Disturbing stories are ongoing in Turkey and in Flanders: university administrators are eager to accede to demands of the government (Turkey) or powerful politicians (Flanders) to silence and intimidate student and faculty protests against government policies/proposals. The more serious one is developing in Turkey, where a student protest turned violent. The linked report claims that ODTU/METU (confusingly, there are two acronyms for same university) students threw Molotov cocktails. However, my Turkish sources claim there is no evidence of that, and have linked to this (Turkish) video, which suggests unprovoked police attacks, although I cannot guarantee, of course, there was no editing. (Maybe some of the police were trained in California?) I should say that the Rector of ODTÜ/METU, one of the most prestigious universities in Turkey, is showing backbone and is meeting with the government today. There is petition to show support here.
In Flanders, the philosopher, Lieven De Cauter, wrote an ill-tempered, satirical (somewhat funny) attack (it's in Dutch, but enough is in English to understand how silly it all is) on the leading Flemish nationalist politician, Bart De Wever, who has a tendency to name-drop once famous philosophers (e.g., Adorono) in his editorials (this one preparing the way for future cuts in art-subsidies). Yeah, Europe really is different. De Wever responded in brief to De Cauter. (The email exchange is linked in Dutch.) But what De Wever didn't tell De Cauter is that he also wrote Mark Waer, the Rector of the Catholic University in Leuven (one of De Cauter's employers), who has a poor record defending academics under attack, to complain about De Cauter. Waer responded, meekly, criticizing (I am freely translating) De Cauter's lack of civility. But the sentence that caught my attention was Waer's insistence that "there is also such a thing as academic restraint,"["Maar er is ook zoiets als academische terughoudendheid,"] clearly suggesting De Cauter failed in this duty.
What makes these stories interesting is that (a) the political establishments of both Turkey and Flanders are eager to invest in higher education as a means toward prosperous futures; (b) in both places important democratically elected politicians lack warmth toward an open, critical society (and a university professoriat that they see aligned with a discarded establishment); (c) in both places important parts of the higher education establishment much prefer being at the technocratic core of industry-government investment rather than presiding the kind of creative fertility and tension that is the breeding ground for creative industries (and what passes for independent thought) .
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