Contribution to the seminar “Ukraine and academic freedom”, organized by Lund University 17.3.2022

UKRAINE AND FREEDOM

Suddenly the term freedom takes on a new dimension.
Or rather, its true, existential dimension.
That freedom which consist in the human ability and capacity to choose.
Or in that inner knowledge that we have a choice.
That life is not predetermined, not imposed on us by a force or a destiny that we cannot influence by our choice of action or thinking.
Even when a choice seems difficult and sometimes impossible, we know it’s there. Even in a prison, your spirit can remain free, which to me is the ability to imagine a choice.
Even in Auschwitz, under the most difficult of circumstances, some people managed to remain free in that sense.
They were killed, but they remained free souls.
Freedom as opposed to the power of what has to be.
Freedom as the power of what ought to be.
Freedom as opposed to the notion that might is always right.
Freedom as resistance to that human state of being which the Greek historian Thucydides described 2500 years ago: “The strong do what they can, the weak endure what they must.”
Freedom is not an absolute, we all know that.
My freedom can infringe on yours etc.
If freedom is about choice, then one choice may hamper another.
We all know that too, of course.
Freedom is not a fixed state of being. It is not a state of being at all, I think.
Freedom is a value.
A particular human value.
It is not the only value we humans live by.
We also live by the value of human life. And by the value of safety and security.
And sometimes these values may clash – and we must compromise.
But the war on Ukraine has made it shockingly clear, that there might be a point where no compromise is possible, since what is at stake is freedom as an existential human value, a value on which our existence as full human beings depends.
And in this war, Ukraine is fighting for this value, and Ukrainians are dying for this value, and thereby fighting and dying for a value that is ours too.
In this they are of course also fighting and dying for whatever we mean by academic freedom.
Since the value of academic freedom is intrinsically linked to the value of truth.
And in this war, this is what is at stake.
Or as the writer Arthur Koestler wrote in the midst of the second world war: “In this war we are fighting against a total lie in the name of a half-truth”.
And I think this is true for this war as well.
In this war, a total lie, resorting to totalitarian means, has gone to war not only with Ukraine but with everything that the Europe we still live in stands for and builds on, and it is this Europe, with all its half-truths, conflicts and frustrations, and the academic world is no exception to this, that we must muster the strength and courage to defend.
In this, there can be no compromise, no ambiguity.
The total lie and the half-truth. That’s what we have.
A world in which a total lie succeeds by physical violence, and by what I would term verbal violence, is a world in which there can be no academic freedom as well. The value of academic freedom is intrinsically linked to the prevalence of the value of truth.
Or as Michael Polanyi once put it: Science can only flourish when scientists have the liberty to pursue truth as an end in itself.
We have seen it coming for some time, a world where total lies are spreading, rapidly undermining the value of truth and truthfulness, and thus the value of freedom.
We saw it happen in Trump’s America, and it can happen again, and what happens may depend on the outcome of this war.
What we now witness is a total lie, armed with nuclear weapons, going to war against the most evident truths. In the most Orwellian newspeak turning black to white, war to peace, lie to truth, massmurder to a rescue operation, a Jewish-born president to a Nazi.
Hitler and Stalin would be proud of Putin.
However, let’s not forget, that the very notion of academic freedom, and perhaps the value of freedom as such, has its roots in what we may call the Western civilization.
Not only there, but largely.
When we for good reason criticize and oppose and investigate the history and the deeds of this civilization, we are acting upon ideas and ideals that have evolved within this very civilization. It is full of half-truths, for sure, and hypocrisy, certainly, but it aspires to not be a total lie.
The truth as a quest. Truthfulness as a moral stance.
This seminar, I believe, has shown that we know what is at stake.
If a total lie is allowed to win in Ukraine, or rather if a total lie cannot be defeated in Ukraine, if brutal might is allowed to be proven right in the very midst of Europe, then we might all find ourselves in a world in which “matter has vanquished spirit”, as a rabbi I have written a book about, used to say.
I believe that this will not happen.
I believe, with him, that spirit will vanquish matter, and I hope that this is what we are seeing right now.
And this is why the cause of Ukraine must be the cause of all of us.