chivers Yochim, Mothering through Precarity: Women’s Work and Digital Media (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 20–21. 65 or taking too many courses at once in order to save money by graduating quickly, students get desperate and gamble. They bet that they will not get caught in working too closely together or borrowing language from someone else’s paper or are utterly unaware of individual course guidelines on academic integrity or Conduct policies despite the institution’s best efforts to inform. In the service of short-term goals like getting agood grade in the course, students make what Iwould call medium-term decisions rather than long-term decisions. Academic misconduct could lead to suspension, or temporary student removal from the institution. You cannot graduate and get your credential if you are suspended. The price for academic misconduct could be both dire and diametrically opposed to the student’s best interest, but students commit academic misconduct anyway. To students, grades matter immensely. Grades are the only valid measure of academic achievement, the quantifiable return on investment in higher education. Why? Neoliberalism. Grades are the only visible and legitimate metric of learning that has meaning because they can be understood quantifiably. Agrade can be converted into anumerical measure of student learning and therefore student quality in the form of aGrade Point Average. As aresult, students are forced into difficult decisions about how to spend their very scarce time in the service of financial security or, really, non-precarity in aneoliberal climate.47 Alternately, students are stretched too thin in aneoliberal society in which every minute must be optimized into peak efficiency in order to be aproductive subject.48 In aconstantly-busy, constantly “hustling” world, to use the vernacular, there is no time for careful consideration of outcomes, of pros and cons lists, of well-reasoned arguments for and against. There are only deadlines. Inflexible, rigid, deadlines. Ialways told students that they should ask their faculty for more time if they found themselves up against atight deadline, because faculty would likely rather extend grace than deal with acomplex, time-consuming conduct case as aresult of student behaviour. But, faculty themselves are pressured into being subject to neoliberalism. In aneoliberal policy climate in which all their work must be quantified and quantifiable in order to have value and prove their worth within the system, they too are not incentivized to spend time considering student misconduct. It is always easier to do nothing. Given the 47 Epstein and McKinnon-Crowley, “(D)riven by Neoliberalism,” 8, 10; Wilson and Chivers Yochim, Mothering through Precarity, 58–61. 48 Wilson and Chivers Yochim, “Mothering through Precarity,” 86–89. 66 hassle of mustering evidence and reporting something to Conduct, and perhaps going through atrial-like, time-consuming process with an uncertain outcome, many faculty opted to do nothing. Iheard stories from faculty and graduate student teachers, though, who preferred to handle plagiarism or other academic integrity cases themselves. They kept aprivate file for student misconduct, away from the prying eyes of the administration. While frowned upon officially since students could then, in theory, cheat with abandon in multiple different classes over time with no consequences, in practice it was simply easier for professors to implement their own small-scale conduct system, maybe giving students the opportunity to re-do certain plagiarized assignments rather than giving them an official referral and afile with Conduct. Perhaps the faculty wanted to remove their students from administrative surveillance. Actually, there was aprocess in place somewhere between these options called Faculty Dispositions, which did create afile with Conduct but kept the case between the faculty and the student. Some faculty used these, but they were not common. The problem was, however, that preserving academic integrity took alot of faculty time. The number of students referred for potential disciplinary action is not an administration-friendly, accreditation-usable metric. Icould be wrong, but Idoubt that number is shared on most promotion portfolios, especially since high numbers of referrals could be read as faculty encouraging plagiarism-friendly assignments or creating aclimate of cheating in their class. Few faculty or staff participated as hearing officers (basically judges) in Conduct hearings, either, as service is of course seen as less valuable than research and teaching. The Quantification of Education That, too, is aproblem with neoliberalism. Only work that can be quantified is valued for promotion, tenure, job security from semester to semester and year to year, et cetera.49 Iam not sure exactly how teaching evaluations are handled at readers’ institutions, so Iwill speak on the United States context. While anyone who has the stomach to read their 49 Though it is beyond the scope of this chapter, the world-wide fascination with the numerical rankings of higher education institutions can also be read as aproduct of the numerical justification for use of public funds dictated by neoliberalism. See also Collini, Speaking of Universities, 52–58. 67 teaching evaluations can tell you that any actually helpful material for improvement lives in the qualitative, written feedback, those comments are less valued than numerical scores. They are both less reportable and more likely to contain personal attacks or critiques. Iam also bracketing the bias against women, 50 people of colour,51 and non-native English speakers52 in the U.S. evaluations. Anecdotally, Irecently read student evaluations that said adecorated woman scientist recruited to the institution was unfamiliar with her area of expertise and therefore unequipped to teach their class. The student was upset that they had paid money for this perceived subpar educational experience. Numerical teaching scores can provide documentable evidence of improvement over time in away that sentences cannot. Relatedly, perfect numeric scores leave no opportunity for growth, only the potential to fall.53 The numbers keep sole possession of their own explanatory power. Quality of instruction is reduced to scores and the number of students taught, making the efficient instructor the one who can most easily share their work with the greatest number of students. Quoting from an article in which faculty reflect on teaching: [Interacting with students] truly is the way that Ilearned how to teach because Iget this feedback that, you know as aresearcher, this kind of qualitative feedback is really different than just getting some numbers on amultiple choice, right, because you have no idea how they’re really thinking. So, it’s all of these moments in time over all the years that help me decide things that my colleagues could never know about our students if they don’t do this.54 Improving teaching takes more than viewing quantitative scores. 50 Kristina M. W. Mitchell and Jonathan Martin, “Gender Bias in Student Evaluations,” PS: Political Science & Politics 51, no.3 (2018): 652, https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909651800001X/. 51 Michael A. McPherson and R. Todd Jewell, “Leveling the Playing Field: Should Student Evaluation Scores Be Adjusted?” Social Science Quarterly 88, no.3 (2007): 875, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2007.00487.x/. 52 Daniel S. Hamermesh and Amy Parker, “Beauty in the Classroom: Instructors’ Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity,” Economics of Education Review 24, no.4 (2005): 373, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2004.07.013/. 53 Collini, Speaking of Universities, 48. 54 Tessa C. Andrews, Anna Jo J. Auerbach, and Emily F. Grant, “Exploring the Relationship between Teacher Knowledge and Active-Learning Implementation in Large College Biology Courses,” CBE Life Sciences Education 18, no.4 (2019): 12, https://doi.org/10.1187 /cbe.19-01-0010/. 68 Outside of teaching, the only other products legible to the institution as evidence of worth within aneoliberal system are those that can be quantified.55 These include number of articles submitted and in which journals of which type. Journal quality is measured by its selectivity, the number of submissions it receives versus the number rejected. Exclusivity becomes acipher for worth. Student mentorship can only be reduced to publishing pieces with them or chairing thesis or dissertation committees. Number of shoulders provided to cry on is not CV-friendly. Giving detailed feedback for students is not an efficient use of time. All of these pressures were, of course, amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic when folks scrambled to move formerly in-person activities to an online modality. Conclusion In this chapter, Ihave discussed neoliberalism, the American higher education system, the funding crisis facing it, and reflected on how neoliberalism impacts individuals within this system, focusing on my work in Student Conduct and how neoliberalism harms faculty more broadly. So, what next? What to do in this dire situation where human expression and quality of teaching, research, living, et cetera is shrunk down to anumber? American higher education could of course be free or offered at nominal costs to students and their families, which would really just shift the funding problem onto federal and state governments, bypassing the individual. Idoubt this will happen. In the meantime, to reflect on what comes next, Ioffer some questions aimed at institutions. First, Iwonder: Why do things always have to be better and working toward improvement? Isuspect this, too, is due to neoliberal capitalism. Asystem of pure, unbridled, unobstructed growth requires change to thrive, heedless of consequence on people and the environment. What if institutions strove toward achieving contentment rather than competition?56 That seems like aradical proposition, but perhaps one worth exploring. 55 Stefan Collini makes aslightly different– though equally critical– argument about the reliance of metrics for scholarly success and productivity and uses the term “bibliometry,” placing the blame for this movement on the need for academics to justify their expenditures of public funds rather than on neoliberalism. Collini, What Are Universities For?, 124–128. See also Collini, Speaking of Universities, 25–30. 56 Collini, What Are Universities For?, 17. 69 Given that large-scale change is unlikely– though we can hope– Iwill attempt to offer some individual-level solutions to structural problems. Ido think that is the core of the neoliberal ethos, however: structural problems are presented as individual ones. This is still an inescapable discourse. Ithink this contributes to “hustle culture” in which all time is optimized and in which multiple business and self-improvement ventures must be operating at peak capacity to stave off precarity.57 As individuals: value rest. It is OK to take breaks. It is OK not to strive all of the time and work tirelessly toward self-improvement and self-optimization. As academics, life is more than publishing and teaching scores. Speaking directly to those engaged in the academic enterprise: realize you are more than your work. You are more than your accomplishments that can be quantified and made legible to institutional eyes. The work you do to help people, the intangible moments, the mental click when you learn something new or read something that opens your eyes (or share that with your students)58: those are valuable and the essence of the scholarly enterprise. You and your work, no matter how it manifests on paper or in numbers, matter. 57 Wilson and Chivers Yochim, Mothering through Precarity, 68–72. 58 Collini, What Are Universities For?, 81. 70 Whither the Situationist University after Late Capitalism? Jones Irwin If the May ‘68 events in France are most often associated with the Situationist movement and with the specific figure of Guy Debord, the role which particular universities, as well as students and lecturers, played in this series of revolutionary events is often underestimated. At the University of Nanterre, where the revolt got started on the outskirts of Paris, some later to be well-known philosophers and sociologists were involved in the intellectual and activist ferment. While the roles which perpetual enfant terrible Henri Lefebvre and later seminal postmodernist Jean Baudrillard (Lefebvre’s student of the time) played are quite well-known, it is less known that Jean-Francois Lyotard played akey role in developing atheoretical literature around the revolutionary and underground processes that led to May 1968. Given Lyotard’s later international significance as aleading philosopher, this is asignificant oversight. Moreover, the short texts which Lyotard developed at the time are also important as they very much foreground the question of the politics of the university, oftentimes in overt discussion with the Situationist texts of Debord and others. In this, the particular texts of this moment provide akey historical document for an understanding of the role of university in later twentieth century political life. In this, Iwill argue, they also have something significant to tell us about the politics of the university in 21st Century contemporary life. In this paper, we will explore how Lyotard’s conception of the university and its relation to the Situationist movement might be understood in acontemporary context of (very) late capitalism. Given the ultimate failure of the May ‘68 project, and the subsequent advent of the “Neoliberal University,” we can ask– whither the Situationist university in the 71 context of late capitalism? Some specific reference in this paper will also be made to the Critical Pedagogy of the Brazilian educationalist, Paulo Freire, whose Pedagogy of the Oppressed text was published in 1968 and which references the events of the time in its first pages.1 Lyotard on May 1968 – Before, During and After Here, Iwould like to concentrate on several short but seminal texts which Lyotard wrote in the 1960’s and early 1970’s which are notable for their explicit educational and pedagogical import but also for their key linking of education to wider political processes. Lyotard is unambiguously advocating what we might term a“re-politicising of education” and the concept and institution of the university is at the heart of this advocation. Lyotard’s earliest text within the selection, written in 1962 (the aforementioned “Dead Letter”)2 develops from its focus on the Sorbonne awider critical discourse on education and its relation to the public sphere. As stated above, with reference to the Sorbonne as an institution but also more generally, Lyotard speaks of the “failure of university discourse to embrace the desire for meaning,” the questions “what meaning is there in existing?” or “what do we live for?” remaining unanswered. Lyotard seeks to distance an authentic conception of what he terms “culture” from the kind of reductionism which he depicts as everywhere destroying the basis of true, living cultural life. For Lyotard, the principle which he describes as ruling society is one where “the aim of all activity is to reach optimal equilibrium between cost and benefit.”3 The “human sciences,” that is the application of ascientistic paradigm to the humanities, merely brings “new refinement” to the application of this rule, which Lyotard refers to as asystem of “unculture” or anti-culture.4 He is similarly scathing of the institutions of political life in France and even of the institution or practice of “literature.” In contrast, he calls for aresurgence of authentic “cultural desire”: “cultural desire is the desire to put an end to the exile of meaning as external to activities. 1 See Jones Irwin, Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Education: Origins, Developments, Impacts and Legacies, Bloomsbury Collections (New York: Continuum, 2012). 2 See Jean-François Lyotard, Political Writings, trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman (London: UCL Press, 1993). 3 Ibid., 38. 4 Ibid., 38. 72 It is at the same time the desire to put an end to the exile of activities as estranged from their sense. Its instrument cannot be the university, which dwells in this very exile, and is the product of it.”5 While the university is and must remain insensitive to this desire (as the problem here would seem to be apriori in terms of the university’s very raison d”être for Lyotard), he ends the essay with aremarkably prescient sense that this desire remains alive in the wider society, however stultified: “now we must look for the acts in which this desire is already silently present; we must hear in these acts the call of asense, acall that has no truck with the operational world but that is nevertheless utterly contemporary; we must make the call ring out, at the cost of transgressing (destroying) the apparatuses that stifle it [here, the university no doubt]; we must find the ways to make it ring out, the opportunities and the means. That is what it means to take culture literally.”6 This is certainly an ambitious call and ascathing critique of the contemporary culture and system of education. It also has aresonance for today when we might argue that, in 2022, many similar aspects of the 1968 system have re-emerged with education often considered more of amarket commodity than acultural or philosophical domain. This first Lyotard text is written in 1962. In 1964, the University of Paris at Nanterre is established, in the working-class suburbs, attracting anew generation of thinkers, far removed from the more ivory tower leftist theorising of Althusser and his students (Derrida, Rancière, Badiou, Balibar) in the Ecole Normale Supériere. While the master discipline of abstract philosophy remained dominant at the ENS, in Nanterre the relatively new discipline of sociology started to attract iconoclastic French outsider intellectuals to teach, most notably, the neo-Marxist Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre was to be akey figure in the build up to ‘68, an extraordinary thinker and activist, aprovocative agent whose works were ingested by the Situationists and spat back out in the slogans of the era; Guy Debord and Lefebvre were for a(crucial) phase, collaborators (although as was always the case with Debord, there was to be amajor falling out and subsequent, vehement disavowal).7 Lyotard, in his place as aphilosophy lecturer in Nanterre, was thus faced with avery different situation from his fellow philosophers at the ENS: the area of Nanterre 5 Ibid., 39. 