The current controversy surrounding Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist at Barnard College in the US, highlights important questions about academic freedom. Essentially, it seems El-Haj’s work suggests that prevailing ideas about the ancient Israelites are the product of modern Israeli politics as much as archaeological or genomic discoveries. Predictably, especially given El-Haj’s Palestinian background, she has come under fire from those who see this as a challenge to the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and the usual polarisation of opinion has ensued. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that there are currently two online petitions, one to deny El-Haj tenure and another to grant it to her.
The situation is complicated by the fact that many of the criticisms are academic: El-Haj is alleged to lack knowledge of Hebrew, for example, and to employ an unscientific ‘social constructivist’ approach. This means her supporters have been caught between a straight ‘academic freedom’ defence, and a substantive defence of her work. Ultimately, it is impossible to separate the two. If someone’s work is entirely without academic merit, there is no meaningful argument for academic freedom: she can be dismissed from a university to pursue her work independently. Things are rarely so clear-cut, though: often academics disagree about what is a worthy line of enquiry, and thus the notion of academic freedom depends on colleagues granting one another the benefit of any reasonable doubt.
Where things get really complicated, as in this case, is when political disagreements take an academic form, and especially when non-academics weigh in, as with the petitions. Fellow anthropologist Paul Rabinow, who is sympathetic to El-Haj, has nonetheless refused to sign the petition in favor of granting her tenure, on the quite reasonable grounds that “Petitions about people’s tenure cases are completely out of order…It’s a breakdown of the standards of debate. I guess the alternative then is demagoguery.” The Chronicle also quotes mathematician and ‘science warrior’ Norman Levitt, who has signed the petition against El-Haj, arguing that “It is wiser to acknowledge that the educated public has something to say about “professional” matters... than to fill the air with pompous resentment when such criticism arises”. Levitt has a point, too, inasmuch as the public has a right to criticize and dispute the merits of academic work. But to suggest that academics should be influenced by public opinion when assessing the work of their colleagues is indeed to open the door to demagoguery.
The whole point of academic freedom, as opposed to simple free speech, is that it is both more demanding (because framed by an academic discipline) and to an extent insulated from the outside world (because criticisms from outside that discipline, however popular, are not relevant). However acrimonious their disagreements might be, academics should have the confidence and integrity to maintain their professionalism amid controversy. As long as El-Haj’s colleagues agree her work has merit - which seems to be the case - she should enjoy full academic freedom. Others are free to challenge her work and disagree with her politics, but the dispute over her tenure is the wrong arena for such arguments.
Dolan Cummings
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Thursday, 23 August 2007
Arresting thinking
German sociologist Andrej Holm has just been released on bail by German federal police. After his arrest under paragraph 129 of the German Penal Code on suspicion of “membership of a terrorist organisation”, he was held in solitary confinement for a week, only being allowed out of his cell for one hour a day. His home and office were searched, his mail intercepted, and his defence lawyers still don’t have access to the evidence being used against him. What was Holm’s crime? Apparently, he used the word “gentrification”.
In what has to be one of the most absurdly Orwellian attacks on academic freedom this year, Holm and another academic were apparently targeted on the basis of the police’s amateur discourse analysis that found “key words and phrases” in common between their academic work and the leaflets of a radical group opposed to gentrification, militante gruppe (mg). Apparently, they both use such seditious terms as “gentrification”, “inequality” and “imperialism”, and according to American professor Peter Marcuse the police’s 80,000-page dossier (so far not shared with the defence) also compares the use of punctuation and abbreviation. The evidence presented so far really is as thin as whether Holm uses “G8” or “G-8”. Apparently the similarities are “striking, and not to be explained through a coincidence”.
The police have been sure to pepper these pathetic accusations with accusations of “comprehensive conspiratorial contacts and meetings” with “Florian L.”, another arrestee, but these are equally fatuous. The fact that Holm didn’t take his mobile phone to meetings supposedly adds to their “conspiratorial” nature, and he is also accused of attending the protests against the 2007 G8 Summit in Heiligendamm – along with about 25,000 others. The most striking charges, though, relate directly to the academic qualifications of the accused. Dr “B”, the academic arrested alongside Holm who isn’t even accused of writing anything inflammatory – it’s simply that he is “intellectually in a position to compile the sophisticated texts of the militante gruppe” and “as [an] employee in a research institute has access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts”. If the capacity to write a document and access a library is now grounds for arrest, then millions are potentially at risk of such treatment, and academics are signing an open letter demanding their colleagues’ release.
