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Universities reawakening after State-induced intellectual slumber

Macharia Munene

By Macharia Munene | Mar 31, 2025

**Maasai Mara University is reviving the culture of promoting intellectualism through undertaking public lecture series.** [File, Standard]

There was time when universities were citadels of ideas and engaged the public on issues of the day. They had intellectuals and a culture of intellectualism which, as Ali Mazrui would claim, were fascinated with ideas. In that culture, when not in class pushing students to be critical thinkers, lecturers productively spent time in one of three university places.

First, they were in offices musing about fresh thoughts while looking at the ceiling and waiting for students to consult them on some complicated issue covered during the lectures. Second, they were friends of the library, the store of knowledge, where they went to dig deep into assorted topics and write articles or seminar papers. Third, when not in offices or library, they were in the Senior Common Room arguing about minute details of the latest trend in the world of ideologies, theories, or research.

They also held departmental, college, or university-wide seminars and public lectures on new knowledge or theories. Public lectures were popular in the university culture for involving people known for their influence on public affairs or power to think and speak with clarity so well and strongly that the audience was left satisfied that it was worth attending.

Until recently, that culture of the intellectual disappeared as anti-intellectualism turned students into certified commodities to be processed in ‘factories’ called universities. The humanities and the social sciences, particularly history, philosophy, and literature suffered greatly in the orchestrated anti-intellectual crusade. Top government officials, particularly ministers for Education, proudly announced their disdain for history and urged students to become mechanical rather than critical thinkers. In the process, policymakers excelled in incompetence, sinking deep into dependency on extra-continental forces. Having seemingly surrendered critical thinking on national interests to external forces or ‘the interpreters of Africa’, policymakers also lose ability to perform such fundamental duties for the public as providing health and educational services. In losing ability to perform, they expand incompetence and become liabilities to the State.

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There appears, however, realisation that promoting anti-intellectualism was a gross national mistake and efforts to revive public lectures at the universities is afoot. Some universities, not all, are returning to the basics of higher education, to produce critical thinkers. These appear to have mastered the art of promoting knowledge production rather than being mere consumers of what others produce. Among them is Maasai Mara University, a young institution located on a hill overlooking Narok town. It previously captured public attention for the wrong reasons until it changed management and brought in a vice chancellor who values intellectualism, Prof Peninah Aloo Obutho. No longer mired in pecuniary awkwardness and scandals, the university boasts of having a ‘Mini Maara’ on campus and of undertaking public lecture series to add to the university’s higher learning environment. In those lectures, it invites people of ideas from outside to enrich its intellectual offerings in public lecture halls that are full beyond capacity.

Maasai Mara is not the only one reviving the culture of promoting intellectualism. Religious ones like St. Pauls in Limuru, probably the oldest university in Kenya, and the Jesuit run Hekima College in Nairobi, invite scholars to address security concerns in Africa. USIU and University of Nairobi (UoN), both being institutional age mates, are also active. When in 2024, USIU hosted PCS and Foreign Affairs CS Musalia Mudavadi to expound on Kenya’s ‘grand strategy’ if it has one, it opened room for other public officials to show they too can think beyond issuing political platitudes. It, commented Mudavadi at one time, started a process of intellectual engagements. The UoN History Department engages in worldwide ‘hybrid’ conferences. All these institutions give hope that universities can save the country by moving away from ‘commoditisation’ and returning to being citadels of ideas that produce critical thinkers as potential policymakers.