Mintoff and academia

The reports in the media of Dom Mintoff's recent visit to the university brought back, with remarkable vividness, an episode I had experienced almost 25 years ago.

Way back in 1977, when I was still not yet 30 and struggling to set up my dental practice, I also had a teaching job at the Dental Faculty as a part-timer.

Malta was going through a turbulent period. Mr Mintoff had just won a second mandate after a general election held under harrowing circumstances in September 1976. Despite these dubious credentials and a wafer-thin majority, he exercised power as if he had overwhelming popular support. Tertiary education was in his gun sights and he was determined to clip the wings of the academic body and introduce a hair-brained student-worker scheme.

In 1977, one of the secretaries of the university phoned me late one morning and instructed me to go to Tal-Qroqq at about 3 p.m., as the prime minister was going to address the teaching staff of the university. I got there on time to find the auditorium packed with academics and university staff of various levels of seniority. One could cut the tension with a knife.

We were told Mr Mintoff would address us at Castille at 6 p.m. We had been called earlier so that we would be briefed, enabling us to present a common front against any threats to the university's autonomy.

Lino Briguglio, well known for his Left-wing sympathies but no yes-man, warned us that Mr Mintoff was a person who would not hesitate to hurl an ashtray at anyone with a dissenting opinion.

Some two hours later we dispersed to meet again at Castille. The MLP ministers were seated against the wall facing us, decked out in suit and tie as dutiful schoolboys awaiting their teacher. A small table was bare except for a large tape recorder and an ashtray.

Eventually, Mr Mintoff stalked in with his usual casual dress style, sporting a large belt and buckle. He seemed to be relishing every minute, as a cat facing a cornered prey.

He had no sooner entered, than he promptly picked up the ashtray and told us he would not be throwing it at anyone. Any doubts, if any, made us realise that spies and sycophants were in our midst. Mr Mintoff had already been thoroughly briefed about our prior meeting.

He immediately delivered a rousing speech that would have inflamed any uneducated audience, abusing academics for living in ivory towers waxing rich at the expense of the public purse and bearing no practical relevance for society. At the end of his diatribe against academia, he invited these to put forward their questions.

The servility of some academics was distressing. One professor was almost on his knees pleading that, as he was abroad, he was not one of the architects of a petition sent by the university staff. Mr Mintoff seemed to relish every minute.

Prof. Briguglio walked out of the room after a sharp argument. He was the notable exception. Very few had the guts to stand up to Mr Mintoff in those days.

With his proverbial acumen, deftness and alacrity, Mr Mintoff brushed aside or ignored piercing questions and pounced on topics that gave him the opportunity to score partisan points and cut down the speaker. Not exactly a climate to promote dialogue. He vented his spleen on the distinguished historian Prof. Andrew Vella OP. The hapless professor had a double disadvantage. He taught a non-utilitarian subject and was a priest.

The late Fr Vella had the temerity to explain that, although he was not against the student-worker scheme in theory, he questioned the manner in which it was being executed. His students had been asked to paint the doors and windows repeatedly while in work phase and ended up practically wasting their time.

Seeing this, Fr Vella took them to the archives, as he desperately needed trained assistance to safeguard this precious national patrimony. He felt it would make more sense for the work phase to be linked to the students' future professional skills.

At this intervention, Mr Mintoff exploded into a paroxysm of rage, denouncing Fr Vella for stealing the money of the people, insulting him mercilessly. For Mr Mintoff, safeguarding archives did not qualify as work. Words cannot describe the ominous atmosphere in that magnificent hall at Castille. Few dared ask any further questions.

The so-called reforms at the university were rammed through and Ralf Dahrendorf, of the London School of Economics, withdrew his initial support and publicly disowned any say in the matter. In his narrow utilitarian approach to education, Mr Mintoff was not as progressive as he thought he was.

Almost 50 years ago, the outstanding Jesuit, the late Fr Joseph Bernard SJ, in his speech as prefect of studies (November 22, 1953) at St Aloysius College, had pointed out the concerns of H.E. Harding, the dean of Westminster Medical School. Mr Harding had deplored the drift from the humanities, from languages and from literature in the medical schools, for they provide the only fundamental background for a good doctor. Fr Bernard then said that even as eminent a pure scientist as Prof. Einstein had the same views, confirming it is not the sciences that have a civilising, humanising influence on man and that a savage is no less a savage for being a first-class engineer or physicist.

The cataclysmic changes that were unleashed by Mr Mintoff on our university in 1977 had far-reaching and devastating effects on the university. Many young people lost out on a university education. As is always the case, bad policies penalise the disadvantaged and underprivileged most of all.

We should realise that the passage of time is no guarantee for progress and advancement. Mr Mintoff had ruled Malta and his party with an iron fist, derailing the harmonious democratic development of Malta. He also crippled the possibility for his party to renew itself into a valid political alternative.

History, even recent history, is a great teacher. Education is the key to empowerment, especially of the disadvantaged and the underprivileged. Mr Mintoff let us down badly. Let us learn from the past and not allow Alfred Sant to do the same by denying our future generations access to the educational advantages offered by Malta's prospective EU membership.