Ibn Haldun University has organized a panel in cooperation with TURKEN Foundation USA, titled “Intellectual Independence: New Directions in Education.” in New York, USA. Speaking at the panel Prof. Dr. Recep Şentürk, the President of Ibn Haldun University stressed the importance of intellectual independence, meaning to study Western and Eastern theories at the same time and letting the students choose whatever they think is essential. According to Prof. Şentürk it is very important to adopt a comparative methodology to solve the problems that are faced in social sciences today. "Social scientists failed to foresee the economic crisis in US and the Arab Spring, and that shows we have a crisis in social sciences. The thing is we do not present alternatives to students who are studying social sciences." he said. Prof. Şentürk said he believed offering alternatives to students will let them understand what really is going on around them and decide accordingly. "The social sciences should not only present Western scientists like Habermas, Marx and Faucault but thinkers from the non western world like Gazali, Ibn Haldun and Ibn Sina should also be presented." he added.
Prof. Şentürk thinks the education today is based on theories which are produced by Western academics and the non western academics only import those and market them rather than to produce anything themselves. "That brings intellectual dependance" Prof. Şentürk said and "If a country can not make its own political decisions, that country is politically dependent. The countries that can not produce their own ideas, their own theories and look around to find ideas to adopt are all intellectually dependent. If you look to the countries in the non western world like China, Turkey and the Arab countries, they are all intellectually dependent. Because the education system in those countries have ideas that are imported from the Western world" he added. According to Prof. Şentürk, if the universities in the non western world wants to be intellectually independent, they should produce their own ideas. To him the way for intellectual independence lies to adopt a new kind of pedagogy that he called comparative pedagogy. Şentürk said, "All the things that we teach to our students need to have an alternative. If you teach economics, you should teach them Marx and Ibn Haldun. If you teach them psychology, you should teach them Freud and Imam Ghazali. If we do this we give the students something to choose from. But if you teach them only one way, that becomes a doctrination."
Prof. Şentürk thinks the solution for today's problems in education is to adopt a comparative education. He said it is more essential in an open civilization that people live in today. "Today civilizations have no walls. They are open to each other. Today it is impossible to isolate any civilization from others. We should let the heritage of each civilization to interact with the other." he said. Prof. Şentürk said that the education system that is used today needs to be reconfigured based on the realities of open civilizations. "In this context, Ibn Haldun is a great example and offers a lot to us to come out of the problems we are facing today" he added. Associate Professor Burhan Köroglu who is the Director of the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Ibn Haldun University said the Western civilizations should not ignore the other civilizations and puts itself into the center of everything. "Others should not be forgotten" he said adding, "Islam do not ignore others. It accepts and tries to find ways to interact and use the good theories of other civilizations." Köroglu said he believes every civilization can be criticized but the main principles should be taken into account while studying social sciences of today.
