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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 October 2022
The democratic backsliding that has accelerated across the globe over the past decade has included a rollback of liberal arts and sciences (LAS) as a system of university education. This essay explores the origins and goals of the global LAS education reform movement. I argue that while the movement is under threat largely due to its principled value of educating democratic citizens, it still has powerful potential and global impact; in part because LAS education is primarily an indigenous phenomenon adapting to local circumstances. I also argue that U.S. universities could contribute more constructively to the movement if they conceived of their role as global civic actors that conduct themselves in the spirit of mutuality and reciprocity, not as multinational corporations that channel neoliberal tendencies to maximize revenue. U.S. critics of the global LAS movement should also pay heed to the United States’ own history. Specifically, they can learn from historically Black colleges and universities how, operating under the extreme authoritarianism of the Jim Crow era, they managed to produce leaders who shaped a more democratic country. Liberal arts education produces short term benefits for students and alumni, but in the democratic context it is a long-term wager.
1 Having been asked so many times about the liberal arts, I wrote an article entitled, “What a Liberal Arts and Sciences Education Is . . . and Is Not,” which has been translated into Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. See Jonathan A. Becker, “Chto takoe obrazovanie po model svobodnykh iskustv i nauk . . . i chem ono ne yavlaetsya,” [What a liberal arts and sciences education is. . . and is not] [published in Russian], in Jonathan A. Becker and Philip Fedchin, eds., Svobondyi iskusstva i nauki na sovremennon tape [Contemporary liberal arts and sciences education: Experiences from the United States and Europe] (St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University, 2014), pp. 12–39. For an English version, see: tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/files/5438940/1/Liberal%20Arts%20and%20Sciences%202014%20Final%20September%202014.pdf.
2 Becker, Jonathan, Kortunov, Andrei, and Fedchin, Philip, “Russia: Against the Tide, Liberal Arts Establishes a Foothold in Post-Soviet Russia,” in Peterson, Patti McGill, ed., Confronting Challenges to the Liberal Arts Curriculum: Perspectives of Developing and Transitional Countries (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 151–74Google Scholar. See also Samuel Abraham (ed.), “ECOLAS MANIFESTO: The Crisis of the Bachelor's Degree in Europe,” Kritika and kontext 25, no. 60, pp. 2–4.
3 Nussbaum, Martha C., Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 7Google Scholar.
4 Teun J. Dekker, “Liberal Arts and Sciences After Bologna—What's Next?” in Samuel Abraham, Kritika and kontext, pp. 19–25. Dekker wrote, “One of the most notable recent developments in European higher education is the emergence of the liberal arts and sciences movement. In the past 30 years, over 100 programs identifying with this educational philosophy have been created all over Europe, including significant numbers of programs in the Netherlands, the UK and Central Europe,” p. 19.
5 The ten university colleges established in the Netherlands increased graduation rates from around 20 percent to more than 80 percent. Hans Adriaansens, “The Future of University Colleges or the Emancipation of the Bachelor's,” in Abraham, Kritika and kontext, pp. 27–33, at p. 29. See also survey results in Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Maestricht University, Liberal Arts & Sciences Programmes Alumni Survey Factsheet 2017 (Maastricht, Netherlands: ROA, April 2018), pp. 1–7, universitycolleges.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Factsheet-LAS-Alumni-Survey.pdf.
6 Smolny College refers to a dual degree partnership between Bard College and St. Petersburg State University. It was started in 1996, became a degree-granting program in 1998 as a part of St. Petersburg State University's philology faculty, and in 2011 was transformed into the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Russia's first department oriented in the principles of liberal arts education.
7 Aleksei Kudrin, “Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Russian University Educational System,” Educational Studies [Voprosy obrazovaniya] 4 (2015), pp. 62–71, vo.hse.ru/en/2015--4/169106216.html. See also “Alexei Kudrin Tells the Gaidar Forum about ‘Free Knowledge’ and the New Education of the 21st Century,” Gaidar Forum, January 15, 2021, www.gaidarforum.ru/en/news2021/2049/.
8 It should be noted that universities with the title “American University of…” are unregulated and many such institutions are neither accredited in the United States nor follow the LAS system. The Association of American International Colleges and Universities (AAICU), which unites many such institutions, stipulated in its 2008 Cairo Declaration that its members must be accredited in the United States and operate “within the framework of the American liberal arts tradition.” See “Cairo Declaration (Identity-Principles),” Association of American International Colleges and Universities, www.aaicu.org/about/cairo-declaration-identity-principles/. Several of AAICU's twenty-two members have joined since the 1990s, including American Universities in Armenia, Bulgaria, and Central Asia.
9 Jonathan Becker and Daria Pushkina, “Sila obrazovaniya vypusniki program svobodnykh iskustv i nauk v rynke truda v XXI veke,” [The strength of graduates of liberal arts programs in the labor market] in Aleksei Kudrin, Danila Raskov and Denis Kadochnikov, eds., Obrazovatel'naya model’ svobodnykh iskustv i nauk: Mirovoi i Rossisskii opyt [The liberal arts and sciences educational model: International and Russian experience] (Moscow: Gaidar Institute, 2021), pp. 362–94.
