Varia: In relation to my last post, I was very flattered to see that former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is clearly a devoted post-europe reader! While it’s often said that the problem with liberals is that they are hard to find, Verhofstadt may be pretty close to the real thing. He has thoughtfully responded to my post on the French Hijab/Burqa/identity affair with his piece in Le Monde (it’s alright for some). Diplomatically choosing his words, Verhofstadt declares that “There’s Something Rotten in La Republique Francaise”.
For those who may not know, Verhofstadt may have another reason for his affinity to post-europe: he most certainly is of the opinion that he and not van Rompuy should be the Belgian at the top of Europe. Actually, it’s Barroso’s job, he thinks he should have. He was the top candidate for the post way back in 2004, before Tony Blair stepped in and scuppered Guy’s chances in retaliation for his opposition to the Iraq war, the far more manageable Barroso was installed in his stead. In 2009 a broad spectrum of MEPs attempted to block Barroso’s reappointment with Verhofstadt again the candidate of choice. But again European leaders preferred the docile Barroso to proactive and pro-integration Verhofstadt.
Verhofstadt went up in my esteem when during some sort of city wide ‘leave a book on a bench’ initiative in Brussels, Verhofstadt said he would not be participating because he liked his books too much to lend or give them away, never mind just leave one on a bench.
In completely other news, some of you may be aware of the egregious treatment that several members of the King’s College London philosophy dept. have recently had to endure. Due to “restructuring” (at least) three very well respected senior scholars have been told they will lose their jobs. Perhaps they were lacking adequate synergy to operationalize the roll-out of the university’s strategic scalability – in which case they clearly had to go! Apparently the whole of the humanities faculty has been told they may have to reapply for their jobs (I suggest that they simply take a collective decision to refuse). The students at KCL have been at the forefront of the efforts to halt this process. It’s a testament to the excellent education these students are receiving at the KCL philosophy dept. that they have launched a wide campaign in protest, argued their case so eloquently (what do you expect, they are philosophers), and garnered wide support. You can read their letter and more about their campaign here.
American philosopher and blogger Brian Leiter has been posting news on the situation from various sources. He claims that not only are all the academics in humanities being put on alert that they may be sacked or forced to re-apply for their jobs, but while cuts are being made in areas where King’s really excels like philosophy, funds are being allocated for positions in “Culture and Identity” and “Digital and Visual Culture”, so it turns out that while KCL administrators who sees fit to fire well-respected philosophers, linguists and Britain’s only chair in Palaeography, they seem to be funding someone’s pet interests. What’s worse they are trying to sneak in these changes under the guise of necessary recession related cuts. This of course channels into the greater story that while the US, France, and Germany are pouring money into education, the Labour government in the United Kingdom is promising huge – around 10% so far – cuts in the sector.
Addendum (23/02/2010): A rather astute reader pointed out to me that my musings on Guy Verhofstadt’s brand of liberalism and the current crisis facing higher education in the United Kingdom due to draconian cuts imposed by the current labour government (and whoever is behind the debacle at KCL) are anything but “completely other news”. In an of course unverifiable assertion, said loyal reader claims that given the chance Verhofstadt would happily impose just the sort of Mandelsonian cuts that universities in the UK are now facing, cheerily gutting Belgium’s generous and productive academic sector, perhaps alongside a similar “impact” criteria for academic research (see here, but also here). She/he goes on to posit a link between attitudes held toward the welfare state in Verhofstadt’s Open VLD party and the disdain for French Republican attitudes displayed in Verhofstadt’s piece in Le Monde. I simply do not know enough on the matter to say one way or the other, I do of course welcome any suggestions…
Personal ignorance notwithstanding, I leave you with a sobering quote from famous French liberal philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville
“If our guiding lights are ever extinguished, they would grow dim gradually and, as it were, of their own accord. By confining ourselves to practical application, we would lose sight of basic principles and, when these had been entirely forgotten, we would find it difficult to pursue the methods which derive from them. We would stop inventing new ones and would use unintelligently and clumsily scientific processes we would no longer understand.”
