Multi-Disciplinarity Problem and Challenges of Mainstreaming Peace Studies in Tanzania’s Higher Education System

The relationship between higher education and intercultural and epistemic diversity has often been ambiguous. Higher education has developed distinctive ways of organizing, validating, and legitimizing certain forms of knowledge production. The social processes, quality assurance, and economics of scholarly publishing do not typically reward intercultural and epistemic diversity. The Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) has a new career path regulation that requires that, for academic staff to qualify to teach in the university, he or she must have studied directly related subjects. This regulation is based on skill-centred specialist approach. The regulation basically is favourable for highly focused professional practitioners because they create a protective boundary around their area of expertise, e.g. medicine and engineering, but to a greater extent not favourable for social sciences disciplines. The idea of favouring a directly related subjects approach of disciplines is rooted in a holism versus reductionism perspective (Smuts 1936). This perspective calls for scholars to study a single line of discipline in order to qualify as teachers in higher learning institutions. The holism perspective “underlies the synthetic tendency in the universe and is the principle that makes for the origin and progress of wholes in the universe” (Smuts 1936: ix). The approach raises questions on whether the interdisciplinary approach, also known as the multidisciplinary approach, poses a problem in the higher education system in Tanzania in the quest for mainstreaming Peace Studies in university programs.