Sydney University’s Michael Spence keen on course funded by Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation

Sydney University VC Michael Spence is taking a civilised approach to the Great Books war.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence: ‘The notion that we might be entering a new phase of public conversation is scary’. Picture: James Croucher

With their dreaming spires and hushed cloisters, their fondness for rank and love of ceremony, the ­nation’s oldest universities may look a little like baronial strongholds. But in reality they are resolutely — at times belligerently — democratic.

When University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence puts to his academic board a proposed US-style liberal arts course, funded to the tune of $65 million by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, there’s a chance that the course will get the heave-ho from those who want nothing to do with, as they see it, ideologically stained lucre.

Sydney’s academic board, composed largely of the vice-chancellor and his pro vice-chancellors, a raft of deans and heads of school, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate student representatives, is the final arbiter not only of what gets taught but how it gets taught. And it is understood that some members of the board have already declared their opposition to the Ramsay proposal.

Meanwhile, opponents among the 6000 staff and 65,000 students on campus have been described as “vociferous though not particularly numerous”. The vice-chancellor is convinced that most staff members have taken a pragmatic “let’s wait and see what’s actually proposed” position.

During the past few months Spence has had a team, led by philosopher Peter Anstey, devising a curriculum that might work for both the university and the Ramsay Centre. Their work informs a draft memorandum that ultim­ately will go to the board for a vote, but only after a period of internal consultation that, given the ­porous nature of the university, is likely to become very public very quickly.

It’s clear from talking to Spence in his office in a quiet though shadowed corner of the famed Tudor revival quad — a gas faux fire in the hearth, a Sidney Nolan behind his desk, a scatter of Aboriginal and Chinese artworks about the room — that the controversial Ramsay Western civilisation course is being considered, elaborated and finessed behind faculty doors for one reason: Spence likes the idea. He believes a dedicated liberal arts and humanities course would enhance the “personal, moral and intellectual development” of students.

Equally apparent is his frustration at the polarised public debate over the Ramsay Centre offer.

“The proposal is not,” he tells me with the air of a cautious man who has just surprised himself by speaking forcefully, “for a kind of boot camp for preparing brainwashed neocons.”

The Ramsay Centre, funded by an endowment from Paul Ramsay, a businessman and philanthropist who died in 2014, has been compromised by the composition of its John Howard-chaired board. Until May this year, when Kim Beazley resigned as director after his appointment as Governor of Western Australia, the then nine-member board was able to project an acceptably bipartisan public face. It is understood that the Ramsay Centre is seeking a replacement for Beazley with the same political hue. But the task of selling its proposed Western civilisation course, which was controversially spurn­ed in June by the Australian National University, just got a lot harder after prominent board member Tony Abbott’s role in the political assassination of Malcolm Turnbull.

Spence, 56, is an arts and law graduate whose primary field of academic specialisation is intellectual property theory, and our interview begins in a considered, legalistic tone. The opening questions are weighed and considered for an age, as if passing through a cerebral security scan; his answers, when they come, are carefully formulated in large blocks of armour-plated prose.

“We have said to staff at the university that any conversation with Ramsay” — Spence refers to the centre habitually as if it were an individual — “would be guided by a memorandum of understanding about the terms of engagement,” he says. “We currently have a draft memorandum of understanding. So we’ll soon be releasing that draft memorandum in the university.

“We’re committed to being absolutely 100 per cent transparent with this process. Of course the tricky thing is that you’ve got to have some conversations of the ‘How do you think people would respond if we did X?’ kind. Therefore, you need to have a couple of goes at putting this down on a piece of paper before you have a draft memorandum.

“We’re now in the process of doing that but I don’t want to give the impression that we’re secretly stitching up a deal — because we’re not. What we’re doing is putting together a draft memorandum that we think would probably be acceptable to Ramsay and probably acceptable to the university. The memorandum won’t be a definitive ‘yes’. It will say, ‘If we are to enter into an agreement with Ramsay these are the underlying principles.’

