Intellectual Freedom and the Weight of History: AAU’s 75th Anniversary Dialogue
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By Sewasew Teklemariam
At Addis Ababa University’s 75th anniversary celebration, a remarkable exchange unfolded, one that crystallised decades of tension between Ethiopian intellectual life and political power. The dialogue between Professor Berhanu Nega, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and moderator Professor Bahru Zewdie was not mere ceremonial conversation. It was a collision of three generations of intellectual memory with the anxieties of the present moment, conducted in a room where every gesture carried weight and every word risked consequence. The significance of this encounter lies not merely in what was said, but in the careful choreography of speech itself, the way critique was articulated through historical analogy, the manner in which power responded with acknowledgement yet deflection, and the palpable tension between aspiration and institutional reality that suffused every exchange.
Professor Berhanu Nega opened with striking directness: “There is one fact that bothers me and generates fear in my heart. Due to political pressures, intellectuals are not openly discussing contemporary issues: artificial intelligence, capitalism, and its transformations in this new AI era. Our intellectuals are silent.” This was no abstract concern. Nega was diagnosing a paralysis at the heart of Ethiopian intellectual life, a silence that threatens to render Ethiopia a spectator rather than a participant in the transformations reshaping global civilisation. His invocation of Gebrehiwet Baykedagn, who produced foundational governance essays in his early thirties independent of partisan politics, served as both reproach and aspiration. Ethiopian intellectuals once generated fearless, constructive thought outside the machinery of political struggle. What happened to that tradition? Where did the courage to think independently disappear, and why have successive generations found themselves unable to reclaim it?
Professor Bahru Zewdie provided the historical scaffold that contextualised Nega’s concern: “Following the Red Terror of the late 1970s, Ethiopian intellectuals became fearful. They retreated from political dialogue until the 2005 election, when a fleeting sense of openness returned. Yet the aftermath of that election forced intellectuals again to retreat from open discussion. Fear became institutionalised.” This periodisation, pre-Red Terror autonomy, post-Terror silence, the 2005 opening and subsequent closure, maps a geography of fear that has shaped Ethiopian thought for half a century. It is a history not merely of repression but of internalised constraint, where the boundaries of permissible discourse become psychological as much as political. The Red Terror did not simply kill intellectuals; it killed intellectual confidence, creating a culture of self-censorship that survived the fall of the Derg and persisted through subsequent political transitions.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s response was both acknowledgement and deflection, revealing the complex dance between power and critique that characterises Ethiopian political discourse. He accepted the historical framework but fundamentally reinterpreted the source of intellectual failure: “Past political actors, including the EPRP, TPLF, and leftist movements, did not foster free and fair discussion as a culture. Blaming political pressure alone misses the core problem. Much of the discourse then was a struggle for political power, not an exchange of ideas. Movements often pursued vendettas rather than constructive thought.” This reframing is philosophically significant because it shifts the locus of responsibility from state institutions to historical actors themselves. Where Nega and Zewdie locate the problem in institutional structures that produce fear, Abiy locates it in the moral and cultural failures of past movements. The 1960 coup plotters, the student movements, the revolutionary parties, all failed, in his view, not because systems constrained them but because they substituted grievance for genuine ideas, vendetta for vision, and personal animosity for intellectual rigour.
“Real discussion must be knowledge-driven, not grievance-driven,” Abiy insisted, drawing a sharp distinction that deserves careful examination. His argument contains a kernel of uncomfortable truth: Ethiopian political movements have often struggled to maintain boundaries between ideas and identities, between programmatic disagreements and personal vendettas. The fratricidal conflicts within the Ethiopian left, the ethnic nationalism that eventually dominated post-1991 politics, the personalisation of ideological disputes, all suggest that intellectual movements have sometimes failed to embody the very principles of reasoned discourse they ostensibly championed. Yet this reframing raises equally uncomfortable questions: If past movements failed because they were grievance-driven rather than idea-driven, what institutional mechanisms exist to ensure that present discourse rises above grievance? And if fear is not primarily systemic but cultural, why does it persist across such radically different political epochs, from the Derg to the EPRDF to the Prosperity Party era?
The exchange that followed revealed the fundamental tension at the heart of Ethiopian intellectual life. Nega pressed the structural argument with increasing directness: “The political framework and institutional fear shape that very environment. Intellectuals retreat not because they lack courage but because systems do not protect them. Without institutional guarantees, fear governs the dialogue.” This is the crux of the matter the question of whether intellectual courage can exist without institutional protection, or whether calls for bravery in the absence of such protection constitute a kind of moral displacement, asking individuals to bear risks that should be managed collectively through legal and institutional frameworks. Abiy maintained his position: past failures were fundamentally moral rather than structural. The 1960 initiatives of Woorkneh Gebeyehu, the 1960 coup attempt by the Neway brothers, these were “driven by grievance, not generative ideas. Had they been substantive ideas, they would have embraced multiple forces.” Even Jagama Kello’s observation that he could have contributed if consulted by Mengistu Haile Mariam became, in Abiy’s interpretation, evidence that Ethiopian political failure stemmed from exclusionary vendettas rather than from systems that criminalised dissent.
