When I was a sociology graduate student at University of Toronto in the mid-1980s, the conservative government’s deep budget cuts were hitting hard. A cartoon on my department’s bullettin board said it all.
The rector was pictured at his desk, agonising over where to cut staff and resources without much blood-letting. Standing behind him, the university’s financial controller sheepishly floats a wild suggestion: “Ehm, Rector, how do you feel about the sociology department?”. “I don’t know, is it any good?” responds the rector with wry sarcasm.
The sign of the times was simple enough: the white heat of the market was making the 1960s dream of critical ideas, revolution and idealism evaporate. Ideas behind the thick and ancient walls of academia were becoming as important as their price on the market outside them.
This cartoon flashed back to mind recently when I thought about the extent of public-spiritedness of Malta’s university, its staff and its students. What contribution do Maltese academics give to the formation of public opinion? Where do these men and women inhabiting the highest institution of learning in the land stand on issues of national importance? What do they think on illegal immigration, changing family structures, the environment, the economy or the changing face of politics a year after EU membership? Do they want to have such a voice or not?
The media in Europe is regularly speckled with the opinions of academics, either inserted in news stories or fleshed out as fully-blown opinion pieces. Some academics even have their own weekly column. In some countries, France stand out, academics are premier league opinion formers and changers. They are assiduously courted by the media, feared or feted by politicians of different stripes and major economic, social and cultural power brokers.
Do Maltese academics and intellectuals in general see themselves in the same light, as contributors to the national conversation? Hardly. Barring a few rare birds who regularly or occasionally fly out of tal-Qroqq towards newspaper pages or television screens, our university has hermitically sealed itself off from public opinion and debate.
Have the members of the sociology department, of which I was a member for a decade, engaged in the debate on the changing contours of this society? What have the lecturers in the philosophy and theology departments done to bring their thoughts and research to bear on the various moral and ethical questions hanging over us? When will someone in the history department take the first deep stab at chronicling the last three and a half decades? When will a politics lecturer shed some insight on to the local scene? Are there no lecturers in law who have a view on the nature and quality of our legislative process, the state of the legal profession and the way the courts are functioning, or not, as it were?
This is not to say that none of these academics has done any work in their field, far from it. A number are published widely, both locally and abroad. Some have even touched, albeit lightly, on the themes mentioned.
Yet few, too few Maltese academics, have chosen to engage, really engage, with the life and times of their country. They never get their hands dirty. Most are only too happy to write about developments and events in other countries but they steer clear of the ones in their own. Intellectually, it is as if Maltese academics live in this society, but are not of it. They are paid to think but don’t do much of it in the service of those who sign their paycheque – and that’s you, the taxpayer.
What sort of engagement should academics have with their society through the media? It is actually quite unique and only they can give it. Academics are well-positioned to offer readers and viewers a wider and deeper perspective on things than any reporter or columnist ever could. They have spent years looking into perrenial questions to which wildly different answers have come down to us over centuries, even millennia. When the public is faced with a “new” ethical dilemma – say, in vitro fertilization – or an emerging socio-economic reality – say, globalisation – it is very likely that the respective academics would have been there, done that many times over. He or she would probably be well acquainted with the whys, wheres and hows of the central question, the range of answers given by different societies in different historical junctions and how the debated panned out over time.
The academic is therefore excellently poised to give a unique public service. He or she can simplify matters without sacrificing debt, lay out the key questions, pass on the relevant information, put the matter in context and, perhaps, make some circumspect predictions and recommendations.
Sadly, Maltese academics rarely render this service. Why? My hunch is that it has a lot to do with the nature of our political culture.
The instant and over-politicisation of every issue under the Maltese sun make the gentle souls wary of getting involved. Not surprisingly, in our language we have a precise way of putting it. Ghalfejn ticcappas? To the average Maltese academic, being politically labelled and probably slaughtered always outweighs the joy and benefit of sharing his or her informed views on an issue of national importance. The indignity of seeing yourself used and abused by the politically-owned media as if you were some sort of a criminal is just too much.
And so, the status quo continues to reign supreme. Like a hermit, the Maltese academic confines his or her mind to the four walls of an academic cell. While politicians continue to hog public space, safe in the knowledge that they can continue to shoot from the hip and express opinions on matters about which they know very little.
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