Inger
Enkvist: Article published 2024-04-25
The universities are failing their mission
In the last six months, a lot of light has
been directed at elite American universities. They have quickly gone from being
admired to being seen as examples of how universities are failing in their
mission to teach what is true.
The universities had meritocracy as an ideal both in the employment of teachers and researchers, and in the admission of students. They were a standard of what was right. Perhaps the prime example of failed ideals is Harvard. Harvard's now-departed chancellor Claudine Gay was poorly qualified for her position, and was also charged with plagiarism.
Also, meritocracy is not always applied in
student admissions, and Harvard was recently convicted of discriminating
against Asian applicants.
After the demonstrations that followed the
attack on Israel on October 7, more and more questions are being asked about
the intellectual and ethical quality of teaching at Harvard. After Hamas's sadistic rapes, documented on
film by the rapists themselves, it appears incomprehensible that young female
students are shouting their support for Hamas. It is equally
incomprehensible that Harvard's chancellor could not bring himself to say that
it was against the university's code of conduct to call for the murder of Jews.
In short, we have witnessed a university in
deep moral confusion. In addition to all this, another problem should be noted
here, namely that entire fields of study within, above all, the humanities and
social sciences appear to be corrupt. American elite universities have often
led the negative development. One has partly introduced study subjects that
have no clear scientific knowledge to convey, partly within well-established
subjects certain aspects of the subject have been excluded and others distorted.
The consequences are that the public can no
longer trust the transfer of knowledge from the universities. To cite a
specific example of such intellectual corruption, we can choose the
representation of Spain in the period 711–1492, that is, the time when large
parts of the country lived under Muslim rule. This long period is crucial to
understanding the early connection between Europe and Islam. The era is taught
in subjects such as Spanish, Arabic, history, religious history and art
history.
Knowledge of the period is based on
historical, legal and religious texts originally written in Latin and Arabic,
as well as archaeological finds. Distortion occurs when scholars try to play
down the fact that it was about Muslim conquest, and instead describe it as an
"expansion", that "pacts" were established and that the
result would have been a functioning and respectful environment.
A few brave researchers dare to question the
picture. The Spanish historian Alejandro García Sanjuán showed in
A researcher on the subject of Spanish in the
United States, Darío Fernández-Morera, wrote in 2016 "The Myth of the
Andalusian Paradise", in which he systematically criticizes incorrect
claims about the era. He organizes his text based on picturesque descriptions,
taken from books by researchers at reputable universities, often Harvard.
The Muslim-ruled medieval Spain is thus often
portrayed precisely as a paradise where there would have been
"convivencia", peaceful coexistence, between different groups. A more
correct description, Fernández-Morera believes, is that a small circle of
Arab-Muslim origin stood at the top of the social ladder. Next came North
African Muslim Berbers, after them the local population converted to Islam and
at the bottom Christians and Jews who were allowed to keep their lives if they
paid high taxes and submitted to their Muslim masters.
Those researchers who want to portray the era
in a positive light overlook that the capital Córdoba was one of the biggest
markets of the time for both European and African slaves, often prisoners of
war. They carefully avoid talking about
the treatment of women.
These descriptions have since trickled down
into textbooks and encyclopedias and been used in good faith by journalists, policy
makers and researchers in other specialties. Córdoba has been used as a symbol
of the idea of peaceful, multicultural coexistence under Muslim rule.
Tellingly enough, a school named Cordoba
International School was started in Sweden in Järva, an allusion to this very
symbol. All of these phenomena can be traced to universities that put other
goals ahead of the search and imparting of knowledge.
We should not think that Sweden is spared
from these trends, and the problems do not primarily have to do with money.
Trust in universities is falling in the US, but not only there. That trust must
be nurtured.
Inger Enkvist is professor emerita of Spanish
and author of several books on education and literature
Also check:
https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2023/05/overpopulation-and-future-of-mankind.html