Many academics choose to devote their energies to assisting the state, developing problem-solving analyses to combat “extremism” and “terrorism” and other government objectives. These individuals are left alone while those more sceptical academics whose work openly criticises the status quo - while never advocating violence- are subject to criminal prosecution. The heavily politicised nature of this assault on academic freedom is clear. Academic freedom means academics must be at liberty to study what they please and publish what they think after following a rigorous process of research and peer review by which the academic community regulates itself. It also means a certain distancing from the possible consequences of the research. Academics can’t legitimately be held responsible for what’s done with their work in the public, political sphere, since this would stifle their pursuit of knowledge and truth. However unpalatable the truth might be, its pursuit is the specialised role of the academic and its value to society is recognised in the very idea of academic freedom.
Academic freedom doesn’t shield academics from the consequences of the actions they undertake outside the profession, such as engaging in political or criminal activity – in these spheres they’re subject to the same rough-and-tumble debate or judicial sanctions as anyone else. But it does mean that even if Holm’s work is being used by mg, and even if he knows it, he can still publish and not be damned. It does mean that neither Dr “B” nor anyone else can legitimately be harrassed for having a PhD and access to a library, just in case he provides some intellectual grounding for a radical group, or anyone else. To hold Holm or “B” responsible for what mg do makes no more sense than holding Karl Marx responsible for Josef Stalin’s brutal inversion of the emancipatory promise of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, or holding the moral philosopher Adam Smith responsible for Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. The capacity to think should never be criminalised.
Lee Jones
In what has to be one of the most absurdly Orwellian attacks on academic freedom this year, Holm and another academic were apparently targeted on the basis of the police’s amateur discourse analysis that found “key words and phrases” in common between their academic work and the leaflets of a radical group opposed to gentrification, militante gruppe (mg). Apparently, they both use such seditious terms as “gentrification”, “inequality” and “imperialism”, and according to American professor Peter Marcuse the police’s 80,000-page dossier (so far not shared with the defence) also compares the use of punctuation and abbreviation. The evidence presented so far really is as thin as whether Holm uses “G8” or “G-8”. Apparently the similarities are “striking, and not to be explained through a coincidence”.
The police have been sure to pepper these pathetic accusations with accusations of “comprehensive conspiratorial contacts and meetings” with “Florian L.”, another arrestee, but these are equally fatuous. The fact that Holm didn’t take his mobile phone to meetings supposedly adds to their “conspiratorial” nature, and he is also accused of attending the protests against the 2007 G8 Summit in Heiligendamm – along with about 25,000 others. The most striking charges, though, relate directly to the academic qualifications of the accused. Dr “B”, the academic arrested alongside Holm who isn’t even accused of writing anything inflammatory – it’s simply that he is “intellectually in a position to compile the sophisticated texts of the militante gruppe” and “as [an] employee in a research institute has access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts”. If the capacity to write a document and access a library is now grounds for arrest, then millions are potentially at risk of such treatment, and academics are signing an open letter demanding their colleagues’ release.
Many academics choose to devote their energies to assisting the state, developing problem-solving analyses to combat “extremism” and “terrorism” and other government objectives. These individuals are left alone while those more sceptical academics whose work openly criticises the status quo - while never advocating violence- are subject to criminal prosecution. The heavily politicised nature of this assault on academic freedom is clear. Academic freedom means academics must be at liberty to study what they please and publish what they think after following a rigorous process of research and peer review by which the academic community regulates itself. It also means a certain distancing from the possible consequences of the research. Academics can’t legitimately be held responsible for what’s done with their work in the public, political sphere, since this would stifle their pursuit of knowledge and truth. However unpalatable the truth might be, its pursuit is the specialised role of the academic and its value to society is recognised in the very idea of academic freedom.
Academic freedom doesn’t shield academics from the consequences of the actions they undertake outside the profession, such as engaging in political or criminal activity – in these spheres they’re subject to the same rough-and-tumble debate or judicial sanctions as anyone else. But it does mean that even if Holm’s work is being used by mg, and even if he knows it, he can still publish and not be damned. It does mean that neither Dr “B” nor anyone else can legitimately be harrassed for having a PhD and access to a library, just in case he provides some intellectual grounding for a radical group, or anyone else. To hold Holm or “B” responsible for what mg do makes no more sense than holding Karl Marx responsible for Josef Stalin’s brutal inversion of the emancipatory promise of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, or holding the moral philosopher Adam Smith responsible for Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. The capacity to think should never be criminalised.
