The week in higher education – 17 October 2019

Environmental scientists must be “allowed to cry” about loss of species and ecosystems and then should be given the emotional support they need to respond effectively, according to a letter by academics published in Science. The researchers from the universities of Exeter and Bristol say that the huge rate of environmental destruction in the world inevitably “triggers strong grief responses in people with an emotional attachment to nature”, yet there was a “pervasive illusion that scientists must be dispassionate observers”. Tim Gordon, lead author of the letter and a marine biologist studying for a PhD at Exeter, said it was “impossible to remain emotionally detached” as a scientist “documenting the destruction of the world’s most beautiful and valuable ecosystems”.

The University of Oxford’s default retirement age policy came under the spotlight after 97-year-old John Goodenough won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Professor Goodenough, who helped to invent the lithium-ion batteries that powered the portable electronics revolution, has been working at the University of Texas at Austin since having “fled” Oxford ahead of compulsory retirement. “It’s foolish to make people retire. I’ve had 33 good years since I was forced to retire in England,” he told The Times. Oxford and Cambridge are the only UK universities that still retain policies setting a default retirement age, and the name Goodenough stands as the perfect rejoinder. The professor did, however, conform to age-related stereotypes by being asleep when news of his Nobel win came through. One of his collaborators, Helena Braga of the University of Porto, recalled telling him: “Wake up, wake up! You won the Nobel prize.”

The whistleblower who was dismissed from the board of UK higher education’s main pension scheme has criticised the lack of transparency about the investigation into her conduct. Sir David Eastwood, chair of the Universities Superannuation Scheme, said that Jane Hutton had “breached a number of her director’s duties owed under company law and contract”. In a letter to university leaders, Sir David, vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, insists that the probe into Professor Hutton is “completely separate” from the investigation of her allegation that she was obstructed in a bid to investigate the fund’s deficit – a major bone of contention in an ongoing industrial dispute. However, the USS has refused to publish the report into Professor Hutton’s conduct, and Professor Hutton rejected the option of reading it in a secure room under observation by a solicitor, without being able to take notes, and then being forbidden to discuss it. “We’re talking about a pension pot worth £50-£70 billion, with a lot of very interested members,” she said. “What is the point of a report that no one is supposed to use or refer to?”

“Student activists at the University of Southern California have called for a long-standing exhibit honouring alumnus John Wayne to be removed, after an interview resurfaced in which the actor said he believes in white supremacy,” The Independent reported. Western actor Mr Wayne, who studied law at USC in the 1920s and died in 1979, said in the 1971 interview with Playboy: “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” He also denied that the US “did wrong” in taking land away from Native Americans, which for critics has confirmed the unflattering appraisal of Mr Wayne’s views on race in Public Enemy’s song Fight the Power. Variety reported that USC’s School of Cinematic Arts has responded by “hosting a discussion between the students and the school in hopes of finding solutions to concerns of racism”, adding that there has been “no word yet on whether USC would consider removing the entire tribute to Wayne”.

“A British academic has claimed that she was secretly paid to have children as part of a eugenicist scheme while working at the London School of Economics in the early 1960s,” the Daily Mail reported. Hilary Rose told the BBC Four series Eugenics: Science’s Greatest Scandal that £50, “worth roughly £1,100 today, would ‘just appear in your payslip’ [after having a child] as part of an incentive for the ‘brightest’ people in society to reproduce”. “The scheme was originally proposed in the 1920s by LSE director William Beveridge, who would later become the creator of the welfare state, who believed the idea was part of ‘positive eugenics’,” the article says. If eugenics is on the comeback trail, the government’s Longitudinal Education Outcomes data on graduate earnings by course and university could come in handy for identifying the right breeding grounds for the “brightest”.