Free speech a character test for vice-chancellors

Illustration: John Tiedemann

Some institutions have intrinsic qualities. Queensland is Queensland. Daniel Andrews is apoplectic. Universities are committed to freedom of academic inquiry and freedom of speech.

Sort of. Indeed, universities are having considerable trouble sorting out what their academics can and can’t say, and whether academic freedom is a fundamental right or something like a driver’s licence.

This is not about the case of James Cook University professor Peter Ridd, who had an initial court win over what he regarded as “academic freedom”, which was then overturned by the full Federal Court. That case is factually and legally complex, and could yet be appealed.

But it is just one instance of where the academic right to ­rabbit on rubs against a university’s right to run itself.

The problem is that those outside the academy increasingly suspect universities are more interested in their public image, and not upsetting their Departments of Woke, than protecting fundamental academic freedom.

This is not a new argument. Last year, Education Minister Dan Tehan commissioned former High Court chief justice Robert French to have a look at academic freedom. He did, and proposed a protective code. Tehan liked it, and told universities to implement it, or he would.

The French Code was not exactly a model of clear drafting, but its direction was plain. The universities’ collective enthusiasm was so deafening you could hear the smallest cricket chirp.

There’s no problem. If there is, we can fix it. Trust me, I’m a vice- chancellor. Go away.

Eventually, many universities made minor changes to their policies by way of symbolic compliance. But typically, the exemptions they contained were big enough to drive a bus through.

There is a real challenge here, because protections for academic freedom always need some limit. A rogue professor cannot libel or slander, downright lie, or break the law. But sometimes the exemptions are larger than the right itself.

Universities typically have two types of problem with freedom of academic expression. The first is corporate.

This is where an academic writes something that could rile a major stakeholder: a sponsoring corporation, a government partner or — frankly — China. Vice- chancellors understandably, but not heroically, feel for their institutional wallet.

The second assault on academic freedom is more insidious because it is internal. An academic strikes trouble because he or she writes something counter to the accepted wisdom of their faculty or university as a whole.

This is deeply problematic, because the heart of academic freedom is the right to take a view with which your colleagues, and possibly the whole world, disagrees. But particularly in fields where ideological conflict is easy — law, history, political or environmental science — it can be very dangerous to be a dissenter.

This was the challenge with the Ramsay centres. They did not fit the dominant paradigm, which was once the subversive position.

The problem ultimately is psychological, rather than about legal drafting of university policies. Many academics coalesce into solid blocks of thought that reject internal challenge. Universities being what they are, conservative challenge is the most dangerous.

Vice-chancellors do not like to talk about this, understandably. On the law of averages, most will not personally have experienced it. But as a moderately conservative runt among progressive ­giants, I have and it’s not pretty.

As a student, I was told not to apply Christian insight to the poems of William Blake, who was a Christian mystic. As a junior academic, I was advised not to specialise in criminal law because, as a Catholic, I might write about abortion or euthanasia, which would end my career.

Most vividly, I remember the aftermath of taking leave from the Law School at Melbourne to serve as crown counsel to the Kennett government, at a time when it was all hands on deck for Victoria. I went from the Law School a valued constitutional lawyer. I came back a pariah. I left.

Nowadays, I see it as a vice- chancellor. Most months, someone demands I sack an academic for writing something outrageous. Almost invariably, if they had just as pungently written the precise opposite, I would have a letter of commendation. I usually suggest the complainant publish their own rebuttal.

When the French report formally hit the university sector, the position of ACU was for full ­implementation: Academic freedom, intellectual freedom, freedom of speech and clear definitions.

But we were one out. The song is wrong: sometimes, you really do walk alone.

The point is, universities can create regimes with teeth, if they want to. At ACU, our senate ­enacted a statute — not a policy — for freedom of speech and intellectual freedom. It is a super-statute, overriding all other statutes and policies, as far as law permits. And it’s broad, covering not only intellectual freedom, but general freedom of speech — and it expressly allows staff to publicly criticise ACU.

Yes, it says staff should “consider” the university’s reputation, and does not allow harassment, unlawful behaviour or supporting Collingwood. But any court would be quite clear which fundamental principles to apply.

Here’s an irony: A Catholic university is more intellectually liberal than its secular counterparts.

Sadly, I do not have confidence that every university would have the stomach for this. If that is right, I think a legislative solution, in some form, will be necessary.

But the reality is that universities have the solution and their credibility in their own hands.

Greg Craven is vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.