Griffith Uni chief Carolyn Evans warns on academic freedom

Don’t rely on government regulation to protect academic freedom and freedom of speech, warns Griffith University chief.

“There is almost always a moral panic about young people, what goes on at universities and the general end of civilisation,” says Griffith University vice-chancellor Carolyn Evans.

Government interference has posed the most significant threat to academic freedom and free speech in Australia and universities should be careful not to rely on regulatory solutions to the dilemmas that arise from managing them, Griffith University vice-chancellor Carolyn Evans has told a workshop on Freedom of Expression at the University of Melbourne.

“Beware of governments bearing solutions,” Professor Evans said. “In a rush to moral panic with respect to a handful of cases, which universities have not always handled well, we need to ensure we do not hand over too much regulatory authority to government.”

She cited the “insidious” instance of a Cold War intervention by ASIO director-general Charles Spry, who in 1952 ordered an investigation into all academics and wrote to then prime minister Robert Menzies about the “inadvisability of employing … lecturers who are like to infect students with subversive doctrines”.

Public debate about universities and free speech had also taken in 1960s and 1970s demonstrations that were anti-conscription, anti-war, anti-apartheid, anti-racist and anti-sexist, but Professor Evans noted “there is almost always a moral panic about young people, what goes on at universities and the general end of civilisation”.

The “political locus” of perceived threats to freedom of speech had changed relatively recently, from the left to the right. She cautioned a principled approach was needed: “both sides need to be careful about this … One never knows when one’s political views will turn into [an] unpopular minority viewpoint”.

In present times, she had “serious concerns … with the notion of government running freedom of speech surveys on campuses as they propose to do. I think that I can cope with the balance that has been struck in requiring universities to demonstrate that their policies protect freedom of speech and academic freedom but giving us the power to do that in various ways as suit our circumstances.

“But it is potentially the not-very-thin edge of the regulatory wedge and we need to be careful not to cede too much authority to government in this realm. They do not have a good track record.”

It was important to remember the fundamental educational mission, “the purposes for which universities are valuable to our society” when considering freedom of speech, academic freedom and their “reasonable limits in light of this”.

In a vigorous classroom debate over immigration policy for example, academic freedom protected the right of protagonists to conflicting views and for making a robust case without facing disciplinary or penalties such as a lower grade; but if racial slurs or threats were introduced a “lecturer would have every right – even an obligation – to intervene” because the debate had degenerated into “ad hominin attacks and threats with no intellectual value”.

Universities were not “vast public squares” and there were circumstances in which free speech could be reasonably limited on campus, such as to prevent physical harm, violence and destruction of property. Proportionality of response should be the guiding principle.

She also raised a number of questions, including whether a group “propounding demonstrably false theories – anti vaxxers or holocaust deniers for example – wish to use the campus for a public event, are universities justified in denying them access if we believe they are using us to cloak themselves in our hard-won respectability?”