PEACEFUL USES O F THE ORGANIZED INTELLECT: A UNITED NATIONS PLAN

Harold Taylor

“While the UN Charter speaks in the names of peoples rather than governments, mankind as such still has no direct voice in the United Nations. . . . All too often the forgotten e lement is m a n . . . . the people who live and die for t he policies of political leaders they a re unlikely ever to meet.”

From address by U Thant to World Youth Assembly, United Nations, July 1970.

During the early years of the League of Nations, proposals were made for a world university a s a way of creating a collective security for the world’s intellect and of building a counterforce against nat ional ism and t h e use of mass violence in international affairs. The sceptics and opponents of t he idea , most of them from famous European universities, argued that world universities were unnecessary since by definition universities were already international in their outlook and the body of knowledge they possessed was universal. The opponents won.

They won because the League ofNations, like the United Nations, was an establishment ofgovernment officials represent ing official policies of t he i r governments and the officials who were university scholars represented not the students, teachers and citizens of the countries from which they came but the academic bureaucracy and the official culture. There was no way for citizens, students o r teachers to join the League, no way ofcreating a world university which would bring students and teachers together on a world scale, no way in which they could have a direct voice in what wenton in the League o r in world affairs in general.

The situation is very much the same a t the United Nations in the 1970’s. All the cards a re held very close to the UN chest, it is assumed that the affairs of governments, whether national o r international, a r e not t h e affair of c i t izens. Announcements a r e r e l eased abou t dec is ions made ‘and ac t ions undertaken, but people continue to go on living and dying “for the policies of political leaders they a re unlikely ever to meet” and who are unlikely ever to pay them the slightest attention.

None of t h i s is d u e to d e l i b e r a t e pol ic ies unde r t aken by the Secre ta ry-Genera l a n d t h e secretariat, o r even the delegations. It is inherent in the UN structure, and U Thant, more than any other UN official, had a sense of what more could be accomplished if the mass public opinion of the world’s citizens could somehow be mobilized to take a n active in te res t in the issues, problems and decisions of the United Nations system. If we do not appeal to ‘the conscience of mankind’ who else is t he re? World opinion d o e s change . World conferences on t h e envi ronment , colonial ism,

population, the status of women, economic order, hunger, disarmament, the sea bed, do have long run effects simply by raising the problems to a higher level of world visibility. That is a first step and others follow. Members of non-governmental organizations in consulting status with the UN now have more opportunities to express their views, attend world conferences as obse rve r s and par t ic ipants in pa ra l l e l conferences , and t ake pa r t in the exploration of issues before UN bodies.

But un t i l now t h e r e has never been an educational plan through which the nerve centers of education in the international community ofschools, colleges and universities could be connected in an over-all system des igned for t h e benefi t of a l l mankind. The idea of a world university gives the basis for such a system, and in the years since the inconclusive debates in the League of the 1920’s, the i d e a has s tayed al ive and grown in s ize and importance. Hundreds of proposals for international universities of all kinds have been made around the world, most often to UNESCO where they have died of i n t e l l ec tua l malnut r i t ion . More t h a n 2300 international organizations for cooperative work in f ie lds ranging from t r a d e unionism and adu l t educa t ion to re l igion, t h e social sc iences and medic ine have been e s t ab l i shed outs ide governments, a long with more than 250 among governments.

Other institutions designed for global outreach have formed themselves within t h e scient i f ic community - T h e In t e rna t iona l Cen t re for Theore t ica l Physics in Tr ies te , t he Cent re for Coordination of Research and Documentation in the Social Sc iences in Vienna, t h e In t e rna t iona l Fede ra t ion of Ins t i tu tes of Advanced Study in Stockholm, organizations like the Internat ional Peace Research Association, t he Internat ional Peace Academy, aside from the research workof UN agencies and the ad hoc international research teams and individual s-holars who have prepared research papers for use in UN world conferences and international congresses.

