The 21st SVU World Congress

Keynote Address by Senator Josef Jarab

Coping with the Past or Shaping the Future?

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, dear friends,
Allow me to greet whole-heartedly all the participants of the 21st World Congress of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences before I invite you to ponder with me over an answer to the question mark in the title of my talk - has the Czech society, in the recent decade or so, been more contending with its past or has it been preoccupied with shaping its future?

Before we engage in such deliberation, however, I want to express my gratitude for this invitation to the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU - as we call it here) and its President, Dr. Mila Rechcigl, as well as the organizers of the impressive event here in Plzeň, a city which seems to have fruitfully embraced the chance that came with freedom in 1989 and whose young university ranks highly among the dynamic and creative institutions of higher learning in this country. I feel privileged for the opportunity to address this very distinguished audience.
I have to admit that I take this occasion of appearing before you here in Plzeň today as a continued honor granted to me after I had been given the enormous pleasure of saluting your congress in Toronto in 1990. To be more accurate I should be saying OUR congress because it was in Toronto that I was offered and gladly accepted the SVU membership. My feeling of belonging was enhanced when I was invited to the SVU conference in Oxford, England, in November the same year, and thus could share with the participants my own first experience from and ideas for reforms of higher education in, then still, Czechoslovakia.
It should be added that this was already at a time when a number of SVU colleagues from the Unites States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries in Western Europe were frequently visiting our traditional and newly established universities providing needed advice, assistance, expertise. Nobody working with interest in the field of education and research could have missed the appearance and the activities of the SVU Commission for Cooperation with Czechoslovakia.
The list of names of particular people involved in this beneficial endeavor would be long and I feel it would be unfair to start even reading from it and leave it incomplete... One more reason for not doing so is that the help, the involvement, the cooperation continues and I would like to use this opportunity to thank the Society and its members for all they have been initiating and delivering over the last twelve years.
But having said that, I am immediately reminded of something even more important - namely, that recognition, gratitude and gratulations are due to the Czech and Slovak Society of Arts and Sciences for what they, what YOU, dear and distinguished colleagues, have represented, and literally stood for, since the mid- 1950´s when the body was founded - the fact of truly historical relevance, that the minds, the muses, the intellectual capacity and creative spirit of Czechs and Slovaks proved unsuppressed, indeed unsuppressable even in conditions of very unfavorable fate. The fact manifested itself in a great number of artistic and scholarly achievements which became powerful sources of inspiration for others all around the world, where Czech and Slovak countrymen were scattered, and in the artists´and scholars´ original homelands. I myself can hardly imagine the earlier days in my academic life without the knowledge of Professor Rene Wellek´s , the first SVU President´s, contribution to literary studies, and others would have their own masters and guides whom they learned from and tried to emulate. Summarized in very simple words, we have a lot to thank the SVU for and we are and should be proud of it, proud of you. In its history of the SVU there are contained quite a few lessons to remember and to learn from.

Today, I find the present opportunity also personally moving as it provides me with the chance to meet again many friends and colleagues, some of whom I have not seen for a number of years. Friends like to wander through recollections. And so let me take it as a convenient moment to cast a backward glance to assess the past twelve years, as I have seen them, and dare a forward glimpse into the possible immediate and even more distant future.

