When Minister of Education Mats Persson wrote a post on 9/4 about reducing the number of independent courses at universities, he received a cautious response to speech. The discussion soon turned to the value and benefit of education itself. In this debate, historian Ida Östenberg presented an argument in DN Kultur that caught my interest.
In his defense of the humanities, Östenberg regrets that the Liberals have moved away from the position that education functions as “a necessary societal defense against populism and extremism”. It’s not the first time you’ve come across that idea – I read surprisingly often that education and critical thinking have a dampening effect on man’s radical tendencies. But it’s all the more surprising to see a historian make it because history is filled with examples to the contrary.
Militant and/or extremist movements have also several times arisen directly on campus
Education is usually transforming. A new world opens before one’s eyes – and it can have different effects on different people. At the end of the 19th century, young Russian intellectuals barely had time to finish reading Karl Marx’s spellbinding “Capital” before they hurriedly joined radical, sometimes violent movements. Today, Nietzsche’s (and to some extent also Heidegger’s Enlightenment-critical) philosophy seems to have become a revival text for American right-wing extremists.
Militant and/or extremist movements have also several times arisen directly on campus. The Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979 was fueled in part by radicalized university students – they were the ones who stormed the US embassy and took hostages. The May Revolt of 1968, where French students and police officers fought openly in the streets, is another example of when student activism developed in a violent direction.
More locally historically, the Bollhus meeting in Uppsala and the Kårmötet in Lund in 1939 can be mentioned, where many hundreds of pro-Nazi students voted to deny ten Jewish doctors residence in Sweden. Education also failed in that case to be a safeguard against extremism.
68 percent of the rioters of the storming of the Capitol in 2021 had some form of college education
If you instead for historical examples, looking at contemporary empirical research, one finds the same thing – education does not reduce the risk of extremism. For example, of the 253 convicted offenders who committed Islam-related crimes in the UK in 1998–2015, 26 percent had some form of university education, which corresponded to the national average. Although exact figures are lacking, a report from The international center for counter-terrorism in The Hague shows that a significant (“sizable”) percentage of the Western citizens who joined IS had some form of post-secondary education.
The same pattern is seen for other forms of ideological radicalization. The storming of the Capitol in Washington DC in 2021 was committed by the subversive nationalist right. An American report shows that of the insurgents whose education could be determined, 68 percent had some form of college education.
Someone may now object that rather than knowledge, it is the critical thinking that (at best) is included in university education that counters extremism and populism. But that’s not true either.
It is the feeling of injustice, vulnerability and an outside threat that unites extremists, regardless of ideology
An interesting study from Denmark showed that politically convinced people shared fake news to a much higher degree than others – regardless of educational level. Another interesting report from the University of Houston last year found that the more partisan people knew about politics, the more likely they were to believe misinformation from their own party. In other words, critical thinking is applied selectively in real life. We all know people who have ideological blind spots.
What then drives people to radicalization if not ignorance? According to the EU’s Radicalization awareness network, it is the feeling of injustice, vulnerability and an external threat that unites extremists, regardless of ideology. Possibly, it is also a question of placement.
My point is not to portray education as something dangerous – on the contrary, I belong to the critics of Mats Persson’s proposal. I believe that the humanities have an obvious and central place in human thinking and society – I think it helps most people understand the world better. But we must be careful with over-optimistic utility arguments. Knowledge is not a vaccine against extremism.
Food useful about extremism
●The principals for two of our top universities, Lund and Uppsala, jointly criticized Mats Persson’s actions. Apart from the fact that it is a strange idea to free up resources for technical education at the expense of the humanities, according to the rectors, it is also ineffective.
●Swedish researchers have shown that there are differences in higher education between different extremist groups. Swedish female left-wing extremists are mostly highly educated (37% have higher education). The least educated are female Islamists and male right-wing extremists, where only a few percent have attended university.
●It’s enough with to be on X (formerly Twitter) for half a day to witness for yourself how ideologically convinced opinion leaders and politicians spread fake news. Hanif Bali made a big deal the other day that an “Arab migrant” had hacked to death a mother with an infant in Australia. When it was later revealed that a mentally ill white man was the perpetrator, the tweet was quietly deleted. Be careful who you follow on social media.
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Farshid Jalalvand is a PhD in medical microbiology and cultural writer based in Malmö. His debut book “Apan & Filosofen” came out in the spring of 2022. He writes a column in DN Lördag once a month.
Here you can read more articles by Farshid Jalalvand.
