Here is public comment on and by the main characters in what looks remarkably like an ill-considered and rather crude attempt at a beer hall putsch against academic freedom.
With one of the eight Ramsey Centre directors, Tony Abbott, giving the game away when he revealed that half of the proposed four-person Partnership Management Committee had an expectation that this committee would directly set the Bachelor of Western Civilsation curriculum and hire academic staff.
An expectation which appears confirmed by a statemet attributed to the Ramsey Centre CEO that; “If we feel like it’s not going to go to appreciation of Western Civilization, then we can withdraw the funding.”
Paul Ramsay was a
leading Australian businessman who was passionate about education and wished to
educate future generations in the traditions and practices of western
civilisation: its history, philosophy, literature, science, theology, music,
art and architecture.
He also wanted to create over time a cadre of
leaders – Australians whose awareness and appreciation of their country’s
Western heritage and values, of the challenges that have confronted leaders and
people, with that broad heritage in the past, would help guide their decision
making in the future.
The Ramsay Centre
Scholarships will provide students from across Australia the opportunity to
study western civilisation in this spirit at one of our partner universities.
Places will also be available within the BA degrees to non-scholarship holders. [my yellow highlighting]
ANU announced plans for
a $25,000 a year scholarship associated with a proposed Bachelor of Western
Civilization on Tuesday, subject to student consultation. The announcement
occurred at a forum for staff and student feedback, where more details of the
proposed program were given, though some students voiced concerns.
At $25,000, the
scholarship is the largest ever offered at ANU. It will be larger by just above
15% than the Tuckwell Scholarship, which is set at $21,700 for 2018.....
In a question at the
forum, one attendee quoted the CEO of the Ramsay Centre, Simon Haines, as
saying, “If we feel like it’s not going to go to appreciation of Western
Civilization, then we can withdraw the funding.” [my yellow highlighting]
*The proposed program
comprises 16 core courses, typically taken over three years, with an additional
Honours year sequence open to outstanding students. Students may replace up to
4 of the 16 BWC courses with 4 courses of classical or modern European language
study. Students will be able to take the program alongside other disciplines
offered by the University and (in the case of double-degree students) other
degrees.
*The different courses
within the program consider books from a variety of genres or disciplines
(predominately works of literature, history, philosophy, religion, politics)
but also including architecture, art and music,
*The program will be
capped at 60 students consisting of up to 30 scholarship recipients in the
first year and up to 30 non-scholarship recipients. Up to 10 further
scholarships will be made available to students in the second year of the
degree.
*A distinct aspect of the
proposed program is the use of the ‘Socratic’ approach. The program aims to
create active learners engaged with primary texts in classes of no more than
six to eight students. These small-group discussions will be supplemented by a
series of panel-style discussions where academics from different perspectives
engage in discussion with each other and with students.
*Curriculum
recommendations will be made by the Partnership Management Committee
(consisting of two academic staff from the Ramsay Centre and two academics from
the ANU, one of whom is the Dean of CASS) and considered through the normal ANU
academic processes. [my yellow highlighting]
“The key to
understanding the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation is that it’s not
merely about Western civilisation but in favour of it. The
fact that it is “for” the cultural inheritance of countries such as ours,
rather than just interested in it, makes it distinctive. The fact that respect
for our heritage has largely been absent for at least a generation in our
premier teaching and academic institutions makes the Ramsay Centre not just
timely but necessary. This is an important national project. It’s not every
day, after all, that such a big endowment is dedicated in perpetuity to raising
the tone of our civic conversation…..
A management committee
including the Ramsay CEO and also its academic director will make staffing and
curriculum decisions.” [my yellow highlighting]
Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull will personally intervene in the ANU's decision to pull out of a
controversial new degree in Western Civilisation, saying he wants to talk to
the university's vice-chancellor about it directly.
On Thursday, Mr Turnbull
became the latest Liberal politician to wade into the furore over the course,
which was to be funded by the John Howard-headed Ramsay Centre.
The Prime Minister said
he was "very surprised" by the ANU's decision last week to end six
months of negotiation with the centre and would be speaking to vice-chancellor
Brian Schmidt personally "to get his account of it".
