Sinking University

The managing of a university is being equated with the managing of an enterprise, so that, with the legalized equating of a university with an agricultural enterprise, a zenith of democracy has been reached in Serbia at the foot of the third millennium.

The proposal by the University of Belgrade for postponing adoption of the law until spring, and for the government to, in the meantime, draft a new version of the law in cooperation with the university, was not accepted.  Nor were any of the 66 amendments proposed by the opposition.

The choir of JUL members, Radicals and SPS representatives, which trumpeted praise for the new law on universities throughout the Siberian Parliament, could not even be drowned out by the sounds of whistles which reached the center of Parliament, nor by the fact that in the center of Belgrade, special police cordons were placed during the parliamentary session, as if we are some kind of banana republic, nor by the fact that once again a warning was issued that undercover policemen, just like in the unforgettable year 96/97, were beating up and seriously injuring a large group of students and even civilians.  The Students' Coordinating Committee stated that a professor of the medical faculty, Srdjan Mitic, an economist, Dusan Aleksic and students Predrag Simic and Jovan Manic were arrested and beaten up.

This was an overture to dramatic events which Stevan Lilic, a professor at the University of Belgrade fearfully, and unfortunately correctly announced as the beginning of the JUL version of the Chinese "cultural revolution" throughout universities in Serbia.

Will the University of Belgrade announce a general strike, as the students who gathered on the square in front of the faculty of philosophy are demanding?  As this article is going to press, students have decided to occupy the Rector's office, the Committee for Research and Teaching is holding a session behind closed doors, and has concluded that the decision on whether to strike should be brought separately by each of the faculties.  The academician Milan Kurepa briefly states: "I'm disgusted!"

Fedor Zdanski, dean of the faculty of technology and metallurgy in Belgrade, expressed a hope several days earlier that the University of Belgrade will not join universities in the former Soviet Union and the Third Reich in which management by commissars was introduced.  Now there appears to be no more hope.  There is only fear and uncertainty...
HAPPY NEW 1948:  The attack on the universities had been planned for some time, as VREME wrote on several occasions already.  The headquarters of this anti-cultural action, the University Committee of JUL, found passionate and unquestioningly loyal executives of their plans in the representatives of the government, members of the Council of U. of B. who did not treat universities as public property, but as an issue for party and political discussion.  That is why "democratic totalitarianism" (Nebojsa Popov) was instituted by the Council of U. of B., where the majority believe that they can do what they please, as Prof. Ph.D. Svetozar Stojanovic stated at one of the session of the Council.  The Radicals passionately took up, with their coalition partners, the task of straying the metaphorical Carthagena represented by universities.

The irony is that some people at the university were not only part of an unquestioning voting machine, but also the same people who delivered the death sentence, as well as its principal executors: all three vice-presidents are university professors (Seselj is a former professor, but is not going to Pristina any longer), just like the ministers of science and of education, not to mention the spiritus movens from Dedinje, the great stage designer, but also director of many spectacular institutional and extra-institutional conflicts "of the left against the right", as well as of the "freeing" of the University of Belgrade...

Ph.D. Dragan Veselinov, as an MP for the Coalition Vojvodina which completely refuses the proposed law, but also as a Professor at U. of B., stated in Serbian Parliament that this law is perceived as exacerbated political intervention by the state which will politicize universities, directly placing them under the state, centralizing authority, staff decisions, and decision making...

Many people correctly saw the development of the drama at the universities: the government gave back all "privileges" to students, accepted all their amendments and even more, just so that a real rift would be created between students and professors, and so that the main issue would be pushed into the background - the undermined autonomy of universities.  The Minister of Education, Jove Todorovic, stated self-contentedly that the schedule of exams is more forgiving than before, and the academic record condition has been dropped for transferring from paying tuition to studying at state expense, and even tuition is dropped!  Only 24 hours earlier, Jovo "El Nino" was saying the exact opposite!
The cynicism with which the government is carrying out this shameful business with the universities is without precedent: Gorica Gajevic stated that the Law which was passed underwent "extensive public discussion: both the public and experts had their say, both students and professors...!"  There is no end to this cynicism: members of the Council who refused to let representative of the Students' Parliament have a say, who brought security to the Rector's office so that students could not enter the rectorate Building, who did not give Viktor Todorovic, the legitimate, elected president of the Students' Parliament, a brilliant student of molecular biology, a single vote when there was a secret vote for choosing university and students' pro-rectors -- those same people are now boasting that the new law will finally give the students their say?!

