5 minute read
An Ensemble of Halves
News Editors: Eleanora Catenaro, Madihah Najeeb, Viandito Pasaribu
SOAS News
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Yet the question of what a university is supposed to look like remains very much contested. Wedged between the towering, opaque and heavily-guarded university buildings, Praler’s colorful marquees and expos perfectly illustrate the contrasting visions. Yes, they are very di erent, but must they be opposed?
One organizer answered that ‘all knowledge has the right to coexist’. Yet the University of London’s management does not seem to agree, instead they used security guards to threaten immediate eviction. It is hard to see the need for hostility when PRALER could be in synergy with even those students who seek to use the university in a more traditional sense. So who is the university defending and is collaborative coexistence possible?
Addressing those students who would rather keep their head down and study, one organizer said ‘If that’s what you want to do, do your thing, but there are alternatives.’ Crucially it is these alternatives that those struggling to nd meaning in their course are desperate for. Whilst others feel totally alienated from the education system as a whole and demand ‘cognitive justice’, that legitimizes non-eurocentric and practical ways of learning.
ere are also many that are not only desperate for more meaningful education generally but enraged by their unmet expectations of Soas speci cally. ‘It actually hurts. ere’s a level of violence to what SOAS does.’ To these students the institute’s decolonial promise is criminal because it is pro ting from verbally upholding glocal communities whilst in practice working to their detriment. If the university wants to be serious about its 2017 decolonising vision which promises to embed a decolonial approach in its ‘contribution as a public university in the service of the wider world.’, then it might collaborate with student initiatives to do just that.
Whilst PRALER’s week-long residency has expired, the group and its concept of action learning will not. Neither will the shortcomings about the nature of education it has shined a light on. e bene ts, and some may say, imperative of ‘action learning’ that they claim, leads us to consider the wide potential for institutionalizing the concepts it uses.
One PRALER statement that might be cause for common-ground is, ‘We cannot have education that is training desk-killers’ Once upon a time this is exactly the alumnae that SOAS trained and sent around the world, today we must all make sure the university is empowering a very di erent alumnae to uphold glocal needs as PRALER demands. e group’s methods and vision of education may evoke varied opinions, but its goals do not.
An Ensemble of Halves
Lilli Hill, BA Music and World Philosophies
In front of me a santur is placed, and I am asked to make a sound. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing or how much pressure to apply to the mezrabs (sticks used for playing), but I am assured that there is no rush; when someone is practising it is their turn. I try and I do, quiet and meek, but I create a sound nonetheless. Slowly, we make our way round the class and each person inherits the space, with us holding a continued hush in the process. In just one class, I am shown through example the expertise and value within my department. Sadly, like many areas of SOAS, this value is something waning away as a prolonged impact of the pandemic.
By the start of the 2022 academic year, the BA Music programme had been scrapped, along with 60 other programmes and 247 modules. SOAS in its transformation plans said that this was its only option to ensure high-quality learning and teaching. In the two weeks that I have been a student here, my experience has been re ective of this highquality goal, but I am le with questioning what the cost to the university is, and will continue to be.
SOAS heralds itself as a one-of-a-kind university, with one of ve national research libraries in the UK and teaching a breadth of languages that is not o ered anywhere else. is is something in decline: we’ve lost language modules and the ability to take a course with
the language centre for free, not to mention £6.5 million worth of sta . Most disheartening of all, the single honours BA Africa and Black Diaspora studies programme has been scrapped, undermining the very name ‘School of Oriental and African Studies’.
Ultimately, this comes down to an issue of funding leaving the question, what is Director Adam Habib doing about this?
e seemingly obvious response would be to take on more students, especially international students who pay higher fees. In its magnitude, UCL takes on roughly 23,000 international students a year (54% of its total cohort), and with each of them paying on average £22,150 this brings in an eye-watering £514 million to the University each year. In comparison, SOAS’s 1,362 international students make up only 26% of the intake, and even accounting for home students, it would take SOAS seven years to make what UCL makes each year from its international students alone.
So, why not increase the student population by accepting more foreign students? is would rstly pose a physical challenge considering that SOAS sold one of its few buildings during the pandemic for a £9 million booster, and secondly an institutional challenge with Habib’s reluctance to take on more internationals. Habib claims that international fees are skewed and unjust, and should instead work on a sliding scale re ective of countries’ incomes. A noble and respectable aim, yet unlikely to bring the nancial boost that the university needs.
Another solution could be something that Habib has advocated for: systemic and institutional change. We cannot hide away from the problem that is facing us, and despite his actions to generate a cash surplus of £11 million in 2021, this is small change in the long run. In fact, the university has been reported as being “structurally unpro table”, suggesting that the system that requires change is within university walls.
And sadly, this may be due to the fractured foundations that SOAS was founded upon: to be an extension of the British colonial state. Over a hundred years on, SOAS maintains this legacy by animating one of Habib’s fears - that we are draining countries of their own promising young minds by creating a place of study here in the centre of London, instead of creating places of learning in the countries themselves.
