Social Responsibility in

Universities in Unstable Times

Gu
est lecture delivered at the international conference, Revisiting Social
Responsibility in Contexts of Crisis: Challenges and Possibilities in Sri Lanka
at Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo, 17 November 2014
by Prof Sasanka Perera

- on 11/22/2014

Vice Chancellor, the dean and

colleagues, let me wish all of you a very good morning.
When the Dean, Faculty of Arts wrote to me some time ago and asked if I
am willing to speak at this conference under the theme, Revisiting Social
Responsibility in Contexts of Crisis, I postponed responding to him. That is
because I was quite anxious that this was yet another generic theme
couched within a developmentalist and feel-good agenda. But after a
reminder from him, and on a closer reading, I realized that the conference
offered a certain obvious space for critical self-reflection on what social
responsibility might mean, if one wanted to do so. This space is my point of

departure.
Despite the conferences focus on Sri Lanka, much of my reading comes
from sources beyond Sri Lanka. My interest is to explore what social
responsibility means within universities in difficult times rather than more
generally. Of course, many countries have gone through socio-political
upheavals for various reasons within which the notion of social
responsibility has undergone significant transformations. In this context, I
will present some of these situations to you with an invitation: what do
these experiences mean when translated into local contexts?
If we accept that the university is a space for the generation of knowledge
as well as innovation in thinking, what would happen when the fundamental
intellectual space needed for the production of knowledge becomes
ruptured under unstable socio-political conditions? What happens to larger
issues of citizenship and social responsibility? Does the practice of such
responsibilities become life-threatening?
I will attempt to answer these questions by taking the following route: 1)
initially, I will briefly suggest what I consider to be academics responsibility
to society. This will be followed by an outline of my own understanding of
what a university ought to be; 2) Second, I will explore briefly through the
thoughts of a few thinkers how the idea of the university has transformed
globally, particularly with reference to human sciences; 3) thirdly I will
outline how universities are officially situated locally; and 4) finally, I will
see how social responsibility might seem like in these circumstances.
Who is an academic and what is a university?
For me, being an academic is not simply holding a job. It is a vocation; it is
a way of life; it should be a passion; and above all, it is a responsibility. To
be this, one needs a specific frame of mind in addition to training.[1] To do
all this, one also has to go beyond the classroom into the domains of
broader social practice. To do this, one also has to go beyond the syllabus in
the classroom itself. Even within the syllabus, one has move beyond the

text and the disciplines to the discursive practices of the philosophy of

knowledge, citizenship, justice and common-sense. This is not simply the
responsibility of individual academics. It is also the institutional
responsibility of universities to ensure the feasibility of this vocation. It may
be obvious, what I have in mind as an academic with a responsibility to his
society is not simply someone who is working within the ivory tower and is
imprisoned by it. Instead, it must be someone who can travel with ease
between society and academy without compromising the integrity of his
vocation. In other words, an academic necessarily also has to be a public
intellectual. This is particularly so in regions like South Asia where societies
are burdened with multiple crises in which a rational discourse unshackled
by religion, ethnicity and other sectarian tendencies is a necessity. Being
the author of such a discourse is the responsibility of an academic.
Admittedly, what I have suggested is a very subjective position. But then,
responsibilities cannot be clinical positions understood in black and white.
They are by definition subjective and inscribed with emotion, ideology and
passion. My exploration of what social responsibility means will begin its
journey from this subjective position.
The other side of this equation is what a university should be. S.
Radhakrishnan has noted that the ideal of the university is the promotion
of liberty of mind or freedom of thought and has nothing to do with
promoting conformity.[2] With reference to Sri Lanka, Panduka
Karunanayake suggests quite correctly that the university is societys
intellectual compass not its computing machine.[3] It is also in such a
context but much earlier in time that Rabindranath Tagore noted that
universities should never be made into mechanical organizations for
collecting and distributing knowledge.[4]
How has the idea of the university transformed, globally?
The consensus among many thinking people is that university education is
experiencing numerous crises today. This is more acutely felt in the human

