PSYCHOLOGIST and author Dr Leachim Semaj is urging local and regional universities to be more than just a space for students to get degrees by opening minds and fighting ignorance, which he sees as key to protecting academic freedom around the world.

Speaking during The University of the West Indies’ Vice-Chancellor’s Forum on Academic Freedom, Sustainable Development, and the Role of the University last Thursday, Dr Semaj said universities must take a stand against people and systems that try to enforce a single way of thinking.

“Universities have to continue to broaden the horizon of students, irrespective of what they said they came to study, because oftentimes — especially in our part of the world — many of our students, they’re the first generation who graduated from high school so we have an awesome responsibility to help them, to fast-track them into getting this broader view,” he said.

Dr Semaj warned that in today’s world, where social media has become even more prevalent, universities must remain a safe space for responsible discussions and intellectual thinking.

“Social media is going in another direction in terms of the narrowing and the trivialisation of reality, so the university has an even more important role now to provide that space where thought, intellect, understanding is present. Oftentimes when I teach the first section of a course, in the first couple of minutes I ask, ‘What’s on your mind?’ And I say this to explain why we call this a university because, irrespective of the subject, you’re here to learn about the universe,” he added.

Agreeing, vice president of academic affairs and director of the Centre for Civic Engagement at Bard College, Professor Jonathan Becker said universities must also break away from the image of being “closed-off ivory towers” and instead focus on widening access and engaging more deeply with the communities.

“I think we need to recognise it as a privilege to have access to higher education, and therefore it is a responsibility of institutions to consider access to higher education when it is shaping its programmes. Too often institutions are not thinking about how to provide access to people who might not otherwise have [it], so they do not think about how they can prepare students who have not had educational opportunities earlier to do so,” he explained.

Becker argued that universities have a civic duty, not only to educate but to actively contribute to society through services like legal and medical clinics, and by creating platforms for meaningful dialogue and democratic participation.

“I write a lot on what I call universities as civic actors… they should view themselves as being capable of contributing to communities in which they’re situated, first and foremost through providing education, but through the other types of activities it can do [too],” he said.

Becker also highlighted the importance of helping students find their voice through exposure to diverse ideas and experiences.

“It’s also very important that we train undergraduate students, that we provide them the opportunity to find their voice so that they become contributors to society based on the views that they develop and based on the diversity of ideas that are presented at the institution — and that is also part of the university’s responsibility,” he said.

Meanwhile, Professor John Petrovic from the University of Alabama pointed out that, from his perspective, universities across the world are slowly becoming too much like businesses.

He warned that teachers and professors are losing their voice in the process, which could hurt the quality of education.

“I think my call to action would be for faculty to regain control of the university. There used to be something called faculty governance… I think that’s under attack; and I think that attack is driven by the neoliberal impulse — which is a global phenomenon now. And the effect that has then leads to this neo-liberalism and neo-liberalisation of higher education, leading to things like what I refer to as the adjunctification of the faculty,” he warned.

He believes that in order for universities to conquer the fight against the growing threat to academic freedom, they should go back to being places that help people live full and meaningful lives — and not just train them for work.

“…Skilling people and educating them to get a job is necessary for them to flourish and gain self-sufficiency, but it doesn’t lead necessarily to a flourishing life; that requires other gifts from the university. And to take advantage of those things, students have to develop the capacity for autonomy — to think through different kinds of problems, to have the capacity for rational deliberation among many competing conceptions of a good life — and when we emphasise the economic purposes of higher education we lose sight of that and we lose sight of human flourishing, in general,” Professor Petrovic warned.

The UWI’s Vice-Chancellor’s Forum on Academic Freedom, Sustainable Development, and the Role of the University brought together academics and education leaders from across the region and beyond, to explore ways in which tertiary institutions can fight against the different growing threats to academic freedom across the world.