As a young, idealistic academic, I saw an opportunity to clarify values that I assumed most academics held sacred – values such as rationality, civility, and an emphasis on evidence. In 2015 Heterodox Academy, a worldwide association of academics, was founded to defend those same ideals. A couple of years later, I became the coordinator for its classics chapter.
My experience was sobering. Professors wrote me emails saying they supported what I was doing but asking me not to put their name on anything. Others agreed to endorse open letters defending under-fire colleagues – but only anonymously. Inevitably, the group eventually ran out of steam.
I wasn’t the only academic who took up the banner of ‘heterodoxy’ in those years. Dozens of academics spoke up about their experiences. Meticulous studies were conducted showing that English-speaking universities really did have problems to do with free speech and viewpoint diversity. Through it all, we reformers stressed to colleagues that if we didn’t put our own house in order, sooner or later, somebody else would.
Those years represented a window of opportunity – let’s call it the ‘heterodox hiatus’ – for universities to actively engage with efforts at reform. With a few honourable exceptions, most university leaders wasted that chance. Academics who were only trying to help their institutions flourish were ostracised, smeared as ‘far-right,’ or even driven out of their jobs.
That window of opportunity is now closing. In the US, President Trump has issued an immediate ban on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) activities on federally-funded programmes – including at universities. Here in New Zealand, prestigious Marsden grants will no longer be awarded in the humanities and social sciences.
As a humanist, I deplore that decision. But considering the number of substandard and flagrantly partisan projects receiving thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money, it was probably inevitable.
The backlash is now well and truly upon us. In some quarters (especially in the US) it will be excessive, threatening the very values (like academic freedom) it is meant to protect.
That too, I deplore. But the universities have to bear part of the blame.
Dr James Kierstead is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington.This article was first published HERE
My experience was sobering. Professors wrote me emails saying they supported what I was doing but asking me not to put their name on anything. Others agreed to endorse open letters defending under-fire colleagues – but only anonymously. Inevitably, the group eventually ran out of steam.
I wasn’t the only academic who took up the banner of ‘heterodoxy’ in those years. Dozens of academics spoke up about their experiences. Meticulous studies were conducted showing that English-speaking universities really did have problems to do with free speech and viewpoint diversity. Through it all, we reformers stressed to colleagues that if we didn’t put our own house in order, sooner or later, somebody else would.
Those years represented a window of opportunity – let’s call it the ‘heterodox hiatus’ – for universities to actively engage with efforts at reform. With a few honourable exceptions, most university leaders wasted that chance. Academics who were only trying to help their institutions flourish were ostracised, smeared as ‘far-right,’ or even driven out of their jobs.
That window of opportunity is now closing. In the US, President Trump has issued an immediate ban on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) activities on federally-funded programmes – including at universities. Here in New Zealand, prestigious Marsden grants will no longer be awarded in the humanities and social sciences.
As a humanist, I deplore that decision. But considering the number of substandard and flagrantly partisan projects receiving thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money, it was probably inevitable.
The backlash is now well and truly upon us. In some quarters (especially in the US) it will be excessive, threatening the very values (like academic freedom) it is meant to protect.
That too, I deplore. But the universities have to bear part of the blame.
Dr James Kierstead is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington.This article was first published HERE
2 comments:
What do you mean by ‘backlash’? Do you mean the move to repair the situation? Or just the public’s growing lack of respect for universities?
Marsdens are one thing. The RSNZ and its humanities and social sciences panels gave up on retaining gatekeepers capable of judging and defending scholarly merit. The extent of corruption there meant that those Marsdens needed to end immediately. They were a waste of public money. Good riddance.
But now that we have so many mush-for-brains pseudo-scholars comfortably entrenched within the NZ universities, what do we do to fix that larger problem? Won’t that require government intervention? Will new legislation be enough to do the job? Or will a real clean-up require that Councils and VCs and administrators and managers be sacked so that power is wrested away from those who’ve done so much to destroy the universities? (We could add in ALL of the social sciences and institutes/colleges of education too, on the ground that, just like those Marsdens, they have become too corrupt to retain.) Power within a university needs to be simply the power of the individual scholar to contribute to research and teaching at levels needed for Kiwis to contribute to and keep up with international scientific advances. There is simply no honest work within a university which involves ‘power over others’, ‘social agency’, or ‘activism’. If addressing that problem is too dramatic for the govt, then maybe New Zealanders have to accept that the imbeciles and corrupt among us have won? …and that the public must continue to fund them with $100,000, $200,000, $600,000+ in annual salaries and benefits?
I'm glad that Dr Kierstead has at least kept his job. Normally lecturers who value rationality, civility, and an emphasis on evidence get sacked because students supposedly "feel unsafe" around them.
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