    We all remember - and hardly would we want ever to forget - our spontaneous joy and enthusiasm which accompanied and pushed forward the revolutionary changes in the fall of 1989 throughout the totalitarian Soviet bloc. In Czechoslovakia hundreds of thousands of people were gathering in the streets and squares all over the country to celebrate, by ringing their keys and singing ad hoc composed songs, the sudden and unexpected, though certainly not undesired, collapse of the communist regime. It is, however, relevant to recall that these mass demonstrations and manifestations of discontent followed only after our students, on November 17, marched through Prague, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the tragic events in 1939, letting the present police state know their minds not just on the historical but also on the current injustice, lack of freedom, and continual violation of basic human rights.
The marching students were brutally attacked, and again I find it necessary to remind ourselves of the fact that among the first to support the rebellious students there were actors, writers, intellectuals - and, of course, the political dissidents of the preceding dozen years.
From my personal experience I can tell you that it took hours and, indeed, long days before the revolutionary message (for some promising, for others impending - ) of a dramatic change was brought home to and was finally accepted even embraced by the society at large. Eventually, it seemed to have happened - though how fast and deep, how serious, how politically responsible and how conscious of all potential social consequences and moral requirements such embracement then really was could not be easily judged. And the spreading mass enthusiasm of the time that immediately followed the collapse of the empty communist regime did not and could not make all those questions real issues yet. Terms like freedom, democracy and justice were being quoted by practically everybody, of course with different, little or no understanding of the real meaning and of the inevitable consequences involved... All in all, and historically speaking, it would have been rather more surprising had the general scene in the country behaved differently. Over the decades, and especially after 1968, the regime had introduced a number of schizophrenic elements into everyday life, even those who were, at various practical levels, part of the system also felt victims of the totalitarian straitjacket, people have (some more and some less willingly) learned and adopted a life "out of truth" and only very few were brave enough to follow Václav Havel´s voice encouraging his compatriots to live and seek a kind of private liberty "in truth". Such voices, however, including his own, used to come too often from a prison cell.
So, was it not the best proof that the world has fortunately turned upside down when, still before the year of the Velvet Revolution ended, the leading dissident, so to say overnight, became President of the country? The Czechoslovak population must have welcomed this event, which provoked a real ecstasy all over the world, with a feeling of relief both in their consciousness and conscience; the communist Parliament elected Václav Havel unanimously. The country was ready for transformation.


But then the public was rather shocked when some of the student leaders refused to celebrate the first anniversary of November 1989 telling the world that the very idea of the Velvet Revolution was, in fact, stolen. As they were assessing the new, transforming, reality - principles of liberty, democracy, and rule of law seemed to have been in their eyes more exploited than truly applied and respected. The process of rehabilitations, restitutions, reforms - as their semantics already suggests - could not have aimed singly for the future without avoiding the legacies, burdens and shackles of the past, which, indeed, proved true sometimes quite painfully. .

Privatization of property looked like a simpler project - with the voucher as the instrument of transition it must have suggested to the participants, i.e. all citizens of the country, a rather playful affair. And eventually it turned out to be one... Within the framework of faulty legislation (difficult to decide whether out of innocence, negligence or intentionally) and under the surveillance of unprivatized, i.e., state-controlled banks, who frequently behaved erroneously (if not criminally), the affair proved to be a playful affair only for a few individuals who must have truly enjoyed it. For me as for most participants in the voucher game, however, the bonds we bought quickly disappeared without a trace, and they remain practically untraceable to this day.
If one thousand crowns would have been my price for bringing back a just and efficient ownership of property and for helping, what the Marxists called, "means of production" grow more efficient I would have been a happy contributor to the process. Even repeatedly so. But, instead, along with millions of other taxpayers we keep paying large bills continuously being handed over to us by governments to compensate for the collapsing or collapsed banks who kept emptying their vaults providing clearly unretrievable loans to unreliable individuals, if not obvious suspects.
If this sounds like a gross generalization of the early 1990´s I admit that it is one. If it sounds too much like accusations coached by politicians serving in the opposition, by people who have not succeeded in the sudden requirements for a change of the individual´s existential behavior, by those who have been for whatever reason socially marginalized, I admit that this may be so. And yet there must have been enough of a negative experience from the process of transformation that gave people a feeling of uncertainty; to others it could have become a ground to justify their own wrong-doing and/or a reasoning to compensate for their feeling of frustration that resulted from their failure in face of the chances offered by freer but also more demanding conditions for self-realization. But whatever the reasons for a "bad mood" in a society may be it always proves a wrong decision to neglect it. Be it a decision of the politicians, media, education, or of the society itself.