sciences. It is by visiting these specific situations that we can assess what

social responsibility of individuals in these systems might be, and how they
might have changed. Terry Eagleton, in a recent essay titled Death of
Universities focused on higher education in the United Kingdom observes
that what we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities
as centres of critique.[5] In this sense, the university is expected to be the
space where the conscience of the society would reside openly and not in
hiding. For me, this specific understanding of a university is the most crucial
element in any structure of social responsibility as it impacts the academy.
However, as Eagleton explains, in the case of the United Kingdom, since
Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo,
not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human
welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the
future.[6] But as we know quite well, the UK is simply one of the many
countries where this situation currently prevails.
Many such thinkers are talking about the transformation of universities from
a space for critical reflection and production of knowledge into simple
technical institutions. It is precisely this situation that Tagore lamented
about so long ago in his essay, An Asian University. He noted, we are
provided with buildings and books and other magnificent burdens
calculated to suppress our mind. All this has cost us money, and also our
finer ideas, while our intellectual vacancy has been crammed with what is
described in official reports as Education.[7] He was talking about colonial
education in India. But he might as well be talking of the present situation
in higher education in many Indian institutes as well as ours.
How are universities officially situated in Sri Lanka?
If the ideal of the university and its current transformed self globally can be
summarised as above, let me now briefly describe how universities in Sri
Lanka have been understood by the guardian of the system, namely the
Ministry of Higher Education. It is within this official reality you have to

teach and would also have to define what social responsibility might mean.
On its website, the Ministry of Higher Education presents the following
sentiment as its vision: Sri Lanka to be an international hub of excellence
for higher education by 2020.[8] Surely, such a hub of excellence in any
sense should be an oasis for free thinking where social responsibility would
be a natural and essential partner. In itself, this vision does not contradict
the ideal of a university as I have described earlier. The ministrys mission
explains how this hub would be achieved in the following words: To Delight
Students, The Industry, Staff And Other Stakeholders Of The Higher
Education System Of Sri Lanka By Formulating And Implementing Results
Oriented Policies & Strategies And To Deliver Results In An Effective And
Efficient Manner Through A Participatory Process To Produce The Best
Intellectuals, Professionals, Researchers, Entrepreneurs To Deliver
Innovative Solutions To Make Sri Lanka The Wonder Of Asia.[9] Clearly,
the Ministry has carved out as its mission to create a large and throbbing
comfort zone filled with happy people. The manner, in which I described
social responsibility within higher education earlier, would necessarily fit
into this scheme of things. Universities cannot produce the best
intellectuals, professionals, researchers and entrepreneurs and make Sri
Lanka The Wonder Of Asia, without seriously engaging with social
responsibility.
Seen in this sense, this official position seems to indicate that the countrys
higher education sector is keen to create a vibrant knowledge production
system within which there ought to be ample space for the production of
knowledge within a discourse of social responsibility. Nevertheless, despite
this seeming availability of space for innovation and free thinking in Sri
Lankan universities, what is more clearly manifest is the promotion of a
very different set of institutions which vary considerably from the original
idea of what a university was supposed to be.
Much of these pronouncements also have to do with the states

understating of research. There is considerable consensus among the

guardians of the university system, captains of industry and many
university academics that the responsibility for meeting the national
research requirements should be borne by the state universities and their
academics. Research understood in this manner is supposed to fuel
industrial development and economic growth,[10] and nothing more. This
sense of research squarely locates it within the ambit of profit. Similarly,
some streams of human sciences have also become vibrant service
providers for industry and international and local civil society. That is,
research is no longer about seeking knowledge and understanding the
human condition. Instead, it is about delighting the industry and other
stake-holders as the Ministry of Higher Educations mission very clearly
proclaims.
What we are seeing is the enforced disappearance of the university and the
emergence of technical colleges in its place. This is merely the local
manifestation of a trend that is already evident in other parts of South Asia
as well as beyond the region.
How can social responsibility be understood in these circumstances?
What I have outlined so far are the conditions that have ruptured university
education in general and human sciences more specifically. However, this
has not always happened under conditions of political upheaval and
violence. Often, these changes have taken place under conditions of
general socio-political change and specific economic reforms that have
followed the global embrace of the neo-liberal agenda. Situations of war,
generalized violence and dismantling of democratic practices invariably
exert much more pressures on universities as zones of freedom. Edward
Said, in his essay, Identity, Authority and Freedom suggests that in the
post-independence Arab world, state universities were seen as extensions
of the national security states, which had become a norm in state formation
after independence in the Middle East. In this context, Said makes the

following observations about the Arab academy:

