In this country, we are fortunate in this degree, that our Chancellor, Osagyefo Dr. Nkrumah, has gone on record with a statement which categorically and in strong terms denies any doctrine that would encroach on the proper sphere of the teacher’s freedom. I should like to quote this important passage from a speech made by our Chancellor a little more than a year ago, on February 24, 1963:
We know that the objectives of a university cannot be achieved without scrupulous respect for academic freedom, for without academic freedom there can be no university. Teachers must be free to teach their subjects without any other concern than to convey to their students the truth as faithfully as they know it. Scholars must be free to pursue the truth and to publish the results of their researches without fear, for true scholarship fears nothing. It can even challenge the dead learning which has come to us from the cloistral and monastic schools of the Middle Ages. We know that without respect for academic freedom, in this sense, there can be no higher education worthy of the name, and, therefore, no intellectual progress, no flowering of the nation’s mind. The genius of the people is stultified. We therefore cherish and shall continue to cherish academic freedom at our universities.
The Chancellor in his speech laid stress not only on academic freedom, but on the need to serve the community, and we wholeheartedly accept the ideas which he propounded on both subjects. We remain faithful to the aims placed before us in the Statute of this University’s foundation: “That students should be taught methods of critical and independent thought, while being made aware that they have a responsibility to use their education for the general benefit.” These aims are logically interdependent, for if the University graduate has not been encouraged to think critically and independently, then he will have no education worthy of the name which he can use for the general benefit.
The existence of the University as a centre of critical and independent thought is therefore no luxury, but a necessity.
In times of rapid social and political change, such as those in which we are living, centres of critical and independent thought seldom enjoy unalloyed and universal favour. In the long run, the survival of such centres is secure, for it is in the nature of the human mind to question, and to check and test the answers to the questions. In the short run, however, at any given point in space and time, the future of a particular centre of critical and independent thought may be in doubt. What of the future of this particular centre now? If the spirit of those noble words of our Chancellor’s which I have just quoted will prevail in all the practical relations between the University and the authorities, as surely it ought to do, then this University’s future will be as secure as any institution has a right to expect. The Constitution of the University, the Act and our University Statutes which, although of recent enactment by our Council, enshrine principles of academic freedom which are very old, will be respected, and our academy will flourish. We must hope that this will be so. We cannot, in the light of some recent events, and the comments of certain publicists, simply take it for granted that our intellectual freedoms are unchallenged.
In many lands, and in widely different political contexts, in America, in Germany, in the Soviet Union, and elsewhere at various times, people have sought to call down on scholars, on teachers, on writers, the hand of authority. The pretexts for this have varied widely: in America, teachers have been dismissed or disciplined for being sympathetic to communism, in the Soviet Union they have been dismissed or disciplined for revisionism. Whatever the language used, however, the nature of the operation remained the same, and its motive the same: the need to overawe and, if possible, inhibit the working and expression of a free intelligence. People driven by this impulse of coercion are heard from in disturbed times, and it would be surprising if we did not hear from them; we have heard from them, and we have recognized what they represent. What we do not know is to what extent their voices may prevail. For the University it is vital that they should not prevail but that the enlightened policy proclaimed by our Chancellor in the passage from which I have quoted, should stand firm.
We hope, naturally, that this will happen and that we shall enjoy a resumption of the pleasant and fruitful conditions of work which characterized the last academic year. But even if we face, as well we may, a time of difficulties and of painful silences, we should not allow ourselves to become despondent. Respect for learning, for truth, for justice and for intelligence are enduring human qualities which are present in ample measure in the people of Ghana. These qualities may be obscured for a time, but in the long run they are tougher and more resourceful than their impatient adversaries. It is a reasonable faith, therefore, that the flame of free learning which has been lit on this hill will not be suffered to die out. In that faith, and in the hope that we ourselves may see that flame burn with renewed brightness, we can face the future, and whatever it may now bring us, with serenity. The values which a university represents, the values which we ourselves individually strive to represent, are infinitely more important than we are. They do not die when we die, or depart when we depart. We should be speaking loosely if we spoke of ourselves as their defenders, for it is we, rather than they, who need defence. We should be altogether wrong if we thought, or acted as if we thought, that these values could be in some way protected or upheld by evasion or compromise on principle. These values do not depend on what we do, or fail to do, nor do they need our feeble protection. Rather it is we who shall be judged—we who in our own minds and consciences must judge ourselves—by the measure of our fidelity to these values. Insofar as we have held to them in our lives and in our teaching, and insofar as we have transmitted, to even a few others, a sense of their abiding and transcendent importance, then we have done all that we can do; we have in fact fulfilled our task, whatever the immediate material outcome may be. The various forms of instruction that go on at a university are important in themselves, both practically and as disciplines, but the soul and life of a university is the spirit of learning, which is the love of truth. If a university has instilled this spirit even into some of its students, then no matter what happens to the organization, or even to the physical shell, of the place in which the teaching was done, the university lives on, and will, in the fullness of time, flourish anew.
