Dialogue: Dire slide into the Dark Ages

Academic freedom is being denied as the University of Auckland sets its store by a corporate face, writes STEPHEN WEALTHALL*.

Academic freedom is one of the pillars that makes a society open and free. An open society trains and pays academics to midwife new ideas - to test, store, integrate and transmit old and new ideas. But, most important, to openly and freely debate any matter.

It is precisely this ability to debate any matter, rather than accept doctrine that the authorities conjure up to suit passing social or political trends (or their own careers), that has meant real societal freedom is preserved.

However reprehensible Socrates' views were, it was his ability to state and hold those views that made his stand and ultimate execution worthwhile.

Over the centuries, academic freedom has waxed and waned with attempts by religions, governments and philosophies to suppress it. Those seeking to undermine it knew that the most powerful weapon to suppress dishonesty, graft and corruption was open debate by the informed.

Academics are the real fifth estate protecting freedom, although journalists may publicise it better if they are allowed to.

For most of the past century, academics knew they could state their opinions without fear or favour, including criticising other academics and their employers.

In Paris and Berkeley in the late 1960s, this became almost the sole pastime but was justified because the real employers of academics are the society they serve, not the apparatchiks who wangled themselves into high university management.

In universities the ability to say anything (that there was evidence for) came to be taken for granted and we academics assumed that this proper state of affairs would continue. We had not reckoned with the insidious effect of the creeping privatisation of the moral atmosphere of universities, where the ethics of the marketplace replace those of the cloister.

Although public funding still provides most of the support for universities and their staff, we now have a situation where, because a proportion of so-called leading-edge research is funded privately and students pay a proportion of their costs, university management practices and morals have levelled down.

If a university activity generates revenue or publicity, it does not seem to matter if it is dubious or useless to society.

Gradually universities (with the University of Auckland in the vanguard) have adopted a culture whereby the openness that is necessary for free debate has been replaced by secrecy and a policy of managing information and decisions.

One of the saddest comments I have heard is that of a senior academic who said: "I used to be part of the university, now I am an employee."

In its race to present a successful corporate face to the world, the University of Auckland allowed a small number of individual academics and groups to wield enormous influence. These groups apparently flourished and were (according to the media management campaigns) successful in producing outstanding research and reorganisation of learning.

As the hype moved into dimensions normally reserved for Hollywood, ordinary academics were gradually denied the ability to use normal academic debate to test the validity of the hype and see if the emperors actually had clothes.

The university (under the leaky umbrella argument of commercial and competitive need) started to hide its most commercial activities under the guise of commercial institutes, where the control was with university employees (often in a double or triple capacity) but part of the funding and risk was borne by outside investors.

In seeking to produce a commercially competitive university, the collegiality whereby all staff are regarded as having valid opinions and value was lost, and governance by the equivalent of papal decree was established.

In this new climate, those who want to ask questions and have open debate are asked to choose between their duty to society and their continued employment.

Staff at universities are frightened to speak out because they have the example of myself and others who, when they chose to speak out, found themselves redundant and inhibited from using legal process by the bottomless pockets of universities used to hire lawyers to smother discussion of the real issues.

As the media found out, the innovators they originally championed have also used the same legal processes to prevent media investigation and publication of what are rightfully matters of public interest.

There is an urgent need for those within our universities, who question the slide into the equivalent of the Dark Ages that is taking place, to stand up and state their doubts publicly, and to start to re-establish genuine and responsible academic freedom.

It is also the duty of the media to show it is not going to be inhibited by the threats of legal action that are used, and to perform some genuine investigative journalism into the reasons for the latest apparent threat to academic freedom at Auckland University.

* Stephen Wealthall was lately the director of medical education development at the University of Auckland.