It is an encouraging sight that the Sri Lankan universities organize annual international symposiums where the researchers can present their findings and share knowledge with fellow academic. In these occasions, the local academics gain exposure from the experience of the foreign researchers, especially those who come from, if I borrow Daniel Bell’s term, ‘advanced industrial nations’ on the Marxian proposition that developed nations exemplify what the developing nations would look like in future. The major nations which could produce some ‘ground breaking knowledge’ after the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution are the subjects of the Industrial Revolution itself. Germany, France, Italy and England in the early stage and the United States joined the list later, but as Zizek observes correctly, ‘if someone wants to study Hegel he must definitely go to a States university than to Germany’. People who want to learn something serious always go to States universities. This shows how strongly and distinctively that United States has come up in the knowledge building process, in addition to the fact that how effectively they have commoditized higher education. So, a lot of academics who come to evaluate the junior academics as Chair persons in these symposiums are now from States background.
Having said that it is a stimulus for young academics to enhance their research skills and establish links with fellow academic sometimes for higher educational opportunities and further research interests, there must be a serious revision on what is actually being done in these occasions. We also have to keep in mind that intimately it is public funds utilized in these occasions and we are accountable to the people of this country for the last cent spent. It must also be mentioned here that these observations are done in this article not to discourage the organizers or to demoralize the presenter but to constructively suggest to enhance the quality of these findings and align them with international academic standards and global knowledge building paradigms. This is simply to remind that, ‘whatever we do’, as said in the film Munich, ‘someone else is paying for it’.
Symposium is a formal social gathering where specialists deliver ideas on similar or related topics, and if we borrow the word colloquium it then refers to a collection of opinions on a subject which is often published in a periodical. It was for men of aristocratic background to discuss and debate on philosophy, poetry and politics. It is an occasion move with others and to meet the new members of their society. The word ‘symposium’ is derived from Classical Greece where citizens gathered to express their thoughts about poetry, culture and politics. The most common reference is made to Plato’s Symposium where highest purpose of love is identified as ‘to become a philosopher or lover of wisdom’. Socrates shows, in his speech, how to become a philosopher who can orient the common mental and physical desire to procreate which is understood as the ‘humanity’s desire for immortality’ to give birth to intelligent children of greater immortality than one conceived through procreation. Exemplarily, Socrates could create Plato and this dialogue on duty and ethics survives until today both in pedagogy and morality. There is an elaborated discussion on love for days on various matters that are of universal validity. After thousands of years, these discussions are even read today for higher academic purposes and are considered to be the basics on which new knowledge is constructed. Hence, what we produce today must derive from past while, paradoxically, it should break away from past. In other word, whatever constructed now must maintain its symbolic relationship to the existing knowledge (or knowledge already constructed) while completely deviating from it to become a ‘ground breaking one’. The classical background of the word ‘symposium’ therefore signals something highly symbolic in its academic spirit.
Though this word can connote something of celebrative nature, from a modern day context, it certainly means something seriously academic and of research orientation where new knowledge is produced for the future.
Presently, there is a trend where Sri Lanka universities annually hold symposiums. They are mostly called ‘international symposiums’ since the academic are supposed to publish in international journals (refereed or index) if they want to score marks for promotions. The easiest way to do that is to find some money and conduct a conference or a symposium for which some foreign delegates are invited to. Mostly, they do not even worry for publishing full papers since they can convince the interview boards about the type of the research. On the other hand, they can present the same for the research allowance. In the meantime, in Sri Lanka, we hear stories that the students’ answer scripts are not properly marked by some lecturers in Gampaha Wickramarachchi Aurvedic University. One can ask the reasonable question, ‘whither academism?’ Isn’t this a de-motivation factor for students?
The symposiums held in Sri Lankan universities can be identified as a symptom. When there is no authentic academic effort to build universal knowledge (that of Socrates), what is found instead of nothing is always a symptom. We use to say, ‘at least this (symposium for the name sake) is alright since there isn't anything else in this barren land’. But that ‘something’ in the place of nothing is the symptom, because it covers the real need to do something worthwhile.
There is a problem of the quality of the papers presented in these sessions and their standards under international knowledge building contours. We should not hide that under the comfortable slogan of ‘something is better than nothing’. ‘Something’ never solves the problem. You need to find the 'real thing'.
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