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Ethics of activism and teaching
Canadian varsities to woo Indian students Campus Notes
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Ethics of activism and teaching WE see that a time comes when suddenly our intellectual activities are shaken; traditional rationales which underpin our daily practises stand discredited. In this context, the role of the teacher becomes an act of responsibility and intervention, especially when we all know that education is never neutral. Its emancipatory project makes it inherently political. As Samantha Powers writes: “At the moment our world seems to be afraid and fear is dangerous. It can justify excesses and can lead to escapism. The gravest temptation is an overwhelmed, apolitical retreat into private life. But it is not enough to lament the burden of our time; we critics must shape the response. It is only in the public sphere, through voting, voicing, and mobilising (and through dissent) that our fates become our own. While fear is dangerous, fear can also concentrate the mind and lead citizens to take political action. The coming years are years of danger and promise, and we can only hope that the tug towards apathy will be overcome by the lure of human improvement and self-preservation.” Powers fears a progressive withdrawal in the universities from public concern. Until this is realised, it would be futile to talk about ethics and teaching. I am not engaging in any sermon that puts across lessons in moral responsibility, truth and sincerity in the teaching profession. Surely, we all know the ethics of our profession; every teacher must maintain integrity and devotion to teaching and do nothing that is unbecoming of the profession. For me, ethics, more than anything else, stands for outrage and a sense of duty that refuses to retreat into a squirrel-like specialisation perpetuating a system of professionalised transmission of knowledge. In such a discussion on ethics, the need is to move out of the closet and one’s own narrow specialisations, always resisting the overwhelming effect of received notions. A deep-seated fluidity marks all disciplines of investigation and we cannot push the students and ourselves into the quagmire of fossilised principles that are regurgitated day in and day out. I have in mind the case of the yellowing notes that teachers often resort to. We cannot possible cordon off literature or pure science from social science or social theory. The focus on ethics redirects all reading and learning towards active politics, towards an emphasis on social justice and freedom. Stepping beyond the narrow confines of one’s area of pursuit, it becomes imperative for a teacher to relate to extraneous social concerns of his research and teaching. With a ferocious work ethics combined with a restless curiosity and sharp literary judgement, the teacher has to rise against any kind of oppression. These are the ethics of an emancipatory value that are then passed on to students. I have before me the example of the Grand Strategy Programme at Yale run by Professor Charles Hill who involves his students in relating big ideas to big events; the application of Gibbon’s thought to international politics, for instance, is one way of breaking walls between disciplines and learning to correlate disparate subjects which inherently have a deeper connection often overlooked by traditional forms of teaching. It is through his commanding presence that Professor Hill draws students towards his rather revolutionary pedagogy through activism and an aura of great purpose that underpins his approach. Indeed it is imperative to “de-academise” critical and literary theory, refusing its disciplining into courses, methodologies, and conferences which are utterly cut off from the political reality that they purport to address. My point of reference is the ethics that we confront in the life and works of writers like Vaclav Havel, Jean Paul Sartre or Raymond Aron, all of whom are role models of immense consequence. If Havel stood against the onslaught of the Soviet invasion, Sartre and Aron stood against the French dominance in Algeria. I rate these three as profound intellectuals, though surprisingly, none of them seem to have been given enough importance in academic disciplines. I feel we academics try to achieve a timeless perspective on a well-defined patch of reality, whereas these intellectuals were prompted by current events to develop a distinctive point of view on all reality, which they repeatedly revisited and revised as the times changed. They realised that their “conscience was the most reliable instrument of inquiry at their disposal”. We remember them more for the attitude they brought to what they wrote or said. Such is the new intellectual base for teaching which becomes an instrument of change, a practise that changes the very conditions of reading any text for that matter. We have to move on into the practise of thinking hard and scrutinising the possibility of the hitherto unthought-of, so that teaching changes the very outlook of students and of society. The responsibility, therefore, of a teacher is to expose lies and lay bare the hidden agenda of discourse, so that his intervention can help to mitigate misery and terminate violence. Telling people that, which they least want to hear, becomes the moral responsibility and the consequences of our actions or writings. The ethical value of intervention is judged according to its human consequences. The responsibility conferred on the teacher by his freedom must lead him to protest, to resistance, to articulate goals, to persuade, and to organise. Thus, in the Gramician sense, the teacher has to avoid a role whereby he executes nothing more than the legitimation of the acts of the ruling class. It is well known that the role of the intellectual has been to ensure that beliefs are properly inculcated, beliefs that serve the interests of those who wield social control. As Chomsky writes, “Ideas that circulate in the faculty club and executive suite can be transmuted into ideological instruments to confuse and demoralise.” Intelligentsia, therefore, chooses to serve power rather than truth, while ideology becomes a mask for self-interest. The intellectual tradition around the world is one of servility to power and, therefore, opposed to the philosophy of anarchism where no privilege is granted to the public servant and no intellectual is drawn to power; he just uses knowledge for application to various problems. Thus, those who desire freedom must beware the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. Within this context, I see an ethical concern that gives an impetus to socialist thinking that can reach out to millions who have sacrificed, gone hungry and lost dear ones; only that culture may take birth and survive. It is imperative to keep this fact of our social and economic history in the forefront in order to come to grips with the need to offer resistance in a growing exploitative world.
