Some Comments on the Idea of a World University

Abstract

The argument for the establishment of a world university can be put quite simply. The scholar and the intellectual hold their allegiance to the ideal of full intellectual enquiry and exchange among all men, in all fields of knowledge. National systems of university education limit by their nature the possibility of such enquiry and make demands for allegiance to certain local values and truths which are assumed rather than explored. The lack of opportunity for the continual confrontation of these varieties of truth with each other has meant the consolidation of intellectual blocs which roughly parallel the political blocs now in existence between East and West, North and South. In the case of the African and Asian universities, much of their intellectual and social force is dissipated because of a continuing reliance on forms of organization and content derived from British and European models no longer relevant to post-colonial needs.