Commitment to freedom & justice

Shelley Walia

I was privileged to have a father who was a visionary academic and from whom I learned lessons in inspirational pedagogy. He regarded the classroom as a forum where one studied the subject at hand, engaging in a fearless exchange of ideas. Students were encouraged to voice dissenting opinions. I still meet some of his old students who remember his lectures as an inspiration for delving deep into history and culture, an intellectual necessity for sharpening critical thinking with a focus on public responsibilities.

Going through a dark period of uncertainty, some of us see clearly the ominous signs of the end of free thinking and the collapse of democratic institutions. The conflict is between a university becoming a seat of diversity and learning or a seat of conformity and indoctrination. Early on in life, coming in contact with the works of Rosa Luxemburg in my father’s library, I learnt that ‘freedom is always an exclusive freedom for one who thinks differently’ not because of any dogmatism but only because of the ‘instructive, wholesome and purifying’ nature of political freedom.

As an academic, I could only think of inculcating in young minds the lessons I had imbibed from my father, whose courage to stand up for the progressive role of the university guided me through much of my life. His approach was alert and tinged with humour, leaving his students with a language and political thought that allowed them to articulate their opposition to any conformist control. Any kind of political quiescence became anathema.

I gradually moved towards the study and later the teaching of Marxist cultural theory, with its propensity of prioritising intellectual multiplicity of opinion from a libertarian point of view. My close reading of books like the Brazilian philosopher and educationist Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, or the works of Howard Zinn and Edward Said on history, war, and race made me aware of their commitment to the cause of freedom and justice. The combination of knowledge, teaching and social commitment was inherent in the intellectual culture generated by their legacy. They recognised that their conscience was the most unswerving mechanism of inquiry.

Meeting Noam Chomsky at Oxford years ago turned into an everlasting friendship that left a profound impression on me of his passion for exchange of ideas and willingness to consider the opposing point of view. With him, borders between political beliefs and existence, pedagogy and civic obligation faded. Waxing between disgust at the machinations of hegemony and an emphasis on the principle of hope, pedagogy thus came to serve for me as a radical struggle — that is, intervention.

Boisterous and freewheeling, fearlessly exploring the unconventional and the unexpected and always holding received assumptions to critical scrutiny became my guiding principles. I hope to have left a mark on at least some of my students, to be fearless and committed, with the resolve to stand up for what's just and equitable.

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