Sir Ralf Dahrendorf Interview:Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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I would like to now cut into your career in a different way because we've looked at the themes that you've pursued as a scholar and intellectual, but let's talk a little about what I see as a movement between two worlds -- the world of theory and the world of action. You comment in your new book about who your mentors were, let's talk a little about them. You identify this important theme in many of their careers. I have in mind this brief experience in political life.
It wasn't so brief. I was campaigning for two full years in Germany and was elected very soon to the Land Parliament of one of the large states of Germany, then to the Federal Parliament. And then, of course, as a European Commissioner -- the American papers often described us as "officials" but it was really a political job. So it was really seven years in politics.
Well, I suppose, this question of theory and practice is, in a certain sense, the real theme of my life. And it's a very complicated one. One of the mentors I quote is Max Weber, who of course was the man who, in his important writings at the beginning of the century and then again around the time of the First World War, distinguished quite dramatically, almost unbearably dramatically, between investigating facts (the world of science), and advocating programs (the world of politics). To him these were two necessarily divided and separate worlds. And while he didn't rule out that the same person moved from one to the other, he did rule out any facile union, or any facile merger, of these two worlds, or indeed any -- to use the language which is most alien to me, the Hegelian language -- any dialectics of theory and practice, which is just one of those words which fudges the issue.
I do believe that the two are different. I do believe that these are two world which you can't easily relate. Sometimes people have said to me, "It must be wonderful for you to apply your social science to politics." I've never seen it that way, never. In politics you have to win votes, and you have to get things done. And it's not applying social science, it's a totally different, totally different thing. Similarly, it is not that you actually apply your experience in practical life to your scholarly investigations, although it may make a certain difference. So there are two worlds, two different time scales, two different sets of constraints, but one person can be a part of both over time. That's what I've tried to do.
In what way, if any, does one experience inform the other? Is there any connection there between the two?
Well, it's a big subject. First of all, we are of course, in our own world, encountering increasingly people who have straddled theory and practice, and who continue to do so. I have naturally become quite interested in the whole structure of policy advice, the world of Brookings and other institutions, and indeed Institutes of International Studies, which advise practitioners by accepting their ways of formulating issues, their time scales, but using some of the methods and schools of scholarship. So that's one way.
But, if you really get down to it ... you see, the real difference is this: in the practical world, you do not determine the questions which you have to answer, and you do not determine the time scale within which you have to answer them. In the scholarly world, in the best and strictest sense, you define the problems which you deal with and the time scale is, in principle, unlimited, although your funds may run out before you've actually got anywhere, but in principle it's unlimited. You can't tell when you are going to find the answer. Maybe tonight. Maybe in twenty years time. Maybe never. Now that, you can't afford in the practical world. These different time scales make for a totally different rhythm of life, mode of thinking, and I would resist, for quite a long time, the notion of one informing the other in any direct way. I think that they inform each other though the experience of an individual person, or they can, but not in any other sense.
I have a quote here from Weber about the work of the politician. He says, "This is the decisive psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness."
Well that's right. That's right. Whereas the real quality of scholars is to be, I'm almost tempted to say, unperturbed by reality in pursuing the problems which they have set themselves.
Now what about an academic administrator in all of this? You were a director, for ten years, of the London School of Economics. This was obviously a time of very great pressures on the university, both from students and from the politicians. Comment on what you just said about these two worlds. Is university leadership a special case where there is more co-mingling of these two worlds?
Is this an academic administrator asking for advice?
Yes, I suppose that what I've called "straddling" is a little easier if you are in charge of an academic institution. Although, I, as Director of the London School of Economics, have always regarded it as my job to protect academics from the obsession with realities, even the obsession with funds. That is to say, if you do administer, if you are in charge of an academic institution, you really have to see to it that those who are there as academics can do their job. So you have to relieve them of some of the burden of living in the real world. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed, continue to enjoy, being in charge of academic institutions precisely because it enables me to be a part of both worlds and, as I've now said several times, straddling between theory and practice; straddling, I suppose, Britain and Germany. Straddling worlds is something which I find almost existentially necessary.
Are there any particular challenges that the universities confront these days? As you were saying, protecting the financial resources of the faculty so they could pursue research, that's a problem that the universities, at least in the United States, are having -- to reach out more to raise money. There are all sorts of concerns about the kind of research one can pursue, whether a greater concern about animal rights or genetic engineering and on and on. What important challenges do you see out there that confront the universities today?
From a European point of view -- and this is of necessity different in the United States -- the greatest single challenge is, without any doubt, how to maintain the cutting edge of research and inquiry into new subjects after a period of enormous university expansion, in which all the pressure is on dealing with a larger number of students and in which there doesn't seem to be the space anymore for research in the traditional sense. That I regard as the biggest single challenge. Many political reactions to universities spring from this particular challenge (inability to cope with expansion financially), a change in the social value placed on academic institutions (there is a lower social value after this period of expansion), and so on and so forth.
In practice, this means preserving corners and pockets of creativity in a world in which all the pressure may be toward mediocrity. But it also means preserving an un-depressed academic self-confidence in an environment in which academia isn't exactly popular. And this is not easy and is in many ways defensive, and has in recent years led me to advocate something which I suppose I have to say twice in order not to be misunderstood, and that is the importance of moral minorities. I repeat, moral minorities. That is to say, of an awareness of the need to move forward rather than a defensiveness, a protectionism (economic, social, and cultural) which is so widespread in our world. That is, an awareness of some of the civilized values which have made the best things in our world, including the best things in our universities, possible. So it's a slightly defensive job to be an academic administrator these days, but one which can be done in a way which, I hope, keeps pockets of excellence alive.
What particular issues arise because of the problem of a changing world order? What is the responsibility of universities with regard to training students, giving them both a sense of "from whence we've come," but this new world that's out there (you mentioned the commitment to multilateralism, for example), how does one bring that to the university?
I'm grateful to you for that question. There are two answers to it really. The simple one is that those of us who have professional interests in internationalism, and as Warden of St. Antony's College at Oxford which is, as you say, specializing in area studies and international studies in general, those of us who have this responsibility must make sure that these pockets, or islands, of internationalism are not squashed by a prevailing trend to look inward. So we educate young people in awareness of the world and promote research.
But the other point, which is equally important, is this: if you go back and look at the origins of the postwar order, which is perhaps so far the most impressive example of the attempt to set up a whole range of international institutions, starting with the United Nations but going on to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, then the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and whole lot of subsidiary institutions -- if you look at the origins of that, you will find that most of the ideas were actually thought out during the war. And many of them within university institutions, and indeed, there were one or two committees in this country, one was a committee of university presidents, and there were university institutions.
It is extremely important that when the moment comes in which it is possible to take a new leap forward in international institution building, the ideas are there. These ideas can only be produced by institutions which are not constitutionally a part of the political time scales which we've talked about, the political space. And so apart from educating people for a world of awareness of international issues, there's also the more specific task to think through, for example, the clear establishment of human rights as genuine rights, the violation of which is sanctions, internationally, or the institutions of a new international monetary system, or whatever.
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