A well-intentioned article in an American higher education journal has ignited what, in some countries, can easily pass for rabid racism.
What initially started as spontaneous revulsion by the University of Botswana academia in response to an article that sought to highlight structural deficiencies at UB has now mutated into a well-organised and increasingly hostile reprehension at the author, led by citizen academics.
The article by Professor John Holm, which has been reproduced by our sister publication The Sunday Standard, has got the University of Botswana debating its place in our society, and for that we are infinitely grateful.
While we cannot thank Professor Holm enough for his views, we have a problem that what started as a sincere and well thought-out advice by him that University of Botswana academics should spend more time inside academics halls and laboratories with their students and less time attending conferences or repairing their boreholes has now been ruthlessly and ostentatiously thrown out of the ensuing debate by our academia.
Instead of engaging Holm, it is a pity that his erstwhile colleagues at UB have chosen to throw all sorts of epithets at him. And this was all the clearest last week when Professor Holm made an attempt to clarify his views before the UB academia.
Courtesy, we want to tell our esteemed academics, is one of the basic principles of a debate.
We expect nothing less of tolerance, especially from scholars at one of the world’s most reputable institutions like the University of Botswana.
Yet that is not what we saw when a seminar was organised clearly as a platform for Holm to explain his views.
Instead of engaging Holm on the veracity of his views and how he arrived at them, it is regrettable that many of the academics present effectively behaved not much better than judges of a kangaroo court.
Not only did they question Holm’s judgment, (and we have nothing against that) some went all the way to cast aspersions on his motives, including the timing of his views. And that cannot be the best example of tolerance, especially in a place where diversity of views has to be encouraged and engendered.
Yet another group of scholars went as far as to effectively apportion blame that instead of telling the world about themselves, Holm should only have confined his views inside the family ÔÇô within the confines of the campus, so to speak.
The fact that some of our most reputable academics went as far as to demand a public apology from Professor Holm for only having dared to raise matters on how best to improve quality at UB underscores not only the mawkishness of our existence as a society but also that also our preparedness at a broader national level to play victim whenever we are forced to face up to our inherent weaknesses as a people.
Their visible anger and irascible attitude towards Holm’s views only went as far as to confirm what he set out as part of his introduction in his “offending” article when he wrote that ”… an equally significant problem ÔÇô and one that is often too taboo to raise – is that African academics themselves play a role in impeding the ability of African higher education to reach its potential”.
To put Professor Holm’s views into context, long absenteeism by lecturers away from what is their core mandate at the university should be addressed.
Thus we agree with him when he says “those damagingly long absences must be openly recognized, not ignored, and changes must be made”.
We call on the University of Botswana to show maturity and start debating issues as raised by Professor Holm ÔÇô uncomfortable, painful, humiliating and embarrassing as they may be – with the hope of transforming the university into that which is envisaged by its strategic plan.
Resorting to technicalities and questioning his methodology and findings can hardly be a good starting point.
