The Academy and its Disengagement from Popular Struggles in Kenya

Abstract

In this article, the academy refers generally to tertiary institutions of learning including universities and polytechnics. But given the history of political engagements between tertiary education institutions and the state in Kenya, the study zeroes more specifically on the story of universities as sites of political and popular struggle. The trajectory of engagement described here has a clear pattern that has tended more towards disengagement from popular struggles in the last three decades. The pattern has moved from active participation in popular struggles against authoritarian one-party rule to the current phase in which the terrain of higher education is at a crossroads and academics and students remain disengaged from everyday political struggles in society. The possibilities of a re-composition of the student movement and faculty union are many. I describe the history and dynamics involved in this process and explain why the potential for greater involvement of universities as change agents in the diverse struggles for social justice remain underutilised. Student politics and struggles are organised around associations while faculty have coalesced around staff unions. These are new or resuscitated organizations and do not seem to anchor their pursuits in any popular struggles. In fact, they seem disengaged from these struggles and are unable internally to defend and enjoy the democratic gains evident in the larger Kenyan society. The associations and unions lack a serious ideological base around which to galvanise, mobilise and anchor any social struggles. Their organisational capacities are bureaucratised, weak and susceptible to manipulation from university administration and university management has exploited this with alacrity. Similarly, their activities are few and restricted to advancing the interests of their petty bourgeois class location. They enjoy different levels of acceptance and recognition by university management, the state and within society. In some way, this bureaucratisation and recognition has acted to depoliticise the associations and unions and to render them mere vehicles of struggle for better remuneration and working conditions.