Lee Jones
Friday, 27 July 2007
A Danish denier and irate Israelis
The recent decision by the Danish Arts Council to grant research funding to a holocaust denier has attracted criticism from commentators in Israel. This is both baffling and alarming when you consider that the subject of the student’s study is the involvement of Danes in Hitler’s SS, and not the existence or otherwise of the Final Solution. There is no need here to extrapolate from the particular abhorrence of holocaust denial, the legitimacy of the moral indignation that it provokes, and the need for it to be fought wherever it raises its ugly head. But it must be fought on the proper grounds, using the proper tools; and that is the ground of open and informed debate, using the tool of reasoned argument. What is not acceptable is the attempt to suppress unfavourable beliefs through legislation or through the refusal of funds for academic study.
The fact is that morality and moral censure, no matter how justified, have no say in the process of allocating research funding. It is worth remembering that some of the greatest advances in human history have been the product of research considered heretical or immoral at the time. In the context of fund allocation, the only relevant criterion is the academic merits of the scholar's submission. This doesn’t mean that, free from the shackles of moral oversight, any offensive crackpot theory may count on megabucks for its investigation as, clearly, part of what it means to have academic merit is not to fly in the face of extensively researched historical data. If the Danish student in question had attempted to get money for a project on holocaust denial, it would have been rejected on this basis.
But the fact is, he did not. His submission wasn’t a crackpot theory, but a legitimate area of study. It was merely his incidental belief in an offensive theory that has attracted so much controversy. Not only is this idea absurd (should hard-line but non-violent Muslims be barred from studying the ecology of the Galapagos Islands? Are anti-immigration campaigners to be denied access to Quantum Theory?), but it is hugely dangerous and self-defeating for a thriving democracy. The moment the determination of government funding for students depends on the applicant’s personal beliefs is the moment academic freedom wheezes its last breath, to be replaced by a stultifying and oppressive conformity in the academic community - supposedly the vanguard in thought and attitude - which would then suffuse society as a whole. The fact that such obvious dangers are lost on the detractors of the Danish Arts Council’s decision is worrying, and indeed hypocritical given the much-lamented boycott by British institutions that Israel’s academics are currently enduring. So it seems that denial and myopia are the order of the day.
Beau Hopkins
The fact is that morality and moral censure, no matter how justified, have no say in the process of allocating research funding. It is worth remembering that some of the greatest advances in human history have been the product of research considered heretical or immoral at the time. In the context of fund allocation, the only relevant criterion is the academic merits of the scholar's submission. This doesn’t mean that, free from the shackles of moral oversight, any offensive crackpot theory may count on megabucks for its investigation as, clearly, part of what it means to have academic merit is not to fly in the face of extensively researched historical data. If the Danish student in question had attempted to get money for a project on holocaust denial, it would have been rejected on this basis.
But the fact is, he did not. His submission wasn’t a crackpot theory, but a legitimate area of study. It was merely his incidental belief in an offensive theory that has attracted so much controversy. Not only is this idea absurd (should hard-line but non-violent Muslims be barred from studying the ecology of the Galapagos Islands? Are anti-immigration campaigners to be denied access to Quantum Theory?), but it is hugely dangerous and self-defeating for a thriving democracy. The moment the determination of government funding for students depends on the applicant’s personal beliefs is the moment academic freedom wheezes its last breath, to be replaced by a stultifying and oppressive conformity in the academic community - supposedly the vanguard in thought and attitude - which would then suffuse society as a whole. The fact that such obvious dangers are lost on the detractors of the Danish Arts Council’s decision is worrying, and indeed hypocritical given the much-lamented boycott by British institutions that Israel’s academics are currently enduring. So it seems that denial and myopia are the order of the day.
Beau Hopkins
Thursday, 14 June 2007
In a further case of the internet providing new opportunities but also challenges for academic freedom, Prof David Colquhoun of University College London has struck a victory for academic freedom. It is not worth retelling the whole story (it would inevitably take on the tone of playground tittle-tattle - "he said and then she said and then teacher did and then what happened was..." - best to read it in The Guardian), but suffice to say that hopefully the outcome of this case will set a precedent: simply because an academic's potentially controversial, offensive, or even subversive words are spoken via the medium of a webpage hosted by their own institution, this does not justify curbs on their autonomy to pronounce on important matters.While on the one hand we can see cases such as these as being merely teething problems to do with the recent advent of blogging, social networking and the like - and there must be some truth to this - the prevalence of such cases, of which only a tiny sample have been documented on Speaking our Mind , indicates a wider culture of unfreedom in the academic sphere.
