Letters – 7 February 2019

We support free thinking in the academy

I read with interest the feature article “No strings attached?” (3 January), about large donations and gifts to universities and academic independence.

It quotes claims by the Australian National University that the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation sought a “controlling influence” over curriculum design and staff hires. The centre has rebutted these claims point by point in the Australian media. We never sought such a level of influence; nor would we seek in any way to interfere with academic freedom, itself a pillar of Western civilisation. The universities that we are talking to are well aware of this.

The article refers to “prominent right-wing politicians” on our board, but it fails to mention that the board is served in equal numbers by prominent trade union leaders. A former deputy prime minister and leader of the Australian Labor Party left the board last year following his appointment as a state governor. He remains a strong supporter.

The feature refers to the problems posed to universities in the US by donations from the Koch brothers, whose enterprise is described as “a maze of conservative activist efforts both overt and clandestine”. The article then refers to “similar agonies” caused in Australia by the proposed Ramsay donations. I know very little about the Koch endeavours, but to judge from the story’s description they bear little or no resemblance to the activities and intentions of either the late Paul Ramsay or the centre seeking to realise his vision – however “agonising” some may find the prospect of an entirely non--political and optional “great books” course, which is all we are proposing to fund.

Simon Haines
Chief executive
Ramsay Foundation for Western Civilisation

Critical rejoinder

We like a fair critique as much as the next scholar. However, a few clarifications are in order with Martin McQuillan’s rather lopsided and misleading “review” of the book that we co-edited, Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education (Books, 24 January).

In his article, he says “both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton take a bashing” in the book, but not Barack Obama. Trump and Clinton are referenced in Peter Mc-Laren’s afterword in the context of the 2016 US election – they were the candidates running for president, not Obama.

Referring to our contributors, he says it is easy to “adopt a wounded pose”; is the reviewer really referring to 500-plus years of colonisation and genocide as a “wounded pose?” There are four chapters by brilliant scholars that provide ample evidence for its significance and the university’s colonial role, including Marie Battiste (pictured), Sandy Grande, Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Eve Tuck. Did he skip these? Or was he referring to the incisive chapter by Rosalind Gill on the psychosocial injuries of the neoliberal academy and simply dismissing it?

McQuillan says “nowhere does anyone actually explain what they mean” by “neoliberalism”. Neoliberalism in the academy is clearly defined in the very first chapter, by Yvonna Lincoln.

The reviewer dismissively refers to an anecdote describing a -scholar’s resistance to bureaucratic form-filling as “heroic”. The discussion on providing form after duplicate form for submission to an organisational black hole was used as an example of just one of the symptoms of the surveillance culture rampant in higher education. Moreover, if none of us spoke out against or resisted what we perceive to be deleterious changes to the academy for fear we would simply be replaced by “early career scholars”, it would indeed be a race to the bottom.

And reducing Noam Chomsky’s contribution to his anecdote about the frustrations and telling signs of algorithmic automation is just straight up disingenuous.

All that said, we do appreciate the space and resources it took to have our book reviewed.

Marc Spooner
James McNinch

Those in the know

Dennis Farrington seeks to justify the existence of the Office for Students by pointing to such forms of reprehensible behaviour in universities as grade inflation, overuse of unconditional offers and high pay for senior management, and he associates such behaviour with “weak governance and poor management” (“Sector fails to self-regulate its ‘wicked issues’”, Letters, 31 January). He must expect to be asked what kind of governance and management has led to the upsurge of such behaviour – and what effects it has had on the world of work in universities. Would it not provide a more appropriate form of restraint on such practices if academics were permitted to
make responsible quality judgements in the relevant areas?

David Midgley
Cambridge

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