The feudal and ceremonial cultures are two toxic cultures that will confine the Indonesian academic world in backwardness. If both cultures are left to continue, Indonesia shall never expect to have Nobel laureates.
By
TAUFIQURRAHMAN
·7 minutes read
Kompas has lately published several reports about the country’s academic world. The issues brought up concern the ghostwriting of scientific works for professorial candidates and the excessive administrative burden on lecturers.
Amid the uproar in academia, Peter Carey, a historian dedicated to the study of modern Indonesian history, presented an online lecture about why Indonesia has never had Nobel laureates. He mentioned a number of factors including the very low salaries of lecturers, the civil servant status of lecturers that is counterproductive to scientific development, the absence of sabbatical leave for lecturers to focus on independent research and non-campus academic activities and the absence of an adequate peer review culture.
On the last issue, Peter Carey related his experience as a modern Indonesian history researcher who had published his works in Indonesian. In 2012, he published three volumes on Prince Diponegoro. He hoped there would be many critical reviews of the books from the academic community in Indonesia, but it turned out that “there was only deafening silence”. It means there were responses to the books, but they were not the critical and substantial reviews he expected.
Feudal culture
The absence of an adequate peer review culture as indicated by Peter Carey is in fact related to the feudal culture that remains strong within the campus environment in Indonesia. The Indonesian archipelago, before the colonial era, was the place of feudal society with its system of monarchies. The colonial government preserved the feudal system for the sake of strengthening its position in the colony (Fauzan and Adela, 2019).
In the post-independence era, even in the current post-reform period, feudalism has not completely disappeared from the archipelago. Political parties as institutions of democracy are still held hostage by feudal values. Party leaders, who have never been truly elected democratically, can determine who is eligible to emerge as a presidential candidate or regional-head contender.
Universities, or academia, constitute a social domain that is not immune to the influence of feudalism either. Robert A Nisbet (1997: 13) wrote that “whatever attempt to understand the contemporary academic climate […] should begin with the recognition of two very important facts. […] The first is the structure of universities that is aristocratic, and even feudal, and also their historical relations with the social order”.
Universities everywhere are always run in a hierarchy that divides their academicians into ranks. They may be referred to as instructors, assistant professors, associate professors and professors or others, but the essence is social stratification – and perhaps also epistemic – of those within the ranks.
In the perspective of social epistemology, such epistemic stratification is prone to produce testimonial epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007). The view or testimony of a professor tends to be considered more valid than the view or testimony of an expert assistant. This epistemic injustice will be even more prevalent in an academic climate that still preserves feudal values.
In a feudal social structure, worse still, what happens is not only epistemic injustice, but also epistemic repression. Those in lower ranks are conditioned to be scared of conveying their views, especially if their views differ from those of the upper ranks. The reasons for this fear vary but most frequently they are afraid of a delay in career building.
Why do I call it conditioned fear? It’s because a lecturer’s career development in the academic world is, among other factors, determined by the lecturers in a superior position. A lecturer wishing to be promoted from assistant professor to associate professor, for instance, needs the approval of the leadership of the relevant department or faculty. An associate professor wishing to apply for promotion to become professor needs the approval of the university senate.
The controversial Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministerial Regulation No.1/2023 also contributes to the preservation of the feudal culture and structure in Indonesian academia. The evaluation of superiors, based on the regulation, becomes one of the main determinants of a lecturer’s functional status promotion. For this reason, apart from having an excellent academic performance, lecturers in Indonesia are highly recommended to maintain “good relations” with their superiors.
The superiors can argue that their evaluation of applications for lecturers’ status promotion is objectively carried out, without the bias of favor or disfavor. However, without a procedure guaranteeing the absence of conflict of interests, like the blind review process, nobody can ensure that the evaluation is not made subjectively. Without such a guarantee, fear will haunt academicians in their early career.
In such an academic climate, we will never find junior lecturers critically reviewing the academic works of senior lecturers, let alone lecturers with official functions. As lecturers have been conditioned to be uncritical from a young age, even when they become professors, they will never be critical of the works of other academics. This may explain why Peter Carey received no critical reviews whatsoever from Indonesian academics when he issued his volumes about Prince Diponegoro.
Ceremonial culture
The feudal culture already strongly rooted in the academic world has generated another equally toxic culture, which is ceremonial culture. One of the characteristics of feudal society is its fondness for various ceremonies filled with symbols of common people’s reverence or obedience to their masters/kings. In medieval Europe’s feudal society, for example, there was a ceremony called homage, a symbol of farmers’ reverence and loyalty to their landlords.
The academic world as a haven for feudalism is also full of ceremonial worship, while at the same time neglecting practices that are academically substantial. Campuses seem to be never short of ceremonies with nuances that are, in fact, not academic at all. Nearly all campuses celebrate their anniversary every year with a series of programs that can last for over three months.
Anniversaries are not only commemorated by universities, but also by their faculties. If one university has 14 faculties, there may be 15 celebrations on the campus with different schedules and agendas. Generally, the programs are left to lecturers, especially the young ones. This is very hard to understand using academic common sense. If the energy and funds available were spent on the research and development of college subjects, its impact academically would be far more productive.
The feudal and ceremonial cultures are two toxic cultures that will continue to confine the Indonesian academic world in backwardness.
Ceremonial nuances are also apparent in open-session tests for doctorate candidates. I have several times heard of doctorate aspirants having to delay their open tests due to cost constraints. It is because the open tests for would-be doctors usually invite many people, most of whom have no idea of their dissertation topics, only to join the feasts at the end of the sessions.
Campuses also often deem it necessary to invite officials to deliver keynote speeches at seminars or conferences (Masduki, 2022). These officials may have no scientific background, let alone theoretical contribution, related to the themes to be discussed. As in the ceremonies of the feudal culture, the invitations to the officials only symbolize reverence. So, there is no problem if the substance of their speeches is irrelevant to the topics of discussion.
The feudal and ceremonial cultures are two toxic cultures that will continue to confine the Indonesian academic world in backwardness. If both cultures are left to continue, Indonesia shall never expect to have Nobel laureates.
DOK. PRIBADI
Taufiqurrahman
Taufiqurrahman, Lecturer at UGM Faculty of Philosophy and director of Antinomi Institute