- Good luck reading this now!
There has been a bit of discussion re: French attitudes towards liberalism stemming from my previous post. I essentially argued that while from a Anglo-American perspective (taken up by the NY Times) a ban on certain types of clothing (eg. Burqa, Niqab, Hijab)was fundamentally illiberal, this was not necessarily the case from a French-liberal-republican perspective in which the role of the state and social institutions in defining and protecting the freedom of citizens was thought rather differently. It was objected that French-liberalism did not exist (today), and moreover that “liberal” was a scorned word in contemporary French political discourse. I think that at the root of this difference of opinion is the understanding of the word liberal. As the Economist magazine (self-appointed standard bearer of liberalism in the Anglo-American world) points out: “The French use it ["liberal"] almost exclusively to caricature classical economic liberalism: blind faith in free markets and competition”. This is of course a rather drastic and unfortunate limitation of the word and the set of ideas it conveys. A wish to get beyond this caricature is undoubtedly what led Paris mayor and socialist Bertrand Delanoë to proclaim that he is “liberal and Socialist” and proud of it. “‘I am liberal,’ he writes, ‘because I love liberty’, anchoring his conception of liberalism in the political and social thinking of French philosophers reaching back to the Enlightenment.” (http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2008/05/disputing_the_meaning_of_liber). Expanding the scope of the term “liberal” beyond the narrow and caricatured confines of laissez-faire free-marketism allows for a proper debate an confrontation between Anglo and French ideas of what actually constitutes a free society and how best to achieve that goal. It also opens up the discussion to properly examining the relation between economically and socially “liberal” ideas.
The priest of my village used to say that if you are goodhearted and you help people, you are almost a Christian de facto, it takes “only” the Sunday mass to confirm it. Problem is that for a Catholic, Sunday mass is mandatory. That “only” could similarly apply to the “almost” liberal Frenchies. I agree with you that the point is all about the concept of liberalism, but for how broad the definitions of liberalism could be, we can not refer to it in the demagogic and simplistic way Mr. Delanoë did, just in honour of the philosophical sources and despite the historical practice. Because, if I only need to love liberty to be a liberal, then I am a conservative because I love to conserve and a socialist because I love to socialise. I follow you when counting French liberalism in the family of genuine liberal doctrines when gemmated from the Enlightenment. But, without necessarily sharing all ungenerous Burke’s considerations, there is already a significant difference between the 1789 Declaration (article 10 and 11) and the Bill of Rights (1st and 9th amendment).
Sure, we could grant the actual French Republic the liberal-TM label. Then it would be a little hard to explain French policy toward language (both local, like Breton and foreign like English). Policy towards religious beliefs. French application of the EU takeover directive. Long-lasted tradition of welcoming Basque or Red Brigades terrorists. The infamous campaign against the Polish plumber and the strong opposition to the Bolkenstein directive. The quota of French music on the radio (Radio Nova was shut down for one day). The outrageous invention of the “French exception”. And we could go on with many other examples not exactly in line with neither 1947 nor 1997 Oxford Manifesto.
Therefore, I strongly support the idea of expanding the scope of the term liberal from the caricatured laissez-faire free-marketism, which only exists on some books, no-global flyers and French writings on the walls. And considering the French reluctance on that (Alain Madelin, where are you?), let’s call into the game the Scandinavian systems, that proved to be able to contribute to the debate on governance and reforms much better than France, and whose solutions (like the Danish “flexicurity”) are of inspiration for many countries (unlike recent French reforms).
On the dangerous trends taken by the European education policies, have a look at the new Europe 2020 strategy proposal (http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/pdf/COMPLET%20EN%20BARROSO%20%20%20007%20-%20Europe%202020%20-%20EN%20version.pdf, page 15):
“At national level, Member States will need to ensure a sufficient supply of science, maths and engineering graduates and to focus school curricula on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship”.
[...] posts ago – “Shaming and Naming” – I discussed the threat of cuts to the distinguished philosophy department at Kings [...]