“They are about protecting our academic freedom, but at the same time recognising Ramsay’s legitimate interests as funders of scholarships and academic positions at the university.”

When I ask whether the Ramsay Centre would have any academic input, however, the res­ponse is prompt and to the point. “Zero,” Spence says with a smile.

And then, after a pause, he goes on: “We have been clear about this (question of academic autonomy) from the beginning. We’ve submitted a draft course outline which they (Ramsay) like but that would have to be, like all our course outlines, workshopped in the faculties and approved by the academic board; it would be a University of Sydney course. Now when the final course is signed off by the academic board I imagine there’d be some kind of opportunity for Ramsay to say, ‘This is so far from what we’re interested in that we won’t fund it.’ But, of course, we at Sydney could still run the course. The design of the course is up to the University of Sydney.”

The Ramsay Centre says it continues to hold discussions about the proposed course with several other universities in the hope that up to three, ultimately, will take up the proposal. Each partner university would receive about $8m — the money would fund scholarships and new academic positions — for eight years.

When asked for his personal feelings about bringing a US liberal arts-style course to Sydney, Spence warms quickly to the theme. He remains, to crib a line from Yeats, a “smiling public man”; but the smile is more relaxed, more genuine.

“The more high-quality educational offerings we can make available to students the better,” he says. “We have 160 units of study in what you might call Western civilisation. So, for example, we have one of the strongest classical philosophy departments in the world; and to have the opportunity to draw on the incredible intellectual resources of the university, to put together an interesting and challenging great books program, is kind of exciting.” Shifting a little in his seat, he adds with a smile: “In fact, it’s very exciting.”

As Spence’s anticipation has begun to build about the course and its possibilities, so too has his despair over the terms of the public debate. “What’s frustrating at the moment is that neither the far Right nor the far Left want this to happen, for different reasons,” he says. “The far Left don’t want it to happen because they don’t want us to be associated in any way with people who have Tony Abbott and John Howard on their board. The far Right don’t want it to happen because they want to prove that Australian universities are all full of lunatics and the subject of ideological capture and are not places where there is a diversity of views.”

Do you have a diversity of views at Sydney? “I can tell you that we have a diversity of views on almost everything. But we have a very strong position as an institu­tion of not adopting single ­stances on matters of public debate. For example, unlike many corporations, we did not adopt a public position in relation to the same-sex marriage referendum. That was not because people around the university didn’t have strong opinions but because they have a diversity of strong opinions.”

Spence has not entirely discarded his dry jurisprudential manner, but there is a little more spring in his speech now. He is clearly nettled by the tone of the public discussion over the Ramsay proposal, particular when it implies that Sydney may need the course because its own humanities curriculum is lacking. “Where the Ramsay debate drives me crazy is …” he begins, before collecting himself and pausing to recompose the point. “I’ll put it this way: I had a conversation with an otherwise apparently intelligent businessperson who said, ‘I really hope Ramsay gets up because it would be really good for your university.’ We agreed about this and he went on. ‘Because you don’t teach any of this stuff.’

“And I replied, ‘Actually we do; we have 160 units of study, blah blah (as mentioned earlier).’ He said, ‘Yes, but you can’t read Aristotle at your university.’ I said, ­‘Actually there are many opportunities to read Aristotle at the university.’ I asked about his information source and it seemed to be that he had a child at another university and had been reading the papers. I then did something I rarely do in public conversation. After about 10 minutes I had to say: ‘I’m sorry but you’re just wrong.’

“What I think is kind of sad about the Ramsay conversation is the extent to which it demonstrates that truth is the first casualty in the culture wars. That’s a problem for Australia. And Australia has usually been pretty good at avoiding cultural extremism. The notion that we might be entering a new phase of public conversation is scary.”