    What about the notion that to think of others, not just oneself, is a normal reaction to life? Some people believe it has been fast forgotten in the process of reintroducing capitalism in our country. Some of them think we should try to prevent such sentiments from dying and keep them alive. But I assume the situation is more complicated because to believe that selfishness was incompatible with life and social behavior under communism is basically false. Despite the official ideology of solidarity and collectivism, in fact, narrow egoism, above all in materialistic terms, was the reality in the old regime - the saying "who does not steal cheats on his family" was taken as a guideline for survival; and so the neglect of things social or communitarian, is, therefore, more a fruit of life in the communist era than just a problematic reaction to it, let alone a justified one. Obviously, here we have a hard problem to deal with, and I consciously say deal with rather than solve to suggest the process. Much of what we had lived with (and some would say had to live with) got intricately entangled with what we live now and with what we think we want to live in the future.

Quite often do we hear and even repeat that especially individuals of the younger generations are irresponsibly individualistic and selfish and negligent of the social environment. I think I can disagree and dare judge such observations as dubious and misleading, especially if generalized. Much of the elders´ moral preaching is and will remain unconvincing as long as corruption in this country continues to be tolerated. (It is worth noticing in this context that it is the postcommunist countries where the corruption rate ranks among the highest).

And so, not just theoretical but also empirical education (by example and practical argumentation) is badly needed; it should be aimed at ethical behavior, honest working habits, good citizenship, social sensibility and humanity, true solidarity and other civic virtues. It is, undoubtedly, an uneasy task of great seriousness and urgency to be taken up by the whole society and its institutions, indeed, by every individual who thinks she or he has something to offer, including cultivation of one´s own self along these lines.
And just as a coda to this theme, let me confess that my own experience with the new generation of students is quite encouraging - they are more independent, they have more self-confidence, they have seen more of the world. The crop of essays I have recently collected in my course on Americam literature provided not just well-written texts of analysis of books, such as, Sister Carrie, Great Gatsby, Winesburg, Ohio, Mainstreet, of Du Bois´s essays from The Souls of Black Folk and Langston Hughes´ poetry, but they offered rather surprisingly personal and freshly sensitive readings that included highly interesting and telling commentaries not just on the American reality of the early 20th century but on life developments in this country as well. Including especially the recent ones. And so, from what I read I have a feeling that, like myself, my students too would see limits to the wisdom comprised in the proverb that "envy is better worth having than pity."


I think it is of great importance to realize that the decade at the end of the 20th century granted us the most promising of chances imaginable for substantial change, for saying good-bye to the dark and unfree past including its legacies, for embarking upon a free and generally desirable future. Yet, instead of offering itself as an occasion to celebrate the tenth anniversary, the November of 1999, was used as an opportunity for a number of citizen initiatives to protest against the politicians in power for their unwillingness to enter a public discourse on various open political and public issues. Some of the former student protagonists from the Velvet Revolution addressed the political leaders with a petition politely but appealingly worded "Thank you, but leave!" Thousands of people, for various reasons, joined in the protest but those in power chose to ridicule rather than read the messages of the demonstrations. An even more dramatic moment arrived at Christmas time in the year 2000 when many of the discontents massively protested against the blatant attempt at a direct political surveillance and regulation of public media. Due to the highly unusual "oppositional contract" of two political parties whose election programs were virtually incompatible, but who, nevertheless, joined forces in governing the country, the so-called "Czech TV crisis" was not reasonably solved. Such solution - that would ask for an introduction of legislation that would not allow any political or economic interference and would guarantee, or at least encourage, independence and good service of public media - will, then, have to be sought in the future again - so that media can finally to assume its role in the development of democratic culture in the country.

