Not policing but silence. Reflections on academic practice in a small state

This paper is a personal reflection on academic practices at a small state university, specifically the University of Luxembourg (UL). It was initially inspired by the thoughts on field methods in “closed contexts” of Koch (2013a), who discusses research conducted in authoritarian states and places. Although this setting does not fit the case presented here, the context of the small state and its young university (founded in 2003) is specific and ambivalent. The government has made significant efforts to establish knowledge, research, and higher education as pillars of Luxembourg’s economy and society. On the other hand, the place of the university in society remains unclear at best. The problem discussed here is not that research is threatened by policing. Rather, the creation of independent, evidence-based, and critical knowledge conflicts with the overarching political interest in maintaining the country’s political economy unquestioned; furthermore, scientific knowledge suffers from a lack of attentive interaction by the public. This results in the authorities’ deliberate silence, which disregards critical scientific evidence without questioning it. Disregarding scientific evidence, however, would damage the academic ethos, limit the young university’s aspirations, and call into question the small state’s ambitions in the knowledge economy.