Kwadwo Twum-Boafo, steer clear of Legon!

He is not the very first to venture down the primrose path of academic witch-hunting. Indeed, one of the darkest stripes against the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP) government was the party leadership’s dastardly attempts to politicize tertiary education in the country. At one point, during the twilight days of this extortionate regime, one had to be a card-carrying member of the CPP in order to be assured of one’s professional, or job, security at the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana. This indefensibly unhealthy practice would take an irreparable toll on the quality of education in the country in general, but particularly at the tertiary level.

The decision by National Democratic Congress (NDC) apparatchiks like Mr. Kwadwo Twum-Boafo to witch-hunt college and university professors known to be passionately unsympathetic towards the Mahama government must be roundly condemned (See “Twum-Boafo Has Contracted Students to ‘Spy’ on Lecturers – Dr. Gyampoh” Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/14/16). In the latest of such dastardly attempt to compromise the integrity of the country’s tertiary academies, we are told that the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Free Zones Board has recruited some Legon students to secretly record lectures as a means of marking down lecturers and professors known to be hostile towards the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress.

Now, I don’t know what the rules of conduct for students at the University of Ghana, as well as the other tertiary academies across the country, have to say about secret recordings of on-campus lectures but, even as Dr. Ransford Yaw Gyampoh rightly points out, all instructional faculty members of the country’s colleges and universities are protected by academic freedoms about which shameless political thieves and parasites like Mr. Twum-Boafo can do absolutely nothing, especially if these professors and lecturers also turn out to be tenured members of their academic communities. Indeed, on the State University of New York campus where I teach, for example, it is illegal for any student to record lectures without the express and official permission of the lecturer or professor whose lectures are being recorded. And any attempt to use such unauthorized lecture material to witch-hunt a professor could be inviting a lawsuit.

The fact of the matter is that it is totally irrelevant whether, indeed, Mrs. Naana Opoku-Agyeman, the current Minister of Education, secured her cabinet appointment by leaking debate questions formulated by the staff of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) to then-Interim President John Dramani Mahama in the lead-up to Election 2012, as is being alleged in certain quarters around the country. What is relevant is the fact of whether such pronouncement or assertion was made organically within the context of Dr. Gyampoh’s lectures. Then also, students have a right to challenge any such assertion, provided such student challenge of a professorial assertion is done in good faith and with respect and occurs within the context of the same lecture, without the dissenting student being vindictively penalized for daring to freely express his/her dissent. Either way, the key word here is “decorum.”

In other words, any such conflicting exchange of ideas within the context of a classroom lecture ought to be mediated or tempered by a protocol of mutual respect between student and professor. There is clear evidence here that Dr. Gyampoh may well have made his assertion on the credible strength and/or authority of him being a member of the Institute of Economic Affairs. The latter privilege, of course, does not necessarily validate Dr. Gyampoh’s assertion, but it definitely makes his assertion worthy of critical examination and evaluation on the part of his class as a whole. Outside of the lecture hall and the academic confines of the University of Ghana’s campus, there is absolutely nothing that anybody can do about the cognitive orientation or ideological suasion or leanings of any Legon faculty member as long as, for example, Dr. Gyampoh keeps any such discussion strictly within the context of his lecture notes and the confines of his lecture theatre or auditorium.

His decision to go to an NDC-leaning radio station, Radio Gold, to be precise, to launch a virulent personal attack at Dr. Gyampoh for a statement made during a lecture at which, by the way, Mr. Twum-Boafo was not even present, makes the Free Zones Board CEO squarely responsible for any harm that may come to his very public target of vitriol or malediction in the foreseeable future.

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