Obviously, we are still only in the middle of a learning process as regards life in freedom and democracy, as regards respect for the rule of law (including our Constitution that some political forces would like to change whenever their practical, not always necessarily good and even honest, reasons appear). Our behavior as citizens and human beings is still marked and burdened by the life under communism, by communism within us, which is not to be considered an excuse but a challenge to every and each individual, as our colleague, Benjamin Kuras, reminded us of so eloquently in his recent article published on the very eve of the June parliamentary elections in the daily paper MF DNES.
The elections themselves only confirmed his true and painful observations and justified his fears. And not just concerning the results. Nearly half of the population did not even bother to take part in the elections, they did not use the right to express their view, and so, nor did they decide to accept their responsibility for what will happen in this country and to this country, and, indeed, to themselves.
Who could have guessed in 1989 that one out of five members in the freely elected House of Deputies would be a member of the Communist Party! But such are the facts. A young businessman, leaving in a luxurious car for his weekend cottage, told the TV reporter who enquired about his electoral preferences that he was certainly not interested in politics and therefore saw no point in voting - thus helping to vote the Communists back into the power structure. But one also wonders about the true motivation behind a TV station´s decision to concentrate (as a pre-election advertisement?), chiefly on citizens who let the nation know that they did not consider elections an important event in their lives, and, in general, simply did not care.
During my own Senate election campaign, two years ago, I met on November 17 with an entrepreneur who angrily scolded me for having to observe that memorable day as a new national holiday and thus was about to lose some twenty thousand crowns in his business. My question about what did he do before November 1989, which certainly must have brought him the possibility of opening his business, remained unanswered but enough could be heard about those responsible for his loss - they were clearly identified as "the university kids" and politicians. Frankly, if I could I would have brought back at least for a few days, and only for the new, probably rather small, capitalist, the historical reality as it existed before November 1989. Are the Czechs already suffering of historical amnesia? How do we cure it?


The inherited and again re-emerging distinction between "us" and "them" is undoubtedly a sign of an unhealthy relationship between citizens and their democratically elected representatives. It is usually a symptom of mutual lack of trust and confidence, of political naivity if not ignorance. But should we not be reminded of the truth that it is always the wiser and more powerful party that should try to cure such social sickness and look for ways to overcome such a politically unproductive relation? But let us consider such actions of politicians which led to the fatal breakup of Czechoslovakia without a public referendum, or the obstruction, for three years, of elections to the Senate as required by the Constitution of the Czech Republic; the continued blocking of legislation that would define, regulate and make impossible the practice of "conflict of interest" of elected politicians and of abuse of public office - to quote a few examples. It can only lead to unwanted, xenophobic, reactions when even mainstream political parties fuel their election campaign by demagogic exploitation of already vague fears of foreigners, or else, make promises to "end criminalization of successful businesspeople" - thus sending the message that if one makes (or even steals) enough money, one should be above the law, and even worse, that the judiciary should be obedient again when it comes to the powerful and noticeable. All these cases do not certainly represent recommendable standards of behavior, examples that could be offered as models to the general population by those whose logical responsibilities should include, among others, the task to educate good citizens.

Experience (including experiencing of freedom and democracy) may still be the best schoolmaster, as we are being told by empirical thinkers and our neighbors in the local pub, and yet formal learning lessons in which we can share also the experience of people in other times and other places remain, of course, a vital instrument in the development of not just the individual' s skills and knowledge useful to the learner for his or her later professional career but also for cultivating the qualities of free and democratic citizenship. After decades of uncritical, Marxist and Leninist, brainwashing, which has been generally considered less successful, i.e., less harmful, than it really proved, it is of grave importance that the society of the future can be effectively shaped through desirable changes in and of individuals. In a couplet from his Moral Essays the English poet of the Age of Reason, Alexander Pope, was convinced that:
'Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent the tree' s inclined.