A further element which is indicative of this culture: as Ben Goldacre correctly notes in The Guardian, the appeal to authority (the Provost of UCL and the law) made by Colquhoun's antagoniser was pretty much immediate. That is to say, the plaintiffs in this case evidently didn't bother to engage with Prof Colquhuon at all, instead putting legal pressure on the university to create the conditions in which Colquhoun would have to remove the offending post, or even take down his whole blog.
Of course, not all cases are as clear-cut as this one, which is why attempts to clarify what we mean by academic freedom, versus free speech in general or employment rights in particular, are essential (1, 2). Nevertheless, Prof Colquhouns' intransigence in this case remains an example to follow.
Alex Hochuli
Monday, 11 June 2007
Bully for you!
Josie Appleton's post attracted a number of comments and was reproduced with dismay on the Bullied Academics blog. The post had argued that the Sal Fiore case championed by Bullied Academics was not really a case of academic freedom, since Fiore had been disciplined for maligning his bosses rather than for the content of his work. In the comments, Lee Jones quite reasonably argues that even if this is not an academic freedom issue, employees should be free to criticise their bosses. While, legally, employers may be entitled to sack employees they judge to be harming their interests, it is certainly in the spirit of this blog to argue that they should err on the side of tolerance. Depending on the job, of course, there may come a point when free speech leads inevitably to the sack - Josie Appleton gave the example of a deputy company director publicly disagreeing with his boss; similarly, everyone understands that civil servants' freedom of speech is constrained by their position.
Academic freedom forms an important exception to the very basic rule that employers can sack whoever they want, but the point of the original post was that not everything an academic says comes under the rubric of academic freedom, or even ordinary toleration. Whatever the merits of Sal Fiore's case - about which I make no comment here - it would actually demean free speech to argue that people should be protected from the reasonable consequences of unprofessional or abusive speech, for example. There comes a point when it is fair enough for an employer to sack someone for expressing views that are incompatible with the job, or expressing views in such a way that is incompatible with the job. As long as state sanctions are not involved, the employee keeps his freedom of speech, but loses his job. It's a hard-knock life.
Again though, academic freedom is sufficiently important that it must be defined generously enough to give the benefit of the doubt to academics and prevent university or other authorities from silencing people on spurious grounds: as a rough guide, it is legitimate to sack a lecturer for hurling racist abuse at students, but not for espousing views deemed to be 'racially offensive'. Clearly such distinctions depend on a certain degree of good faith. Another problem thrown up by this case, then, is the shrill rhetoric about 'bullying', 'fascists' and 'fourth rate administrators'. It is telling that while Sal Fiore accused his university of bullying, a disciplinary letter from the university accused him of 'inappropriate and aggressive behaviour'. This spectacle of accusation and counter-accusation is the unedifying consequence of a legalistic and bureaucratic culture in universities, which is utterly at odds with academic freedom. For academics who feel pushed around by their bosses to style themselves as victims of bullying is counterproductive, since in the end it can only exacerbate the bureaucratisation of universities by entrenching anti-bullying codes and procedures. What is needed instead is a robust defence of academic freedom as a collective enterprise marked by thoughtful engagement with the ideas of others.
Dolan Cummings
Academic freedom forms an important exception to the very basic rule that employers can sack whoever they want, but the point of the original post was that not everything an academic says comes under the rubric of academic freedom, or even ordinary toleration. Whatever the merits of Sal Fiore's case - about which I make no comment here - it would actually demean free speech to argue that people should be protected from the reasonable consequences of unprofessional or abusive speech, for example. There comes a point when it is fair enough for an employer to sack someone for expressing views that are incompatible with the job, or expressing views in such a way that is incompatible with the job. As long as state sanctions are not involved, the employee keeps his freedom of speech, but loses his job. It's a hard-knock life.
Again though, academic freedom is sufficiently important that it must be defined generously enough to give the benefit of the doubt to academics and prevent university or other authorities from silencing people on spurious grounds: as a rough guide, it is legitimate to sack a lecturer for hurling racist abuse at students, but not for espousing views deemed to be 'racially offensive'. Clearly such distinctions depend on a certain degree of good faith. Another problem thrown up by this case, then, is the shrill rhetoric about 'bullying', 'fascists' and 'fourth rate administrators'. It is telling that while Sal Fiore accused his university of bullying, a disciplinary letter from the university accused him of 'inappropriate and aggressive behaviour'. This spectacle of accusation and counter-accusation is the unedifying consequence of a legalistic and bureaucratic culture in universities, which is utterly at odds with academic freedom. For academics who feel pushed around by their bosses to style themselves as victims of bullying is counterproductive, since in the end it can only exacerbate the bureaucratisation of universities by entrenching anti-bullying codes and procedures. What is needed instead is a robust defence of academic freedom as a collective enterprise marked by thoughtful engagement with the ideas of others.