6 Ibid., 40. 7 Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, trans. Malcolm Imrie (London: Verso, 1990). 73 was itself volatile and the student constituency less traditionalist. It is not inaccurate to say that in terms of the rallying cry which completed the “Dead Letter” text, that Nanterre was aplace where the kind of “cultural desire” which Lyotard describes was indeed taken more “literally,” in the raw. It is precisely in this specific context then that we can best understand the other three texts from the period, all written with explicit mention of Nanterre as amicrocosmic context but with awider eye to the macrocosmic dimensions of socio-cultural and political upheaval in the France of the time. “Preamble to aCharter,” written in 1968, “Nanterre, Here, Now,” written in 1970, display atransition from amore optimistic or even utopian perspective on ‘68 and its implications for political and social processes, to amore realistic (or some might say pessimistic) tone.8 My analysis of the texts is completed by the piece “March 23,” written in and around 1971/72, which looks at Lyotard’s involvement in the March 22 political movement begun in Nanterre in 1968. Already in the beginning of the “Preamble to aCharter” essay, adifferent interpretation of the possibilities of the university is apparent; “our task will have to be that of displacing [détourner] the entire institution of the university as fully as possible from the functions to which it is restricted by both the ruling class and its own deeply internalised repressions, in order to turn it into aplace for working out the means of the critical understanding and expression of reality.”9 Two things are noticeable here; the concept of détourner or displacement is an explicit borrowing from the work of the Situationist leader, Guy Debord, and his text The Society of the Spectacle. This indicates Lyotard’s cultural and political affiliation to the wider May ‘68 movement. But the semantics of the term also indicate aprofound shift from 1962– whereas then the university was seen as intrinsically complicit beyond redemption in the politics of capitalism, now the university has the capacity to turn, to become displaced, into avery different kind of place or space; an emancipatory place “where [a] critical understanding and expression of reality might be authentically forged.”10 However, Lyotard also warns against utopianism or political naiveté here; “the university of course will not be revolutionary; whatever we may be able to do here can and will be recuperated by the powers that 8 All in Lyotard, Political Writings. 9 Ibid., 41. 10 Ibid., 41. 80 which we saw outlined earlier in the critique of paternalism (“stop telling us we are oppressed”). This is aclear thematic in the ‘68 movements which both Debord and Freire anticipated and influenced. For example, in the famous poster “Participation, all the better to eat you with my children.”38 The dangers are clear here of apseudo-revolution, are-commodification of the potential of the revolution in false dawns and overly-hierarchical leadership, failing to see the self-emancipatory potential of the student or of the individual agent. We see asimilar theme emerge in Debord’s later work.39 In his earlier texts, Debord had spoken of avery real potential for the realisation of revolution. He speaks to the revolutionary project of aclassless society which implies the withering away of the social measurement of time in favour of a“federation of independent times” (Thesis 163) and the “temporal realisation of authentic communism.” But in the later work, the tonality has become somewhat more pessimistic and even satirical. “It is certainly not the spectacle’s destiny to end up as enlightened despotism.”40 At times in this later text, there is anear-sense that Debord has started to become fatalistic about the spectacularity of the Spectacle– “This form of barbaric grandeur.”41 Here, we might see adistinction between Freire and the later Debord which carries significance. However self-critical and undermining of naïve liberatory education Freire’s work becomes, under the complex conditions of late capitalism, his work never becomes attracted by fatalism. If there is adanger that “participation” may only eat us up, there is still always and ever the real possibility of action which can transform our world, whether in education or in politics or both. “In action, we have the source of our beauty.”42 Fatalism only leads to Freire’s much repeated warning that “the oppressed becomes the oppressor.”43 At times, the later Debord’s work succumbs to such revolutionary pessimism under the conditions of late capitalism. Freire maintains the tension which instead keeps the possibility of revolution alive. It is thus Freire who maintains the possibilities of what we have termed “nondogmatic Marxism” even under the most difficult contemporary conditions. 38 Kugelberg and Vermès, La Beauté Est Dans La Rue, 102. 39 Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. 40 Ibid., 62. 41 Ibid., 100. 42 Kugelberg and Vermès, La Beauté Est Dans La Rue, 103. 43 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 32. 81 Nonetheless, the Situationist texts of Debord in the early to late 1960s (culminating in the Society of the Spectacle) point towards the maintenance of this enigmatic Leftist (anti-capitalist) critique of ideology, even while they fail to provide the inspiration to maintain this vision throughout the chronology of his own work. In this, we might see Freire’s later work as the true inheritor of the early Situationist legacy to the Left-wing tradition of politics and pedagogy and thus as the true inheritor of the May ‘68 counter-culture. In this inheritance, we can also perhaps see the contours of anew architecture of the university (ethical and aesthetic) emerge, giving us the complex materials for anew intellectual and political task into the near-future. 82 The University and the New Problem(s) of Counsel* Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho Attending to how academic and scientific advice is integrated with decision-making and part of the forming of public opinion, in the present article, I delineate the terms of the reconfiguration of the problem of counsel. 1)I will briefly start by sketching the original configuration of the early modern problem of counsel, considering how it accompanies the differentiation of the modern university. We will see how melancholy, as a complex of impotence or inhibition, is intrinsically related to the scholar’s counsel. Then, 2)departing from Niklas Luhmann’s remarks on the formation of the university’s medium and forms, I address the ambivalences surrounding the forms of scientific advice and counsel, namely the recurring complex of inhibition affecting scholars. 3)From there, considering the function of academic prestige, I delineate the evolution of the positioning of academic organizations and scholars in delivering counsel and scientific advice. 4)Finally, I outline the contemporary conditions for soliciting and providing scientific advice on public matters, highlighting the COVID-19 crisis. I will conclude by focusing on the imposition of automatized forms of advice and their risks to the social ecology. * This work is part of my research project devoted to “Melancholy and the constitution of the therapeutic medium in modern society,” developed at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Porto, and integrated in the RG Aesthetics, Politics & Knowledge. It has been possible with the support of a fellowship provided by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). 83 Early Modern Formulation of the Problem of Counsel Classical philosophy praised good counsel as the product of acharitable deliberation oriented by the common good of the whole.1 Counsel relates to practical reasoning in contingent situations, which, even remaining in the domain of opinion, is acquired by experience, particularly in the government of the household or the state. As such, the art of counsel provides no certain solution to aproblem but may assist the seeker of counsel in achieving abetter assessment or outlook of aproblem, thus favoring abetter decision or the improvement of one’s conduct.2 Therefore, it contrasts with an imperative logic and cannot be conformed to the “genus deliberatium” of rhetoric. According to this view, which remains valid, by definition, there can be no stereotyped solution to the problems assessed by counsel. Latent was the contrast, later established by Montesquieu, between the register of consilia, as the process of prudent deliberation that proceeds by the assessment of conditions of uncertainty, and praecepta, consisting in the various ways of actualizing general commands from religious dogma or legal institutes. Appearing in Hellenist culture, the first formulations of the problem of counsel entailed adouble question: who can advise the prince and how can that preceptor displayparrhesia,i.e., speak frankly?3 As the background to these, athird question should be added: how to guarantee effective listening to counsel? The institution of counsel was an object of intense legal regulation in the transition to modern society. The provider of counsel had to conquer the space to operate in freedom, exerting his observations unconstrained by the prospect of the whims of the ruler. The problem of counsel arises in the context of advice of the ruling class, referring to the spectrum of harsh punishment for bad counsel, as aconsequence of the views and counsels which were not accepted by the ruler and those which were followed but had nefarious consequences. The counselors tended to underline (and in some sense explore) the gap between acounsel and 1 In the Nicomachean Ethics (6.5, 1140a:23–1140b:29), Aristotle distinguishes such form of deliberation from science, based on invariable principles, and art/technē, that concerns an activity guided by external ends. 2 As part of the Hellenistic model of subjectivation, Galen’s On the Passions and Errors of the Soul is alocus classicus of the duties of seeker and provider of counsel. 3 Michel Foucault provided agood summary of the importance of frankness in Greco-Roman culture, cf. The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the College de France 1981-1982, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2006), 396–339. 84 the imponderables of its application, i.e., the interpretation and implementation of the counsel in practice. Machiavelli (Prince, chaps. 22–23) considered the conditions of the Prince’s resort to counselors and how their license to speak frankly, without fear of immediate or future punishment, might be in his best interest. Acentury later, in his “Of Counsel” (1625), Bacon proposed that the resort to the counsel of well-established experts on specific matters leaves the position of the ruler unblemished. It contrasts both with the resort to counseling on general matters or those that, due to his own formation or experience the ruler is expected to dominate. Resorting to counsel on those matters would imply the ruler’s demise from his own prerogatives. On the other hand, resort to counselors without a well-established reputation and recognized independence of the domain where they must deliberate would raise suspicion that the ruler has fallen prey to flattery or vested interests. Therefore, the problem of counsel was not limited to the discursive conditions of the provider of counsel, decisive to conquer aspace of free deliberation. It extends to the formalization of the occasions where counsel is required, which may reinforce or undermine political authority. The problem of counsel constitutes the background of the composition of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516). Its first book may be read as away to suggest the tension between More’s servile use of his capacities and knowledge at the service of Henry VIII, and the observations issued by Raphael Hythloday, alearned outsider who displays adisinhibited speech unwilling to serve the interests of power. More’s articulation of acounsel exempted from the varnish of court’s deference and the latent menace of the monarch’s reception of its perspectives is only possible through the adoption of that fictivealter egowhich conveys the vision of an ordered society where, ultimately, the problem of counsel would be dissolved by the integration of morally and epistemically virtuous scholars. J. H. Hexter presented the initial formulation of the “problem of counsel,” highlighting how More’s formulation diverges from the humanist tendency to center its focus on personal character as its sole cause,4 as it occurs in Erasmus’ Complaint of Peace (1517). Instead, Utopia attends to the structural and systematic conditions exerting resistance to scholar’s counsel, both echoing and revising the psychagogic conception that underlie the specula principum tradition.5 4 See J. H. Hexter, More’s Utopia: The Biography of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), 103–115. 5 Ibid., 110–111. 85 In order to maintain his integrity, Hythloday refuses both the submission to akind of deflationary form of counsel that tries to influence the king, princes, or clergy members instead of deliberating according to his own principles and convictions,6 and the possibility of entering himself in politics.7 He is therefore committed to deliberating and presenting his advice unblemished by the systemic pressures of corruption and flattery. Political power had military or hereditary grounding, and while lacking in formal education, rulers were accustomed to obsequious flattery from an early age, and while lacking in formal education, rulers were accustomed to obsequious flattery from an early age, developing aform of practical intelligence that used those same resources to influence their superiors, enabling the access or maintenance of privileges. Matters of principle or the population’s welfare were rarely accounted as crucial in deliberation. More is keenly aware of the improbability of rulers accepting and receiving good advice. Under such conditions, the effective granting and receiving of counsel would be greatly hindered, if not impossible.8 The problem of counsel is directly related to the differentiation of modern university, initially implying the application of akind of reasoning grounded on aconcept of universal truth, alternative to religious and parochial forms of knowledge and praecepta. In his exposition of the “miseries of the scholars,”9 Robert Burton exhibits the complex evolution of the “problem of counsel,” atransition 6 According to which, “you must strive and struggle as best you can to handle everything tactfully– and thus what you cannot turn to good, you may at least make as little bad as possible.” Thomas More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan, trans. Robert M. Adams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 37. This will be the position adopted in Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano(IV:7–10) published in 1528. Instead of convincing the ruler by reasoning and arguments, he commends the counselor to influence him through his charms. 7 In accordance to Plato (Rep. 496c-e), who, following his turbulent relation with the tyrants of Syracuse, allowed that possibility in the ideal city governed by philosophers (Rep. 517b–520d). 8 It, of course, becomes possible in anew kind of social organization such as the republic of utopia, whose officials were scholars “who from childhood have given evidence of excellent character, unusual intelligence and devotion to learning.” More, Utopia, 67. 9 Inserted on the section “Love of learning, study in excess, with adigression, of the misery of scholars, and why the Muses are melancholy” of the Anatomy of Melancholy (I.2.3.15), after abrief presentation of the classical topos of literati melancholy, the digression advances for an overwhelming diagnosis of the institutional causes of scholars’ conditions of precariousness and servitude. Parallel to the scarce security offered by patronage, the transformation of the university is at the center of his analysis. In afew decades, under new statutes imposed by royal power, the university abandons amodus vivendi whose principles were similar to those of the monastic organizations, adapting itself to receive and fulfill the demands of an overwhelming number of students, mostly members Gentry and English aristocracy, in search of acertification that would allow them access careers at court. This will result in adrastic easing of the 86 from the risk of counsel to the anxiety of counsel, that is to say, an anxiety of influence.10 In the name of the improvement of the ruling, which gradually became captive to legal and military experts of integrating the “Privy Council,” Burton is no longer reluctant to provide his knowledge in the service of power, fearful of its probable distortion. On the contrary, he resents the exclusion from the pedagogic instruction and Counseling of the prince, which he idealizes as apast institution. Since the later Middle Ages, counsel has been afundamental institution of government, assisting decision-making. As aconsulting service, in early modern Europe, it was afrequent way to sidestep council or parliamentary procedures of validation of adecision. Instrumental use of counsel has been common throughout history, sometimes conditioning or directing it to reject adversarial solutions while validating concomitant ones. In this case, since by definition the solutions sought for in counsel are never stereotyped or pregiven (as in the case of subjunctive application of praecepta to acurrent issue),11 involving the exposition of perspectives according to one’s values and goals, the receiver of counsel may attempt to bend the assessment or deliberation of the counselor to favor his interests.12 Another form of instrumentalization, inherited from the classical problem of counsel, is its use in order to postpone or delay decisions, for instance waiting that the issue at hand dissolves itself or is no longer under public scrutiny. These tendencies to corrupt or instrumentalize counsel in matters of public interest reveal the space and time that individual counselors and academic institutions had to secure to provide free and independent assessment and recommendations. In modern society, counsel and advice have become pervasive in almost all domains of personal and organizational functioning. They requirements for the cultivation of humanist values. “Universities can give degrees. . . but he nor they, nor all the world, can give learning, make Philosophers, Artists, Orators, Poets.” Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy…, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989–2000), vol. 1: 307. 10 This transition implied are-examination of the vocation and presumption of political advisors that intensifies in the late sixteenth-century. See Sue W. Farquhar, “Irony and the Ethics of Self-Portraiture in Montaigne’s De la praesumption,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 26, no.4 (Winter 1995): 792–798. 11 Drawing on the speech acts theory, Michael Niehaus provided an extensive account of this and other structural aspects of the Counseling relation. See his “Logik des Ratgebens. Eine Standardversion zur Beschreibung eines Typs von Sprechaktsequenzen,” in Rat geben. Zu Theorie und Analyse des Beratungshandelns, ed. Michael Niehaus and Wim Peeters (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014). 12 These have analogous forms in individual resort to counsel, particularly when one wants to defer aresolution or is reluctant in assuming adecision and seeks external validation. 87 have subdivided into various specialties, targeting specific problems already emerging in the system of reference, i.e., in the person, institution, or organization that demands advice or guidance. Counseling is, by definition, subsidiary as support for adecision that ultimately must be taken by the one asking for advice. It does not aim, at least primarily, for the transformation of the system of reference, but for its assistance. Qualified advice must break with even the most surreptitious forms of conflict of interest, which include conscious and unconscious forms, typically those related to economic or social capital and those originating in affective “reasons” or mechanisms. Therefore, despite the mutual reinforcement of trust on which it depends, more familiarity is needed to ensure its quality, thwarting the mutual clarification of a problem. They may, for instance, leave counsel prey to psychic mechanisms such as projective identification with the other, aiming at his/her manipulation or control. As sustained by Thomas Macho, excessive intimacy with the person asking for counsel may ultimately require the multiplication of observers and counselors: “the history of Counseling can be interpreted as an interaction between the consultant’s internal and external positioning. The need for confidentiality, intimacy and continuity of consultation relationships increasingly creates abetter integration of counselors in the system they advise, which at some point means that counselors know about this system only as much as its own members do. They lose the feeling for the ‘blind spots,’ the ‘sixth sense’ that characterizes those outsiders who look at agiven context from an unfamiliar and strange perspective. Suddenly, they need advice as much as their clients do– and in turn, they need to hire ‘advisors.’”13 As in early modern Europe, in matters of public interest, in contemporary society the internal relation between consultee and the “client” is object of public scrutiny as away to prevent or at least denounce the instrumentalization of counsel, particularly in scientific advice.14 Democratic governments construct the accountability of their decisions in close 13 Thomas Macho, “Zur Ideengeschichte der Beratung. Eine Einführung,” in Das Buch von Rat und Tat, ed. Gerd Prechtel (München: Diedrichs, 1999), 24. 14 On the risks of instrumentalization of scientific advice, and the concomitant depersonalization of decision-making in contemporary society. See Yaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), 263ff, and Matthijs Hisschemöller, “Participation as knowledge production and the limits of Democracy,” in Democratization of Expertise? Exploring Novel Forms of Scientific Advice in Political Decision-Making, ed. Sabine Maasen and Peter Weingart (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 189–194. 88 articulation with the bodies of consultation, providing arguments and evidence.15 Along with its higher demand, in times of crisis or emergency, counsel becomes the object of higher scrutiny, although it is also in these times that its adoption tends to reinforce the immunization against its critics. The recommendations that inform the formal decision-makers are evaluated not only by considering the subject matter but also by assessing the prestige of the counselor.16 Even when acounselor or advisor has formal certifications and credentials to assess aparticular problem, recognized experience in the field as well as political and economic independence are determinant aspects of public perception and judgment. In order to understand how the contemporary organization of the university comes to frame the demand for and resort to academic counsel and scientific advice, Iwill now propose adetour through Luhmann’s conceptualization of the university. Luhmann’s Views on Academic Reform and Scholar’s Melancholy Parallel to his major writings on the systems of science and education, and part of his academic responsibilities, in amanuscript dated from 1979 but only recently published,17 enticingly titled “Zu viel Ordnung und Melancholie” [Too much order and Melancholy], Niklas Luhmann reflected on the effects of excessive regulation on the universities’ differentiation, extracting some consequences regarding their functioning and positioning in modern society. There, the German scholar touches on problems explored in his coetaneous work on the system of education18 15 On the complexities and problems surrounding these processes, see the work of Sheila Jasanoff: The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policy Makers (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), and Science and Public Reason (London and New York: Routledge, 2012). 16 In that sense, Stephen Hilgartner observed that “[m]ost of the drama surrounding science advice consists of efforts to expose, disclaim, or disavow putative interests, as competing performers present conflicting assessments of the character of the advisor. Judgments about the credibility of advice thus cannot be separated from moral judgments about the people and institutions that produce it.” Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama (Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 2000), 15. 17 Niklas Luhmann, “Zu viel Ordnung und Melancholie. Organisatorische und personalrechtliche Instrumente in der Hochschulgesetzgebung (unveröffentlichtes Manuskript),” in Schriften zur Organisation, vol. 4– Reform und Beratung, ed. Ernst Lukas and Veronika Tacke (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2020 [1979]). 18 Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Reflexionsprobleme im Erziehungs-system (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979). 89 that will be further developed in later works, namely: the “technology deficit” of the educative relation, the hierarchical (vs. heterarchic) management at the university organization and the different modes of normative enforcement. Luhmann is convinced that the issuing of more pervasive regulation on academic lecturing and researching activities is consistent in its attempt to reduce universities’ liability to individual impulses. He describes atop-down system of norms stemming from federal bureaus, into universities’ rectors, heads of departments and finally the academic staff. The problem is not with the hierarchical division itself but with its assumptions of arigid performance of the different elements, which risks asuppression of the academic calling. As his reference to Wolf Lepenies’Melancholie und Gesellschaft19makes clear, while sublimating his personal experience with institutionallangue de bois, Luhmann’s views on the federal reform of the university have the classical topos of scholars’ melancholy as their background. Despite their original context, they may help us identify factors that potentiate the reappearance of inhibition as a historical hallmark of academic endeavor. Aware of the emerging challenges and tendencies of the university– the integration of new political, economic and mediatic purposes– Luhmann pointed to the limitations of too rigid descriptors to understand its structure and communication.20 Resounding Weber’s contrast between an “external” observation of science as aprofession and science as calling for certain themes, i.e., an intrinsic vocation to embrace its disciplinary requirements,21 Luhmann remarks that “[…] it may be that, if we do not 19 Niklas Luhmann, “Zu viel Ordnung und Melancholie,” 415. Originally published in 1969, the central thesis of Lepenies’ classical book is that the suppression of opportunities for valid and effective action is the ground for the emergence of reflective and critical forms of observation. First as aresult of the centralization of state power, in the so-called “kingship mechanism” and later with the emergence of technocratic models of rationality determining political action, the complex of inhibition affects particular social groups such as the nobility and the scholars. Always bearing the danger of excessive sentimentalism, by sharpening the criticism of the present the communicative bounds of literature contribute to sublimating (or even discharging) deep feelings of impotence and resentment. Wolf Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972 [1969]), 185–213. 20 Considering the university as aproduct and “player” of amore complex and interdepend society led some to ask if and how one can preserve the classical attributions of academic institutions, cf. , for example, Rudolf Mosler “Ist die Idee der Universität noch aktuell?,” in Politische Ethik II. Bildung und Zivilisation, ed. Michael Fischer and Heinrich Badura (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006). 21 See Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004 [1919]). In various scientific disciplines, the reduction of academic performance to aprofessional role has been potentiated by the imposition of ordinary tasks grounded on unquestioned perspectives and pre-established protocols, cf. Friedrich H. 96 The formation of public intellectuals and their “positioning” are recurrent themes in the discussions regarding the functioning and purposes of the university. They may be considered central for substantiating the concept of liberal education. It is frequently noted how the present constrictions of academic curricula and careers, with the striving for short-term outcomes and profit, seem to hinder the formation of autonomous thinkers. Along with the overload of academic tasks that characterizes the commodification of education, the imposition of rigid research fields reinforces narrow views that foreclose an integrative approach to complex problems. These diagnoses are certainly right, but the seeming demission of the public intellectual is part of abigger picture. Changes in the Academic Positioning for Delivering Counsel and Academic Advice Academic counsel and advice on matters of public interest, which may require diverse fields of knowledge to deal with particular systems and their ecological impact, have different declinations. Advice may be integrated in the political processes, as part of participatory policy-making that ensures both the reliability of information grounding legislative and executive action and their public accountability. This scientific advice may be termed expert knowledge that, although having various levels of personal representation, is idealized as impersonal. It is generally conceived as the outcome of scientific procedures validated by the scientific community, as an unbiased account of acertain issue.45 However, while the acceptance of its recommendations may contribute to the citizen’s acceptance of government’s reasoning, if scientific advice remains purely technical or analytical, it evades the normative problems inherent in its acceptance and implementation, putting the onus of decision on the state authorities. Iwill return to this problem in the following section. 45 Reflecting on academic freedom in the field of historical sciences, Thomas Haskell, Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), maintained that the practitioners taking part in the scientific community are (or become) aware that: they are in “competitive communication with one another (‘open to mutual attack’), [and] that their decision-making process should be as public as possible (amatter of ‘tested’ methods and ‘explicit’ principles).” At the same time, the “truths that such communities generate fall short of being universal or ‘foundational.’ Anyone relying on such truths takes a calculated risk, not only that the community’s current opinion may not be right, but that its internal dynamics may render it obsolete tomorrow." (222) 97 More common in the social and human sciences, another type of academic counsel concerns the participation of the public intellectual in debates over current social problems or challenges. The proliferation of the “knowing all” intellectual, assuming an engaged position, from the end of the war until the end of the sixties46 may be understood as the result of the “crisis of causality” at the transition to the twentieth centuryandthe decline in the belief that the expert possesses aknowledge that provides aneutral answer to the challenges at hand.47 The voice of intellectuals such as Sartre or Bertrand Russell was grounded on self-assertiveness and charismatic authority, sometimes obliquely related to their academic credentials. They expressed their personal views, mostly on matters that escape analytical and scientific scrutiny, the great philosophical questions and the destiny of humanity. In his planning for the creation of the Bielefeld University, Helmut Schelsky, promoter of aculture of knowledge and discussion, envisioned anew public intellectual, the expert.48 Steaming from the refusal of the paternalistic models of guidance, the university revolution of 68 had arole in the emergence of anew academic that could represent vast forms of dissent. This was the profile of figures such as Bourdieu or Foucault, whose views on political and social matters were grounded in the academic recognition of their methods of research. Luhmann himself 46 In The Americanization of Social Science: Intellectuals and Public Responsibility in the Postwar United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), David Paul Haney argues that the relative absence of intellectuals of this stature in the post-war United States must be attributed to aparticular specialization of the American academia, which is consistent with Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton’s views on the status of social sciences and their determinant role in policymaking (31–45). Somewhat paradoxically, by defending their scientific rigor and integrity from public misperception and their instrumentalization by political and economic power, the social sciences relinquished asignificant part of their transformative potential. Such tenacious commitment to the preservation of their muse occasioned pressures for the scholars to withdraw from the public space and opprobrium over those that attained popularity in the media (203–231). This self-enclosure of scientific endeavor, preserved for technocratic application, is inextricably linked with what Hans L. Zetterberg, departing from Merton’s conceptual framework, termed “acedia of specialization” (“Scientific Acedia,” Sociological Focus 1, no.1 (1967): 37-38). According to Frank Furedi, this exclusion of scientists from the effective and independent participation in the process of political decision-making is amajor contributor to the depoliticization of public life, culminating in the “acclamation of apathy” (Democracy Under Siege. Don’t Let Them Lock It Down! [Washington: Zero Books, 2020], 121–123). 47 See Thomas Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000 [1977]). 48 Luhmann reflected on Schelsky’s university planning and implementation (“Die Universität als organisierte Institution,” 194–197). 98 can be considered ascientific former of opinion, although he manifested acertain ambivalence concerning such status.49 According to Lepenies,50 not for asecond would it occur to Schelsky to conceive the expert as anatural scientist. As he notes inAufstieg und Fall der Intellektuellen in Europa, Sociology comes to assume arole previously reserved for the prophets which insisted on enlivening dead ideals, affirming itself in aproductive gap between the application of the scientific method to society and the unrestrained digests of literature. It presented athird way between the melancholic contemplation, anegativity towards the present order that has lost its efficacy in the socio-economic conditions of liberal democracies, and the achievement of the utopian technocracy, presuming to hold the pathways to perfection and compulsive happiness. The fall of thehomo europaeus Intellectualisand his “faith in genuine, authentic revolution, which would put an end to the ills of the west”51 leaves avoid which cannot be filled by the social scientist or the technician. According to Lepenies, the engaged position of the scholars coming from the eastern bloc– we may think of intellectuals of the stature of Vaclav Havel– brought renewed enthusiasm around values and principles cemented on personal commitment and consistency, that had long given place to abstract, technocratic views, or everyday commentary. The return of the philosopher, first as the engaged melancholic that called for an open society and later as the “failed intellectual” engaged in the political arena, contrasted with the safe and lukewarm attitudes of the public intellectuals of the west. In his reading of Lepenies’ views, Kwiek52 pointed to the role of the intellectual in reviewing the conviction of anew objective order of society 49 This ambivalence was well captured by Hans Gumbrecht. Luhmann refused that his theory was contaminated by personal influences and, conform to Weber’s model of the expert, already at the time of publication ofSozial Systemein 1984, acted as if his theory was the outcome of alarge network of social sciences’ laboratories and “all the world worked in systems theory, as agreat swarm” (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “‘Alteuropa’ und ‘Der Soziologe’ Wie verhält sich Niklas Luhmanns Theorie zur philosophischen Tradition?,” in Luhmann Lektüren, ed. Wolfram Burckhardt [Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2010], 73). At the same time, due to his own relevance and prestige, Luhmann's personal views acquired agreat potential to influence political agenda and policy-making. 