Magna Charta Observatory and Prof. Badrawi , Chair of Education Committee co-sponsored meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, 13/14 June 2008

Magna Charta Observatory and Prof. Badrawi , Chair of Education Committee co-sponsored meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, 13/14 June 2008

Universities: builders of modernity and /or education providers?

Prof. Hossam Badrawi, Cairo University MD, MP

. Dr Andris Barblan, Magna Charta Observatory
Introduction

Social responsibility is at the core of the Magna Charta Universitatum. Signed by some 400 university leaders at the occasion of the 900th anniversary of the University of Bologna in 1988, this short document outlines the fundamentals of university identity, the institution’s values and rights, its relevance for societies in which the search for knowledge requires, today like yesterday, academic freedom and institutional autonomy if universities are to meet their social obligations. Until 2008, the 20th anniversary year of the Magna Charta, another 150 academic leaders have signed the document – now endorsed by 573 universities: the charter has become a reference for many systems of higher education around the world.

University identity

Born in the Middle Ages to answer the political, physical and spiritual needs of a Europe reinvigorated by urban renewal, the universities have cumulated over the centuries a number of social functions the combination of which makes their unique character.
All societies need to ‘reproduce’ and to ‘evolve’ at the same time. All societies need to understand why they change or how they keep to tradition: to do so, they doubt the acquired. All societies also test various patterns of thought while developing modalities of organisation that shape the welfare of their members: thus, they take the risk of the unexpected.
Universities embody these processes of change, since their role in society is to invent and assimilate the new, to transmit knowledge and adapt know-how to today and tomorrow’s requirements. Consequently, academic institutions are understood to search, teach and serve, all activities based on the capacity both to dissent (the critical dimension) and to consent (the need for commitment).

University functions

At the Magna Charta Observatory, a model is being used to understand how reform balances conformity in world higher education. It considers that everywhere mankind tries to meet four objectives: they are welfare, order, meaning and truth. Their combined quest is theraison d’être of the university.

When focusing on community welfare, the university either prepares its students for a constructive integration in the labour market through the acquisition of professional know how or, acting as a tool of progress, develops its research and innovation potential to reinforce the economic strength of the nation. The matter is to meet social demands in an effective and economical way: this utilitarian relevance often justifies university investments made by governments and stakeholders interested in structuring their community material well being.

When focusing on the social order, the university helps society to function as a ‘community of belonging’, i.e., a group that shares references that make knowledge and know-how appropriate. This requires to situate those skills and areas of knowledge that are pertinent to civic integration, to adopt them for teaching and to adapt them to present social needs. Thus, higher education decides of people’s ‘qualifications’, diplomas becoming passports to well-considered or well-paid positions set on different rungs of the social ladder.

When focusing on meaning, the university develops the group’s world-views one by revisiting society’s accepted intellectual references, often re-arranging data according to new and different criteria – be they intellectual, ethical or aesthetic. Nurturing ‘meaning’ consists in mastering information in order to help reorganize the known world by questioning earlier presuppositions, thus pointing to possible reforms in knowledge and society (what the. Encyclopédie achieved in 18th century Europe).

When focusing on truth, the university explores the unknown – today not so much as a facet of the divine but as the natural order of which mankind is also part. The aim is not only to roll back the frontiers of ignorance but also to question radically man’s existing understanding of the universe. The stages of that effort correspond to the traditional reasoning of science, i.e., to doubt, to imagine and to assimilate, a rather risky process since, n, the unknown being opened to all types of conjectures, the process can lead to error and failure.

The entrusting of these roles to the universities, should not be taken for granted since they can often be cared for by other institutions outside of academia: professional training by specialized schools giving their own degrees (order); scholarship by academies of arts and sciences (meaning); research by large industrial or governmental organizations (truth); or innovation and development by technical laboratories in commercial companies (welfare).

University dilemmas

If the above model makes sense, universities are structured on two axes, one going from a focus on immediate existence (the needs of welfare) to new realities (the call for truth), the other from dissent (the critical dimension of meaning) to consent (the institution’s contribution to social reproduction). Efforts engaged to make these four functions compatible often induce a search for the unity of purpose implied in the word uni-versitas itself, turning to the one or ad unum vertere. This is also the quest of the Magna Charta Observatory.

In practice, universities often stress one or two such areas only, putting other functions on ‘the back burner’; to keep their academic identity, however, they should refer to the four functions and, giving them different weights, thus draw unique and varied academic profiles. What is then the organizational axis that brings out the highest synergies between these fields of activities, that turns their combination into evidence, that justifies the specificity of the university as such? Can institutional unity induce or reflect the unity of knowledge?

Any university develops its own value system that helps fulfill its chosen functions; at one extreme, the focus is on integration in the social context, i.e., on the academic contribution to the development of the community. Basically, such universities accept society and help sustain it by shaping the right products and right citizens able to support collective development: technical expertise, social relevance and community understanding are the keys to institutional behavior. At the other extreme, the focus is on reshaping the conditions and constraints of individual and group organization; to do so, academia has to take distance from social and intellectual routines, thus inventing new solutions to the given problems they are analyzing in a critical way. Imagination, doubt and the courage of dissent become then the keys to institutional behavior. This represents a wide spectrum of possible attitudes – that are also influenced by or translated into financial, legal and organizational constraints.

In our model, objectivity – the use of logic – characterizes the search for truth and that for welfare. One could also speak of an ‘objectification’ process when moving from thought to action. Thus, the prevailing academic discourse considers these two functions as essentially scientific – hence especially university worth. Logic, indeed, seems to develop according to rules independent from human choices – thus it keeps the observer independent from his/her observations. In a positivist mould, logic bears objectivity and cannot be tampered with – in terms of concussion, social influence or personal expectations. In theory at least, it is incorruptible – hence the argumentative strength of hard sciences and technology.

On the other side, meaning and order require judgement, be it individual or collective. There is no absolute value in social order and qualifications, no special transcendence to refer to when giving meaning to the sum of knowledge, that is culture: indeed these functions depend on choices, i.e., on subjectivity – and liberty. The ‘subject’ is at the centre of the process not the ‘object’. In social sciences and the humanities, rhetoric, the ability to convince others of the validity of one’s choices, is central: this calls for social recognition; and the higher is such a recognition, the more impact the institution can have on society – but also the more influence society can exert on universities in terms of social and cultural values.