Bridging the academic disciplinary divide

By Panduka Karunanayake

I am thrilled to see that the articles in the Kuppi Talk series are taking on, with gutsiness and composure, issues such as efficiency, quality assurance and outcome-based approaches in university governance and UGC officialese. I too agree that these conceptualisations have many drawbacks or even flaws, and the writers of these articles have articulated them very well. In this response, let me add to their ideas. But you will find that while some of my ideas resonate with theirs, others will strike some discord. The purpose here is to see if we can first visualise a fuller picture of the issue, befitting something as large and important as the academia. I dare say that it behoves all of us to work with some amount of give-and-take here, so that we could avoid a mutually-destructive war of attrition.

One point that bothers me is how academics in the social sciences and the humanities are so keen to lump the two disciplinary paradigms together. One main reason for that is, of course, the purely historical – they have been lumped together right from the start of our university system, about 100 years ago. Another reason may be their common vulnerability in the face of World Bank dictates. It makes perfect sense to join forces to overcome mutual adversity.

But by having them lumped together in academic structures – such as the UGC standing committee, national centre and postgraduate institute – I fear that they risk losing their very different, unique and precious perspectives, posturings and principles. To my simple mind, the two are as unlike as science and art – even while there is a lot that they can explore and do together – because their epistemic premises and even psychological correlates (especially the place for emotions) are so different.

Most writers of the series have articulated the value of the humanities or the social sciences to society. Even the academia in the US itself – where the World Bank dictates themselves emanate from – are clear about this. Why the UGC hierarchy in Sri Lanka misses this point is surely a sad reflection of what actually goes on at that level.

To me, this is a clear evidence that the structure of so-called standing committees is a failure. I have no intention of throwing any accusations at the individual academics in those positions, because I am quite sure that as individuals, they are both erudite and capable of critical thinking. But as a collectivity, the idea of having standing committees to guide these separate academic perspectives or activities in a manner that is contextually appropriate for our local academia may seem nice on paper, but it is not generating the ‘outcome’ we all wanted from it. The disciplines have lost their direction in a stream of documents that are produced in a foreign land (sometimes with foreign spell settings), which are dished out at us for compliance, adherence, implementation, adjustment, readjustment and so on. Not only has the structure at the top ceased to think for itself, but it is also robbing the bottom of the latter’s own precious thinking space. It is no secret that there is a strong top-down approach here – the exact opposite of what should be the case in the academia!

What is more, there is also an element of extracting academic freedom out of the separate universities that had been assured them by the current Universities Act. This is creating a situation where unscrupulous academics can try to abuse this ‘system’ to further their narrow and parochial ends, throwing everything off balance, and academics and universities are then thrown into an unnecessary and wasteful battle of wits amongst themselves!

But my second point is a bone of contention with the scholars in the social sciences and the humanities. It is true enough, as they point out, that these academic disciplines have a value to society that is evident only in the long term or broad visualisation. But they miss the value that these have for university education itself. For example, the value of the humanities is not something that can be realised only in the graduate with a humanities degree or specialisation; it is something that can and should be realised in the science graduate or the university-educated professional too. And through them, its value should percolate to the wider society too. The point here is not to make the science graduate or university-educated professional an expert in the humanities, but to ensure that the gifts of the humanities enrich their intellectual make-up and thereby make them holistic and balanced thinkers.

The lessons and value of these subjects are for everyone. The science graduate may attain technical mastery of her discipline, but when she performs her duties in society, she will come across unexpected challenges and contextual obfuscations to which the technical mastery has no answer. These may include moral dilemmas, issues with equity or the interests of the wider society, balancing conflicting interests or pressures, need for calmness and strength in the face of complexity or adversity, need for resilience in the face of protracted intellectual challenges, and so on. A graduate who hasn’t got these becomes a robot that can be misappropriated by some unscrupulous element in society.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the German academics who began to rebuild their universities had to answer this question. How could German universities, which led the world in research productivity and scientific discovery at the beginning of the 20 th century, produce scientists that helped Hitler to do such abominable things? This has been answered brilliantly by social scientists. (In fact, one of them, Max Weber, even warned them and ‘gave the answer’ even before Hitler rose to power!) One of the great survivors of that era, Karl Jaspers, put these thoughts into his book, The Idea of the University. In it, he described the true university as the juxtaposition of three ‘centres’: a training centre that creates tomorrow’s intellectual workforce, a research centre that finds answers to society’s questions, and a cultural centre that imbibes these people and their ideas with the lessons of philosophy, history and other disciplines. It is this last step that can act as an antidote to such calamities. And therein lies the full value of the social sciences and the humanities to university education.

The reason for that calamity was the runaway phenomenon of overspecialisation (which Weber brilliantly predicted). It made experts know ‘more and more’ about ‘less and less’, until eventually each expert was left quite clueless in the bigger arena of social issues. It was this situation that megalomaniacs can quickly and easily exploit, leading the whole intellectual endeavour into confusion and misappropriation. What Jaspers suggested was to balance superspecialisation with a healthy pow-wow across the great disciplinary divides – hence, the three juxtaposed centres.

In our own country, Professor Carlo Fonseka suggested just as much, in his Kannangara Oration. He was the longest-standing member in the history of the UGC, but it is sad that even he could not make the UGC (then) to take real note of his rare wisdom. And we have been left to rediscover the wheel.

My third point is that conceptualisations such as effectiveness, efficiency, quality assurance and outcome-based processes are not entirely useless – in spite of their drawbacks. They have a place too – only, a place not as captivating as what the World Bank dictates enforce. Otherwise, by simply focusing on the processes and leaving outcomes or quality to chance, we can easily self-deceive ourselves and create self-defeat. So, I believe that even scholars in the social sciences and the humanities must try to adapt them to their subjects in the appropriate manner. This is where a leadership by something like a standing committee would really make a difference.

The real challenge here is overcoming the McNamara Fallacy – by making the important measurable, rather than making the measurable important. It is difficult, no doubt. But then, as academics, what are we there for?

The writer teaches Medicine in the University of Colombo.