EDITORIAL: Unam must offer platform for political vibrancy
The current heated debate at the University of Namibia (Unam), where its leadership has been accused of stifling academic freedom and applying double standards when it comes to hosting events of political nature on campus, needs to be robustly unpacked.
Political awareness and participation are essential determinants of a society’s democratic survival. Therefore, it's extreme to demand that academics and students be neutral or covert in agitating and postulating their ideologies on campus.
The recent campus blow-ups at universities like Yale in the USA over the Gaza conflict are nothing unusual. It’s ingrained in the very fabric of being an enlightened and conscious varsity student.
But here is Unam, desiring a robotic environment where only activities of certain political formations are allowed. This kind of partisan control will only churn out obedient, politically-daft yes-men who will pollute our already dirty political environment after graduation. And society will suffer further intellectual bankruptcy, a crisis we are already battling.
Instead of its voyeuristic attitude, Unam must promote vibrancy among its various student societies.
Playing the role of a prying observer who seeks only the sordid among her own children will only degenerate our once-vibrant beacon of free speech, the Unam of yesteryear, which has long disappeared into the annals of obscurity.
May we never – again – see the Unam that banned Robert Mugabe critic Professor John Makumbe, whose public lecture 'Landscapes of Poverty – Daily Life and Social Crisis in Zimbabwe' was conspicuously cancelled by the university in 2007 without an iota of explanation.
Political awareness and participation are essential determinants of a society’s democratic survival. Therefore, it's extreme to demand that academics and students be neutral or covert in agitating and postulating their ideologies on campus.
The recent campus blow-ups at universities like Yale in the USA over the Gaza conflict are nothing unusual. It’s ingrained in the very fabric of being an enlightened and conscious varsity student.
But here is Unam, desiring a robotic environment where only activities of certain political formations are allowed. This kind of partisan control will only churn out obedient, politically-daft yes-men who will pollute our already dirty political environment after graduation. And society will suffer further intellectual bankruptcy, a crisis we are already battling.
Instead of its voyeuristic attitude, Unam must promote vibrancy among its various student societies.
Playing the role of a prying observer who seeks only the sordid among her own children will only degenerate our once-vibrant beacon of free speech, the Unam of yesteryear, which has long disappeared into the annals of obscurity.
May we never – again – see the Unam that banned Robert Mugabe critic Professor John Makumbe, whose public lecture 'Landscapes of Poverty – Daily Life and Social Crisis in Zimbabwe' was conspicuously cancelled by the university in 2007 without an iota of explanation.
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Namibian Sun
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