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Paul Kelly

Freedom should be a no-brainer

Paul Kelly

The apathetic and grudging resistance from many of Australia’s university vice-chancellors to the prudent recommendation from former High Court chief justice Robert French for a protection of freedom code exposes a higher education sector that is short on common sense, enlightened self-interest and sound judgment.

Australia’s university sector is its own worst enemy. Its leadership at the vice-chancellor level is sadly lacking. The warning lights are flashing.

If the VCs cannot detect the mounting critique from a growing part of the community and government over standards, politicisation, managerial arrogance, refusal to accept responsibility for what happens at their institutions and the inadequate return on research funding, then the sector’s troubles are certain to multiply.

The French report was a no-brainer. That it has been treated for many months as a piece of political radioactivity by many vice-chancellors only betrays their weakness, paranoia and the phony nature of assurances made about intellectual freedom on university campuses.

The real significance of the French report is as a pointer to a deeper malaise. In a supreme irony, as revealed in this newspaper yesterday, university chancellors after the Morrison government’s re-election felt obliged to take the lead.

At a post-election meeting last month the chancellors received a briefing from French on his report and approved the core recommendation — in principle.

In terms of university politics this is an extraordinary event. It reflects on the defensive and delaying tactics of vice-chancellors as embodied in statements from Universities Australia and the Group of Eight.

You can now expect a tortured rationalisation from the univer­sities that they were always keen to embrace French. Might this event be an omen — a sign that chancellors recognise the need to show moral leadership at a time of growing turbulence surrounding the university sector?

Federal Education Minister, Dan Tehan previously had written to all vice-chancellors asking them to implement the central recommendation from French — for a non-statutory code that protects freedom of speech and academic freedom, upholds institutional autonomy, avoids statutory overkill, defines core principles and signals the commitment of universities to the freedom pivotal to their existence.

Last weekend, signalling his frustration, Tehan wrote an opinion piece in The Weekend Australian saying “it’s time for our universities to stand up and defend free speech and freedom of academic inquiry”.

What could be more obvious in terms of principle? What was the problem here?

The minister quoted French to the effect that “even a limited number of incidents seen as affecting freedom of speech can feed into the political sphere”. Yet this has already happened.

French’s recommendation arose from his central findings — there is no “freedom of speech crisis” on Australian campuses but there is a distinct problem.

French referred to the diverse range of rules, codes and policies in the university sector that leave room for “the variable exercise of administrative discretions … capable of eroding the fundamental freedom of speech and that freedom of speech which is an essential element of academic freedom”.

He said “that fact constitutes a risk to those freedoms and makes the sector an easy target for criticism.” In short: no crisis but a problem. Yet the response from the universities has been disingenuous. Incredibly, they seized on the “no crisis” finding as some sort of vindication, overlooking the thrust of the report.

The French report in its appendix 14 had a long series of alleged incidents undermining free speech, as claimed by the Institute of Public Affairs, with the worst offender being the University of Sydney. The report doesn’t stand by the veracity of all such claims and some are being challenged by universities. Yet nobody can read this list and think there is no problem on university campuses.

French is highly critical of the mass of different rules and policies across the sector and this partly inspired his recommendation for “umbrella principles operationalised in a code” — a proposal, he said, that “is not a novel proposition”. It could be adopted, with or without modification, by individual institutions or adopted across the sector.

French leaned over backwards to accommodate the universities. He rejected government regulation for voluntary action. That is no surprise since he is chancellor of the University of Western Australia, which means his report came from within the system.

In effect, he was telling universities to take sensible action now to pre-empt more radical interference. But you can’t help some people.

In bizarre remarks this month the vice-chancellor of Sydney University, Michael Spence, admitted student self-censorship but said the problem wasn’t just university culture because “the whole culture has a problem with the way we’re talking to each other”.

Spence said he was engaging with the French code but you couldn’t just “plop it into your own system” — a truism to be sure.

In a rejection of Spence’s argument, Tehan said the fact a broader cultural problem existed was an even stronger reason “to act and send a clear signal to students and the broader community”.

Universities don’t seem to grasp the damage they have done to themselves in the way they have rejected courses in Western civilisation proposed by the Ramsay Centre. French’s report refers at one point to the notion of “intellectual rubbish”. This is a good description of many of the polemical articles published by activist academics demanding the rejection of such courses in the classic texts.

One Liberal MP told me months ago: “Parents read these articles and are horrified at the idea their kids at university are going to be indoctrinated with the prejudice of these academics.”

The moral and intellectual crisis of the American university system has been documented in brilliant fashion by New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who visits this country next month and whose recent co-authored book, The Coddling of the American Mind, exposes how the culture of suppression and outrage is damaging students. In interviews before his arrival, Haidt’s message to Australian universities has been: “Don’t end up like us, don’t make the mistakes that we made.”

Haidt says of the US: “Our democracy and our universities are in big trouble. We have a new moral culture that gives us constant outrage and makes it much more difficult to talk openly or make jokes.”

Haidt points out that a new campus culture in which academics can be denounced anonymously for “micro aggressions” — supposedly offensive remarks — has damaged the trust, sense of intellectual adventure and scholarly nuance necessary for higher education. Lecturers become less confident and find themselves pitching less inspired material so as not to trouble the most sensitive student in class.

No responsible university leader in Australia could be unaware of the turbulence within the American academy. While the problem on the Australian campus is not of the same dimension, the evidence shows it does exist. The issue is whether Australia will drift towards the US malaise or find the resilience and leadership to counter that trend.

Haidt has been a moving force in creating the Heterodox Academy, designed to confront the pivotal issue: is the purpose of university to engage in the pursuit of truth or to advance the quest for social justice? Haidt has insisted US institutions confront this question and decide on a guiding star.

The chancellors of Australian universities have belatedly displayed moral and intellectual leadership over the French report after the Coalition’s surprise victory. There is no escaping what French said: “The diversity and language of a range of policies and rules give rise to unnecessary risks to freedom of speech and academic freedom. And even a small number of high-profile incidents can have adverse reputational effects on the sector as a whole.”

This had to be addressed. The idea the Morrison government would sit pat and let universities delay and dodge indefinitely was never tenable. There are a lot of lessons to be learned, but will the vice-chancellors read the trends and change their ways?

Read related topics:Freedom Of Speech
Paul Kelly
Paul KellyEditor-At-Large

Paul Kelly is Editor-at-Large on The Australian. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of the paper and he writes on Australian politics, public policy and international affairs. Paul has covered Australian governments from Gough Whitlam to Anthony Albanese. He is a regular television commentator and the author and co-author of twelve books books including The End of Certainty on the politics and economics of the 1980s. His recent books include Triumph and Demise on the Rudd-Gillard era and The March of Patriots which offers a re-interpretation of Paul Keating and John Howard in office.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/freedom-should-be-a-nobrainer/news-story/c83c2ba402a5e7c5aec89460e5872e75