50 Wolf Lepenies, Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 348. 51 Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adventures on the Freedom Road. The French Intellectuals in the 20th Century, trans. Richard Veasey (London: The Harvill Press, 1995), 43. 52 Marek Kwiek, “Wolf Lepenies: Homo Europaeus Intellectualis Revisited,” in Philosophie an der Schwelle des 21. Jahrhunderts, ed. E. Czerwinska-Schupp (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 2003). 99 where everything can be trusted to analytical and technical approaches, condemning the intellectual to avain play of “unemployed negativity,” similar to the incredulous conclusion that Georges Bataille extracted from Kojève’s reading of the Hegelian system. Academic instruction certainly provides a better assessment of socio-political issues and interdisciplinary ways to understand and manage them. In the Arts and Humanities for instance, in the attempt to reach and engage the larger public– sometimes accepting the risk of damaging their muses– scholars may realize that in order to raise awareness or “touch” the public the conventional perimeter of the academy must be exceeded. Apropos constitutive possibilities of the university, Peter Sloterdijk asked: “what is an academy aside from institutionalized melancholy about the fact that art is long and life is short and we can neither solve crucial problems nor forget them?”53 As an alternative to resignation or despair, dreaming and utopian imagination have been the privileged soil for class or group resentment over their demise or loss of significance in public life. Not without irony, Luhmann presented asimilar view on philosophy’s resentment over its loss of dominium over public opinion, first with the emergence of social sciences and mass media, and later with its ambivalent attitude about the possibility of adaptation of its contribution.54 According to Bauman’s diagnosis of post-modernity, the mandate for academic “legislative reason” has ceased, being replaced by the plurality of “interpretative reason.”55 This change is expressed in astriking paradox that we may witness in recent decades. The greater the academic freedom, particularly in the humanities, the greater relative irrelevance of scholar’s words, theories and counsels.56 This “powerlessness of an intellectual” 53 Peter Sloterdijk, The Aesthetic Imperative: Writings on Art, trans. Karen Margolis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017 [2007]), 281. 54 “If one wants to judge the possibilities of self-description in and by modern society, one must above all consider that it is no longer passed down orally as ateaching of wisdom and no longer articulates high final thoughts as aphilosophy, but follows the autonomy of the mass media. Inevitably, every morning and evening, the web of news descends upon the earth, determining what has been and what is to be expected. Some events happen of their own accord, and society is turbulent enough that something is always happening. Others are produced for the mass media. Above all, the expression of an opinion can be treated as an event, so that media can reflexively allow their material to enter itself.” Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 1097. 55 Zygmunt Bauman, “Philosophical Affinities of Postmodern Sociology,” Sociological Review 38, no.3 (1990): 411–444. 56 This was the bittersweet diagnosis of Zygmunt Bauman according to which: “Having reached the nadir of their political relevance modern intellectuals enjoy freedom of thought and 100 contrasts deeply with the Kojevean assumption according to which the conveying of aphilosopher’s understanding could bring world redemption. But the disappearance of the public intellectuals is only apparent. The ever-renewed call for public participation has its counterpart in the emergence of new forms of academic public positioning.57 This reflects Thomas Macho’s58 distinction between two ideal types of counsel: one based on the presence and (presumed) wisdom that takes part in amysterious ritual of revelation, aform termed “charismatic,” and the counsel of the one who speaks “out of experience” and with aknowledge that allows questioning and demonstration, termed “pragmatic.” The charismatic model of counsel, which characterized the golden era of post-war intellectuals, is no longer viable. Through the ritualization of statements, these charismatic forms of counsel countered the clarification or the access to the metacomunicative level. In recent decades, in highly mediatized societies, various factors have contributed to a rejection of unconditional and unqualified assertions grounded exclusively in authority. This change has been favored by a less hierarchical educative system, emerging communication technologies, and society's greater complexity and contingency. In contemporary society, with the explosion of social media and the imposition of the culture of influencers, any position is open to scrutiny and interactive comment, taking part in what Sloterdijk termed the “collective fields of excitation,”59 in which “dialogical intellectuals” take part, since “[c]ontrary to both authoritative and expert public intellectuals, dialogical public intellectuals do not assume asuperior stance towards their publics.”60 Although the discursive position of the “knowing all” expression they could not dream of at the time that words mattered politically. This is an autonomy of no practical consequence outside the self-enclosed world of intellectual discourse.” (“Legislators and Interpreters: Culture as the Ideology of Intellectuals,” in Intimations of Postmodernity [London: Routledge, 1992], 16). 57 See, for instance, Sloterdijk’s appeal: “[t]he comprehensive world crisis of our time should provoke the philosophers who had been hiding in the bosom of the universities to come out of hiding. We must go back to the streets and squares, to thepages littérairesand the screens, to the schools and the popular festivals, to give back to our trade, the brightest and most melancholy in the world, the importance that, well done, it also has on the fields of non-academic life. Countless people are asking more urgently than they have for along time what that is: the good and conscious life. Anyone who thinks they know the answer– or who wants to ask acounter-question: they should now go forward and talk.” (Was geschah im 20. Jahrhundert? [Berlin: Suhrkamp 2016], 213). 58 Macho, “Zur Ideengeschichte der Beratung,” 22–27. 59 Peter Sloterdijk, Neither Sun nor Death, with Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, trans. Steve Corcoran (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) 2011[2001]), 84. 60 Baert, “The Philosopher as Public Intellectual,” 170. 101 intellectual is clearly in decline, the philosopher’s participation in the public space retains the possibility of reframing the current themes. He must resume the ancient function of pondering, immunizing himself against the torrent of opinions, developing his own voice.61 Even when abstaining from provide formal counsel on agiven matter, he preserves the requirement of providing aview or perspective that at least interrupts the current understanding of the topic at hand. This function of the interrupter, someone that dares to disturb, might be considered the recessive form of amore authoritative way of positioning. The Democratic Call for Scientific Advice; New Risks and Challenges Although their conceptual division is highly porous, allowing contaminations and reciprocal influence, irrespective of their intrinsic relation with scientific prestige, these processes differ significantly in their origin and status. The integration of scientific advice in decision-making occurs mostly in the form of reports that meet rigorous scientific methods, aiming at an unbiased assessment of agiven issue. Therefore, although they allow scientific impersonation by arepresentative, intrinsically related to the reputation of her academic institution (department, research institute or laboratory), which is in increasing competition with other providers of scientific advice such as consulting enterprises and think tanks,62 the recommendations are based on an impersonal analysis. 61 “As abearer of aphilosophical function Ihave neither the right nor the desire to be either aconductor in astress-semantic chain or the automation of an ethical imperative. Intellectual askesis or the effort of distance no longer functions in such situations. Remarkably few are those who manage to develop aunique opinion, one that is independent of the induction of excitation and are thereby able to interrupt the wave. In the future it will be necessary to raise the following question incessantly: am Icontributing to adebate or am Irunning along with the mob?” (Sloterdijk, Neither Sun nor Death, 84). 62 To understand the vectors of these dynamics of competition, Daniel Kleinman and Steven Vallas proposed the concept of “assymetric convergence,” referring to how higher education institutions and enterprises appropriate practices and goals that are characteristic of the other into their own terms. According to the authors, this generates “contradictions, anomalies, and ironies that violate long-held normative understandings yet increasingly pervade both university and industrial laboratories.” (“Contradiction in convergence. Universities and industry in the biotechnology field” in The New Political Sociology of Science. Institutions, Networks and Power, edited by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore [Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006], 36). 102 In contrast with this impartial positioning of the experts, and as asymptom of the specialization of scientific research which tends to know more and more about narrow subjects,63 unprepared and/or unwilling to take part in current moral and political debates, the counsel of public intellectuals, albeit no longer adopting aprophetic stance on the destinies of humanity, has necessarily to exceed the strict limits of afield of knowledge. In order to recover legislative reason, it needs to evade the strict limitation of analytical reasoning, assuming aposition in conditions of uncertainty. In both cases, an extension of the forms of education and research that emerge in the academic medium is implied. However, since it has arecursive effect on the reputation of both the university and the adviser, this is far from reduced to an outsourcing service. The technical expertise implied in advice and counsel implies greater importance of research and development over the educational valence of the university. Nevertheless, since it always involves the delivery of outcomes, assessments, or recommendations, sometimes in viva voce, the providing of advice or counsel preserves critical pedagogical importance. This becomes more evident when the receiver or client of scientific advice requires abetter understanding of the methods, presuppositions and data that lead to aconclusion or recommendation. In the delivery of scientific reports for legislative and executive action, this is indeed adeterminant part to ensure the public scrutiny and accountability of the advice. In the case of the traditional form of Counseling, since its assessment, definition and resolution of agiven problem depended on the recursive communication with the client, instead of amodel of “transfer of knowledge” one had to consider the possibility of arenewed approach to the original problem demanding the effective involvement of the client. In both cases, particularly when we take into account the transition from the charismatic to the pragmatic register in the production and delivery of counsel, it becomes clear that explanation and reasons, either displayed at once or in recursive 63 In The Vocation Lectures, Weber presents aprogressive interweaving between this process of specialization and the scientific calling, “the inner vocation of science”: “[S]cience has entered astage of specialization that has no precedent and that will continue for all time. (…) Only rigorous specialization can give the scholar the feeling for what may be the one and only time in his entire life, that here he has achieved something that will last. / Nowadays, areally definitive and valuable achievement is always the product of specialization. And anyone who lacks the ability to don blinkers for once and to convince himself that the destiny of his soul depends upon whether he is right to make precisely this conjecture and no other at this point in his manuscript should keep well away from science.” (7–8) 103 participation in the process of assessment of an issue, play an important role in the valuing of counsel, contributing to reinforce the commitment in its subsequent adoption (or rejection). When considering the call for scientific advice and its applications in governance, it becomes clear that refusal or distrust in scientific deliberations is no longer to be attributed to conflicting values, the clash with religious or cultural beliefs, the fact that, as Thomas Haskell put it, “in many parts of the world these truths will seem too frail to be valued, and even where valued they may prove too lacking in charismatic authority to compete against other, more visceral sources of conviction.”64 Nor can such forms of resistance always be discredited as simply resulting from greater exposure to an ever-growing torrent of non-scientific views of reality or counter-culture. Lack of transparency and conflicts of interest in decisory processes, sometimes restricting broader participation of citizens and groups (or their representatives), are essential to account for the resistance to the manufacturing of consensus, particularly when those decisions have a crucial impact on individual and social life. Although Weber acknowledged the expert as apublic official providing technical expertise to government authorities,65 he was convinced that the ability to take determinant action should be safeguarded as aprerogative of the political leader.66 But in the course of the twentieth century, by virtue of its integration into the political decision processes, the epistemic authority “ascribed to the possessor of specialized knowledge, skills, or expertise,”67 increased its “epistemocratic” status. Nevertheless, in virtually every area where academic advice is required, there is space for conflicting views on aproblem. The decision process, including the moment of counsel, has to account for the need for participatory deliberation and public accountability. This means that instead of self-evident rationality at the center of academic advice and governance models, even when these work in tandem, there is an assessment of risks regarding the acceptance of the decision process. In his study onAuthority, Joseph Raz pointed to the distinction, which implies an epistemic gap 64 Haskell, Objectivity Is Not Neutrality, 222–3. 65 Max Weber, “Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland. Zur politischen Kritik des Beamtentums und Parteiwesens,” in Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Tübingen: Mohr, 1958 [1918]), 320–350. 66 “Politicians must counterbalance the rule of public officials.” Weber, “Parlament und Regierung…,” 323. 67 Terence Ball, “Authority and Conceptual Change,” in Authority Revisited, ed. J.R. Pennock and J.W. Chapman (New York University Press: New York, 1987), 47–48. 104 between scientific and theoretical authority, whose focus is to provide “reason for belief,” and political authority, which establishes “reason for action” as fundamental in legislative and executive governance.68 COVID-19 has repeatedly made clear that science cannot be immediately translated into policy-making, even if politicians seem eager to outsource decisions under pressing conditions of uncertainty, insulating themselves in the pieces of advice of scientific experts or committees,69 what Sloterdijk termed “absolution through consultation.”70 The present COVID-19 epidemic has brought asignificant transformation on the prevailing type of public intellectual, but also on the register of public advice and counsel. During the pandemic, asignificant part of the co-production of technical expertise and political decision-making took place on the mass media stage. With the generalization of biomedical semantics and scientific impersonation in social media, scientific advice would liberate “leading indecision-makers” from their impasses. Instead of ideological standpoints, critical reflection, and speculation, the spotlights targeted the expert in certain biomedical topics. The “dialogical intellectuals” gave room to biomedical, epidemiological, and public health experts. This was justified by the uncertainties of the epidemic and the recognized need to suspend or reframe assumptions of individual rights and freedoms in states of emergency. At the same time, under pandemic emergency, the manufacturing of consensus became more systematic, smothering or canceling the voices of non-aligned experts even when the resort to scientific advice led to contradictory signs by political and health authorities.71 While these measures were justified (and called for) to make science speak in unison,auna voce, they inadvertently fuelled public mistrust and hesitancy in the acceptance of public-health measures. With the prospects of 68 Joseph Raz, Authority (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 5. 