Spence graduated from Sydney with first class honours in arts (English and Italian) in 1985 and, two years later, with honours in law. The following year he left for Oxford, where he was awarded a doctorate of philosophy in law and a diploma in theology. When appointed vice-chancellor at Sydney in 2008, he was Oxford’s head of social sciences. His first wife, with whom he had five children, died in 2012; in 2015 he married artist Jenny Ihn and they are expecting their third child.

An ordained Anglican priest and, as of last year, a Companion of the Order of Australia, Spence wants the university to play a constructive role in what some describe as a “post-truth” world. “One of the things we are concerned about is the extent to which a concern for evidence is shifting in public discourse,” he says.

“We see that as part of our role. The university is a theatre for the exercise of the independence of the mind: a place where ideas are challenged and tested, but where evidence is called for.”

Recalling the famous axiom of Jacques Derrida that there is nothing outside of text (il n’y a pas de hors-texte) and therefore no external world with which to verify propositions — no truth, according to standard definitions of the term — I ask if all schools of thought at the university are equally committed to the values of logic, warrant and evidence.

“I’m not arguing that there aren’t staff at the university with strongly ideological positions, but in their academic work they are nevertheless subject to the normal processes of peer review and the disciplines that come with that. You’re going to be able to find something loony at any contemporary university, just as you could have at any traditional university. But to say, as some do, that this represents the work of the university as a whole is simply crazy.”

Another criticism that he is keen to chalk up to a misconception is the notion — promoted by Abbott — that any University of Sydney collaboration with the Ramsay Centre would produce a course of pedagogical advocacy for Western civilisation.

“One thing that we’ve made very clear to Ramsay, and that they’ve said they do not want, is that this would not be an assessment of the contribution of Western civilisation in the world; I’m not even sure how you would begin to make such an assessment.

“But students on this course will have the opportunity to encounter — as they do in so many of our courses — the great intellectual resources of what might in the broadest sense be called the Western tradition. And I’m sure that will give them an understanding of a whole body of intellectual resources for which some of them may develop a fondness, and some may remain profoundly critical.”

One thing is clear after an hour with Spence: his commitment to the place of rigorous questioning in the life of the university is firmly and sincerely held. It goes to the core of his belief system. The Western tradition has its origins in the Graeco-Roman and Hebraic-Christian worlds, and Spence insists that neither is above questioning.

“I’m of an orthodox Christian faith,” he says, “and there is much that’s been done in the name of the so-called Western tradition of which I’m profoundly critical. I say this not in betrayal of my cultural patrimony but precisely on the basis of my cultural patrimony, as well as personal commitments.”

Any Western civilisation program at the University of Sydney would be “critical in the fullest sense of the term”, he adds. “Students would be encouraged to think deeply, to ask questions, to explore; and as far as I can tell, that’s what Ramsay wants, too.”

In the early 1990s, at the height of the American culture wars, Western civilisation courses at many Ivy League universities came under fire from students and academics opposed to their emphasis on “dead white males”. A black student journal at Stanford flamed a required course in classics in history with a “message to the racist oppressors”. It was rhetoric of this kind that prompted writer Saul Bellow to declare: “When the Zulus produce a Tolstoy, we will read him.”

Many of these courses were devised early in the 20th century as exercises in elite character formation, and in the postwar years they put down strong roots at universities such as Chicago and ­Columbia. They have since been broadened to include other cultures, more music and science. But the US campus brouhaha of the early 90s stemmed largely from the fact many students were required to study Great Books or masterpieces of Western civilisation courses: they were compulsory. Why the heat in the Ramsay debate, I ask, when its Western civilisation course is merely an ­option?

“It’s even weirder than that,” Spence says. “We’re not talking about a degree. We’re talking about a program. You could do a whole additional major or a combined degree. So these students could do Western civilisation and a minor in diversity studies; or Western civilisation with a major in gender studies.

“A well-rounded student might want to combine a program on Western civilisation with Asian studies, and that would really set them up for the 21st century.”