In Defense of Academic Freedom.

The University of Ghana, 1962-1965

The defense of academic freedom has been a vital, recurring theme throughout my career, not only in Europe and the United States, but also on the continent of Africa. In the spring of 1962 I was completing an account of my experiences as Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold's personal representative in Katanga at the height of the Congo crisis the previous year--later published as To Katanga and Back--when I unexpectedly received a telegram from the office of Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana. Unknown to me at the time, my opposition to British and American neocolonialism in the mineral-rich province of Katanga had caught the attention of Nkrumah, who now wished me to take up the position of vice chancellor at the University of Ghana. This new academic institution had recently replaced the old University College of the Gold Coast, the soundest and most advanced university in tropical Africa. Nkrumah was himself chancellor. Within the British and British-inspired academic system, this office is supposed to be a purely dignified and decorative one, with the vice chancellor being responsible for the day-to-day management of the university, that is, its academic and administrative head.

Despite this traditional demarcation of responsibilities, I was not at first disposed to accept Nkrumah's often I knew that he had attained power in genuinely free elections, but I sensed that he was at least potentially a dictator and that his respect for academic freedom would be at best a doubtful quantity. Sensing my reluctance, Nkrumah invited my wife, Maire, and me to Accra to assess conditions on the ground at the university. After this exploratory journey I decided to take up the new post, but only for an initial term of three years.

During the first two years of my tenure (1962-63), relations between the University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah remained untroubled--at least outwardly. Quite early on Nkrumah had asked me to draft a speech for him on university matters, which he delivered on 24 February 1963. I included a critically important paragraph in the speech, that ran:

 
   We know that the objectives of a university cannot be achieved without 
   scrupulous respect for academic freedom, for without academic freedom there 
   can be no university. Teachers must be free to teach their subjects without 
   any other concern than to convey to their students the truth as faithfully 
   as they know it. Scholars must be free to pursue the truth and to publish 
   the results of their researches without fear, for true scholarship fears 
   nothing.... We know that without respect for academic freedom, in this 
   sense, there can be no higher education worthy of the name and, therefore, 
   no intellectual progress, no flowering of the nation's mind. The genius of 
   the people is stultified. We therefore cherish, and shall continue to 
   cherish, academic freedom at our universities. 

I was glad of the opportunity of getting the president committed--as far as recorded words could commit him--to cherishing academic freedom. I had a hunch that at some point in the future, when the university might come under pressure from Nkrumah's government, I might need to quote that passage. And, after the university did fall under quite heavy pressure from that quarter, I reached for that speech and did quote that passage. With tongue firmly in cheek, in an address to the university on 14 March 1964, I quoted what I called "the spirit of those noble words of our chancellor" and expressed the hope "that that spirit would prevail in all the practical relations between the university and the authorities." It did not exactly "prevail," but neither was it altogether extinguished. All that, however, was still to come.

On 2 January 1964, a soldier made an attempt on Nkrumah's life in Kulungugu, Northern Ghana, and killed one of his security officers. Following this incident, a state of emergency was declared. This crackdown coincided with preparations for a referendum proposing certain controversial changes to the constitution of Ghana, including a provision making Kwame Nkrumah president for life. The state of emergency, combined with the mobilization of opinion required for the plebescite, led to considerable excitement in the country and to the adoption in the government-controlled press of increasingly militant and, at times, vituperative language. The press attacked various persons and institutions whom it suspected of disloyalty, and the latter category included the University of Ghana.