69 Furedi, Democracy Under Siege, chap. 9. 70 Peter Sloterdijk, In the world interior of capital. For aphilosophical theory of globalization, trans. W. Hoban (Cambridge: Polity, 2013 [2005]), 65. 71 Still at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, affirmed that “[a]sascientist, Ihope Inever again hear the phrase ‘based on the best science and evidence’ spoken by apolitician (…). This phrase has become basically meaningless and used to explain anything and everything.” (Hannah Devlin and Sarah Boseley, “Scientists criticise UK government’s ‘following the science’ claim,” The Guardian, April 23, 2020, https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/scientists-criticise -uk-government-over-following-the-science). For acritical overview of the risks involved in the imposition of the “following the science mantra” as the way to insulate political decision from public scrutiny, see Furedi, Democracy Under Siege. 105 abetter management of the virus and acorrelative easing of restrictions, some of the expert advisors that emerged in mediatic space during the pandemic are worried about their loss of relevance, striving to preserve their space in public reasoning. Ironically, as recently suggested by Elena Esposito, areturn to forms of counsel proper of the charismatic register, whose grounds are (or have become) opaque and inscrutable, is taking place.72 They are no longer issued and impersonated by the “intellectual prophet” or the technocrat, stemming from the self-enclosed operation of predictive algorithms based on deep machine learning. These new oracles rely on the processing of omens whose complexity is inaccessible to human predictive reasoning. The risks involved in the reliance on AI algorithms are far from restricted to the display of bias in target prediction concerning health and security.73 The automatization of advice in ethical and political matters is the ultimate frontier in delegating major (and minor) decisions, promising a dissolution of the uncertainty at the center of the processes of counseling and advising. As such, it may be seen as afusion between the proper institution of consilia and praecepta, two forms of support to decision-making. In this case, the prediction of the future not only conditions what is expectable but, by recursively defining what is to be the case at each moment, collapses the openness to the future. Since it precludes the processes of public accountability and democratic participation, advice based on AI, while it may be deemed neutral, fosters impersonal and pervasive forms of influence and command in the management of the future. Even if these algorithms develop beyond instrumental rationality, with specific cognition to provide qualified advice in aparticular field whether in the form of recommendations or instructions-, the assessment of its groundings remains inaccessible. This calls for critical reflection and regulation, including participative human reasoning and communication.74 72 Elena Esposito, “Future and uncertainty in the digital society,” filmed March 2018 in Berlin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb18MZn9Ies&feature=emb_imp_woyt/. 73 At the same time, since the assessment of upcoming risks always has to account for the impact of its predictions in the future, as aform of self-fulfilled prophecy, it may lead to the adoption of egotist strategies that disturb social ecology. 74 In AI Ethics (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press, 2020), Mark Coeckelbergh develops this line of reasoning proposing criteria of “transparency” and “explainability” in the development and implementation of IA technology (esp: 116–123). 112 As regards the system of positive law, Luhmann famously criticised external and ultimate source of legal validity including those formulated by legal scholars in their theoretical work and pushed through academic education and institutions. He reformulated the problem of legitimacy and the principle of justice as an intrinsic value (Eigenvalue) of the legal system manifested in its procedures, operations, internal coherence and, most importantly, efficiency as the internal criterion of legitimacy. According to him, justice is “acontingency formula” and “the concept of substantive justice … transforms atautology into asequence of arguments and makes something that is seen as highly artificial and contingent from the outside appear quite natural and necessary from the inside.”8 However, persistent and repetitive jurisprudential debates regarding constitutional principles, supra-legal values and their entrenchment in both legal education and decision-making also show that the systems of positive law and education are expected to be meaningful beyond their function even if this meaning is impossible to achieve by rational consensus or academic arguments. In this chapter, I, therefore, argue that validity claims are not guaranteed by an ultimate principle and reason behind the construction of social reality which could be identified by academic theories and disseminated by both academic and non-academic education. I, rather, argue that the systems of positive law and legal education are self-constituted by their internal self-limitation which requires the adoption of “an ironic ethic”9 avoiding the promise of constituting the authentic self and identity of polity by distancing theoretical education and positive law from the moral code of good/bad. Constitutional theories often engage in prescriptive reconstitutions, general reconstructions and academic legitimations of constitutional law by the authentic self of polity and its foundational values. However, constitutional values cannot be considered society’s transcendental foundations normatively constituting it from its outside by the system of education. Constitutional values, rather, are internally generated expectations defining the difference between legitimacy and illegitimacies in both politics and law. 8 Niklas Luhmann, Law As aSocial System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 445. 9 Niklas Luhmann, Moralität der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2008), 194. 113 Ideology, Utopia and Constitutional Values: A Critique of Normative Theoretical Knowledge and Legal Education Karl Mannheim described ideology as the collective unconscious motives blurring the real state of society and thus stabilising its order. It is part of atypically modern conflict caused by the democratisation of the state and the plurality of political parties which need to justify and systemically explain and validate their struggle and position within the political and social order. According to Mannheim, ideology replaces theology in its goal of constituting the total and only image of modern society. However, this goal is paradoxical exactly because modern society is defined by the pluralism of its value structure.10 Modern morally pluralistic and politically democratic societies subsequently consist of the plurality and conflict of ideologies mirroring structural conflicts between those who rule and those ruled by them. Unlike philosophy with its belief in objective validity and social indeterminacy of knowledge, sociology, according to Mannheim, analyses unconscious social motives connecting the existence of aparticular social group with its cultural values, goals and ideological arguments.11 Modern democratic and pluralistic politics then reveals how different groups and parties represent different ideas and use them to legitimise their political goals and programmes. Contrasting ideology and utopia, Mannheim expanded his analysis of collective knowledge and beliefs by showing that structural conflicts in modern society are reflected in its total images. The distinction between ideology and utopia is constituted by the opposition between trust and distrust in authority which leads to the constitution of opposing total images of society. Ideology has the legitimation function because it affirms the existing authority structures and conceals specific gaps in its general legitimacy claims. It imagines society as one integrated polity. On the other hand, utopia has the delegitimation function of unmasking this ideology’s surplus value in the symbols of authority. Instead, it imagines anon-existent ideal alternative to the real structures of power. 10 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge, 1997[1936]), chap. 2. 11 Ibid., 30. 114 In this circular communication, ideologies are constantly unmasked by utopias as adding the surplus value of legitimacy where there actually is the lack of belief in authority. Utopias are counterstrategies according to which all social reality constantly falls short of its shared ideals and value foundations.12 They are images of society in which hierarchical authority is replaced by horizontal structures of collective life fully legitimised by commonly shared values and ideals. The subversion thus paradoxically ends up in the ultimate integration of society which, however, is always yet to come. This struggle requires anew ideology which could claim legitimate authority for such autopian political project. Utopia is therefore aspecific form of ideology critique.13 Values include the promise of general validity in special social circumstances and respond to the call for the meaningful universe and human life in it which typically constitutes the system of religion.14 Modern constitutional philosophies and theories then often fall for this kind of religious and political existentialism looking for the true foundations of collective identity and reasserting it through legality and power.15 Human existence and authentic forms of its fulfilment allegedly have to be saved by political action and legal normativity by either returning to the past with its authenticity of tradition, or leaping forward by promising the constitution of utopia. According to this view, constitutions are considered guardians of concrete forms of collective existence.16 Normative legitimacy of political constitutions is measured by their capacity to represent the authentic existence and true identity of its people. They can be imagined in moral terms as political documents legally defending self-evident truths.17 They therefore do not have to be further evidenced and can serve as reservoirs of foundational values of polity under the rule of law and natural rights 12 Howard P. Segal, Utopias: ABrief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), chap. 1. 13 Dan R. Stiver, “Renewing the ‘Period of Effervescence’: Utopia as Ideology Critique,” in Ideology and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century: The Surplus of Meaning in Ricoeur’s Dialectical Concept, ed. Stephanie N. Arel and Dan R. Stiver (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2019), 53–71. 14 Alan H. Goldman, Life’s Values: Pleasure, Happiness, Well-Being, and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 121–131. 15 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005), 40. 16 Hans Lindahl, “Law as Concrete Order,” in Law, Liberty and State: Oakeshott, Hayek and Schmitt on the Rule ofLaw, ed. David Dyzenhaus and Thomas Poole (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 38–64. 17 See, for instance, David A. J. Richards, Foundations of American Constitutionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 27–31. 115 which have to be promoted and sanctioned even by the system of legal education.18 However, objectivity and absoluteness of these constitutional foundations is questioned by the very admission of their drafters that “we” hold these truths self-evident and have to interpret them in particular political and societal contexts.19 This constituent “we” indicates that our universal truths paradoxically may not be universally self-evident and apply to other polities and their constitutions. Societal foundations of modern constitutionalism thus become amatter of the paradox of universal moral values enforced by particular political and legal agents. Constitutional Theory and Education as an Apparatus of Values: On Front-Line and Second-Line Knowledge of Law In modern society, lawyers in general and constitutionalists in particular often take on the role of theologians and prescribe the moral and societal unity of values and principles despite the fact that their operations are constrained by the functionally differentiated system of positive law. Legal theorists appropriate this role by turning theoretical knowledge into alegitimation tool of the system of positive law.20 They want to believe that their theoretical transvaluation of legal and political values will lead to practical policy changes in the system of positive law. Anumber of legal and constitutional theories are but prescriptive specialist attempts at resolving the current crisis of reason, civilisation, politics and human values including those legislated for by political constitutions.21 They typically invoke specific theoretical versions of self-evident truths in moral principles and foundational values and thus illuminate the function of values in law as much as the value of legality itself.22 This 18 Michael Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1997). 19 Bruce Ackerman, We the People, Volume 1: Foundations (New York: The Belknap Press, 1991), 131. 20 Dan Priel, “The Place of Legitimacy in Legal Theory,” McGill Law Journal 57, no.1 (2011): 1–35. 21 See, for instance, Michael SMoore,Educating Oneself in Public: Critical Essays in Jurisprudence(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 22 For acritical analysis, see, for instance, John Gardner, “Law’s Aims inLaw’s Empire” in Exploring Law’s Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, ed. Scott Hershovitz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 207–225, 222–223. 116 legal theoretical and jurisprudential recourse to the external validation of law by philosophical speculation and anthropological interpretation of values and political ethics calls for asociological inquiry itself. The distinction between front-line descriptive and second-line prescriptive knowledge allows for atheoretical observation of legal theories and theorists as leaders of legal reforms and social policy makers, if not ideologues of moral transformations of their constitutional polities. Nevertheless, the classic theoretical distinction between law and morality firmly places the legal system in the positive realm of front-line reasoning and decision-making and separates law from both the transcendental cloud of natural law and the immanent burden of moral traditions and conventions. The legal method is thus separated from morality in all its forms including legal theoretical knowledge and its formalism is assumed to protect legal subjects against the arbitrary use of political power and moral judgments alike. Legal positivists often criticise both moralist claims that law’s legitimacy depends on its conformity to the superior moral norms and sociological claims that the law’s form is already predetermined by spontaneous forces of societal evolution. According to the intellectual tradition of legal and political positivism, the modern democratic rule of law means that the people as the political sovereign, rather than moral values and social customs or traditions, is governing itself through the medium of legality.23 However, theorists of democracy and popular sovereignty increasingly address the problem of the validity of legal arguments from the perspective of human rights, constitutional principles and political justice evolving at national, supranational and global. Positivists then highlight increasing conflicts between popular sovereignty and the limitation of democratic politics by supra-positive constitutional arguments and principles24 and expose the danger of political and historical regress caused by the replacement of modern legal formalism by supra-positive moralism embedded in the democratic constitutional state.25 23 Matthew H. Kramer,In Defense of Legal Positivism: Law Without Trimmings(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 254. 24 Geoffrey Marshall, “Positivism, Adjudication, and Democracy” in Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honour of H.L.A. Hart, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and Joseph Raz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 132. 25 Kramer, In Defense of Legal Positivism, 113. 117 For instance, Ingeborg Maus adopts Marcuse’s use of Freud’s concept of super-ego and his diagnosis of modern industrial society as the “fatherless society” of technocratic domination. According to Maus, the judicial power, however, paradoxically acquires the otherwise disappearing Father image and enjoys almost religious reverence by the public.26 This return of the Father image in the judiciary of the twentieth century then allegedly represents aregress in modern development and the function of judicial power which historically established its independence through formalist legal rationality and arguments used against traditional legitimacy of patriarchal power.27 Maus particularly criticises Dworkin’s second-line knowledge and theoretical view that legal and moral judgements are impossible to separate because it assumes asocially and politically privileged position of judges as interpreters of “community morality” who have its better understanding due to their supreme theoretical knowledge. Maus notes that this morality, which is expected to inform such theoretically guided judicial interpretation, is itself aproduct of judicial decision-making and leads to the dangerous immunisation of legal discourse against any critique.28 It leads to the “creative” judicial interpretation because of the vagueness of moral concepts and principles incorporated into law.29 This positivist critique of theoretical moralism shows that moral values and principles have adual function in the system of positive law. They select between legitimate and illegitimate laws by introducing the category of “just law” while protecting morally integrated social domains from the legislated laws. In this dual sense, morality becomes positive law’s boundary. When legal arguments adopt moral reasons as their foundations, they do not need democratic legitimation. Instead, they use initially external morality as the positive law’s internal formula of self-legitimation. If, as Dworkin states, “jurisprudential issues are at their core issues of moral principle,”30 morality becomes positive law’s basic norm and formal legality gets replaced by substantive moral values. Supra-positive moral principles thus paradoxically weaken the limits of both the 26 Ingeborg Maus, Justiz als gesellschaftliches Über-Ich: Zur Position der Rechtsprechung in der Demokratie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2018), 17–19. 