This is more than historical debate; it is a contest over responsibility and agency. If the problem is primarily structural, then government bears responsibility for creating protective institutions, laws safeguarding academic freedom, mechanisms preventing political interference in universities, legal frameworks protecting unpopular speech. If the problem is primarily cultural and moral, then intellectuals and opposition movements bear responsibility for their own failures, and government’s role becomes facilitation rather than transformation. The political stakes of this interpretive contest are enormous, determining who bears the burden of change and what kind of change is required.
Those who witnessed this exchange noted Professor Zewdie’s fidgeting, his crossed arms, the physical manifestation of speaking truth to power under observation. This was not ceremonial discomfort; it was the weight of intellectual responsibility made visible, the knowledge that every word carries historical, ethical, and political stakes, that criticism might be heard as accusation, that historical analysis might be interpreted as contemporary challenge. The body itself becomes a text in such moments, revealing through gesture what cannot be fully articulated through language alone. The Prime Minister’s verbal composure contrasted with subtle defensiveness in his framing. He acknowledged history while asserting authority, balancing critique with aspirational rhetoric: “If we can cultivate balanced engagement, where universities improve their campuses and academic quality, Ethiopia could become a regional hub of scholarship. Even a hundred students from Kenya or elsewhere would come to study here.”
Beneath the historical debate lay Nega’s most urgent concern, the one that elevates this conversation from important to existential: “AI and the transformations of the global economy are accelerating. Ethiopia risks being a spectator rather than a participant if our intellectuals remain silent.” This is the dimension often lost in debates about political freedom, the cost of intellectual paralysis is not merely domestic but civilisational. As artificial intelligence reshapes capitalism, governance, and knowledge production itself, nations require fearless intellectual engagement to navigate these transformations. Ethiopia’s silence on AI, on the mutation of global capitalism, on the reorganisation of work and value in technologically saturated societies whether born of fear, institutional weakness, or cultural failure threatens to consign the country to irrelevance in the emerging global order. The question is not simply whether Ethiopian intellectuals can speak freely about domestic politics, but whether they can participate in the global conversations that will determine the structure of 21st-century civilisation.
Abiy’s response, while acknowledging these challenges, did not address the institutional protection mechanisms Nega and Zewdie implicitly demanded. The gap between diagnosis and prescription remained conspicuous, revealing perhaps the limits of what can be promised in such public settings, or perhaps the fundamental difficulty of creating protected intellectual spaces within political systems where power remains centralised and sensitive to challenge. The Prime Minister spoke of balanced engagement, of improving campus quality, of regional intellectual leadership, all worthy aspirations, but none directly addressing the question of how intellectuals would be protected from political consequence when their analyses prove uncomfortable to power.
This dialogue echoes patterns tragically familiar to Ethiopian history, suggesting that the present conversation may itself be part of a recurring cycle rather than a break from it. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed student movements and pre-revolutionary intellectuals facing both structural and political constraints, articulating visions of transformation that ultimately collapsed into violence and repression. The post-Derg era brought brief openings, most notably around the 2005 elections, quickly constrained by political and legal pressures, mass arrests, and the exile of prominent intellectuals. Now, in the AI era, as existential challenges mount, fear and institutional weakness persist, suggesting that Ethiopia has not yet discovered the formula for sustaining intellectual openness across political transitions. Professor Zewdie’s historical framing revealed this pattern starkly: moments of hope followed by reimposed silence, a cycle that has spanned generations and survived multiple regime changes. The question becomes whether Ethiopia can break this cycle or whether the AAU dialogue itself will become merely another episode in a recurring tragedy, remembered as a moment when important questions were raised but fundamental structures remained unchanged.
Abiy’s historical reinterpretation deserves careful examination because it reveals both insights and evasions. His claim that past movements were grievance-driven rather than idea-driven contains partial truth. The Ethiopian left’s internal conflicts MEISON versus EPRP, the later fragmentation into ethnically-based movements, the transformation of Marxist universalism into ethnic nationalism all suggest that Ethiopian political thought has often struggled to maintain the distinction between ideas and identity, between programme and vendetta. The personalisation of ideological disputes, the tendency to interpret intellectual disagreement as personal betrayal, the difficulty in maintaining principled alliances across tactical differences these are real pathologies that have weakened Ethiopian intellectual and political life. Yet this interpretation risks absolving systems of responsibility, treating fear as merely a psychological disposition that intellectuals must overcome through moral fortitude rather than as a rational response to institutional realities. The Red Terror was not a failure of ideas; it was systematic violence against intellectuals, regardless of their specific positions or the sophistication of their arguments. The post-2005 repression was not a cultural failure; it was legal and political constraint, arrests and trials, the closure of newspapers and the exile of prominent thinkers.
The synthesis these perspectives demand is uncomfortable but necessary: Ethiopian intellectual life has suffered from both inadequate institutional protection and from the internal failures of intellectual movements themselves. Neither explanation alone suffices. Systems have failed to protect discourse, but movements have sometimes failed to embody the principles of reasoned debate they claimed to represent. Institutions have criminalised dissent, but intellectuals have sometimes allowed personal grievances to masquerade as principled disagreement. The challenge is to acknowledge both dimensions without allowing one to excuse the other, to demand institutional protection without denying the need for intellectual self-criticism, to insist on freedom whilst cultivating the discipline that makes freedom productive rather than merely destructive.
AAU, as Ethiopia’s flagship university, becomes more than backdrop to this dialogue; it represents both the promise and the constraint of Ethiopian intellectual life. Can universities create protected spaces for fearless inquiry, or do they inevitably reflect the broader political environment? Abiy’s vision that improved universities could make Ethiopia a regional intellectual hub, attracting students from across East Africa is genuinely aspirational and worth taking seriously. A Ethiopia with world-class universities, producing cutting-edge research, training regional leaders, contributing to global knowledge this would transform the country’s position in ways that extend far beyond academia. Yet the vision elides the question of how such institutions would be protected from the very political pressures that have constrained Ethiopian thought for decades. Academic excellence requires intellectual risk-taking, the freedom to pursue questions wherever they lead, the security to publish findings that challenge prevailing assumptions. Without institutional autonomy and legal protections, aspirations of regional leadership remain hollow.
The professors’ physical discomfort during the exchange suggested they understood this tension viscerally. They were simultaneously honouring and testing the boundaries of permissible discourse, using history and analogy rather than direct confrontation, yet pressing nonetheless on the fundamental questions of freedom and fear. There is something both hopeful and troubling about this exchange occurring at all. Hopeful because it represents a space, however constrained, for professors to articulate critique to power, to raise uncomfortable questions in a public forum, to insist that silence about AI and global transformation constitutes a national crisis. Troubling because the very need for such careful, historically mediated criticism reveals the persistence of the fear Nega diagnosed. The dialogue’s form mirrors its content: just as Ethiopian intellectuals have learnt to speak in coded language, through historical analogy, avoiding direct confrontation whilst conveying substantive critique, so too did this exchange navigate between acknowledgement and challenge, between ceremony and substance, between the rituals of deference and the imperatives of truth-telling.
Three insights emerge from this remarkable conversation, each demanding further reflection and action. First, intellectual fear in Ethiopia is overdetermined produced by both structural constraints and cultural-historical failures, requiring solutions that address both dimensions simultaneously. Institutional protections for academic freedom are necessary but insufficient without cultivating an intellectual culture capable of distinguishing ideas from identities, programmes from grievances, principled disagreement from personal vendetta. Second, the stakes of this debate extend beyond Ethiopia’s borders into questions of civilisational participation. In an era of AI-driven transformation, nations require robust intellectual ecosystems to navigate technological, economic, and social change. Ethiopia’s intellectual paralysis is not merely a domestic tragedy; it threatens the country’s ability to participate meaningfully in shaping global civilisation, consigning it to permanent peripherality in the conversations that matter most. Third, the tension between intellectual freedom and political authority remains fundamentally unresolved, acknowledged but not addressed. Abiy’s aspirational rhetoric about knowledge-driven discourse and regional intellectual hubs cannot be realised without institutional mechanisms that protect fearless inquiry from political consequence. The professors’ implicit demand, for such mechanisms, received acknowledgement but not commitment, recognition but not promise.
As the AAU celebration concluded, the fundamental question lingered in the air, unspoken but palpable: Can Ethiopia cultivate the institutional courage necessary for its intellectuals to engage fearlessly with contemporary challenges? Or will this dialogue become another brief opening in the cyclical pattern of hope and constraint that has characterised Ethiopian intellectual life for generations? The answer will determine not merely the character of Ethiopian universities but the country’s trajectory in an age of accelerating global transformation. For a nation with Ethiopia’s intellectual traditions, from Gebrehiwet Baykedagn to the present, the cost of continued silence would be not merely tragic but civilisationally consequential, representing the squandering of human capital and intellectual potential that the country can ill afford.
This dialogue at AAU’s 75th anniversary was extraordinary because it made visible the stakes of intellectual freedom, the weight of history, and the gap between aspiration and institutional reality. It demonstrated that Ethiopian intellectuals remain capable of pressing uncomfortable questions, of articulating critique within constraint, of insisting that silence about the future constitutes betrayal of responsibility. Whether the political system can create space for the fearless discourse those questions demand remains the test ahead, the challenge that will define not merely this government but this generation’s contribution to Ethiopian history. The conversation between these three figures, each representing different relationships to power, history, and hope, captured something essential about Ethiopia’s present condition. It was a negotiation between courage and caution, memory and possibility, conducted under observation and fraught with consequence. In that sense, it was quintessentially Ethiopian: profound questions raised with eloquence, partial acknowledgements offered with care, and fundamental tensions left unresolved, awaiting the next generation’s reckoning. The weight of history presses upon the present, and the demands of the future cannot be indefinitely postponed.
Sewasew Teklemariam is a political columnist for the Ethiopian Tribune.
