A “musty-dusty tower”: the question of codetermination before and after 1968
As teaching staff rapidly expanded in the 1960s, titles and roles began to diverge significantly. Mid-level faculty members demanded more codetermination rights to balance their increased responsibilities in research and teaching. However, only when the student movement intensified pressure for reform was the regular faculty’s resistance to change overcome – leading to the opening of the University Senate beyond tenured faculty.
In 1962, Uli W. Steinlin, a young private lecturer at the Basel Astronomical Institute, published a small book titled Hochschule wohin? (University – quo vadis?). This incisive yet well-researched work provided a scathing review of the Swiss university system: Swiss universities’ performance lagged far behind on an international scale, a fact only partially attributable to their limited material resources.
Steinlin primarily criticized the steeply hierarchical structure of the university, centered on full professors who held most decision-making power in their roles as Senate members, faculty members, institute heads, clinic directors, and mentors of junior academic staff. In a kind of historical caricature, he exposed the psychological dynamics within the teaching faculty, describing an “old-fashioned organization” where the nonprofessorial “crowd of subordinates” were compelled to serve the “gracious lords” in “humiliating submissiveness,” at the mercy of their “paternal benevolence.”
Steinlin’s clear allusion to the paternalistic policies of subservience under the ancien régime evoked the modern self-image where the historical shift from supposedly “premodern” to “modern” aligns with the emancipation of the individual from paternalism and external control. Steinlin identified these quasi-anachronistic “forms of rule” as the true impediment to the progress of science, research, and teaching.
“Under the gowns – the must of a thousand years”
Beyond this historical juxtaposition, Steinlin employed a memorable metaphor to underscore the outdated state of affairs, referring to the academic faculty as a “musty-dusty hierarchical tower.” The moldy smell of decay that Steinlin perceived in the university’s personnel structure in 1962 foreshadowed a key slogan of the 1968 student movement. The phrase “Under the gowns – the must of one thousand years” referenced the same metaphor of organic decomposition to single out university structures and rituals as obsolete and in need of reform. The slogan’s reference, in its German origin, to Nazi continuities at universities (the “Thousand-Year Reich”) did not hinder its adoption by the student movement in Switzerland.
Steinlin countered these “rotten” conditions with a proposal for reform: the system of professorial chairs, he argued, should be replaced with a system of departments, thereby overcoming the isolation of individual (sub)disciplines under the control of chairholders. Such a system, he continued, would also encourage more equal collaboration among faculty members of various ranks; teamwork, he emphasized, should be a guiding principle for faculty cooperation in the future. Clearly, he had been inspired by his experience in the United States, where he had recently completed a long research stay. In the natural sciences, the departmental system had already become a topic of discussion in Switzerland, beginning in the early 1960s.
Steinlin’s caricature of the psychological micromechanisms between “gracious lords” and compliant “subordinates” showed that his unease extended beyond the formal legal status of nonprofessors in university decision-making. He was fundamentally advocating for a broader cultural shift, a change in the working environment among established faculty members – a shift that legal reform alone would not accomplish. Nonetheless, Steinlin did not mention student involvement or the minuscule number of women in faculty positions.
Legal reform and cultural transformation
This impetus for change manifests two typical developments of the period that all universities in Western societies encountered after 1960. First, following the rapid expansion of universities since the late 1950s, their personnel structures were transformed. The “low-cost” status groups of the academic mid-level faculty, who largely supported the expansion, were increasingly integrated into research and teaching: their roles were functionally – though initially, not formally – enhanced. Desires for change were a response to this widening gap. The issue was not entirely new: as early as 1900, the “nonprofessors’ movement” had demanded the extension of the official codetermination rights of extraordinary (associate) professors and private lecturers to lessen their dependence on the personal concessions of full professors. In Basel, their codetermination rights in the faculties were restricted by the new University Act of 1937.
Steinlin’s psychological caricature drew attention to a sociocultural and generational conflict: the change in the perception of authority. The recognition and legitimacy of traditional structures became less binding in the 1960s, opening up a new arena for negotiating the relationships between academic staff and students, and among professors, assistant professors, and students in which Steinlin’s pointed words resonated widely.
The reception of his paper was divided. Mid-level faculty members quickly adopted the proposed reform ideas. In a 1963 petition to the rectorate, the Basel assembly of private lecturers demanded an increase in their level of representation in faculty assemblies, at the time limited to one, citing the “greater importance” of their function, which had grown through “increased direct participation and shared responsibility in teaching and research.” This request was eventually granted – though the private lecturers had only sought an advisory role.