Alas, political conformity rather than intellectual excellence was often made
to serve as a criterion for promotion and appointment, with the general
result that timidity, a studious lack of imagination, and careful conservatism
came to rule intellectual practice.[11]
As all of us know quite well, Saids description of post-independence Arab
academy describes equally well the prevailing general situation in Sri Lanka
as well as the broader South Asia region. In Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Nepal, Vice Chancellors are appointed by the President or
the Prime Minister of the country. Appointments to similar positions in
regional universities in Pakistan and India are made by provincial governors.
In all cases, these are acutely political appointments where academic
credentials have little relevance. What is of relevance is an appointees
proximity to political power. In Sri Lanka, this state of affairs has come
about as a result of the states relentless intrusion into universities since
the late 1960s. This has happened in the backdrop of institutionalization of
political violence in the country, out-migration academics to the greener
pastures of the West, experimentation with neo-liberal policies of
governance, the long-term impact of war and political violence on the
practice of democracy and so on.
When crucial appointments such as these are made on the basis of
narrowly defined political ends, what does it mean with regard to social
responsibility of both academics and academia? Doesnt social
responsibility of academics appointed to these positions transform into an
individual responsibility for political survival? Can they be guardians of a
system whose original goals were far greater and much loftier than the selfinterests of the political dispensations which appoint them? The way to
survive in these circumstances is to ensure that the university is no longer
a space for self-reflection and responsible critique as it was once thought to
be, but merely a training ground with defined techno-political goals

delinked from larger issues of citizenship, democracy and justice. It is in a

similar situation that Prof Romila Thapar made the following crucial
observations: There are more academics in existence than ever before but
most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free
thinking. Is this because they wish to pursue knowledge undisturbed or
because they are ready to discard knowledge, should authority require
them to do so.[12] Prof Thapar made her observations not only in her
capacity as one of the most erudite contemporary scholars of history in
South Asia, but also as a person with a pronounced track record in public
engagement at the height of her career at great personal cost. It seems
obvious that the relative silence and lack of public engagement academics
in our part of the world have imposed on themselves have nothing to do
with their interest in pursuing knowledge undisturbed. Rather, it has
everything to do with survival and self-preservation in times of crises
coupled with the institutionalization of mediocrity in the academy as
referred to by Said. If the broader public engagement of academics is
discouraged and stifled, such a situation would transform universities into
sterile spaces devoid of the morality of social responsibility. Closer to home,
it is in view of what universities had become in Sri Lanka that Prof Gananath
Obyesekere in a letter to President Rajapaksa in 2012 suggested, there is
another challenge for a wise leader, and that is to bring back the
universities to its early glory by supporting them at every level because a
world bereft of intellectual life will end up as a dreary world.[13] It appears
that we unfortunately have a serious dearth of wise leaders in public life.
However, the transformation of the academy into a technical space without
its moral authority is not something that the state has done on its own. It
has considerable support from within academia as well as the public. In the
Sri Lankan context, can we think of any significant and sustained public
debates on the nature of universities? Most parents who send their children
to Sri Lankas universities actually seem to want what the state wants to

give them: a technical education that might offer their children a placement
in the labor market as a docile service provider. Who can blame them in
circumstances where the creation of a philosopher who might possess the
moral conscience of the world might mean nothing if he cannot bring home
a pay check at the end of the month to satisfy the hunger of his family. In
this context, is the argument for universities as a space for reflection and
responsible critique as a key element of social responsibility be justified any
longer? Or, perhaps what is more relevant is what most people seem to
want. This is quite simply a basic technical training with the guarantee of a
job. Hopefully in the near future, some of the many survey-taking
sociologists and economists this system has abundantly produced can
conduct a survey and inform all of us what our people actually want. If they
also want what the state subscribes to, which is entirely possible, then our
moral authority to describe universities and academics social
responsibility as I have done so far, will have to be radically re-thought and
changed. Our responsibility then should be to create a space of technical
knowhow which also imbibes a sense of conformity. I think to a large extent
this post-Orwellian brave new world has already arrived. In this context, let
me again refer to the words of Professor Thapar: it is not that we are bereft
of people who can think autonomously and ask relevant questions. But
frequently where there should be voices, there is silence. Are we all being
co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming?[14] In this sense,
conformity and relative silence in India, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South
Asia have come about as a necessity for survival. In fact, it seems silence
and conformity might well be the new form of social responsibility
understood strictly within a discourse of personal survival.
But this state of affairs poses yet another problem when perceived from the
point of view of social responsibility. If the responsibility of the system is to
create conformist labourers for the larger marketplace, how equipped are
universities to deliver even this limited goal? Medical, computing,

