Academic Engagement in Politics: Reflections from an Irish Perspective Or.Educate, Agitate, Organise

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Academic Engagement in Politics Reflections from
an Irish PerspectiveOr.Educate, Agitate,
Organise

• Dr. John Barry
• Queens University Belfast
• Northern Ireland

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Educate, Agitate, Organise

• Rallying cry of progressive, left, libertarian
  and anarchist groups for over a century
• Slogan of the Industrial Workers of the World
  (IWW) Union, (known as the Wobblies) circa 1910.

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But firstA word from one of our sponsors.

• Those who profess to favour freedom and yet
  depreciate agitation are men who want crops
  without plowing up the ground. They want rain
  without thunder and lightning.... Power concedes
  nothing without a demand. It never has and never
  will. Frederick Douglass, freed slave and
  anti-slavery campaigner (1857)
• What is the role of the academic, the public
  intellectual in such contexts of political
  struggle and activism?
• Knowledge (is) power (leads to) responsibility
• How does my daytime job relate to my evening and
  weekend work?
• And vice versa?
• Academic as in its just academic
  irrelevant, pastime hobby, interesting but
  useless

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Teaching and Research

• Academic political activism and dangers of
  abusing ones position in context of teaching
• Begin from a view of my job as to teach and
  hopefully produce, critical, and hopefully
  engaged, citizens
• Teaching politics, politically i.e. through
  free debate and argument, to give students the
  tools and experience and exercise to develop
  their own ideas, challenge mine
• Not to produce, in the words of the former Vice
  Chancellor of my university, Oven ready
  graduates, ready to be slotted into the labour
  market.
• Success is NOT that all my student think, act,
  vote Green but WHATEVER political position they
  take on this issue is one the is informed and
  reasoned, not unreflective
• What is a university education for? Is it a
  business? A play of skills dissemination? Or
  the latter plus a training ground for citizenship
  and individual political, social and personal
  development?

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Teaching and Research

• Problems of being seen as too partisan,
  ideological and therefore losing that most
  conventionally prized virtues of the academic
  neutrality, objectivity
• But the unbiased listener is deaf issue is
  contestation of ideas, values not abandoning of
  ones values and perspectives
• Academic peer review process (properly done)
  very useful and important quality control on
  minimising purely ideologically biased research
• but equally importantly helps protect ones
  status as an academic from charges that ones
  academic work is corrupted by ones activism
• Political activism can help improve ones
  scholarly work do we think less of JS Mills
  work because he agitated for womens rights, but
  what of Heideggers work and his connection with
  the Nazis?
• In relation to many aspects of teaching
  sustainability politics or green politics, the
  outside world within which students live is
  already ideologically loaded, so critiques of
  dominant knowledge/power structures is a small
  step to rebalance

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Northern Irish Context

• Northern Ireland political context
  post-conflict, ethno-nationalist dynamics,
  consociational settlement
• Often for first years that I teach, its the
  first time a Catholic/nationalist has sat
  beside a Protestant/unionist
• Accents matter
• University as a non-engaged actor politically a
  safe haven from the surrounding conflict
• You cannot ignore the political contextbut of
  course most of the time it is ignored
• Pedagogic reasons for using/referring to the
  political conflict/settlement like references
  to popular culture (using The Sopranos to explain
  aspects of Machiavelli), the conflict, peace
  process/settlement is a way to may the abstract
  real for students
• Small size of Northern Ireland a village,
  everyone knows one another one cannot hide
  ones public political activism, so best to
  simply be honest and open about it

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Some personal reflections

• On one hand, being an academic is not good for a
  conventional political career were not
  dogmatic enough! Everything is provisional, and
  needs to be qualified and as academics we tend to
  be interested in the complicated not the simple,
  and we tend not to like to toe party lines
  arbitrarily!
• Hard lesson I learnt in relation to press
  releases remove the footnotes!!
• But also, as an academic I am unusual as a
  politician in that on the basis of new evidence
  or argument I am willing to change my view, and
  also to acknowledge the virtues (few as they
  are!) in the views of my opponents
• And also, in part as an academic, I play the
  ball, not the player, keep the debate/argument
  focused on the issue not the person

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Past struggles for justice and social change
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• What were struggling against?
• What are we struggling for?

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OK, so what does it mean
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Educate

• 1. Problem of ignorance
• The unexamined life is not worth living
  Socrates
• (Most) people dont willfully seek to destroy the
  planet and exploit and harm other people
• 2. Issue of structures and individual and
  collective action and behaviour state, market,
  mainstream culture etc.
• 3. Leads to problem of mindlessness
• Example of mindless consumption

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Educate

• 4. Ignorance, apathy and elite dominance
• Crisis of democratic politics
• a. decline in voting, participation in politics
• b. eclipse of being a citizen by consumer
  identity
• e.g. of US President Bushs urge to Americans
  post 9/11 to go to the malls
• c. consumer society a betrayal of the
  Republic? Of democracy?
• Issue is achieving balance between consumerism
  and democratic citizenship
• Remembering that democracy DOES NOT require
  consumerism or excessive material affluence

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Agitate

• Critique of the current new world order
• Free your mind
• And have fun while doing it!
• Role/ responsibility of academics in giving
  students/citizens the critical skills, education,
  tools to know how to be politically active

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From adbusters.com
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• Pop a pill for every ill
• More profit in illness, stress, mental illness
  than health and well-being
• TV, advertising, marketing etc. is a significant
  part of the political environment in which we
  live and operateso get to know it!

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Lessons from the Zapatistas know your
environment!
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Organise

• Individual action alone insufficient
• Danger of lifestyle politics consuming green
  products WILL NOT create a sustainable and just
  society
• Necessary but not sufficient
• Also, there is no one size fits all model of a
  just, sustainable society, value of pluralism
• Need to organise politically and act collectively
• Individual action alone will not change state or
  corporate behaviour and policies
• Non-violent direct action as a strategy this is
  what democracy looks like.

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This is what democracy looks like.
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Conclusion

• Academic engagement in politics obligatory or
  voluntary?
• being an activist is my rent I pay for living on
  this planet, Alice Walker
• Many ways for scholars to be active in politics
  from standing for elections to canvassing for
  candidates to providing knowledge/information,
  writing letters/columns in the press
• Rationale for courses in PhD training on this
  issue? Alongside courses on how to communicate
  with the public/write policy briefs for
  decision-makers?
• Take your pickEducate, agitate, organise!

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New Thinking and Creativity

• The thinking which got us into the problem cannot
  be the same we need to solve it.
• Albert Einstein