Tony Coady: That's the direction which universities are going, there's no
doubt about it, and they're much more autocratic institutions
than they were a
few years ago. I think education in universities doesn't make
full sense
unless, in every area of it, there's this capacity for a certain
kind of
independent thought and criticism, and wide reflection. Now I
think a lot of
the developments we're getting now are moving us away from that.
Tom Morton: Professor Tony Coady, the Director of the Centre for
Philosophy and Public Issues at the University of Melbourne.
Professor
Coady has had plenty of reason recently to ponder on questions of
academic
freedom and independence. A book proposal he put to Melbourne
University
Press was rejected after intervention by senior administrators
within the
university.
Now you'd hardly think that a book about the values of the
university would
be cause for gnashing of teeth and professorial panic. But the
Board of
Melbourne University Press knocked back the book proposal,
amongst other
things because it represented a 'traditional' view of universities.
We'll hear more about the book and the reasons for its rejection
in just a
moment from Tony Coady.
The controversy surrounding the book, tentatively titled 'Why Do
Universities
Matter?' has become something of a cause celebre among academics,
who
see it as symptomatic of a broader climate in universities, a
climate of
paranoia about public criticism.
One of those academics is Meaghan Morris, who herself has spanned
the
worlds of academia and the media, working as a film critic,
writer and
commentator on politics and popular culture.
Meaghan Morris: I think it made an impression on people, partly
because
Tony Coady had been so effective himself in recent years, in
needling the
academic community to think and argue more about what's going on
in this
country. So he was a well-known figure. But secondly, it's the
first case that
appears, on all accounts, to have really stepped over the line
between saying
to academics 'You have to be accountable, you have to produce useful
research in exchange for public money' to saying to them, 'You
have to toe a
definite line, or represent a definite line of argument', and
this is the first case
we've hade that really seems to be flagrantly supporting the
notion that
academics now have to represent points of view that are approved
of by
management.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s17692.htm
Phil Graham
pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html