"I find it very
hard to understand why that proposal from the Ramsay Foundation would not have
been accepted with enthusiasm," Mr Turnbull said….
[my yellow highlighting]
Professor Brian Schmidt AC, Vice-Chancellor and President, Australian
National University, writing in The
Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 2018:
The
news came yesterday that Australian National University remains ranked by QS as
number one in Australia and in the top 25 universities in the world. It is a
global reputation we take seriously. One that is built on the basis of academic
autonomy and free academic inquiry.
ANU
has declined donations in the past and will again where we are unable to meet
the wishes of the donor within our normal practices. It is right that we
explore opportunities openly and in good faith, but it is also right that we
let prospective donors know when we cannot provide them with what they want.
Our
decision to end negotiations with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilization
has attracted a great deal of interest. In this case, the prospective donor
sought a level of influence over our curriculum and staffing that went beyond
what any other donor has been granted, and was inconsistent with academic
autonomy.
This
would set a precedent that would completely undermine the integrity of the
University.
While
there has been plenty of noise from all ends about the merits of the study of
Western civilisation, the decision at our end has nothing to do with the
subject matter.
In
fact, the reason we entered into discussions and, no doubt, why we were of
interest to the donor, is our global reputation for scholarship and teaching
across the full breadth of the Western liberal tradition from classics, history
and literature to philosophy, art and music. We offer more than 150 courses in
western scholarship. It would take 18 years of study to complete all of those
courses.
The
opportunity to augment our teaching and research in these areas, along with a
generous scholarship program for students, was an attractive proposition for
ANU and we were grateful to the Ramsay Centre for considering ANU as a partner.
But
at the end of the day, the University operates on the same principles with all
donors, whatever their area of interest. Whether it is funding to support the
study of Persian language or the study of classics, the same principles apply.
The University retains full control of all curriculum and staffing decisions.
This actually gets to the crux of the issue here for us. In this case, the
donor sought a level of influence over our curriculum and staffing that went
beyond any existing arrangements we have.
[my yellow highlighting]
UPDATE
On 1 June The Australian National University
announced that it was withdrawing from negotiations to create a degree program
with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. We took our decision for no
other reason than the Centre's continued demands for control over the program
were inconsistent with the University's academic autonomy.
We anticipated attacks from some for even
contemplating introducing the degree, and from others for being anti-Western
civilisation. What we had less reason to expect was the protracted media
firestorm which has continued daily for nearly a month, in certain sections of
the press, with ANU constantly assaulted for capitulating to pressure from
those hostile to the Ramsay Centre, but without evidence or new information
being offered. Scrutiny from the press is crucial in western democracies in
holding public institutions to account - and universities should not escape it.
But does stating over and over again a false narrative make it true?
We have intentionally refrained from going into the
details of the University's negotiations with the Ramsay Centre, partly because
of our respect for what we had understood to be the confidentiality of those
negotiations, partly to allow the Centre clear air to rethink its position
after exploring options with other institutions, and partly because of our
unwillingness to personalise the arguments in the way that others have been all
too ready to do. But it has become obvious that we need now to further explain
our decision "in the public square".
If ANU had withdrawn from the program simply
because some people within our ranks were uncomfortable, for essentially
ideological reasons, with the very idea of it, we would deserve all the
criticism hurled at us. But that was absolutely not the case. There was,
and remains, strong support across the University for a major enhancement of
our teaching and research capacity in the area of Western civilisation studies.
We are attracted by the wide-ranging liberal arts courses taught in some
prominent American universities, and remain wholly willing to craft a similar
degree course here. Designed to convey understanding and respect for the great
Western intellectual and cultural traditions - albeit in our own way:
analytically rigorous, not triumphalist, and open to comparisons being drawn,
as appropriate, with other major intellectual and cultural traditions.
ANU has long been ranked number one in Australia in
humanities disciplines, and we already teach some 150 undergraduate subjects
addressing Western civilisation themes. The attractiveness of having major new
resources to advance them, is why an enormous amount of effort has been
invested by our staff in developing a very detailed proposal, including a draft
syllabus, in support of a Ramsay gift, and why negotiations for common ground
continued as long as they did.