27 Ibid., 32. 28 Ibid., 21. 29 Ibid., 84. 30 Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1977), 7. 118 state and legal regulation because, instead of embracing anotion of legal right, they can justify it by appeals to the social and common good.31 The recursive moral grounding of positive law ends up with the increasing power of state institutions and apparatus. The de-differentiation of democratic legitimation and moral foundations of law leads to the weakening of social control by political decision-making because the moral argument can be easily abused as simulating the democratic argument.32 Substantive values operating as legal foundations and ultimate legitimation of the system of positive law show the general modern tendency of replacing formal and general legal rules and reasoning by social justice and regulations promoting specific interests and particular needs. It thus represents yet another example of not just the attack on abstract and generally applicable legal rules but adirect threat to the very idea of democracy as self-government of the people by the laws. According to this critique of moral fundamentalism in jurisprudence and legal theory, Montesquieu’s early modern description of despotic government as that in which there is no rule of law, because adespot is the maker, judge and executioner of laws, still applies in our complex postmodern society.33 Democracy and the Paradox of Value Pluralism The monistic image of constitutional polity governed by judges or any other agents as guardians and educators of the ultimate common good and true values represents adirect threat to the pluralist notion of an open democratic society. Since Plato’s Republic, those who are in possession of the ultimate truth and common good have also arrogated to themselves the right to rule and to determine not only how society is to be organised and managed, but also how individuals are to be educated and live their lives and what culture society ought to be cultivating and developing.34 Constitutional theories of value pluralism, therefore, represent acritique of these monistic images of society and draw on the procedural model of politics in which legitimacy does not rely on the capacity to 31 For aparticularly strong critique, see Brian Leiter, “The End of the Empire: Dworkin and Jurisprudence in the 21st Century” Rutgers Law Journal 36 (2004): 165–181. 32 Maus, Justiz als gesellschaftliches Über-Ich, 227–229. 33 Ibid., 85. 34 Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volumes 1 and 2 (London: Routledge, 1945). 119 eradicate “false” values and opinions. The point of democracy is not to exact any obligation to stamp out other values or opinions.35 On the contrary, democracy gives us the opportunity to refute and reject opinions in acivilised manner by engaging in afree debate. In short, the societal constitution of liberal democracy depends on the paradox of value pluralism as avalue itself. In the 1970s, the German constitutional judge and legal philosopher Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde formulated the basic paradox of constitutional democracy in the following phrase: “ The liberal secularised state lives by presuppositions that it cannot itself guarantee.” 36 The Böckenförde Dictum means that the conditions of the functioning of aconstitutional and democratic state lie outside its power apparatus and positive law. They are amatter of values and ethics which cannot be legally enforced and politically guaranteed. The other premise of an open democratic society, however, is the plurality of values. This may seem contradictory to Böckenförde’s formula, yet value pluralism paradoxically can be considered avalue and presupposition of liberal statehood itself, especially because it is politically less dangerous for freedom than the monistic notion of truth and the common good.37 Values are considered fundamental yet are subject of social change and political volatility.38 Understanding modern society’s plurality of values, their differences, conflicts and transvaluations, and the impossibility to define some values as true and others as false, is astarting point of the principle of tolerance which is the conditio sine qua non of aliberal society and its constitutional democratic state. Value pluralism actually functions as adefence against the extremist value monism, assuring its adherents that they are the exclusive guardians of human values and truth and that any crimes committed in the name of these values, therefore, are already to be praised as higher acts of humanity before they even are committed. 35 Ota Weinberger, Law, Institution and Legal Politics: Fundamental Problems of Legal Theory and Social Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 1991), 128. 36 Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde,Staat, Gesellschaft, Freiheit: Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie, Staatstheorie und Verfassungsgeschichte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 60. 37 See, for instance, George Crowder, Liberalism and Value Pluralism (London: Continuum, 2002); William Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 38 Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977). 120 Political constitutions paradoxically protect both value pluralism and principles and values typically defined as constitutional rights and freedoms. Constitutions couple legal and moral arguments and thus make the validity of law inseparable from the possibility of responding to the most complex moral problems, dilemmas and value claims.39 However, these allegedly fundamental constitutional values are subject to constitutional interpretation and therefore evolve and change according to the changing modes of legal reasoning and interpretation.40 The pronounced unity of law is challenged by the plurality of values and moral diversity. Theories and philosophies of political and social consensus and legal monism are so general and abstract that they can hardly provide aformula for the legal enforcement and resolution of the conflict and clashes of moral values.41 Substantive value elucidation of law escapes the internal logic of legal reasoning and legality remains self-enclosed as the only source of its validity. Preserving this plurality while adjudicating the normative unity of law and legal resolution of moral conflicts then becomes acentral problem of both constitutional adjudication and its theory.42 Values in Legal Theories and Education Values are rooted in ametaphysical search for the meaning of our existence and position in the world. While societal norms restrict the possibilities of social action, values increase it as experiences of “certainty independent of cognitive arguments.”43 Rather than simply defining constitutive moral duties, values establish different degrees of desirability and meaning of human action between good and bad. The highest goal of modern individuation, therefore, is possible to harmonise with asocial utopia of valuable existence. Values are pervasive in all social systems despite their lack of institutional formalisation, enforcement and self-reference through official 39 Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002). 40 Weinberger, Law, Institution and Legal Politics, 119. 41 For the ethical interpretation of legal monism, see Paul Gragl, Legal Monism: Law, Philosophy, and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 291. 42 Wojciech Sadurski, Moral Pluralism and Legal Neutrality (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 89–131. 43 Hans Jonas, The Genesis of Values (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 52. 121 authorisation.44 Judges and other legal officials as well as legal scholars and teachers claim to be their guardians as much as guardians of legality, yet the question of the origins and genealogy of values hardly can be answered by their legal authority.45 Abelief that values should be justified and publicly discussed, taught through the system of education and legitimised in society does not mean that this society actually constitutes its values through justification and deliberation. While the transvaluation of values and their change can be evaluated and referred to as good or bad itself, there is amore general problem with values as societal foundations and guardians of constitutional integration. It is closely related to the modernisation of society and already was described by Emile Durkheim as anomie– aloss of values and meaningful existence.46 Anomie is the negative absolute because it is always considered bad and cannot be contextually evaluated as good or bad for society and individuals. Durkheim’s warning against damaging consequences of modern anomie are matched by the Marxist revolutionary promises to save humanity from its alienation in capitalist society or conservative lamentations of the cultural crisis echoing Oswald Spengler’s “decline of the West.” Durkheim’s theory of modernity as the permanent crisis of values and meaning thus represents asociological response to the evergreen theme of the crisis of civilisation addressed by so many philosophers, political leaders, moralists and ideologues of all kinds and political colours.47 Durkheim’s theory of anomie and other sociological and moralist critiques of the decline and absence of values argue that moral principles and values operate as society’s foundations and reservoirs of meaningful social existence.48 However, the very process of their transvaluation turns them into fluid expectations of what is considered socially valuable and 44 Webb Keane, Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016), 180. 45 In this context, Andrei Marmor, for instance, argues that the conflict between legal positivists and non-positivists is about the conditions of legal validity. See Andrei Marmor, “Legal Positivism: Still Descriptive and Morally Neutral,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 26, no.4 (2006): 689. 46 For the concept of anomie, see William Outhwaite, ed., The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 17–19. 47 For the philosophical popularity of the idea of decline of the West, see, for instance, Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York: The Free Press, 1997). 48 For further details of Durkheim as asociologist and moralist, see particularly Stephen Turner, ed., Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Moralist (London: Routledge, 1994). 128 law and politics and societal forces behind self-validating legitimation procedures of these systems. Critically revisiting Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge and the concepts of ideology and utopia, it is then possible to move beyond the “truth/falsity” distinction and the Habermasian notion of “background knowledge”68 of veritas as auctoritas safeguarding the general meaning and ethical validity even in highly complex and functionally differentiated societies. Constitutional ontology is thus replaced by the sociological analysis examining the self-constituent construction of internal unity of social systems and their structural coupling and societal expansion from one to another system such as positive law and education. Constitution of the collective self, in particular society as polity which can hold universal truths self-evident, may be the first political act, but it is not just amatter of politics or law and education because this self, to sociologically paraphrase Abraham Lincoln’s famous definition of democracy as power “of the people, by the people, for the people,” is constituted in society, by society and for society. Societal constitution as functional differentiation and self-constitution of specific subsystems of modern society represents achallenge particularly for legal and political theories and philosophies ascribing the fundamental role and importance to the legal normativity and political power or moral principles and educational expectations behind them. Acontemporary sociology of constitutionalism, therefore, reformulates the question of what is politically self-constituted in society as aquestion of how this self is jointly constituted by the systems of positive law, politics and evaluative critical education. Sociological inquiries into constitutional values and their education do not follow normative theories and philosophies of constitutional subjects and their will and reasoning. Instead of political existentialist claims that there are real political forces and constituent power of collectivities “sharing destiny,” such as modern nations, asociology of constitutionalism focuses on the societal constitution of these general forms of self-description and self-reference of society and their internalisation by constitutional law and legal education. This task also involves addressing the problem of constitutional objects of self-constituted organisations, knowledge regimes, educational programmes and networks of contemporary European and global society. 68 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 22. 129 Universities as Autonomously Individuated Systems Jimmy Lewis-Martin Universities in many contemporary liberal capitalist societies have not been immune to the process of commodification. This is most evident in the US, where attending aprivate institution requires either substantial prior means or accepting unduly burdensome debt. Though to alesser extent, the issue is also evident in other countries. In Australia, for instance, although student debt for citizens is not quite as life-altering as in the US, students are still often treated as customers and courses as products. Often, if acourse does not have “enough” students sign up, the course does not run that semester, depriving the students who did sign up of being able to learn about atopic that they might be genuinely interested in. This, in turn, results in the homogenisation of available courses around “popular” topics. The commodified university environment also has adetrimental impact on academic faculty and their research. “Publish or perish” is awell-understood reality in the academic world and leads to aglut of superficial research, as it creates aneed to keep up with popular topics and invest in cottage industries rather than doing research that might be genuinely compelling and boundary-pushing. Researchers are also pressured to carve what could be single works into as many different papers as can be managed. It does not seem too great astretch to suggest that the replication crisis in psychology was aresult of the pressure on researchers that they produce something, anything at all, rather than publishing when they have something well-tested to publish. This practice is evidently harmful, and yet there seems to be no escape. Iwill argue that an enactivist understanding of group agents like universities explains why this is the case and is well situated to expound on the differences between universities in different environmental contexts. 130 Contrary to one common-sense view that the detrimental functioning of institutions is the result of bad decisions made by greedy or irrational individual humans, the enactivist account holds that agroup agent, like all agents, is a“system doing something by itself according to certain goals or norms within aspecific environment.”1 Agents, then, are (a)individuals with (b)certain norms that (c)act asymmetrically on their environments. In other words, the group itself– the university– is the target of our descriptions and ascriptions of normative activity, rather than the particular people who make up that institution at any given moment. Iwill specify the first two of these conditions, called the individuality and normativity criteria respectively. Iwill argue that something is an individual if it is an operationally closed, precarious system. Aself-individuating system’s normativity is given by its conditions of possibility, i.e., it is necessarily normatively oriented toward self-maintenance. Agroup agent, on this account, is just aphysically discontinuous agent. Universities are an example of just such asystem. The argument herein assumes realism about group agency. Christian List provides astrong argument for this. He argues that ascribing agency to certain groups is indispensable for explaining their behaviour, hence we are justified in assuming that at least some groups really do have agency unless we are given evidence to the contrary.2 The actions that occur under the auspices of the university are inexplicable without ascribing group agency to them, and so Iassume that they really are group agents. Individuality To be an individual in the sense intended here is to be distinct from one’s environment and from other individuals. Importantly, one distinguishing feature of agential systems is that they are self-individuating systems. This follows from the fact that agency is something asystem is, rather than being something asystem is granted or is judged as. The agent must, in some fundamental sense, be an individual on its own terms, rather than being an “individual” because it is easy or convenient for us 1 Xabier Barandiaran, Ezequiel Di Paolo, and Marieke Rohde, “Defining Agency: Individuality, normativity, asymmetry, and spatio-temporality in action,” Journal of Adaptive Behavior 17, no.5 (2009): 369. 2 Christian List, “Group Agency and Artificial Intelligence,” Philosophy and Technology (2009): 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-021-00454-7/. 