Calling a spade a spade
It’s high time that the rectors and professors at Greece’s universities called a spade a spade. It’s up to them to safeguard academic freedom, the legal order and democracy at the country’s universities. Anonymous protests and theatrics will simply not do this time. When they know that a university campus has been occupied by individuals who use it as a military depot in which to store their ammunition for street fighting, the academic community must ask the state to intervene. Greece’s post-1974 democracy will have matured only when the academic community as a collective body decides to shoulder the responsibility that comes with it. It will only have matured when academics, party officials, prosecutors and the state collectively acknowledge that there can be no exceptions in a democracy, no pockets of lawlessness within our academic institutions. The ongoing drama currently unfolding in the name of university asylum is an embarrassment in a civilized, democratic country.