So what went wrong? We withdrew from negotiations
because there were irreconcilable differences over the governance of the
proposed program, not its substance. We were willing to accept the Ramsay
Centre having a voice in curriculum design and staff appointments. But only a
voice, not a controlling influence. From the outset, however, the Centre has
been locked in to an extraordinarily prescriptive micro-management approach to
the proposed program, unprecedented in our experience, embodied in a draft
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of some 30 pages with another 40 pages of
detailed annexures.
It has insisted on a partnership management
committee to oversee every aspect of the curriculum and its implementation -
with equal numbers from both the Ramsay Centre and ANU, meaning an effective
Ramsay veto.
It
has been unwilling to accept our own draft curriculum, and has refused to
accept our preferred name for the degree ('Western Civilisation Studies'). While
acknowledging that any curriculum would have to be endorsed by the ANU Academic
Board, it has made clear that to be acceptable to the Ramsay Centre it would
have to find favour with the joint management committee - with its
representatives being able to sit in the classes that we teach and undertake
"health checks" on the courses and the teachers.
It became clear that there are fundamental
differences in our respective conceptions of the role of a university.
The Centre has gone so far as to insist on the removal of "academic
freedom" as a shared objective for the program: this remains in the draft
MOU as an ANU objective, not a Ramsay one. For us academic freedom doesn't mean
freedom to underperform or to teach without regard to the disciplines or agreed
objectives of a particular syllabus. But it does mean appointment or retention
of staff on the basis of their demonstrated academic merit, not political or
ideological preference.
A continuing concern has been that the proposed
Ramsay funding is provided short-term, up for renewal in eight years. A
time-limited gift is not in itself problematic, but building a major program
involving the hiring of a dozen staff, and then being held hostage to its
continuation by a donor whose most senior and influential board members appear
to have manifestly different views to ours about university autonomy, is not a
happy position for any university to be in.
Ramsay
CEO Simon Haines, in an interview in last weekend's Fairfax Press (The Age, 23
June), has now at last engaged in a little circumspect distancing from the Tony
Abbott article in Quadrant,
which was very explicit about the controls envisaged. But that dissociation has
been a long time coming, and it remains to be seen whether there will in fact
be a change in the Ramsay board's position. In successive conversations
with the Centre, ANU sought public assurances that Ramsay's position had been
misstated, and that the University's autonomy in actually implementing agreed
objectives would be fully respected. But no reply we have received has
given us any cause to believe that the MOU, with all its over-reach, would be
fundamentally revised. In the result, it was simply impossible on our
side to believe that there was sufficient trust and confidence for the project
to proceed.
We withdrew from the negotiations for governance
reasons of this kind. Boiled down, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation
simply did not trust the ANU to deliver a program acceptable to it, and
consequently asked for controls on the University's delivery of the degree that
ANU could not - and should not - agree to.
ANU, accepts gifts from individuals, foundations,
groups, entities, government agencies, and foreign governments. In no cases are
these gifts allowed to compromise the University's academic integrity, nor are
they allowed to impose on our academic freedom, or autonomy. Regarding
historical gifts surrounding our Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS),
Australia's leading academic capability in its area, let us be clear: if the
Ramsay Centre were to take the same approach to a gift to ANU as the donors to
CAIS, we could reach an agreement in less than 48 hours.
The University has never accepted gifts with such
restrictions as demanded by Ramsay, and under our watch as Chancellor and Vice
Chancellor we never will.
Let us offer this frank assessment as things stand
at the moment, as the Ramsay Centre seeks other partners: to succeed, either
they will have to change its approach and trust its partners to deliver a
program in Western Civilisation studies, or be limited to a university willing
to make concessions on academic autonomy. If the Ramsay Centre and its board
are prepared to understand and respect the autonomy of Australia's national
university, our door remains open.
Professor the Hon
Gareth Evans AC QC and Professor Brian Schmidt AC are Chancellor and
Vice-Chancellor, respectively, of The Australian National University.
[my yellow highlighting]
