This old pun, created in the late 1960s, has only recently acquired a new and completely perverse meaning, which truly harks back to some ideas from that era. It has become the main enemy of the regime, a nest of conspiracies, a poisonous source of politics as something worse – the university: things have gotten so heated that the former president of the republic cried out that private universities should be supported, because the state ones have become dangerous for the state, and they also cost it a lot. The private ones are peaceful, they earn for themselves, they contribute to the spread of the ficus culture and they have changed, in terms of self-sustainability, the meaning of diplomas – of course not all of them. In any case, they are not a burden on the state.
This image is of course suspicious, but only because it is created by a government that knows little about statehood, although it has its mouth full of it. In the fight against an insidious and obviously very unconvincing enemy, a popular cliché has become (attention, it is a masculine word!) that universities must have nothing to do with politics, or rather, if they want to engage in politics, they should leave the university, that is, themselves. In a sense, this is a reflection of reality, because a great many politicians really have nothing to do with the university, some because of fake diplomas and academic titles, some simply because they never even went to university. The relationship is clearly ambivalent – some lied and cheated about their education, others hid their shortcomings – and in the end they got something, because now those who wanted diplomas at all costs are suspicious. This is the first, but not the last or the greatest paradox.
Secondly, the separation of politics and universities is pure nonsense, because the entire humanities, together with the performing arts, are connected to politics, because they study, present and criticize it; why would there be faculties of political science, diplomatic schools and the like, if universities are not allowed to deal with politics? What about political philosophy, which Zoran Đinđić dealt with? What would law look like without that connection? And history? The trick of the stupid in power is transparent: they hit us over the head with a platitude, so that we do not notice the exact opposite, how politics wants to stifle free academic thought and uses any means to do so. Among other things, it nurtures the worst media cesspool that proclaims itself "national" and performs in it. There, people, who have been sitting in armchairs for decades without knowledge and morality, declare students "armchair people" and in open corruption nurture provocateurs ("children"), who are eventually visited by the European Commissioner. Why? To get to know the other side? There is no other side, there is a president who promised to leave if it is discovered that the sonic cannon exists, a minister who praises the police while footage of beatings is streaming behind him, and a masterfully obtuse scoundrel who is horrified by a colorful birthday cake.
The relationship with the university has been an awkward one for most states, ever since the time when states and churches fought over the university, always at the expense of professors. Places where systematic thinking, organized research and teaching take place, at best by pushing and expanding the boundaries of knowledge, are the greatest enemies of any government. I am far from idealizing the university, including the Belgrade one – decades of silence, cowardice and open cooperation with the forces of evil have passed: the reaction of today's government, now that it is finally facing the threat of intelligence, as the communists feared in 1968, is to uncover and persecute that threat – just like in 1968. Back then, a story was spread about how the university was conspiring simultaneously with the Ibeists, the remnants of the defeated bourgeoisie and Western extremists; today the enemy is vague, because Serbia has no foreign policy whatsoever, and the only thing it can offer are the Croats.
Almost sixty years ago, there was someone who knew how to remain silent, only to end up causing a goat-stomping ruckus among the less intelligent – unfortunately, the majority – students and professors. The professors, the others, were mistreated; the students, the most outspoken, were sent to prison, a little over two hundred of them were left without passports in Belgrade, just when the world's youth were pouring into Afghanistan and all the way to India, seeking answers to their questions: a relatively small cost for the state of the time, which did not know how or dared to use the potential of new thought. The state today, led directly by those who destroyed the previous one, has to pay incomparably more. It is still given relatively few opportunities to get away without major damage – but by attacking universities and students, who outplayed it and showed it how politics is conducted, it has shown that it is not even that good at it. The bewilderment is short-lived: the university has existed in more or less the same form since the 9th century AD. There is no doubt about the object of hope.
Bonus video:
