A State of Chaos
Greece is at the breaking point. The autumn air is filled with despair at falling living standards and the inability to meet ever-burgeoning tax burdens and with fury at the political class, members of which are routinely mobbed, showered with eggs and yogurt, even occasionally beaten. Because of striking public-sector unions, Athens regularly lacks public transport, and its streets are often strewn with garbage. The young, with little hope of productive work, divide their time between rioting and looking for a promising place to emigrate. The older generation, those with families, medical bills, and after-school tuition fees, grimly hold on, cutting consumption down to the absolute necessities and eating into their savings to survive. Sometimes, they take to the streets, too. The middle class, such as it was, is slipping into poverty, and no one can see when the bleeding will stop.
The country is experiencing a national depression, both financially and psychologically.
The country is experiencing a national depression, both financially and psychologically. It is accompanied by a collapse of relations between the state and society but also within society, with every group thinking itself victimized by the rest and resisting by any means necessary the surrender of privileges it has long held at the expense of the common good.
Greece’s university system is both a symptom and a central cause of the country’s disease. As August gave way to September, Greece was rocked by a wave of sit-ins in university buildings by students protesting the new law governing the administration of higher education. At its height, more than 200 departments across the country had been taken over, leading to the suspension of the fall exam period and to the threatened cancellation of the fall semester. The demonstrating students found support in many faculty members, especially deans, who in some cases decided to delay the exams to facilitate the sit-ins.
The new law will not solve all the manifold problems of the Greek higher-education system, but it is a step in the right direction. In particular, it restricts the power of the ubiquitous youth wings of political parties over university affairs, and it limits the number of years allowed for obtaining a degree. Perhaps most important, at least on a symbolic level, it repeals the academic-asylum provision passed in 1982. This provision, which had achieved totemic status among the Greek left, had been promoted to protect academic freedom from state interference at a time when memories of the dictators’ tanks invading the National Technical University of Athens to crush the student rebellion were still fresh. But, in practice, the law was badly abused. It shielded extremist groups, often unrelated to the student body, that hid from police on university grounds after causing mayhem with rocks and Molotov cocktails in demonstrations.