Knuckle-draggers? No, we want unis to give us value

Simon Birmingham, a cisgender white male minister in the party of heteropatriarchy, has stopped the free flow of capital from taxpayers to academics. How very dare he!

Academics are outraged that while he was federal education minister, Birmingham blocked funding for right-on projects like “Post-orientalist arts of the Strait of Gibraltar”. Clearly, a democratically elected politician should never interfere with critical ­humanities research on post-orientalism, or music and cultural justice in the post-industrial city, or Soviet cinema, or a history of dude attire 1870-1970. As any non-binary polyamorous drag boi on campus will tell you, the humanities is where it’s at.

Labor accused the former education minister of pandering to “knuckle-dragging right-wing philistines” because he blocked 11 Australian Research Council grants for the humanities. Labor innovation spokesman Kim Carr told The Guardian: “There is no case for this blatant political interference to appease the most reactionary elements of the Liberal and National party.” Refusing to splash cash on totally woke research is just tyrannical reactionary fascism.

Carr did not explain how preventing taxpayer funds being wasted on projects such as “Beauty and ugliness as persuasive tools in changing China’s gender norms” is tantamount to political interference. After all, no one is suggesting the research cannot be undertaken, but simply that few would pay for it if given the choice.

Australians are free to research whatever they like, yet most don’t expect taxpayer funding for pet projects with limited public appeal that offer little to the national interest or human progress. But perhaps Labor is right. Those knuckle-dragging philistines of the Liberal Party are just too reactionary to appreciate the civilising value of splashing $4 million on discretionary research when 116,000 Australians are homeless and the nation is drowning in debt.

Universities Australia chairwoman Margaret Gardner criticised Birmingham for “suppress­ing research in the humanities … on no basis that anybody can see”. I would hazard a guess that many Australians can see why a minister might stop millions being wasted on pointless university research.

The real question is why academics in a position to prevent the immense waste of public money in the university sector are choosing instead to cry poor and demand more.

For decades, our universities have enjoyed taking billions in public funding without answering directly to taxpayers. When questioned about the public interest case for lavish spending on higher education, management trots out motherhood statements and lies by omission.

The big game in town is to convince government ministers that universities are struggling to survive. University executives go to extraordinary lengths to play down institutional wealth when the federal education minister comes to town. The con jobs are legendary. In one staged cri de coeur, a vice-chancellor steered the minister away from newly renovated parts of campus and directed him to dated facilities, including an old elevator filled with graffiti and surrounded by carefully placed rubbish. It’s the stuff of high humour at dinner parties, but the problem is that no one thinks of the struggling taxpayer.

The dated paradigm on campus is the state v the intellectual. Many academics don’t consider themselves public servants and yet their wages are often paid by the public. University executives do not demonstrate a sense of accountability to taxpayers because there is no mechanism by which we can hold them directly accountable. The university sector is buoyed by a sense of entitlement and responds to any sustained demand for accountability with ­absurd appeals to academic autonomy. The term has come to mean the right to take public money without responsibility to the ­public.

The big secret is that Australian universities are immensely wasteful enterprises with numerous departments and bureaucratic units of limited benefit. The hard sciences and technical disciplines are necessary, but the arts and ­humanities could be streamlined without negative impact on the national interest. However, there is little chance that such rationalisation will occur with today’s university leaders and no chance that Labor will encourage it.

Gardner suggested Birmingham’s veto of humanities research was contrary to the government’s avowed support for freedom of speech and Western civilisation. Bravo. Clearly, spending $223,000 of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash on “Post-orientalist arts of the Strait of Gibraltar” has a civilising effect that only a philistine could fail to discern.

The philistine also might not discern the free speech benefits of the “behavioural capability framework” developed while Gardner was the vice-chancellor of RMIT. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the university paid external consultant Mercer $147,895 to produce it. The Australian reported that the BCF included behavioural requirements such as being positive and team-focused. A staff member might be expected to demonstrate that he “embraces opportunities for personal growth” and “displays tolerance and openness to different cultures and experiences”.

How are free speech and scholarly objectivity possible where there is an organisational requirement for staff to display tolerance to different cultures, without management qualifying the term “tolerance”? For example, how might staff criticise cultures that support practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and the death penalty for apostates without being deemed intolerant?

The pressure to conform to political correctness on campus is systemic. As a postgraduate student in the humanities, you are advised to approach academics and journals that support your political point of view. The peer review system is based on bias and insularity. As a result, research projects are becoming increasingly absurd.

In response to Birmingham, the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities called on the government to restore funding because humanities research is “vital to addressing society’s most serious problems”. Super. Might it clarify how “A history of men’s dress from 1870-1970” addresses our most serious problems?

The government’s attempt to stop universities wasting money will be cheered by many Australians, but don’t expect groupthink academics to join the celebration. They’re too busy navel-gazing to party with the philistines.