Accepted 6^th August, 2020

 
Dr. Andraž Teršek

Faculty of Education and Faculty of Humanities, University of Primorska (Koper) and European Faculty of Law, New University (Ljubljana and Nova Gorica) (Republic of Slovenia)

Too many and firm, verifiable signs indicating the path that Slovenian public universities and universities in other European Post-Socialist states, as now the EU Member State, have taken in the last two decades to express several reasons for legitimate concern and criticism. In order to fulfill their social role and function, as guardians of knowledge, thought, critical reflection open-mindedness and give even cause for serious concern, universities have bowed to an aggressive logic of the market, according to which- as university teacher or researcher - each individual should only be worth as much as his or her work can procure on the market (competition). Instead of resisting the purely bureaucratic and brutal administrative conditions and criteria for the selection and appointment of teachers and researchers, the universities have subjected themselves completely uncritically to such a dictate of state authorities and committees. Academics do not focus as much on the content and ethics of the work processes at universities as they should. Instead they have become, too many of them, passive and apathetic slaves of the robotized technocratic dehumanization. Anti-political agents are no longer in the front line defending the university and the academic world such as knowledge, thinking self-realization and active critical citizenship. "Political animals," as Aristotle said. Because of these phenomena, this problem, the universities have considerably failed to take care of the education of critically thinking citizens, of moral personalities and courageous civil intellectuals equipped with authentic and high-quality knowledge, with self-respect, combined with an appropriate ethical self-understanding of their systemic and social role and with self-awareness of their most important public role in the maintenance and progress of genuine democracy and the legitimacy of the political system, the legal order and the social environment. In view of what has happened at universities, it is almost impossible to speak of the genuine, quality and effective exercise of the obligation of universities to safeguard and promote knowledge as a value. And this is not only the problem of the Republic of Slovenia. It seems that the universities in the Post-Socialist states have become almost non-academic.

Key words: Universities, knowledge, democratization of society, post-socialist EU Member State, science, ethics, Critical Citizenship.