How reassuring are the words of a classic. And it was equally reassuring and indeed fascinating to see many of you, many members of the Society of Arts and Letters rush to the liberated homeland, immediately after the fall of the "iron curtain", with the conviction and message that if there is any priority number one for the time of necessary changes it should be education. You tried and so did we.
Never after the revolutionary changes, however, have education, scientific research, the arts and culture been considered priority fields in development and investment policies of any of the post-revolutionary governments. Neither did society at large press the politicians for a higher evaluation of the role of learning and of a cultivation of cultural values. As if we were blind or did not trust what is there to be seen and emulated in other small countries on the continent, such as Finland, Ireland or even Portugal, where they took the educational and cultural investment in the population seriously and at present already begin reaping fine results from their wise policy.
Today qualified studies are needed that would analyze and carefully value the issues and problems of our educational system, our cultural policy, and the consequences of the current state of affairs. Reforms which started in the early nineties got often stuck half way (methods of financing education and educational institutions, financing doctoral students and the future generation of university teachers and researchers, the designing of more open and thoughtful curricula, methods of teaching and examining ); some steps taken are too formal to be efficient (some criteria applied in the official accreditation and evaluation process), others are isolated and out of context and, therefore, sometimes even counterproductive (opening of private institutes of higher learning with fees as against public universities without tuition contributes to false "competition" both recruitment of the students and employment and hiring of faculty ), and we could continue with such of complaints. But to minimize and eschew the potential criticism from our dear colleague, Pavel Tigrid, who accuses Czechs that they cultivate grumbling and complaints as a national habit and a social game, I will stop here. Prematurely, I admit, but so did the reforms.
Undoubtedly, we could also create a list of positive changes in our world of education. The doubled number of students enlisted in institutions of tertiary education, the steadily growing number of institutions of higher learning, the diversification in tertiary education, computarization of academic work, maturing practise of academic autonomy, internationalization of the education process and research activities, attempts to introduce interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity into teaching and learning, a new and developing concept of distance education, the understanding of the need of life-long-learning and requalifications, etc., etc. Yet a "but", or an "if", or a "however" could and should be added to each of the items on both the lists. But generally it can be said that had there been more official support aimed at the enhancement or even encouragement of liberal and imaginative creativity and had there been available more material resources the progress would have been more substantial and noticeable.

(I understand that a whole panel is to be devoted to the subjects of education, the arts and culture at the congress and I am very sorry that for other duties I will not be able to join in the debate.)
   
    One minor, but in my mind not unimportant, issue is whether universities and other educational institutions should be living out of the context of political debates in the country. I believe that it would be a mistake as we would be giving the young people the impression that politics is not relevant for their existence and that they are of no consequence to politics - and this would, indeed, be very false. But, of course, this is not a call for political parties to return to campuses but rather an invitation to critical, open-minded and well-informed political discussions to be initiated in our schools, from which more perceptive citizens could emerge. Such a move should also bring the academic communities more efficiently in the political debates about educational reforms, about the process of learning and of scientific activities in the times to come.

    Let me briefly conclude my remarks. After decades of imposed isolation, after decades of life in a system introduced by a dogmatic ideology and held in force by power, which gradually changed from brutal violence to spirit-killing totalitarian stalemate but lasted long, nevertheless- our beautiful country is free again. It can enjoy the possibilities of making free decisions but, as I tried to illustrate, it has not yet liberated itself from all the consequences and legacies of the past. These keep dragging back and down even the most daring attempts at reforms of the inherited reality, efforts to shape a better future. This aftermath of the past, both the consciously tackled and the hardly perceived part of it, is, however, nothing more than a challenge - it should definitely not be a reason for scepticism, which is another charactersitic feature of the national character; the Czechs, unfortunately, are too willing to give in to such a mood and attitude.
   
    It is, therefore, highly recommendable that we judge the weight of some historical steps taken in the general recent development of the country. And these steps weigh a lot. Membership in NATO brought the Czech Republic security experienced never before, and at the same time faced the Czechs with their obligations ensuing from a partnership in global responsibility. The other step aims at the integration of the country into a community of free, democratic and prosperous nations organized in the European Union. Already the negotiation process is helping us to liberate our legislature from many elements still belonging to our ominous past, it is certainly helping us be better prepared for our new, European, future.
    The prospects for this small country are promising, if they are promising for the world. But one experience from the past should not be forgotten - that we shall always be better-off if the politics that will run the course of our human events is driven and informed by thought and feeling, if our vision of the future is philosophical rather than idelogical, whatever color the ideology may be.

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