U T h a n t was closely in touch wi th these developments in the 1960’s and very much impressed by them. He felt that while t he United Nations Institute for Training and Research was serving a useful pu rpose in providing t r a in ing for international civil servants and UN personnel as well as producing research reports on UN topics, the Institute was too constricted by the internal politics of the UN system ever to act as a major force in the world intellectual community.

In his report to the General Assembly in the fall of 1969 U Thant therefore proposed that the UN establish a comprehensive international university where s tuden t s and faculty members from

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everywhere in the world could work together in a global curriculum. In the next four years U Thant’s proposal went th rough two feasibi l i ty s tud ies , debates in the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly, studies by a twenty-four member international Panel of Experts and a UN University Founding Committee (the late Andrew Cordier was chairman of each of these) and was refined and developed, with the help of UNESCO, into a plan approved by the General Assembly in 1973 and put into effect during the following year.*

T h e world university t h a t emerged is not a university in the usual sense of the word. It will have no central campus, will accept no undergraduate o r graduate students, award no degrees. From a world headquarters in Tokyo, it will administer a “global decentralized network of centers and programs of r e sea rch a n d t ra in ing” des igned “ to promote , under take a n d s t imula te a s well a s coord ina te advanced research and t ra ining focused on the a sp i r a t ions , t h e n e e d s a n d p rob lems of con tempora ry s o c i e t y . . . . t h a t i s to say, such problems a s human survival, development and human we l fa re . . . . It should make provision for educa t ion for soc ia l c h a n g e a n d soc ia l responsibility, so as to ‘promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom’. . . .”

The research and training will be carried on by international teams of scholars and scientists from many disciplines, will not be organized in traditional academic depar tments and will focus on action research rather than academic study. The first three research priorities chosen by the Rector and the governing body. a twenty-four member autonomous group of scholars and educators representing the world intellectual community, a r e the problems of world hunger , t he management a n d use of t h e world’s natural resources, and human and social development,

In addition to organizing the research centers and enlisting the research staff, the University will act as a global data bank on world conditions, it will maintain rosters of qualified scholars in the fields of its studies, and promote exchanges of scholars, ideas and informat ion wi th in t h e g loba l ne twork o f universities, institutes and organizations with which it will be involved. There will be two main classes of r e sea rch c e n t e r s i n t h e Universi ty , (1) t hose developed by the University’s own staff e i ther from scratch or created from existing institutions, and (2) o t h e r assoc ia ted in s t i t u t e s connec ted wi th univers i t ies and publ ic o r p r iva t e r e s e a r c h organizations whose aims and programs match the goals of the University a s a whole.

T h e ma jo r in i t ia t ive in f inanc ing and establishing the new University has come from the J a p a n e s e government which has pledged $100

*For a more extended account of the formation and design ofthe University, see The United Nations University by Harold Taylor, available from The Council for Intercultural Studies and Programs, 60 East 42nd St., New York, N .Y. 10017.

million to the endowment fund, has undertaken to build the University headquarters in Tokyo, to build and he lp fund one o r more of the University research institutes in Japan, and to supply capital costs for some institutes in developing countries. Senegal has contributed $22,000, Sweden intends contributing $250,000. Venezuela a n d Canada have s izeable contributions under consideration, and under the voluntary system of s u p p o r t by UN coun t r i e s , organizations, foundations and individuals, plans a r e being made by the Rector and his staffto mount a world-wide fund-raising campaign a s a first s tep in the organizing program.

Although they voted in favor of the University a t the General Assembly in 1973, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom among others, have a s yet given no ind ica t ion of i n t e re s t in financial support. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Socialist Republics, except for Romania and Poland, abstained from the original vote and it is doubtful that they will take any serious interest in supporting o r cooperating with the University within the next few years.

T h e a t t i tude of t h e United States has been sceptical and fairly negative from the beginning, with doubts as to the need for the new institution, the feasibil i ty of f inancing i t a n d the possibility of guaranteeing the academic freedom of its faculty members. There is still no agreement in the State Department a s to the merits of the University or of American support for it, although a bill to authorize $20 million beginning in 1977 over a t h r e e year period passed the House last spring, while a Senate bill for$bO million was presented to the Senate in the fall of 1975.

