Have Ethiopian Universities and Intellectuals Lost Their Raison d’etre?

By Medhanie Gaim and Temesgen Kahsay

As spaces for intellectual engagement in pursuit of insight for understanding and transforming society, universities  are arenas for the  production of knowledge and the fulfilment of the higher needs of scholars. As such, they play a significant role in shaping the working of society. They are primary sites for expanding the boundaries of knowledge and for shaping the discourse of a country and effecting change for the better of society. 

While commenting  on why universities remain meaningful, Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, in his 2003 article, The Idea of a University, said: 

“universities remain meaningful because they respond to the deepest of human needs, to the desire to understand and to explain that understanding to others. A spirited curiosity coupled with a caring about others (the essence of what we call humanism) is a simple and unquenchable human drive, certainly, as profound an element of human nature as the more often cited interests in property and power, around which we organize the economic and political systems.” 

Lee Bollinger

Since the start of the war on Tigray, Ethiopian political, cultural, religious, political and business elites in general and academic elites, in particular, have been supporting a war campaign. From conceiving and dissemination of exclusionary, hate-filled and genocidal rhetoric against Tigrayans, to justifying and supporting a military campaign, Ethiopian intelligentsia have played a crucial and destructive role, which begs the question – have Ethiopian universities and intellectuals lost their raison d’etre?

The War on Tigray and the Role of Universities and Intellectuals 

Wars, like all major crises, shape societies, but they also expose what societies are made of – their underlying values, their asymmetric structural and power arrangements, and the views and role of their intellectual gatekeepers. In times of war, intellectuals, as privileged citizens and acting from privileged positions, have an opportunity that is not available to the masses – a choice either to challenge or defend the status quo; or a choice either to advance justice, peace, freedom or become culprits in the injustice and crimes of the state. 

Sadly, the genocidal war unleashed on the people of Tigray has laid bare the ugly side of Ethiopian universities and intellectuals. Their collusion with the state and their failure to promote dialogue and warn against a dangerous vicious cycle will take generations to break. 

Ethiopian intellectuals, both based at home and in the diaspora, have been using unrelated cases from the past to incite violence and justify human rights violations. Instead of confronting violent rhetoric, they have been producing them. Instead of questioning the state, they were reduced to echoing the state’s false and conflicting narratives, propagating absurd stories to feed state and non-state media. They would pontificate about past abuses during the ‘27-dark years’ while tolerating egregious abuses today, injecting and normalizing ideas of concentration camps, besieging millions, and using starvation as a weapon of war. 

Unashamedly, they have been justifying war crimes, even why invading foreign forces, accused of hundreds of massacres and an industrial scale rape, must stay and inflict more pain. Intellectuals who were supposed to nudge the warring parties toward a ceasefire were criticizing the government for announcing a ceasefire, regardless of its genuineness. They called for more aggression when the devastation was evident for all to see. They have been engaged in misinforming the public, shifting the narrative, cleverly concealing and whitewashing crimes, and demonizing and harassing those who condemned or called for an end to the war.

In a recent investigative report, a university and its staff were reported to have engaged in destroying forensic evidence. The BBC reported that there was a campaign to dispose of evidence, where government and regional officers were accused of ethnic cleansing, “supervised by experts from Gondar University,” according to an eyewitness who said:

Others, the silent ones, have been indifferent in the face of a genocidal war as civilians have been massacred, displaced, and starved; academics and students have not been spared from the misery. When university staff of Tigrayan origin were in harm’s way, their peers kept silent. No one spoke up while their colleagues, partners, and mentors were assassinated in broad daylight, ethnically profiled, arrested, sent to concentration camps, and denied their employees’ rights. The academic community didn’t even speak up for their own students as they were rounded, harassed and killed only because of their ethnicity. Why were the injustices committed on members of their own community unable to move them? Edward Said once noted:

If intellectuals, like a propagandist, are uncritically enthusiastic about what their leaders say, what moral ground would they have to teach about the pre-eminence of ideas, evidence or reason? How can they expect their students to acquire academic integrity and rigour when the supposed intellectuals are not willing to role model these values? We have already witnessed the terrible consequences of students inheriting negative values from their mentors by violently turning against their peers in what are supposed to be sanctuaries for intellectual discourse.

What is more surreal than to see universities turning into training grounds or a graduation ceremony for university staff in military training? To read that a university would revoke academic degrees of individuals who are found to be supporting a political party must have been unsettling. For universities which probably cannot afford subscription fees to access the latest publications, seeing them spend millions in cash, service, and other items supporting the war was baffling. To see university officials visiting military campaigns in support of the war instead of leading town hall meetings to engage the public towards the end of the war is antithetical to the spirit and mission of universities (see, Weldemichel et al., 2022 for an extended overview). 

In a situation where universities and learning institutions are diverting limited resources to war campaigns, international partners collaborating with and financing diverse projects have the obligation to ensure that the funds they made available are used for the right purposes. It would be a dereliction of ethical practices for partner institutions to collaborate with and support institutions and individuals who support a genocide.

Conclusion

As it stands, Ethiopian intellectuals have failed their moral obligations to stand against injustice. They have abandoned and compromised their intellectual integrity and lost their legitimacy. Return to normalcy is going to require soul-searching and, as Edward Said would say, a fundamental “moral rehabilitation.”

Ethiopia is in a deep crisis – the continued siege on the people of Tigray, the war in Oromia, the deadly drought, and the skyrocketing inflation. With all that, if the intellectuals do not intervene from a position of autonomy now, then when? When will they urge the government to value multiple voices? When will they challenge the politicians using logic and evidence? When will they challenge government policies pushing the country down the drain? The intellectual, Edward Said argues, above all, must avoid an unquestioning subservience to the state. When will you? 

For the universities harbouring individuals who do not do intellectual function, you will add to public scepticism when intellectuals from your institutions attempt to tell the public how to conduct their affairs. So, before it is too late(?!), show us, for the sake of humanity, alternative courses of action, defend the weak, and defy oppressive authority. Above all, seek truth and present it as fully as possible – because that is your raison d’etre.

Sources:

Said, E. W. (1993). Representations of the Intellectual. Vintage. (you can listen to Edward Said’s 1993 Reith lectures on the representation of the intellectual here)

Weldemichel,  Teklehaymanot G., Negash, Emnet, Gebreselassie, Gebrekirstos, Teklay, Amare, & Nyssen, Jan. (2022). Database: the Ethiopian public universities during the Tigray war (Version 2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6385220

Appendix: Representative quotes that Ethiopian professors said about the ongoing genocidal war on Tigray

Authors:

Medhanie Gaim is a researcher in paradox theory and entrepreneurship at Umeå University.

Temesgen Kahsay is an assistant professor at the Norwegian School of Leadership and Theology. His area of research is the intersection between religion and society, religion and culture and the role of religion in the contemporary local and global contexts.