Among you, the new graduates of this University, there will certainly be some, and I hope there will be many, who will carry this spirit into your future life and work. Much—more than you know perhaps—depends on you for the future of this great and stormy continent. From what I know of you I think you will not fail. I hope that your generation, and you among its leaders, will see the consolidation of African freedom: the growth of intellectual freedom within the political freedom of the continent. I wish you, therefore, something more than success in your careers—I wish you success in that phase of African history on which your generation is now entering, and which is likely to be of momentous significance, not only for Africa itself, but for the whole world.
Acknowledgements
Our thanks to the following, for permission to reprint:
NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS—For “The Schweitzer Legend,” by Conor Cruise O’Brien (August 1964), Copyright © New York Review, Inc. 1964, and for “The Perjured Saint,” by Conor Cruise O’Brien (November 1964), Copyright © New York Review, Inc. 1964.
NONPLUS—For “Michelet Today,” by Conor Cruise O’Brien (October 1959), © 1959 by Irish Channels Limited.
WILLIS KINGSLEY WING—For “Love Without Hope,” by Robert Graves, from Collected Poems 1955 by Robert Graves. Copyright © 1955 by International Authors N. V.
We wish to thank the following, in which the selections indicated first appeared:
BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION—“Monsieur Camus Changes His Climate” (radio broadcast, January 1957).
LEEDS UNIVERSITY PRESS—“Conflicting Concepts of the United Nations,” Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations (pamphlet, 1964).
NEW STATESMAN—“Sartre as a Critic” (Augu
st 1955), “Irishness” (January 1959), “Orwell Looks at the World” (May 1961), “Our Wits About Us” (February 1963), “Chorus or Cassandra” (April 1963), “A New Yorker Critic” (June 1963), “Varieties of Anti-Communism” (September 1963), “Journal de Combat” (December 1963), “White Gods and Black Americans” (May 1964), “Critic into Prophet” (May 1964), and “A Vocation” (October 1964).
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN—“Corruption in Developing Countries” (December 1963).
THE OBSERVER—“Communists and Communisants” (June 1964), and “Mercy and Mercenaries” (December 1964).
RADIO ÉIREANN—“Somerville and Ross” (radio broadcast).
THE SPECTATOR—“Poetry, Inspiration and Criticism” (July 1955), “The People’s Victor” (April 1956), “Some Letters of James Joyce” (June 1958), “Queer World” (November 1958), “The Great Conger” (May 1959), “Mother’s Tongue” (August 1959), “The New Yorker” (July 1959), “Re-Enter the Hero” (September 1959), “Free Spenders” (March 1960), “Generation of Saints” (January 1960), “Bears” (April 1960), “Serpents” (May 1960), and “The Fall of Parnell” (1960).
REPORTER (University of Ghana)—“Congregation Address” (March 1964).
TRANSITION (Kampala, Uganda)—“The United Nations, the Congo, and the Tshombe Government” (Speech delivered at Makerere College, July 11, 1964).
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2015
by Faber & Faber Ltd
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All rights reserved
© Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1955, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965
‘Conor Cruise O’Brien: An Appreciation’ © Oliver Kamm, 2015
The right of Conor Cruise O’Brien to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–32426–2
Writers and Politics Page 30
