{"id":15649,"date":"2015-09-09T15:23:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T19:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15649"},"modified":"2015-09-09T15:23:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T19:23:33","slug":"university-committed-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15649","title":{"rendered":"when a university is committed to democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a page from the 2013-14 Rector’s Report <\/a>of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, an institution that I visited this summer.\u00a0(Click the image to open the PDF.) The page\u00a0is headed “A Revolution of Dignity,” and it describes various political–even revolutionary–activities by the university or its members. The next page shows profiles of activists from\u00a0the university, including a lecturer who was shot to death. It is an interesting combination of American-style glossy PR and strongly worded political commitment.<\/p>\n

\"UkrainianCatholic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I would not hope for a comparable stance\u00a0from an American university. For one thing,\u00a0this brochure comes from a country\u00a0with a war on its own territory and ongoing political crises.\u00a0We shouldn’t wish for that level of strife here, even if it elicited more political commitment from higher education.<\/p>\n

Besides,\u00a0one can critically assess the position that the university has taken.\u00a0I’m on the same side<\/a>, but this\u00a0position is debatable.\u00a0Universities\u00a0contribute to the public discussion\u00a0by being fair and open to a range of\u00a0perspectives and by demanding standards of evidence and reason from all participants. When a university commits itself strongly to a\u00a0cause, it can undermine its ability to be an open forum for debate. It also acquires strange bedfellows–people on the same general side of the political issue who may be quite unsavory.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, neutrality is impossible and is the wrong objective. Universities exist to promote free thought and substantive dialog and inquiry, which are incompatible with censorship, oppression, violence, and rampant corruption. Scholars also need intellectual freedom and public support in order to do their work. So universities are closely tied to\u00a0social justice. They must leave space for a debate about what\u00a0defines<\/em> social justice, but they\u00a0should not pretend that it is other people’s business.<\/p>\n

US universities tend to respond to political threats and crises by staying clear of them, at least as official institutions.\u00a0The Ukrainian Catholic University demonstrates what it looks like when an institution leaps into the fray. The\u00a0Rector writes in his introductory message “we declared civil disobedience against the government and the president,” which is not what you’d expect in an annual report from a US college or university. He adds:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to summarize the last year, for most of the processes have only begun and are now continuing. We are still experiencing the ‘Revolution of Dignity.’ We are still fighting an external aggressor and internal problems. …\u00a0From the first days of the revolution we clearly understood what we were fighting for. We were not distracted from running the university for a second. But we also supported our students. …\u00a0 On December 11 we declared civil disobedience against the government and the president, who used violence against his own people. ….<\/p>\n

We should work for victory and for reconciliation. Our weapons are truth and peace. We should already be thinking about what will happen after the war, how to heal physical and spiritual wounds, how to strengthen the country. In addition to the external enemy, Ukrainians need to conquer internal enemies: corruption, anger, hatred. I expect that the spiritual and educational life of the university will help our students handle these challenges.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a page from the 2013-14 Rector’s Report of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, an institution that I visited this summer.\u00a0(Click the image to open the PDF.) The page\u00a0is headed “A Revolution of Dignity,” and it describes various political–even revolutionary–activities by the university or its members. The next page shows profiles of activists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academia","category-democratic-reform-overseas","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15649"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15668,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15649\/revisions\/15668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}