When the Founding Committee worked out the details of the Charter of the University, the question of guaranteeing the freedom of the University to carry out research without political interference was a ma jo r i tem on t h e agenda . T h e solut ion reached by the Committee and incorporated into the C h a r t e r was to make t h e twenty-four m e m b e r University Council autonomous and to put policy ques t ions of a l l kinds, including t h e choice of r e s e a r c h top ics , d i s semina t ion of t h e resu l t s , allocation of funds, appointments to the faculty and administration, and the appointment of the Rector in the hands of the Council. The endowment fund, aside from its role a s t he basic source of income for University operations, is looked upon as the means through which the autonomy of University policy will b e p re se rved aga ins t po l i t i ca l i n t e re s t s a n d economic sanc t ions . S ince t h e Universi ty was established by vote of t he General Assembly, the Rector and Council will report to the Assembly each year, but unIike the existing agencies in the UN system, the University is not a UN body, and the UN and UNESCO will be in the role of cooperating, helping with coordination within the UN system and providing services to the University Council and the Rector.

Dr. James Hester, former president of New York University, was appointed Rector in November of 1974 by Secretary-General Waldheim af te r t h e

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Council had submitted a roster of three names of finalists from a list of international nominees. Hester will have four Vice-Rectors working with him in the University administration in Tokyo, including Dr. Ichiro Kato, former President of the University of Tokyo, and Dr. Alexander Kwapong, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana.

The University Council has held six meetings overthe eighteen months since its establishment and will meet again in September of this year in Caracas, Venezuela. The most difficult problem it has to deal with in the immediate future is a double one. It must develop research programs and ideas for action which a r e imaginative, comprehensive and compelling enough to command the attention and support of the world intellectual community and the member governments of the UN, while at the same time it must raise the funds from governments and other sources to make it possible to carry out the planning and create the programs. This is the problem of a l l universit ies with or without endowment funds, except that in this case there is little capital to begin with, no tuition income, no alumni body, and, as yet, no basic constituency throughout the world to support, advocate and promote the University’s cause.

In response to the Secretary-General’s request in 1973 for an indication by member governments of their willingness to contribute funds and facilities, t h e repl ies were fairly cautious, with some expressing an interest in offering land and buildings, but most suggesting affiliation of existing research institutes and university programs. So many countries a r e already having trouble supporting their own insti tutions of higher education and research that the prospect of spending additional funds for a world institution is not as inviting as it might have been even ten years ago.

However, the Rector, his staff and the University Council a re tackling the financial problem with vigor, and once the world headquarters has begun operation, the virtues and possibilities of the new institution will become much more widely known. In the meantime, there a re certain advantages in beginning the work of the University through the coordination of existing organizations and institutions rather than installation of brand new UN institutes. Until now it has not been possible to bring many of the world’s scholars and educators into the planning of the University, since the basic work had to be done by a relatively few planners within the UN system (the UNESCO staff, the Panel of Experts, the Founding Committee and now the University Council and Rector).

During the next phase, it will be necessary to involve more and more individuals, organizations and governments in the development ofthe program, and the University itself will command much more attention in the world community than was possible during its five years of gestation within the UN system. This will mean that at last there will be some specific ways in which scholars, students and citizens around the world can join in the work of the

United Nations as partners and associates rather than as observers and critics.

How far such partnership and association can go will depend in large part on the initiatives taken at this beginning stage by the University Council and the Rector. Critics of the University plan have already argued that it is likely to become another UN bureaucracy and tha t t h e concept of a global think-tank for the elite of the world’s scholars will mean that the research produced will simply be circulated among researchers and agencies and end u p in the files and l ibrar ies of the world’s international organizations.

Others have argued that the absence of students and youth in the University program will mean that the University will have no educational outreach. Without a direct connection to the coming generation of young scholars and educators the University faculty will have no successors, its research facilities will train no fresh talents, uncover no new intellectual resources and will have no vehicles for the transmission of its research results into the educational systems of the future.

