On meddling, merit and accountability

The situation that Mark Steven describes in his opinion article ¡°The political becomes personal when a grant is killed by a minister¡±, outlining how his personal life was affected by an Australian minister¡¯s veto of funding for his research proposal, is a frustrating one, but not one that illustrates, I think, loss of academic freedom.

The various statements on academic freedom discuss freedom to pursue research, and freedom of discourse, without punishment or censorship. They do not mention any right to receive public funds. The funder ¨C the government ¨C is entitled to make recipients accountable. If the law allows ministerial review, then that is part of the accountability mechanism.

The real problem, in Steven¡¯s own words, lies here: ¡°Winning a large research grant, I was told by my head of school, was the only way to make my position permanent.¡±

The university has abandoned the concept of appointment on academic merit and replaced it with appointment according to income-earning potential. This is a decision not of the government but of the self-governed university.

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In Australia, the shifts to a more overtly commercialised university began with the Dawkins reforms of the late 1980s, which made universities more open to working-class people, shifting university attendance from 15 per cent to 40 per cent. But the way in which universities responded to these demands (by looking at their academics as money-producing units of labour) was arguably one possible response. The question is: Was it the only possible response?

davidweek
Via timeshighereducation.com

The , an association of learned societies that work together to promote the interests of the arts and humanities in the UK, expresses its serious concern at the vetoing by Simon Birmingham, when he was education minister of Australia, of applications to the Australian Research Council. As revealed in the Senate¡¯s estimates committee on 25 October, and detailed in Times Higher Education , the minister ¡°in an extraordinary departure from protocol¡± blocked the allocation of some ?2.3 million in grants. The 11 blocked projects had been rigorously peer-reviewed, considered by a selection advisory committee drawn from the ARC¡¯s college of experts, and recommended by the ARC¡¯s CEO for funding.

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The AHA condemns political interference in decisions over research grant funding, and in particular the attack on the arts and humanities inherent in the ministerial veto, which affected only humanities grant applications. The AHA further expresses solidarity with the 11 research teams from across Australia whose funding applications were secretly vetoed despite the ARC¡¯s recommendation to fund them.

Susan Bruce (Keele 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ), co-chair of the Arts and Humanities Alliance
Martin Halliwell (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Leicester), co-chair of the Arts and Humanities Alliance
Claire Squires (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Stirling), chair of the Association for Publishing Education
Lucinda Matthews-Jones (Liverpool John Moores 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ) and Jamie Wood (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Lincoln), co-conveners of History UK
Simon McVeigh (Goldsmiths, 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of London), president of the Royal Musical Association
Claire Taylor (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Liverpool), president of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland
David Wood (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Sheffield), president of the Society for Latin American Studies
Marion Schmid (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Edinburgh), president of the Association of 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ Professors and Heads of French
Robert Stern (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Sheffield) and Fiona Macpherson (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Glasgow), president and president-elect of the British Philosophical Association
Alex Thomson (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Edinburgh), chair of 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ English
Bettina Schmidt (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Wales Trinity Saint David), president of the British Association for the Study of Religions
Maureen Galbraith (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Glasgow), Economic History Society
Jennifer Richards (Newcastle 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ), chair of the English Association¡¯s HE Committee
Michelle Sheehan (Anglia Ruskin 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ), Linguistics Association of Great Britain
Judith Still (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Nottingham), Society for French Studies
Brian Ward (Northumbria 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ), chair of the British Association for American Studies
Jonathan Hale (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Nottingham), Architectural Humanities Research Association
Naomi Standen (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Birmingham), president of the British Association for Chinese Studies
Greg Woolf (Institute of Classical Studies, 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of London), chair of the Council of 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ Classical Departments
Graham Smith (Newcastle 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ), Oral History Society
Margot Finn (UCL), president of the Royal Historical Society
Judith Pallot (51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Oxford), president of the British Association for Russian and Slavonic Studies

Steady as she goes

I read with interest the article by Anna Notaro in which she criticises Nobel prizewinner Donna Strickland for her lack of interest in being a role model for women in science (¡° A duty to fight for equality¡±, 15 November), and also a letter by Jane Norman and others in the same edition of THE in which Norman et al. criticise Notaro for arguing that Strickland, just because she is a woman in science and has won a Nobel prize, has a duty to promote gender equality (¡°Prize enough¡±, Letters). But I thought that both Notaro and her critics missed the main point of Strickland¡¯s achievement, which was that Strickland, although now a Nobel laureate, was not already a professor.

As reported in THE on 11 October, Strickland said that she had often been approached by her university and asked if she would like to be made a professor, but she had always turned this offer down (¡°More than a woman: Nobel laureate wary of gender focus¡±, News). Rather oddly, Strickland said that she could see no advantage in taking this promotion but preferred to stay as she was, a senior lecturer. Perhaps this then, as Catherine Hakim has argued for some time now, has some bearing on the debate over why there are so few female professors relative to men in higher education? For whatever reason, it seems that Strickland simply preferred to stay as she was and to be left alone to get on with her groundbreaking work in physics.

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Kenneth Smith
Reader in criminology and sociology
Bucks New 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ

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