10 Jonathan Becker, ed., special issue, Obrazovanie po modeli svobodnykh iskustv i nauk [Education according to the liberal arts and sciences model] Educational Studies Moscow [Voprosy obrazovaniya] 4 (2015), vo.ru/en/2015-4.html.
11 Thomas R. Cech, “Science at Liberal Arts Colleges: A Better Education?” Daedalus, vol. 128, no. 1, Winter 1999, pp. 195–216, at p. 213. Cech wrote, “Liberal arts colleges as a group produce about twice as many eventual science Ph.Ds per graduate as do baccalaureate institutions in general, and the top colleges vie with the nation's very best research universities in their efficiency of production of eventual science Ph.Ds.”
12 Jim Sleeper, “Innocents Abroad? Liberal Educators in Illiberal Societies,” Ethics & International Affairs 29, no. 2 (Summer 2015), pp. 127 to 144, at p. 129. Sleeper has also suggested that these institutions adapted curriculums in “too narrow and instrumental” ways, p. 129.
13 It should be noted that in the wake of Russia's continued war in Ukraine, MIT terminated the Skolkovo partnership. See MIT President Rafael Reif's letter to the MIT community: news.mit.edu/2022/mit-responding-ukraine-0228, February 28, 2022.
14 “Mission Statement,” Bard, www.bard.edu/about/mission/.
15 On Bard's approach, see Jonathan Becker and Susan H. Gillespie, “Adapting Liberal Arts and Sciences as a System of Education,” in Ted Purinton and Jennifer Skaggs, eds., American Universities Abroad: The Leadership of Independent Transnational Higher Education Institutions (New York: American University of Cairo Press, 2018), pp. 267–85.
16 “About Us,” Global Liberal Arts Alliance, liberalartsalliance.org/about-us/.
17 For information on the conference, see www.scholarsatrisk.org/event/2016-congress/.
18 These issues are expertly explored in Lynn Novick's excellent TV documentary College behind Bars (2019).
19 Jelani M. Favors, Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020), p. 4.
20 Kyaw Moe Tun, “We Need Authoritarian-Proof Higher Education Models,” Times Higher Education, September 6, 2021, www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/we-need-authoritarian-proof-higher-education-models.
21 Russian Prosecutor-General's Office, quoted in Matthew Luxmoore, “In Banning Bard College, Russia Shutters a Program That Bridged an International Divide,” RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, July 29, 2021, www.rferl.org/a/russia-bard-college-blacklisted/31384301.html.
22 Ibid.
23 For attacks on Smolny, including its faculty, see “Fakutetu svobodnykh iskustv SPbGU prodolzhaet dostavat'sya i Bard-Kolledzha.* I.o. dekana snyala dolzhnosti,” [The faculty of liberal arts at St. Petersburg State University continues to be harmed by its relationship with Bard College.* And the dean was removed from office], Fontanka, 19 April 2022, www.fontanka.ru/2022/04/19/71268119/.
24 St. Petersburg State University News, “Brief Repoft from the Rector's Meeting, May 23, 2022, spbu.ru/news-events/novosti/kratkiy-otchet-o-rektorskom-soveshchanii-23-maya.
25 Oleg Dilimbetov, “Aleksei Kudrin svoboden ot iskusstv v nauk” [Aleksei Kudrin is freed from arts and sciences], Kommersant, May 21, 2022, www.kommersant.ru/doc/5381034.
26 Quoted in “Nazad v kazarmy,” [Back to the barracks] Novaya gazeta, March 23, 2022.
27 Karen Fischer, “A ‘Flabbergasting’ Decision: Abrupt End of Yale-NUS Partnership Offers Lessons to Colleges Seeking Global Re-engagement,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 17, 2021, www.chronicle.com/article/a-flabbergasting-decision. See also Daevan Mangalmurti, “The End of Ideas: Liberation, Liberal Arts and the Closure of Yale-NUS,” Politic, April 10, 2022, thepolitic.org/article/the-end-of-ideas-liberation-liberal-arts-and-the-closure-of-yale-nus.
28 Baehr, Peter, “Hong Kong Universities in the Shadow of the National Security Law,” Society 59 (June 2022), pp. 225–39CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12115-022-00709-9.
29 Adriaansens, “The Future of University Colleges or the Emancipation of the Bachelor's,” p. 29. See also survey results in Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market, Liberal Arts & Sciences Programmes Alumni Survey Factsheet 2017, pp. 1–7.
30 Rick Scott, quoted in David N. Devries, “A Question for Every Answer: David N. DeVries Considers What It Means to Live a Life Grounded in the Liberal Arts,” Inside Higher Ed, June 23, 2014, www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/06/23/essay-meaning-life-grounded-liberal-arts.
31 Henry Giroux, quoted in Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, “Academic Prioritization or Killing the Liberal Arts?,” Inside Higher Ed, March 1, 2019, www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/03/01/shrinking-liberal-arts-programs-raise-alarm-bells-among-faculty.
32 Kyaw Moe Tun, interview with the author via email, May 29, 2022.
33 Giamatti, A. Bartlett, The University and the Public Interest (New York: Atheneum, 1981), pp. 136–37Google Scholar.
34 Tun, “We Need Authoritarian-Proof Higher Education Models.”