Conversely, a self-styled Study Group for University Issues demanded active voting rights in the faculties in 1964, without success. This mid-level faculty initiative formed directly in response to Steinlin’s paper and adopted his core demands – flattening rank hierarchies and separating title from function – as their program. The study group would provide important impulses in the debate on revising the University Act after 1967.
Professorial opposition to reform
Many university professors rejected Steinlin’s ideas for reform. Deeming them unfeasible, Alexander von Muralt, a distinguished professor of physiology at the University of Bern and recipient of multiple honorary doctorates, moreover dismissed Steinlin’s harsh assessment of the situation. Responding in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, he granted that there were indeed some “undignified” working conditions, particularly regarding the underpaid work of mid-level faculty in the humanities. But overall, he concluded, “we can be proud of what we have.” Muralt was especially qualified to make this judgment, being a key figure in the creation of the Swiss National Science Foundation, which also supported young scholars.
In 1964, the Senate submitted a draft for a revised University Act, motivated less by a recognition of the need for fundamental reforms and more by the prospect of reunification between Basel-City and Basel-Countryside. (The Constitutional Council had been meeting since 1961.) In addition to the desire for less protracted decision-making processes and a stronger university leadership, the main concern of the Senate was to relieve the professors of the growing burden of teaching duties, either by reducing the required teaching hours or by introducing sabbaticals. However, the draft did not propose any structural changes to the faculty. “If the professors are doing well, the university is doing well,” was more or less its ethos, and the proposal was soon laid ad acta.
Most professors were still opposed to reform during the next round of discussions – at least at first. The Governing Council’s proposal for a revised University Act in the fall of 1967 triggered a wide debate. The Senate reacted with a counterproposal, described by the press as a defensive maneuver; the charge was that the Senate was more interested in forestalling possible external interventions than taking steps toward reform. The Senate responded that the kind of trendy imitation of organizational structures which might work at large foreign universities would not fit Basel’s circumstances tel quel. It defended the faculty’s hierarchical structure, which it saw to be justified by the corresponding layering of responsibility, denying that the distribution of responsibility had shifted because of the boom-like growth. Given the acute shortage of teachings staff, the Senate warned against “blindly zealous reform” that might further complicate new appointments and spur the departure of tenured faculty.
A “significant operation”
Slowly, however, cracks appeared in the professors’ defensive stance. At the Senate’s initiative, a Parity Commission was established in the spring of 1968, with equal representation of professors, extraordinary (associate) professors, private lecturers, and students. The aim was to develop a unified position with a cross-group proposal and present a united front in the heated debate on the University Act.
Particularly conservative professors objected even to the formation of this commission, arguing that the Senate had thus demoted itself to a minority. The compromise proposal eventually put forth by the commission failed to gain a majority in the Senate, although it was supported by the other three groups. The main point of contention was the rigid, equal representation proposed in the new model, which would have granted equal voting rights in the faculties and the Senate to all university groups.
On 29 April 1970, the Senate finally made a move that was immediately termed “historic”: it opened itself up. Until then, only extraordinary (associate) professors and private lecturers had been represented in the body, each with one delegate with only advisory votes. In the “Neo-Senate,” however, professors had twenty-four seats, extraordinary (associate) professors, private lecturers, and assistant professors had eight seats each, and students had twelve delegates, all with voting rights.
New pressure for reform
This reform step was enabled by defining the moment as an “experimental phase,” agreed upon by various stakeholders in the fall of 1969. Before implementing a definitive legal reorganization, they wanted to test certain innovations in practice to gather experience with different regulatory options.
The fact that the Senate announced its decision to the public, remarking that it was a “notable action,” points to another context. With this decision, the Senate wanted to be seen as responding to the accusation that it was a stronghold of the “establishment,” a group of “reactionary” tenured professors clinging to their positions and unable to enact genuine reform.
This heightened criticism was a product of the student movement. As seen elsewhere, in 1968, engaged students assumed leadership in the Basel Student Union’s committees, marking a generational shift. Their predecessors had taken a moderate, establishment course reflecting the urban elites; though not entirely uncritical, they had paid little attention to reforms of university policy. The sharply socially critical and left-leaning “progressives,” however, viewed university policy as an integral part of social policy. “Since the university cannot be separated from society, we strive to democritize not only the university but also society,” proclaimed the Progressive Student Association Basel, founded in April 1968, in the Nationalzeitung.
Alongside the demands for reform announced primarily by mid-level faculty representatives beginning in the early 1960s, a new voice thus emerged, persistently advocating for structural changes. As plans for university reform ultimately failed in the Basel parliament in 1980, the opening of the Senate remained a central, though partial, outcome of the reform period of the 1960s and 1970s.