Which students?  Well of course, the morally and politically suitable ones: members of the phantom organization of the Alliance of Students of Belgrade and its activists.  Everything confirms that the fear of many people was justified that the new law will permit, among other things, unbelievable manipulation of students, that it will favor obedience, a servile attitude and party membership.  The Left, the richest party on the political scene, had already awarded "the best students" on the basis of their own criteria.
The state which is now pounding the table because it is financing higher education, and therefore has the right also to set its demands, is not saying anything about the crumbs it is dealing out for education, while it is favoring it like the apple of its eye.  Neither the Minister of Education, nor the three vice-presidents, nor the crowd of "willingly usable" experts who in secret drafted the law with the government, and who eschewed the question of the financial standing of universities for over one and a half years, are also not saying now what will change in institutions of higher learning except for the introduction of moral and political suitability.

And while the government, and especially Minister Todorovic, are stating that there is no other country in the world where students drag out their degrees so long, are forgetting to say that many things in the country of Serbia cannot be found "anywhere else”: our poverty in comparison with the rest of the world is nowhere more evident than at universities (from labs to libraries, to washrooms!), there is no country in the world with which our leaders would be willing to compare us, in which university educated people are so penniless.  There is no country in the world which has been deserted by so many young, educated people...

It is hardly surprising that these questions have been persistently postponed, and taken off the agenda of the University Council.  The government and its part of the Council, as well as the "soothsayer from Dedinje", are living in virtual reality: they are driving around in limousines with shaded windows, are getting huge apartments, are circulating from one executive committee to another, are purchasing companies, and are getting TV and radio stations as presents... they are living in a rich, capitalist Serbia from "the state evening news".

At the press conference in the Serbian Parliament in which the proposal for the new law on universities was presented, vice-president of the government, Ph.D. Milovan Bujic stated that "I claim with full knowledge and in the name of the government that there is no question of disdain for (?!) or revenge against the universities."  Ph.D. Bojic had more consoling words: "the state will not appoint bankruptcy clerks, dog catchers and traffic cops for rectors and deans, but will appoint full professors, people who are university trained, accepted and nurtured."  Such a claim is in direct contradiction to the personality and actions of the Minister of Education, Jovo Todorovic, who represents sufficient reason for not discontinuing the strike, as striking teachers concluded last winter.  It is true that other members of government and proven staff do not enjoy a high reputation in scientific circles, nor among their colleagues, and some, not even among students.

The promoters of the new law are talking about some "French model", about a modern law on universities, only to be able to realize "Soviet kind of control over universities!"
Even a cursory look at the law on universities indicates that its promoters are lying shamelessly: it is not true that in any country, from France to America, rectors, deans and professors are appointed in the way specified in the new law.  In any case, let us look how the discussion on the proposal of the draft faired among experts at the law faculty in Belgrade: from a hundred professors, only Oliver Antic voted "for", as well as his assistant, an assistant professor, and also the son of the Minister of Police!  No comment!
The law was adopted, among other things, so that politics would be driven out of universities, as Minister Todorovic put it.  He merely repeated the idea expressed by Mira Markovic, President of JUL, that the project of reform and renewal of Yugoslav society assumes that schools, universities, cultural institutions, as well as hospitals, need to be protected from political parties and their activities.  Which is not the case with JUL and SPS?!  Thus, party members at university are accusing those who are not members of any party that they are too political?!  It is certain that there are young democrats and young member of the Citizens' Alliance, but they have not organized in faculties. At the session of the Committee for Research and Teaching, no member argued as a member of a political party, but exclusively as a university employee.  Only the dean of the faculty of biology stated: "Yes, I am a member of JUL, I do not permit that politics enter the faculty, and that is why I forbade any comments on this law!"  People from this faculty admit that they were shocked, but also threatened by the Dean's behavior.

And thus, while the academic community in Serbia, as well as the public at large, protested because of the new law, while some people again got killed in Kosovo, while events in Montenegro suggested new political earthquakes, and the world was considering what kind of sanctions to use to stifle the regime in Belgrade, the dramatis personae of these events, Slobodan Milosevic and Mira Markovic, accompanied by General Senta, of course, and a host of aparatchiks, participated in the opening of the season in "Madona", "the biggest, best equipped disco bar in the Balkans..."  Their only son Marko even got a present - he skipped over all those members of ANEMA (independent electronic media), and got the radio frequency 101 MHz FM.

After the latest battering in the Srpskih Vladara St. , students and citizens fled, only to gather once more in front of the faculty of philosophy.  Is it actually strange that at this gathering spot, the temperature cannot even be raised by Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl?"  Is it strange that the new student slogan is "Hey ho, to the West we all must go?"  As one student told his professor: "We will finish the university and leave, but what about you?"