The Effects of University Autonomy on the External Cultural Policy of Governments

Abstract

Whether aimed at satisfying the cultural needs of the nation or at organizing and promoting intellectual exchanges with foreign countries in order to spread national culture, cultural policy has become one of the dominant concerns of government today. One hardly need stress the central role universities are called upon to play in this policy. In the past, at a time when governments — absorbed in internal or external struggles — devoted all their efforts to asserting their authority in creating the structures needed for the survival of the state, the initiative for intellectual activities was left in the hands of universities. This was in the Middle Ages; the university, which was independent of the state both in Europe and in the Islamic world, constituted the center of the cultural life of the nation, serving as its guiding light. But today the right to culture has become a fundamental right of man proclaimed in a universal declaration; hence, it is incumbent on the state to ensure that this right is implemented.