131 as observers to treat it as such. According to Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson, the concept of autonomy provides the criteria for the self-individuation of bodies where abody, in this context, is not “constituted exclusively by its biochemical or physiological processes.”3 To be autonomous, asystem must be both operationally closed and precarious.4 An operationally closed system is one whose constitutive processes collectively and recursively produce and sustain each other.5 It is precarious if those processes would fail without the enabling relations of the operationally closed network.6 A kidney, for instance, cannot persist outside the body for long. Although operational closure and precariousness are somewhat technical concepts, the enactivist notion of autonomy still relates to the common understanding of autonomy as self-governance. An autonomous system persists in virtue of its own activity. An operationally closed system still interacts with and requires its external environment. Nevertheless, the operationally closed system is distinct from its environment insofar as the system’s own processes determine what counts as normative environmental conditions for itself.7 As Di Paolo and Thompson note, the Sun acts as an enabling condition for plants since it is required for photosynthesis, but the Sun itself is indifferent to the presence of plant life.8 So, the Sun enables the processes of the plant while not itself being apart of the operationally closed system since it is not in turn enabled by the plant. Similarly, parasites are enabled by the agents they are parasitic on without the other agent being enabled by the parasite. This concept of operational closure allows us to accurately determine precisely which processes belong to the agential system we are interested in while also mapping out the processes the system is reliant on that do not belong to it. That is, we can determine what counts as the environment for agiven agent and figure out how the two interact. 3 Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson, “The Enactive Approach,” in Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy: The Routledge Handbook of Social Cognition, ed. Lawrence Shapiro (London: Routledge, 2014), 69–72. 4 Ibid., 69. 5 Ezequiel Di Paolo, Thomas Burhmann, and Xabier Barandiaran, Sensorimotor Life: An Enactive Proposal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 112. 6 Di Paolo and Thompson, “The Enactive Approach,” 72. 7 Ibid., 71; Di Paolo, Burhmann, and Barandiaran, Sensorimotor Life, 114. 8 Di Paolo and Thompson, “The Enactive Approach,” 71. 132 The importance of precariousness is that it allows us to distinguish operationally closed but ultimately inactive systems from genuinely agential systems. According to Di Paolo and colleagues, acrystal is operationally closed since “chemical interactions lead to the spontaneous growth of aclearly identifiable entity, which thereafter is maintained over time.”9 But once the crystal has formed, there is no active maintenance in the structure of the crystal. It is not an active system, and so should be excluded from the pool of systems that we refer to as “agents.” Importantly, as Wayne Christensen and Mark Bickhard note, not all processes are equally vital to the functioning of the agential system as a whole.10 Myopia is relatively easy to compensate for or even to live with assuming the relevant technology is not available. Agents are adaptive systems with particular capacities that exist in particular environments, and they will pursue their normative ends as best they can, given the interactive possibilities present in the agent-environment coupling. A malfunctioning heart is much less forgiving, however, because the heart enables almost all other processes in the body, meaning the whole agent will fail without the heart process. Normativity As with an agent’s individuality, that agent’s normativity must also be self-determined. The organisational approach maintains that asystem’s norms are given by that system’s present structure or organisation. Specifically, the normativity of an agential system is given by that system’s conditions of possibility, or the system’s capacity to be the kind of system that it is in the environment it is in. As Georges Canguilhem put it: “Normative, in the fullest sense of the word, is that which establishes norms.”11 The idea is that norms can be derived from asystem’s present structure on the basis of what makes it possible for it to persist. This necessarily includes the environmental conditions the system finds itself in, as Canguilhem was apt to point out: “Taken separately, the living being and his environment are not normal: it is their relationship that makes them 9 Di Paolo, Thompson, and Barandiaran, Sensorimotor Life, 116. 10 Wayne Christensen and Mark Bickhard, “The Process Dynamics of Normative Function,” The Monist 85, no.1 (2002): 20. 11 Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 126–7. 133 such.”12 Normativity, in other words, is afundamentally interactive concept. It arises via the interaction of aparticular, autonomous system and the environmental conditions in which that system is aiming to self-maintain. That said, depending on the nature of the system in question, it will be more or less reliant on its specific environment. Certain systems are more capable of constructing or influencing their environments to their own needs.13 Others will themselves be more flexible or resilient. Humans are agood example of both. In an environment with little food or limited access to water, we can construct ways of attaining and storing more of each. Likewise, we are not reliant on any one specific food to survive, as opposed to an animal like koalas or pandas that is specially adapted to eating just one kind of food. Just as the normativity of the whole system is given by its holistic conditions of possibility, so too are the parts of the system functionally normative insofar as they contribute to the viability of the present system as awhole. Practically, then, we can identify the parts of the system, consider what those parts do, and then determine the normativity of the system as awhole by considering what the parts together are functionally oriented toward. Group Agents The account of agency Ihave just argued for applies easily to groups. Despite being physically discontinuous, many groups still involve aseries of interconnected, co-sustaining processes oriented at achieving some particular end or set of ends. Auniversity, for example, is an institution that is constitutively oriented toward education and research. This is evident in the fact that this is the purpose for which their physical buildings are created, the roles of administrative staff are oriented toward functional teaching and research processes, and so on. The key fact that differentiates this enactivist approach to understanding group agents in general and universities in particular is that it locates the key activities and behaviours that we are concerned with in the structures of the institution itself rather than in the laziness or greed or stupidity of individuals. In so doing, Iwill argue here, we are better situated to 12 Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, 143. 13 Christensen and Bickhard, “The Process Dynamics of Normative Function,” 11. 134 understand and therefore address various problems present in our educational institutions than views that take the alternative approach. Let’s begin with the commodification of the contemporary university. Universities are by definition institutions of higher education and research. If we observe the behaviour of aparticular group agent and discover that it is not at all oriented toward these things, then we are likely mistaken about the identity of the group in question. If the system instead relies for its self-maintenance on turning aprofit by selling products or producing propagandistic videos on YouTube, it’s more likely abusiness than auniversity. Still, universities require money to run. Staff need to be paid, buildings need to be built or repaired, advertising needs to be done, and so on. Money is required for the conditions of possibility of the university to be met. Given the environmental conditions that many universities exist in, commodification has been an unavoidable consequence. This commodification drives much of the felt reality of the publish or perish model for professional academics. By employing quantitative measures such as the number of citations or publications an academic has as astand-in for the quality of their work, universities are able to improve their own reputations and generate an air of prestige to those who are either unable or unwilling to assess the genuine quality of the work done. This, in turn, attracts students and funding bodies, which feeds the university with the capital it requires to function and, ideally, to expand. The pressure felt by academics comes in the form of employment and funding opportunities, among other things. Combine this with the further fact that there are more doctoral students than there will be academic positions for those students, and we end up with an environment, consistent with the rest of the capitalist world, in which one’s performance according to various quantitative rather than qualitative measures determines one’s likelihood of attaining or maintaining employment and where failure to perform sufficiently well brings with it the constant threat of being replaced by someone else, since there is always asurplus of potential labourers. In other words, the function of an academic is to serve the normative interests of the university, which are determined by its capacity for self-maintenance. The interests of the academic are unimportant to the group itself, except insofar as they contribute to the group’s own goals. In this sense, then, the pressures placed on academics to publish exist purely because they are in the interest of the university, even as these interests drive directly against the interests of academics and academic 135 research. But it does not matter to the university as an institution that scientific research is falsified,14 or that researchers are putting aside work they believe might be genuinely impactful or useful in favour of work that is likely to be published and cited. Notice, however, that there is no individual or group of individuals that we can easily point to and blame. The academics who engage in these practices are not entirely at fault. They simply have little choice if they wish to maintain their academic careers. The flaws are built into the very structure of the university as it interacts with the capitalist systems around it. We may still rightly hold individuals responsible for their participation in collective actions, especially if those actions are immoral or unjust rather than harmful predominantly to the group members. Nevertheless, the enactivist perspective highlights the structural embeddedness of institutional problems and the necessary difficulty we will face in addressing these problems. If we were hoping for easy solutions, this is no doubt adaunting reality. But, by identifying the genuine root of the issue, we become better placed to address it. It is also avirtue of the enactivist theory of agency that it explicitly embeds the agent in its environment and thus defines the agent’s norms as being environmentally dependent. What an agent needs to do to thrive is always going to be contextual. For now, it is obvious that businesses aim primarily to make aprofit. However, under entirely alien economic circumstances, those same businesses will not simply continue trying to make aprofit– they will adapt to what is required in the new context. This notion of normativity in combination with the enactivist picture of autonomously individuated group agents allows us to better understand the activities of groups due to their environmental conditions and, in theory, to manipulate those conditions to achieve the results we want. Because possible interventions can be identified, there is apotential to empirically demonstrate the utility of the enactive account of group individuality through manipulation of these environmental conditions in models or by looking at these conditions over time in long-term economic studies. The university’s environmental enabling conditions likely include various sources of money such as government funding, research grants, and student fees, the physical space the university inhabits, the laws that 14 We might worry that falsified research will negatively impact auniversity’s reputation. However, this assumes that the research will be found out and, furthermore, that the blame will be placed at least partially on the university rather than squarely on the academic(s) involved. 136 constrain what can and cannot be researched, how staff can be treated, and so on. Ideally, after we have mapped out some or all of the university’s environment, we can then consider how to effect change. Laws might be implemented to change how the quality of research is measured, for instance, so that quantity of output is viewed as less important than, say, avalue rating provided by one’s academic peers. Needless to say, any method will have its flaws, but understanding that interventions at the environmental level have this kind of impact shifts our focus away from fundamentally ineffective individualised interventions and highlights the necessity of collective action targeted at systemic change. Whatever our intent, serious change cannot result purely from the actions of some members of the university, because their position is precisely one of functional constraint. The enactivist account tells us that the university itself is asystem structured to self-maintain in the environmental conditions it is in, and the treatment of academic staff serves that end. Staff might collectively take action, but this would require the support of even potential staff, i.e., the unemployed or casually employed but aspiring full-time academics. Hence, even if change is predominantly driven by demands internal to the institution, it requires external solidarity. If we wish to alter the normative structure of the institution itself, then necessarily the environment that group agent finds itself in must be changed completely. Ashorter working day, while undeniably agood thing for the worker, does not eliminate the conditions of their servitude. It only makes it more bearable. So, effecting change is most likely to succeed if it comes from the environmental constraints and affordances of the system. That said, as the environment influences the system, so too does the system recursively influence its environment to better sustain itself. We should, unfortunately, expect ideological or financial commitments on the side of maintenance rather than change. To conclude, Iwill discuss briefly how two other prominent accounts of group agency fare in the face of similar problems. The most prominent account of group agency is Christian List and Philip Pettit’s. They hold that an agent is asystem with motivational states, representational states, and the capacity to act on those states.15 On this account, the motivations of agiven agent are only explicable on the basis of that agent’s behaviour. This is afine starting point, but the enactivist account 15 Christian List and Philip Pettit, Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 20. 137 allows us the potential to take this understanding further. We can still get adecent idea of the group’s norms via its behaviour, but on the enactivist view we can ideally develop an outline of that agent’s environmental interactions and requirements which would allow for greater predictive power than behaviour observation alone. We can model the university and see what it does or aims to do as its primary constitutive activity. Commodified universities are not, for example, primarily concerned with making aprofit for its own sake the way that abusiness might be. Instead, they have become commodified entities because of the environments they exist in. Using the enactivist account of agency, we could try to predict how universities would respond to certain legal or economic changes. Again, this requires further empirical research, but the enactivist view provides an operational account of agency to build that research on. Furthermore, List and Pettit’s account can never explain why an agent has particular motivations, especially when those motivations seem to contradict the norms of the individuals who make up that agent and the norms of the individuals that agent is supposed to serve. How the pressures placed on academic staff arose in universities is amystery if we think of group agents as and their decision structures as made up strictly of people acting in particular roles. There must be some other forces at play, such as the group’s own normative ends dictated by its conditions of possibility. The individuals who serve the agent are nothing but material for it, just as our own cells are nothing but material for the functioning of our bodies. Raimo Tuomela’s notion of the group ethos runs into asimilar problem to this last one. For Tuomela, agroup’s norms are collectively accepted by the members of that group.16 But, when the norms of the group directly harm the members, as with corporations causing enormous environmental harms or universities demanding excessive workloads of their academics, it seems unreasonable that these norms have been collectively accepted in any free sense. Certainly, to be amember of agroup agent, one must cave to that group’s demands. But given that in many cases group membership means sustenance, housing, and hopefully comfort, framing the group’s ethos as dependent on the acceptance of its members rather than as aconstraining force on them is at odds with the facts. 16 Raimo Tuomela, Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 15, 136-40. 