| Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things | A single over-mastering identity guided by a religious or secular authority outside the academy at the core of the academic enterprise, whether that identity be Western, African, Islamic, Arab or Asian, is a confinement, a deprivation |
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| National independence for countries like Egypt and Syria, meant that young people at last could be educated fully in the traditions, histories, languages and cultures of their own particular Arab countries | Political conformity rather than intellectual excellence was often made to serve as a criterion for promotion and appointment, with the general result that timidity and conservatism came to rule intellectual practice |
We must first, I think, accept that nationalism, whether it is the nationalism of the victim or of the victor, has its limits.
20| I have very little patience with ethnocentrism of the kind trumpeted by Samuel Huntington and others like him who claim that all ideas of democracy, freedom and enlightenment are Western ideas, since the facts of history are, as we now know with reference to education, very mixed, very various, very much a matter of the contribution made by all humankind, all peoples, all cultures | " Then he adds: "not to know the relative disposition of things is the state of slaves or children; to have mapped out the universe is the boast, or at least the ambition, of philosophy," which Newman defines as the highest state of knowledge |
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| What is important to understand, however, is that with few exceptions Arab universities are not only nationalist universities, but are also political institutions, for perfectly understandable reasons | The point I want to make is that as we consider these situational or contextual matters, the search for academic freedom becomes more important, more urgent, more requiring of careful and reflective analysis |
Thus letting slip the note that even a British or Western identity wasn't enough, wasn't at bottom or at best what education and freedom were all about.
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