The History of Haile Selassie I University: Development and Expansion of Higher Education in Ethiopia
(Amharic) Paperback – 2017: 629 pages
In new book, Dr. Aklilu Habte chronicles the historical evolutionary dynamics of higher education in Ethiopia.
In his opening address at the official launch of the university bearing his name, Emperor Haile Selassie stated what he envisioned to be the task of the new institution. In this speech, the English version of which is reproduced in a volume, Education and Nation Building in Africa (COWAN, C. GRAY et al. (Eds)), he went on record as saying, “a fundamental objective of the university must be the safeguarding and development of the culture of the people it serves…..In this university, men and women will work together to study the wellsprings of our culture, trace its development and mould its future.”
As a monarch who took a gradualist stance toward modernization, it was only natural that he stressed the need to strike a delicate balance between the promotion of western knowledge and the maintenance of traditional values of the nation. Thus, the cornerstone on which the edifice of modern education was to be erected was “the heritage of literature and learning which…our fathers have preserved for us”. And he singles out for mention a galaxy of the luminaries of the church down through the centuries, starting from Saint Yared to Aba Ghiorghis Zegasicha, to his contemporaries, such as Aleka Gebremedhin, his chaplain during his regency.
The emphasis is unmistakable throughout the speech. While admitting that “such education maybe technical,” he strongly maintains, “it must nonetheless be founded in Ethiopian cultural heritage. If the student is well adapted to his environment and use his skills effectively.”
Yet this was not to be. As we know now, with the easy wisdom of hindsight, what animated the students was not what the Emperor reiterated in his high-sounding pronouncement, but the new fangled values of the metropolitan modernity they readily imbibed from their foreign professors and textbooks.The exposure of the students to those new ideologies eventually led them to rise in revolt against the system, eventually making the Emperor complicit in setting in motion a chain of cataclysmic events that ultimately led to his demise. Irrespective of its validity or otherwise, this is the argument currently propounded by such prominent scholars as Prof. Messay Kebede and Paulos Mikias, among others.
Professor Paulos Mikias in his Haile Selassie, Western Education & Political Revolution, states this was the natural consequence of pursuing a goal already doomed from the start, “the contradictory nature of the attempt to implement western education in a dependant modernizing autocracy”. This is the perspective of an academic with first-hand experience of student activism, who later studied the process of radicalization from the viewpoint of the theory of political linkage.
Aklilu Habte’s new Amharic book gives us the view from the other side, the establishment, that is. Among the first batch of the University College, the author subsequently rose to be president of university, taking over from the first Ethiopian president Lij Kassa Woldemariam. As one with insider knowledge of the growth and evolution of the institution, he is well placed to enlighten us on the subject.
In this richly detailed account of Emperor Haile Selassie’s effort to establish and expand modern education right from his regency, before the Italian invasion, the US trained educator gives us a broad canvass of the trajectory of Ethiopian education from its humble inception to the founding of Haile Selassie I University, regarded by many to be the Emperors’ crowning achievement.
In part one of the book, considerable space is devoted to features and virtues of traditional church education and such elements of church music, Qine, traditional exegesis are treated extensively. As traditionalist, he is enamoured of the system, at times regretting the subsequent eclipse it suffered by its modern rival.
In part two, he embarks upon the account of the ventures of Emperor Menelik to open the first modern school in the country and goes on to narrate Ras Tafari’s effort to establish modern education in the face of opposition from traditional elements and highlighting what he considers to be his farsighted measure of sending more than one hundred young students abroad for further study.
In the section treating on the educational reforms undertaken by the Emperor after liberation, we are introduced to Dr. Lucien Matte, a Canadian Jesuit who left indelible mark on the history of Ethiopian education. The auhtor thinks highly of this man of cloth, as he fondly remembers and acknowledges him as a shaping influence in his educational formation and career.
Emperor Haile Selassie who favoured the Jesuit educational philosophy entrusted the responsibility of setting up Tafari Makonnen’s secondary school to Dr. Matte who consequently become its director, earning fame for his industriousness, and dedication to his work. Thus, when the idea of setting up tertiary level education later surfaced, it was only natural that he was chosen to be the person to be entrusted with responsibility.