144 systems with one particular type of communication, tends to overlook this multifunctionality. But we could first ask whether the name of this conference, the autopoietic function of universities, should not be plural: functions? Furthermore, we can add, following the terminology of R. K. Merton, that some functions are manifest in nature (wanted, intended, intentional and planned), and some are latent (unintended, unintentional, unwanted and unplanned). According to Merton, the substantial part of sociological research should be the discovery of such latent functions. If sociology was limited to the observation of manifest functions, it would insist on the establishment of well-known banalities. Sociology, on the other hand, becomes interesting and beneficial if it can discover and analyse what people did not intend and plan. In addition to functions, according to Merton, there may also be dysfunctions (in our case, the distribution and redistribution of financial resources, or the disproportionate escalation of entitlements among employees, students or university graduates). For further inspiration, we can look to Luhmann’s predecessor, the American sociologist Talcott Parsons. According to Parsons, any social system can reproduce only if it ensures the realization of four basic functions: adaptation (A), achievement of goals (G), integration (I) and maintenance of latent cultural patterns (L).15 Luhmann does not work with the AGIL scheme, mainly because he prefers to explain the autopoiesis of individual systems on the principle of one specific communication medium, but in the context of the discussed issues perhaps Parsons’ scheme may offer us amore flexible, plausible approach to theoretical description. In Parsons’ systems models, each basic function is associated with afunctionally specialized subsystem. However, university as asystem can in my view be adequately captured only if we do not associate individual functions with one subsystem, but multiple connections. So, for example, adaptation refers to the level and state of politics, economics, science, culture, and other areas, including, for instance, demographic structures. Setting and achieving goals can also have several dimensions: educational, scientific, political, economic, etc. As for integration, it is necessary to consider not only the internal cohesion of the university system itself, but also the question of its involvement in wider social 15 See Parsons, Societies. Sometimes we also talk about the “paradigm” AGIL, or the abbreviation LIGA is used (A: Adaptation, G: Goal Attainment, I: Integration, L: Latent pattern maintenance). 145 structures, and not just those within which scientific and pedagogical tasks are developed (an important topic, for example, is the connection of teaching with practice). Finally, the maintenance of latent cultural patterns, in agiven context, can be understood as apermanent connection, reproduction and development not only of academic traditions, but also of ways of scientific thinking or ideological principles. In Luhmann’s conception, autopoietic processes have the character of communication. For Parsons, however, it is not just amatter of communication in terms of handling information, but also of exchange,16 and this can be understood in the university system as one of the interpretive models of what is happening in this area. Many academics believe that there should be something in science of free competition, which liberals still consider the best environment for dynamic development. It is assumed that, as in the economy, where everything is controlled by the “invisible hand of the market,” something similar should exist in science, and it is believed that in this (marketplace of ideas) way the best will prevail. However, it is often forgotten that neither the contemporary economy nor science works in an environment in which only competition dominates. As political economy showed at the beginning of the 20th century, in today’s capitalism it is often those who are in the monopoly positions that can dictate to others and thus control the relevant market segment. And later something similar– as far as science is concerned– was pointed out by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton when he described the functioning of the so-called St. Matthew effect in science. Merton builds on Jesus’ statement recorded by the evangelist Matthew, which states that the rich will be even richer and the poor even poorer (more precisely: “As every one that hath, he will be added, who that hath not, they shall be even taken away from him.” /Mt 25, 29/).17 Merton takes this statement literally and reflects on its effects on existing science funding systems. The formation of monopolies in the field of science leads to monopolists buying the best scientists in the given field, in whose hands is the best technical equipment, respected professional periodicals, contacts with recognized publishers, privileged access to grant competitions, and funds intended to finance science. Monopolists can then influence the further development and direction of science, but also 16 What Luhmann symbolically calls generalized media, Parsons understands as media of exchange. 17 Robert Merton, “Efekt Sv. Matouše ve Vědě (Úvaha oSystémech Odměn aKomunikací ve Vědě),” Sociologický Časopis / Czech Sociological Review 6, no.2 (1970): 121–32. 146 the advancement of the personal careers of those who move in this social field, simply by choosing and recommending, from the range of options open to science at agiven moment, the paths that suit themwhile they try to eliminate or marginalize other paths, opinions and representatives. If we ask what can prevent the excessive monopolization of science, we are again reminded of what we know from economics, and that is planned management. The management of science is undoubtedly important, but it must be freed from the shortcomings faced by the socialist planned economy, in which the elements that dynamize the economy are fatally absent, such as competition, contention, individual and group interests. German system theorists, who somewhat in connection to Luhmann have tried to resolve the issue of political control over individual partial social systems in the last twenty years, have come up with the concept of “supervision.”18 In response to this idea, we find that the management of science in this regime should not resemble the planned economy of real socialism, but should be asupervision that does not take away from individual areas of science, and also individual and collective actors, the room for exercise of competition and rivalry. However, in the conclusion of this paper we come to processes that cannot be explained only as aresult of autopoietic systemic operation, but must take into account the actions of particular individual actors– specific human individuals of the homo academicus type. 18 Helmut Willke, Supervision des Staates (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997). Historical Investigations: The Current Fate of the Universities 149 Universities under Systemic Changes, the Way of CEU from Prague through Budapest to Vienna Peter Balazs Subjective Introductory Remarks The history of Central European University (CEU) has gone hand in hand with the tremendous systemic change in the eastern part of Europe. The various events around CEU– atrue and authentic Central European educational institution at the beginning– reflected the major political turns in the region. Icannot have an objective view about this topic, being personally involved both intellectually and emotionally. Istarted teaching at CEU immediately after my return from Brussels, where Ihad the honour to be the first Hungarian member of the European Commission in 2004.1 In 2017 Iwent down the streets of Budapest, together with colleagues and students, to protest against the expulsion of the university from Hungary. After having spent 15 active years at CEU Budapest, Iam today aProfessor Emeritus of that university. At CEU Ibegan my activities with adouble task. On the one hand, Iprepared my teaching at the International Relations and European Studies Department. Itook over the course concerning the external relations of the EU and suggested anew one on European governance. Istarted my courses in 2005 and continued until 2017 (11 academic years). On the other hand, Iwas asked to set up aresearch centre “about the EU” and 1 My fellow Commissioners from the Visegrád countries were Pavel Telička (Czech Republic), Ján Figeľ (Slovakia) and Danuta Hübner (Poland), who were actively involved in the EU accession negotiations, too. Pavel Telička and Ibecame the first Permanent Representatives of our respective countries and the first EU Commissioners, also the first being replaced by party politicians. 150 Iwas given afree hand to suggest its topic. Considering the main profile of Central European University, its geographical location as well as the countries of origin of the great majority of the students, Iintroduced the project of the “Centre for EU Enlargement Studies (CENS)” which was approved by the Senate. The Centre started its activities in 2005 for atest period with an initial staff of three people. Afew years later, CENS was enlarged to seven researchers, and subsequently, together with visiting and temporary staff, to astable team of 10–12. Later the name was changed into “Centre for European Neighbourhood Studies (CENS).” In 2020, in parallel with the move of CEU from Budapest to Vienna, this centre– together with several other research centres of CEU– was closed without succession. During the 15 years of its existence, CENS conducted interesting research projects (e.g., about the perspectives of the “EU 36,” the experiences of “post-accession conditionality” in the EU or the future of the EU budget) and organized agreat number of international conferences, workshops, seminars and round tables. The origins of CEU The Central European University was founded in 1991 in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its alliance system. The founding vision was to create auniversity dedicated to examining the contemporary challenges of “open societies”2 and democratization. The initial aim of the CEU was to create aWestern-modelled yet distinctly Central European institution that would foster inter-regional cooperation and educate anew generation of regional leaders to help democratic transitions across the region. The CEU was set up in Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw. It was originally located mostly in Prague, but due to political and financial conflict between its founder and the Czech government, it was moved to Budapest. As far as details are concerned, the CEU evolved from aseries of lectures held at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). In 1989, as historical change was gathering momentum in the region, the need for anew, independent, international university emerged. The minutes of the gathering held in April 1989 record adiscussion among scholars such as Rudolf Andorka, Péter Hanák, Márton 2 The term “open society” was introduced by the philosopher Karl Popper, who made adeep impression on one of his young students, the emigrant Hungarian G. Soros, at the London School of Economics. 151 Tardos, István Teplán, Tibor Vámos and Miklós Vásárhelyi from Budapest, William Newton-Smith and Kathleen Wilkes from Oxford, Jan Havranek, Michal Illner and Jiří Kořalka from Prague, and Krzysztof Michalski and Włodzimierz Siwiński from Warsaw. George Soros liked the idea and undertook the financing of the new university. In 1989–1990, aserious attempt was launched to establish aEuropean University in the Slovak capital of Bratislava, but it fell through due to opposition from nationalist politicians. In January 1990, 38 Slovak historians wrote an open letter in the name of the “Štúr Society” and strongly opposed the use of the Slovak Parliament’s building to host the new university. In April 1991, the President of Charta 77, Jan Palouš, offered the CEU abuilding in Prague. However, Prime Minister Václav Klaus did not like the liberal ideas and limited state support for the university. In 1992 the Czech government increased the rental for the Trade Unions’ House, forcing CEU to leave the country. In parallel with that, CEU could not stabilize its presence in Warsaw either. However, in 1992 the city of Budapest offered acentrally located historical building in Nádor street, amagnificent palace of the Festetics family based in Keszthely at the western end of Lake Balaton.3 So CEU was transferred to Hungary and could function and develop undisturbed for 15 years. The university got accreditation both in the US and Hungary. In the United States it was accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, in Hungary by the Hungarian Accreditation Committee and officially recognized in 2004 as aprivately maintained and operated university. CEU under Attack in Hungary and Moving to Vienna After the occupation of the media, the courts, civic organisations, universities and theatres etc., CEU could not escape the aggression of Viktor Orbán’s4 “illiberal” drive, either.5 On 28 March 2017, the Hungarian Minister of Human Resources Zoltán Balog, also responsible for education, submitted abill to Parliament to amend Act CCIV of 2011 on National 3 Minister Karel Schwarzenberg told me once that his grandmother, coming from the Festetics family, had lived in that palace at Nádor street 9, Budapest as achild. 4 Prime Minister of Hungary in 1998–2002 and 2010–2022. 5 F ranklin Foer, “Viktor Orbán’s War on Intellect,” The Atlantic, June 2019, https:// www.theatlantic .com/magazine/archive/2019/06/george-soros-viktor-orban-ceu/588070/. 152 Higher Education. The bill introduced new regulations for foreign-operating universities, several of which affected CEU. Notably, such universities could only function if the Hungarian government had an agreement with the university’s other country of operation (with regard to CEU, the agreement is between the State of New York and the city of Budapest). In addition, universities in service outside of the European Union should have acampus in their other country of operation too where comparable degree programs would be offered. In 2017 it was obviously not the case for CEU.6 Furthermore, both existing and new non-EU academic staff of CEU were required to apply for work permits. In Hungary, this condition is seen by critics as placing CEU at aparticular disadvantage, given that it relies largely on non-EU faculty. Finally, the law also prohibited both the American and Hungarian entities from sharing the same name (Central European University– Közép-európai Egyetem). In order to highlight the political atmosphere in Hungary, it is important to mention the “Stop Soros” national consultation in late 2017. The opportunity for the accusations against Soros was delivered by himself: in his article “Rebuilding the Asylum System,”7 he suggested humanitarian reception and integration of asylum seekers in Europe with special regard to the missing workforce in some EU countries like Germany. The message of the government propaganda in Hungary was that Soros is manipulating the EU and his final aim is to turn the population of Europe into Muslims. In 2018 the Hungarian government refused to sign an agreement allowing CEU to continue teaching its US-accredited programs in Hungary. Under this political pressure, on 3 December 2018 the Board of CEU announced the decision that it would relocate the majority of operations to Vienna in September 2019.8 Only less than one fifth of CEU’s programs, that are locally accredited, would remain in Budapest.9 In Austria, CEU has been recognized as a private higher education 6 These special conditions were tailor-made for CEU which was called “the university of Soros” by Prime Minister Orbán and other members of the government. 7 George Soros, “Rebuilding the Asylum System,” Project Syndicate, September 26, 2015, https:// www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rebuilding-refugee-asylum-system-by-george-soros -2015-09/. 8 Marc Santora, “George Soros-Founded University Is Forced Out of Hungary,” New York Times, December 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/world/europe/soros-hungary -central-european-university.html/. 9 Palko Karasz, “Hungary Plan That Could Shutter Soros’s University Is Called ‘Political Vandalism,’” New York Times, March 29, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/world /europe/hungary-george-soros-university.html/. 153 institution pursuant to section 7 of the Decree on Accreditation of Private Universities (PU-AkkVO). Central European University Private University (CEU PU) is accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation Austria. As aclosing act, the Hungarian government launched another hostile propaganda campaign by 2019: Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission and George Soros were presented together on billboards, with adistorted grimace on their face, all across the country with the comment: “You should know what Brussels is for.” The hidden message of the campaign was that liberal political forces, embodied by George Soros, in conspiracy with the European Union, exemplified by the person of Jean-Claude Juncker, represent amajor threat to the sovereignty of European nation states. This scurrilous action contributed to the exclusion of Fidesz, the political party of Orbán, from the European People’s Party (EPP) in 2020. Before this breakup, the President of the party group, Manfred Weber visited Budapest on the eve of the 2019 EP elections and made alast attempt to keep Fidesz in the EPP family. He presented three requests to Mr. Orbán: first, to apologise because he called the EPP members “useful idiots”; second, to take off the Juncker-Soros pictures on the streets of Hungary; and third, to leave CEU in peace in Hungary. Orbán fulfilled the first two but did not change his attitude toward CEU. The position of the US government was interesting, too. After failing to promote adeal between the US and Hungary that would keep the CEU in Budapest, the US Ambassador to Hungary nominated by President Donald Trump, David Cornstein, said (on 30 November 2018) that the whole issue “had to do with Orban and Soros. It had nothing to do with academic freedom or civil liberties.” According to The New York Times, “Mr. Orban has long viewed the school as abastion of liberalism, presenting athreat to his vision of creating an ‘illiberal democracy,’ and his desire to shut it down was only deepened by its association with Mr. Soros, aphilanthropist who was born in Hungary. He has spent years demonizing Mr. Soros, aJew who survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary, accusing him of seeking to destroy European civilization by promoting illegal immigration, and often tapping into anti-Semitic tropes.”