But there are visible remedies for such possible afflictions. The strongest support for the founding of the University during the UN debates came from the developing countries who saw in the new institution a means of redressing the imbalance in the world’s scientific, technological and educational resources and a way of shifting a larger sector of these resources into the regions where they are most needed. Along with other supporters of the University idea, they saw in it a means of stopping the brain drain away from the developing countries by bringing international brains into the situations where they could do the most good.

There is more than symbolic meaning in the location of the University’s headquarters in Asia. T h e United Nations Environment Agency was established in Africa because the third world countries insisted that it be located there. Their argument was that the concentration of international agencies in Geneva, Vienna and New York violated the spirit of the United Nations as a world body serving all the world’s people, two thirds of whom live outside the developed countries. In the case of the University, it was not only the initiative of the Japanese government which took the headquarters into Asia, but the concern of the General Assembly that the world’s intellectual center ofgravity be shifted fartherto the East and the South, and that a UN presence in the educational as well as t h e political and economic field be established outside the existing orbits of international affairs.

The Charter of the University makes generous provision for initiatives of all kinds by the Rector and the University Council, and the emphasis throughout t h e document l ies in putting the university research and training to practical use on behalf on the world’s citizens and not merely on behalfofthe international research community. One of t h e best examples of the possibility of collaboration with existing international

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organizations in the field of youth and international development, that is to say, with the students, is to be found in the work of the United Nations Volunteers. Now beginning its fifth year of operation, the program has 249 volunteers from thirty-one countries at work in 41 developing countries in UN development projects, with recruitment in progress to fill an additional 150 posts. The projects have involved economists, statisticians, agriculturalists, biologists, irrigation specialists, architects, nurses, surveyors and sociologists.

If the proper arrangements were made, the University could organize research and training programs for UN Volunteers and others who would then become candidates for positions in the UN secretariat and agencies after service with UN University projects in t h e field. Two years of experience in such projects would qualify the Volunteer for an internship as a ‘young scholar’ in research and study a t one of the regional centers of the University where he would have access to some of the most distinguished scholars and scientists in the world community and to the results of high level research already completed or in progress. Similar arrangements could be made through the international student organizations, many of which have branches in forty to fifty countries, and through existing university programs, by which candidates for UN University internships could be recruited on 3 world-wide scale, particularly in the field of :ducational research and training.

Steps in this direct ion have already been .ecommended by the UN Ad Hoc Advisory Group on louth in its report following meetings in August of 973, and are advocated by the Secretary-General in iis own comments and recommendations. Two of the ecommendations are:

(a) That the United Nations University develop courses and train teachers in human rights at the international, regional and national levels. The Secretary-General suggests that the Economic and Social Council may wish to recommend to the Council ofthe United Nations University the development of a research and training programme along these lines;

(b) That the United Nations seek out and utilize established research activities in the field of youth at the national and regional levels as part of a process of studying the idea of a United Nations Research and Information Centre on Youth. The Secretary-General recommends that consultations be initiated, under the sponsorship of the United Nations, with a number of existing youth research and information centres at the national and regional levels on the feasibility of establishing a cooperative arrangement among these centres for the sharing of their experiences in matters regarding the needs and aspirations of young people.*

‘Report of the Secretary-General, 56th session of the Economic and Social Council,4 February, 1974,E/5427, p. 5.

These are proper concerns for the UN University and could become part of its beginning program without any need for delay until funds for larger enterpr ises a r e found. The mechanism for consultation and organization is already available in the UN system, and interested educators could be recruited as volunteers in the development of the suggested research and curriculum. Since the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Youth has already had experience in the analysis of the needs of world youth and has been working directly with international yauth organizations and the U N Secretariat in coming to grips with the problem of meeting these needs, the Group could become a planning and recommending body on the role of youth in the UN University as a whole.

