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production is polarized and anti-naturalistic, that is, there is no continuum between
the empirical world and the world of humanities. His view of Asian (or perhaps
limited to Japanese) knowledge production is different with what Bertrand Russell
observed in the early Chinese modernization:
Chinese schools and universities...are not hotbeds of rabid nationalism as they would be in
any other country, but institutions where the student is taught to think freely, and his
thoughts are judged by their intelligence, not by their utility to exploiters. The outcome,
among the best young men, is a really beautiful intellectual disinterestedness. (Russell
1993 [1922], p. 222)Russell also perceived a genuine interest for humanities and social sciences. He
witnessed a Chinese youth full of eagerness to become modern yet with “a pro-
foundly humanistic attitude to life” (Russell 1993 [1922], p. 223), that is, socially
oriented humanities aimed at solving urgent problems of China and Asia (e.g., post
Versailles treatise annexation of Shandong by Japan).
Among the young, a passionate desire to acquire Western knowledge, together with a vivid
realization of Western vices. They wish to be scientific but not mechanical, industrial but
not capitalistic. To a man they are Socialists, as are most of the best among their Chinese
teachers. They respect the knowledge of Europeans, but quietly put aside their arrogance.
(Russell 1993 [1922], p. 222)In contrast, Sakai seems to suggest an internalized handicap of many Asian HE
researchers. We could also extrapolate, however, that it is not that HE researchers
cannot do humanistic research but they could rather be reluctant to look at their own
problems while looking up to the West.
If we are to compare scholarship on Asian HE with the West, we will find that
Western scholarship on HE is quantum ahead. It is sizable and some of them
regarded as classics (Barnett 1990 ; Jaspers 1960 ; Newman 1999 [1907]; Ortega y
Gasset 1999 ; Pelikan and Newman 1992 ). Even early history and critical arguments
about Asian HE have been written mostly by Western scholars, John Dewey on
student activism during the May Fourth Movement (Takeuchi 2005 [1961]; Wang
2007 ), Bertrand Russell on the Chinese universities’ intellectual capacity at the turn
of the twentieth century (Russell 1993 [1922]), and the more recent neoliberal
hermeneutics by Philip G. Altbach ( 1989 , 2004 ; Altbach and Salmi 2011 ).
Where is Asian meta-discourse on Asian HE? Why are the neoliberal arguments
so prevalent in Asian HE scholarship? Why is Asian subjectivity silenced by default
in Asian HE knowledge production? These are rather naively provocative questions
but useful to address upfront the leitmotif of this book “Higher education research
as a field of study in Asia” (this was also the initial/tentative title of the book) and
find some answers.
Asian scholars have long been preoccupied with a never-ending and complex
mindset of “catching up with the West” and standardized preference for analysis
over synthesis, empirical-positivistic induction over other methods, and ambition
for generalizability and “total” frameworks. Administratively, Asian HE has been
emulating the dominant Western model for HE management, which is an arena of
realpolitik at the expense of academic freedom with a direct impact on knowledge
production (Ginsberg 2011 ).
J. Park