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Canadian varsities to woo Indian students TORONTO: Presidents of 15 Canadian universities embark on a seven-day mission to India today to woo students from the second fastest growing nation in the world. It is the biggest mission to India by Canadian educational institutions after the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding on higher education during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit in June. Though more than 150,000 Indian students go abroad for higher education each year, Canada gets only about 3,000 annually. Thus, Indian students account for a fraction of more than 90,000 foreign students who enrolled in Canadian universities last year. With foreign students paying more than $15,000 in fees each and collectively pumping more than $6.5 billion into the economy, Canada is looking to a big jump in enrollment from India. Organised by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), the Canadian education mission will travel to Pune and Delhi for meetings with educational institutions, the private sector and administrators to usher in new era in ties in this sector between the two nations. Its major engagements in India include a roundtable with Indian university presidents, which will also be attended by Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal and his Canadian counterpart Gary Goodyear. The mission will also participate in the higher education summit being organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). “This mission is a way for us to get to know India and its needs more deeply — and to make sure that when Indians think of research and higher education, they think of us,’’ said AUCC president Paul Davidson before the mission’s departure for India. “Educators and business people in India need to know that Canadian universities are open to building successful partnerships that will enrich experiences for students, strengthen links between our countries and advance international research collaboration,’’ he said. —
IANS
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Campus Notes THE Central University of Punjab (CUP) has decided to connect itself with residents of the Malwa belt by starting courses and research related to cancer and environment. The CUP would initiate basic research about cause of the disease in the Malwa belt, its treatment and prevention. Prof. Jairup Singh, Vice-Chancellor of the CUP, said the courses related to research in cancer would be started in the coming session. The Malwa belt has the highest number of cancer patients in Punjab. Teaching in CUP started last year. He said among these courses were genetic diseases and molecular medicine and chemical and pharmaceutical sciences. The already established centre for environmental science and technology would also look into the environmental aspects in spread of cancer, particularly in the Malwa region, he said. The centre for chemical and pharmaceutical science would study the possible agents causing cancer and also prevention and treatment of the disease. Jairup Singh said the CUP was in touch with the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) whose team recently visited the campus. He said his stress was on breaking the barriers between science and humanity for the overall development of students. It has been made compulsory for every student of science to study one course in humanity and vice versa. Computer knowledge has also been made compulsory. The CUP has developed a rich library that has been stocked with more than 3,000 books and is subscribing to 37 international and 12 national journals. Very shortly, the CUP would offer a rich collection of print and digital resources. Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana Punjab Agricultural University and Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the students' exchange programme for Master’s as well as Ph.D courses. Under the agreement, the postgraduate students of the university would visit PAU for one or two semesters and similarly, the postgraduate students of PAU will be visiting Udaipur for the same period. The agreement was signed by the Vice-Chancellors of the two universities.
Krishna’s Butter Cup
The university campus has a huge tree opposite the Museum of Social History of Punjab, which is a source of attraction for the people visiting the university. This tree is known as 'Krishna's Butter Cup'. There is a mythological story of Lord Krishna linked to the tree. The legend has it that Lord Krishna was very fond of butter and would often steal the same. Once, when he tried to hide butter by rolling it up in the leaves of this tree, the leaves of the tree later retained the shape. —
Contributed by S. P. Sharma and K. S. Chawla
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WE see that a time comes when suddenly our intellectual activities are shaken; traditional rationales which underpin our daily practises stand discredited. In this context, the role of the teacher becomes an act of responsibility and intervention, especially when we all know that education is never neutral. Its emancipatory project makes it inherently political.
