What 5 Years of Taliban Rule Reveals About Authoritarianism and Higher Ed

A Kabul university professor recently described how the Taliban government had just instituted a policy that allows officials to stop faculty on campus and publicly quiz them on their religious knowledge. These quizzes can occur without warning and take place in front of students. The professor had managed to stay in his position over the past five years, despite an array of attacks by the Taliban on faculty autonomy that range from salary reductions to curricular reform. But with this new policy, he said, they had entered a new era of “fear and humiliation.” 

Five years ago, Afghan universities were filled with students with aspirations about their futures. In the initial period after the Taliban return, their haphazard enforcement of social regulations and their bans on women silenced dissent on campus but failed to upend university governance structures. Now, however, having solidified control of other parts of the government, the Taliban have transitioned to building a higher education system that reinforces their authoritarian rule through oppressive new policies such as the one the Kabul professor described. 

Authoritarian capture of higher education rarely happens through sudden ideological overhaul. Instead, it happens through incremental policy changes that undermine and, at times, humiliate experts and erode the economic value of a degree. Whether it is in Afghanistan, Hungary or the United States, and whether it relies on state oversight boards, ideological litmus tests for hiring or defunding, authoritarian capture, like bankruptcy, happens gradually, and then all at once.

In Afghanistan, between 2001 and 2021, student enrollment surged from 8,000 to more than 400,000 across 167 public and private higher education institutions, making education one of the few areas of genuine success during the international intervention. Over the past five years, however, our collection of more than 100 academic autobiographies from Afghan faculty and students reveals how the Taliban systematically dismantled this legacy. 

While the ban on women’s education has dominated the scant reporting coming from the country, slower, less visible bureaucratic changes within universities have gradually reinforced the Taliban regime and attempt to change the nature of higher education more broadly. Little attention was paid internationally last month when the Office of Religious Outreach and Guidance in the Ministry of Higher Education released a letter that announced that Taliban officials would be conducting new oral exams on religious topics. This policy, however, further institutionalizes the authoritarian approaches of the Taliban and demonstrates how, despite initial resistance, they have been able to reshape universities in the country. 

The Taliban’s first attempts at restructuring curricula included the banning of books by women, the addition of four credits of religious requirements for all students and the installation of religious leaders within universities. These policies were unevenly enforced: For instance, one student described how some of his faculty began each lecture with a five-minute introduction that largely described how the lecture they were about to give was acceptable under Islam and was “not against the Taliban,” without providing any real religious reasoning for this conclusion. The professor would end this introduction and carry on with their class much as they would have under the previous government. Faculty whom we interviewed similarly described how they continued to use the same lecture notes. 

During their first years in power, the government focused mainly on excluding women and eliminating dissenters. Simultaneously, they set about building more than 20,000 new madrassas, or religious schools, across the country. This initial reinforcement of the divide between religious and government education systems meant that university professors were some of the few individuals that retained some independence and authority outside of Taliban officials. 

More recently, however, the Taliban have made clear their intention to fully subsume higher education into their expanding authoritarian bureaucracy. This has been done, in part, by “special representatives” of the government who police social norms, such as dress, on campus. These new officials, and the rumors of student informers working for them, have created a culture of fear that pervades all aspects of university life.

With the recent letter from the Office of Religious Outreach and Guidance, in particular, the Taliban have more directly attempted to undercut the freedom of academic leaders, some of the few nonreligious authority figures left in Afghan civil society outside of the government. The fact that these exams are oral and can be conducted publicly in front of students reveals that their intent is not to assess knowledge. As one university professor at Balkh University we spoke with complained, “These tests are meant only to degrade and humiliate faculty members. If I can’t answer a question about some religious text, students will question whether I know anything at all. We are professionals in our fields, not religious scholars.” 

The Taliban has also promoted officials with educations from madrassas and other religious schools with none of the academic credentials typically expected. This aligns with other declarations made by the minister of higher education, who has stated previously that degrees should be awarded to former Taliban fighters not based on what they know, but on the number of land mines they’d planted. 

At the same time, students in interviews have increasingly questioned the value of a university education in a country which, following an initial collapse, has shown few signs of improvement. Government jobs are “given to Taliban fighters and their family members, not those with university degrees,” one student complained. The nepotism of the Taliban economy has helped further erode faith in the value of higher education. 

Taken together, all of this furthers a culture of fear, which, while far more oppressive than in other parts of the world that are sliding toward more repressive forms of ethno-nationalist governance, still provides some important comparative lessons.

1. Authoritarian governments are more effective at undermining institutional autonomy than ideologically converting them. Authoritarian regimes do not need to change institutions overnight. Instead, they primarily want to neutralize them as independent centers of civic authority or dissent. 
2. It is easier to limit access to institutions than to change them. Banning populations (such as women in Afghanistan or vulnerable groups elsewhere through legal or financial barriers) can be straightforward. Curricular change is harder, which is why authoritarian regimes prefer intimidation in the university over textbook overhauls.
3. Public degradation can replace merit with submission. Arbitrary new oral exams and the valuing of loyalty to the Taliban and combat experience over scholarship are all designed to destroy the status of faculty. 
4. Institutional decay destroys faith in education. When students believe that degrees no longer lead to social or economic opportunity due to a nepotistic economy, both fear and cynicism can drive students from institutions.
5. Creeping authoritarianism in university bureaucracies can prepare the ground for more robust control. Authoritarianism in universities may start simply by policing the clothes students wear or topics on syllabi, but this facilitates compliance monitoring and reporting mechanisms. By the time more formal structures are announced, internal resistance mechanisms are gone. 

This erosion of belief in the value of universities threatens to last far beyond the current administrations, whether they are in the United States or Afghanistan. This cultural shift could have longer-term consequences than policies that limit access. Restoring lost funding or reversing bad policy can be straightforward, but rebuilding public faith in the legitimacy of academic institutions takes years. This is work that educators worldwide must attend to.