Other initiatives have already been taken by concerned scholars and internationalists in the United States and Canada to develop ideas and programs which could become part of the University’s operation in the future. The United States Committee for the United Nations University, founded by volunteers, including Andrew Cordier, Norman Cousins, Buckminster Fuller, Richard Gardner, Margaret Mead, Glenn Olds, Harold Taylor and others, has more than 250 liaison representatives on American campuses, and has received a variety of proposals for research and educational projects which could be carried out in cooperation with the University.

For three years, the city of Toronto has had an advisory group of citizens working with the mayor to organize a UN research center on urban problems in Toronto as part of the UN University system, to be financed by municipal, provincial and federal funds. Under the chairmanship of Glenn Olds, President of Kent State University and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council, plans are under way for a consortium of research institutes in the United States to work on world energy problems in proposed collaboration with the new University.

Seth Spaulding of the University of Pittsburgh and former head of Higher Education and Schools at UNESCO during the time the University was being planned, has worked with his colleagues at the University of Pittsburg on plans for putting together three of the international programs there - in internat ional affairs, social development and education -as a first step toward qualification as an affiliate of the UN University. A preliminary plan for a United Nations Institute at the East-West Center in Hawaii has been drawn up by faculty members there, with a proposal for members of the UN secretariat, newcomers as well as regular staff, to come to the Institute for periods of study and research on world problems, in a n atmosphere free from the daily operational problems of the UN itself

These ideas and hundreds of others from elsewhere have gone o r will go to the University Council and the Rector for review as the Council works on the question of criteria and standards for affiliation of non-governmental and governmental groups with the University. One of the effects of the establishment of the University will be to act as a

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world-wide catalyst for the invention of new research projects and educational programs directly related to the global issues with which the University will be dealing. Another effect will be to put the world’s intellectual community in touch with itself on a scale never before possible.

At the time U Thant made his world university proposal, in 1969, the United Nations published Sir Robert Jackson’s Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System, one of the best analyses of the working problems of UN development programs that has yet been made. “For many years,” said Jackson, “I have looked for the ‘brain’ which guides the policies and operations of t h e UN development system. The search has been in vain. . . . There is no group which is constantly monitoring the present operation, learning from experience, grasping a t a l l that science and technology has to offer, launching new ideas and methods, challenging the established practices, and provoking thought inside and outside the system . . . . The UN development system has tried to wage a war on want for many years with very little organized ‘brain’ to guide it. Its absence may well be the greatest constraint of all on capacity.”

What Jackson says about the UN development system is true of the UN system as a whole, and beyond that, of the world order itself. When we look for the resources presently available for supplying a brain for the world’s body, we find that the world’s universities have shown neither the capacity nor the will to become involved directly and on a sustained basis with the problems the UN University is designed to confront. There is, ofcourse. a large body of academic study in international affairs in general, world history, peace research, social development, international law, conflict resolution. But the national universities have not reached a point at

which their curricula, research and public service on behalf of world cooperation in the prevention of war and the advancement of human welfare are even remotely adequate to the task the UN University proposes to undertake.

On the other hand, there is a form of power developed by the United Nations which is insufficiently noticed and markedly under- developed. That is the power to educate an intransigent and truculent world about the true nature of its own problems whether it wants to know them or not or whether it will take steps to solve them even when it discovers what they are. It is the voice of reason drowned out by shouts and cries. In one way or another, the United Nations has confronted the world’s power structure with the reality of the world’s needs. Its failures have not been failures in intelligence, but in the will of its partici- pant - governments to include international beneflt in equal terms with national interest.

What is at stake in the development ofthe United Nations University is nothing less than the creation of a planetary ethic and a radical transformation in the way t h e world looks at i ts problems. The University can, if the opportunity is captured, become the world’s most trusted source of information, enlightenment and ideas for global action. At the very least it can help shorten the time between the recognition of the exact nature of the issues before the world and collective action to deal with them constructively. The University Council and the Rector hold in trust on behalf of the world’s citizens an immensely valuable instrument to be used for the enhancement of human life. It is up to the world‘s scholars, citizens and governments to give them al l t h e help they need in using the instrument wisely.

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