On March 1950, he was instructed to begin the task laid at his charge. Leaving the directorship of the high school to his colleague Leo Zipfel, he set himself to the task of laying the groundwork for the proposed college. Traveling to Canada and Europe, he carried out the recruitment of teachers, purchase of textbooks and scientific equipment. This he managed to do within nine months.
Dr. Aklilu, whose high regard for the Jesuit is evident throughout the tome, says, having enjoyed both the privileges of being taught by him at Teferi Mekonen school and later working with him at the University College, he had come to know something of his love and dedication to the country and its people he served for a total of seventeen years.
Through the effort and dedication of its Jesuit directors, the institution gradually came to acquire trappings of a college. Classes started in a premise adjacent to Menelik school at Arat Kilo, with nine foreign teachers and 21 boarding students. From such humble beginnings, within 10 years of its establishment, it grew to become a respectable seat of learning boasting 439 regular, 500 extension students; and 52 regular teachers, 11 of them Ethiopian nationals.
The University College managed to graduate its first batch on August 20, 1950; the list includes 13 young men, including the author, who later rose to prominence in various professions; familiar names such as Habtemarim Markos, Mengesha Gebrehiwot (Phd), Teshome Gebremariam, and Belachew Asrat (Phd).
Aklilu earned his BA from the University of Manitoba, Canada in 1955, MA and Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1956 and 59 respectively. He served as lecturer in education and later as Dean and President of the Universty from 1969 to 1974.
Dr. Matte, unflagging in his commitment to the country and king, whom he affectionately adresses Mon Empereur, was busy with this work of tending the growth of college. In the meantime, the university college was in the process of expansion, adding new schools, such as that of an engineering, agriculture and medical.
Yet somewhere along the line, a development was taking shape which was to clip the wings of the dedicated educators, as it were. This was the coming of a team of US educators from the University of Utah to oversee the task of establishing a university.
This naturally did not come as a good news to the Jesuits who have come to identify themselves with the monarch’s commitment to the fledging college. Dr. Aklilu, tells us about the circumstances of the coming of the Utah team and its effect obliquely, apparently revealing less than he knows.
The Emperor, following the advice of his Oxford-educated official and the then Ethiopian Minister of Education, Endalkachew Makonnen went along with the choice of US experts for the establishment of the university. Dr. Matte, already in poor health, had to leave for home for good. Dr. Aklilu reports a snippet of emotional exchange between the Emperor and the Jesuit, which shows the sadness he felt at departing the country he had served for 17 years. Edouard Trudeau, his colleague took over from him as temporary replacement.
The idea of the transfer of establishment of university started, according to Prof. Paulos in his book referred above, with rivalry between Trudeau and Endalkachew Makonnen. This was because the favour and privilege of royal audience the Jesuits enjoyed, “had not endeared member of the society Jesus to Haile Selassie’s ministers, especially the young aristocratic newcomer, Endalkachew Makonnen, who wanted to fire Matte’s chosen successor, Trudeau, in order to assert his power”. Endlakachew, meanwhile went on with his behind scene dealings with US diplomatic personnel for the establishment of the university, to be staffed and financed by US government.
This fateful decision was to have momentous implication for the direction Ethiopian higher education was to take in the years to come. The stage was being set for a full-blown Americanization of the educational system. Paulos says “The Jesuits, as pioneers, were bitter that the institution they were slowly evolving had been snatched from their hands at a time when their long-range dream to establish the first university in the country was about to be fulfilled. They were also familiar with the U.S. approach to education in foreign lands and knew that this decision would have a detrimental effect on the future of Haile Selassie’s regime.”
The Professor goes on to quote a member of the society of Jesus, “when an American university offered 25 million dollars and a teaching staff as against our offer, more modest in money, but more disinterested culturally, the Negus Haile Selassie chose the first. In the long run, the effect was the usual American involvement in politics, which to my knowledge, did not have too good an effect on the country.”
The task of US instructors at the university was in the words of the then US Ambassador, “to interpret the history, culture, and customs of the US to the people of Ethiopia.”
The consequence manifested itself in pervasiveness of cultural influence that came to dominate the school system, so that “the curriculum of the 1940’s and 50’s dealt with cultural and historical experiences that were completely alien to Ethiopians.”
To be continued.
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