engineering and other allied disciplines have been fulfilling precisely this
goal of offering a technical education devoid of larger issues of ethics and
justice over a long period of time. Compared to this long-term reality, what
can the human sciences offer the market? Have the relevant academic
departments begun training their students directly for the market as willed
by the state with the tacit support of the populace? Or by swimming against
the tide, have they created within their courses the space for self-reflection
by introducing cutting-edge knowledge from each discipline available in
different parts of the world, and by creating the necessary space to go
beyond the syllabus creatively? Or are they happy with repeatedly
transmitting received wisdom? Happily, I am no longer part of the system
and am not privy to the answers. Unhappily, you are very much part of the
system and are quite aware of what the situation is. So where does this
leave us in terms of social responsibly? Either we need to accept that our
responsibility lies in training workers for the market and have no
civilizational responsibility beyond this simple utilitarian role. Or, we have to
accept that our responsibility is to ensure that we offer a broader education
within which technical education is also possible. But are we doing either of
these things right?
Mind you, I am not hostile to the governments agenda for a technical
education. Given the expectations of our people, we have a responsibility to
offer such an education to some degree. And I emphasise the words, to
some degree. But if I am to define my responsibility to society as an
academic, it simply cannot be the mere offering of technical competence to
the young people who come to my classes. I believe my responsibility to
society also includes the creation of a sensibility among them which might
hopefully make them sensible citizens. That would remain my conviction
irrespective of the contrary agenda of the state and the wishes of the
people.
In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, I try to assert in my words and works

that education has its only meaning and object in freedom freedom from
ignorance about the laws of the universe, and freedom from passion and
prejudice in our communications with the human world.[15] Personally,
when I cannot do this, it is time for me to look for another vocation. When I
cannot do this, I know I will not be able to carry out my responsibility to
society and to myself. On the other hand, what you do is entirely up to you,
and when the future arrives, the writing on the walls will tell our younger
generations how you dealt with your sense of social responsibility and what
you did with your conscience.
I thank you for your time.
###
The author is a Professor at the Department of Sociology and Dean, Faculty
of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi.
###
[1]. http://www.thediplomaticsociety.co.za/index.php/home/16-home/1112interview-with-an-academic-professor-sasanka-pereradean-faculty-ofsocial-sciences-of-south-asian-university (last accessed on 16/10/14).
[2] Quoted in Panduka Karunanayake, 2011, Promoting Research in Our
Universities: A Critical Examination. In, The
Island,http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=articledetails&page=article-details&code_title=21273 (last accessed on
22/10/14).
[3]. Quoted in Panduka Karunanayake, 2011, Promoting Research in Our
Universities: A Critical Examination. In, The
Island,http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=articledetails&page=article-details&code_title=21273 (last accessed on
22/10/14).
[4]. Rabindranath Tagore, 2004. Selected Essays. New Delhi: Rupa
Publications.
[5]. Eagleton, Terry. 2010 (17th December). The Death of Universities.

In, The
Guardian,http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/deathuniversities-malaise-tuition-fees (last accessed on 02 10/14).
[6]. Eagleton, Terry. 2010 (17th December). The Death of Universities.
In, The
Guardian,http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/deathuniversities-malaise-tuition-fees (last accessed on 02 10/14).
[7]. Rabindranath Tagore, 2004. Selected Essays. New Delhi: Rupa
Publications.
[8]. http://www.mohe.gov.lk/index.php/en/about-ministry/vision-and-mission
(last accessed on 03/04/14).
[9]. http://www.mohe.gov.lk/index.php/en/about-ministry/vision-and-mission
(last accessed on 03/04/14).
[10]. Panduka Karunanayake, 2011, Promoting Research in Our
Universities: A Critical Examination. In, The
Island, http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=articledetails&page=article-details&code_title=21273 (last accessed on
22/10/14).
[11]. Edward Said, 2001. Identity, Authority and Freedom. In, Reflections
on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta Books.
[12]. Romila Thapar, 2014. To Question or not to Question: That is the
Question (Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, 2nd November
2014). New Delhi (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/academics-mustquestion-more-romila/article6535612.ece; last accessed on 03 November
2014).
[13]. Gananath Obeyesekere, 2013. In, Tissa Jayailaka ed., Letters to Our
Presidents by Sri Lankan and US Alumni of the US-Sri Lanka Fulbright
Commission 1952-2012. Colombo: US-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission.
[14]. Romila Thapar, 2014. To Question or not to Question: That is the
Question (Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, 2nd November

2014). New Delhi (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/academics-mustquestion-more-romila/article6535612.ece; last accessed on 03 November

2014).
[15]. Rabindranath Tagore, 2004. Selected Essays. New Delhi: Rupa
Publications.
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