Dolan Cummings
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Back to the boycott
Delegates at the first conference of the new University and College Union in Bournemouth, England, have voted to support a call by Palestinian trade unions for a boycott of Israeli academe. The motion was passed by 158 votes to 99. The full text of the boycott call will be sent to all branches of the union for information and discussion.
Does this give you a sense of déjà vu? If so, it’s not surprising. Barely a term passes without someone in Britain calling for a boycott of Israeli academics, or Israeli goods and Israeli films. Old-fashioned boycotts of products, such as oranges from South Africa or tea from China, have always been problematic: they encourage a passive form of solidarity, and it is ridiculous to believe that our shopping choices can really impact on people’s struggles for democracy elsewhere. But boycotts of academia are especially problematic. They are about slapping an embargo on ideas and arguments. Academic boycotts are an insult to academic freedom and free speech, and they negate the idea of the university as a space for open debate.
The full text of this article is published on spiked.
Nathalie Rothschild
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Real academic freedom
Academics should be free to call into question our most cherished beliefs - to slaughter a whole herd of sacred cows, if that's what is required. Critical inquiry is the starting point for stable and enduring knowledge about the world, and that often means upsetting people.
But academic freedom doesn't mean that academics can say whatever they like, whenever they like. Academic freedom doesn't mean freedom to swear at their students in class, just as it doesn’t mean freedom to behave badly at dinner parties. There are certain standards and restrictions that academics should be expected to comply with, given their position as professional - and adult - members of society.
So that is why the case of Sal Fiore, a senior lecturer in computing at Wolverhampton, sacked for criticising his employers online, is not really an academic freedom issue. In an online discussion forum, Fiore linked Wolverhampton to bullying allegations, and he also conributed to a blog, 'Bulliedacademics.blogspot.com', discussing his university. Heretical books are one thing, but this is an academic behaving like his students on Facebook, who moan about people they don't like.
Academic freedom means something very specific: the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. This is inherently valuable, and can be exempted from normal administrative and professional regulations. The deputy director of a company would not expect to keep his job if he criticised the ideas of the top director. This is not the case in academia, a sphere based on the free contest of ideas. But an academic could expect the sack if he criticized his boss's hair colour or personality, which is not a matter of ideas at all, but merely a matter of bad behaviour.
So defend academic freedom - for academics that know the difference between ideas and tittle tattle.
Josie Appleton
But academic freedom doesn't mean that academics can say whatever they like, whenever they like. Academic freedom doesn't mean freedom to swear at their students in class, just as it doesn’t mean freedom to behave badly at dinner parties. There are certain standards and restrictions that academics should be expected to comply with, given their position as professional - and adult - members of society.
So that is why the case of Sal Fiore, a senior lecturer in computing at Wolverhampton, sacked for criticising his employers online, is not really an academic freedom issue. In an online discussion forum, Fiore linked Wolverhampton to bullying allegations, and he also conributed to a blog, 'Bulliedacademics.blogspot.com', discussing his university. Heretical books are one thing, but this is an academic behaving like his students on Facebook, who moan about people they don't like.
Academic freedom means something very specific: the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. This is inherently valuable, and can be exempted from normal administrative and professional regulations. The deputy director of a company would not expect to keep his job if he criticised the ideas of the top director. This is not the case in academia, a sphere based on the free contest of ideas. But an academic could expect the sack if he criticized his boss's hair colour or personality, which is not a matter of ideas at all, but merely a matter of bad behaviour.
So defend academic freedom - for academics that know the difference between ideas and tittle tattle.
Josie Appleton
Thursday, 17 May 2007
It's NOT just academic
The latest efforts to restrict the freedom of bloggers come not from authoritarian governments or oversensitive lobby groups, but university administrators. Increasing numbers of academics are being disciplined for criticising their bosses, or other colleagues, on blogs like Bullying of Academics in Higher Education, other online forums or even in emails. As Dennis Hayes of Academics for Academic Freedom tells this week's Times Higher Education Supplement, 'Despite continually promoting the supposed benefits of new technology, in reality universities fear it. Blogs, simple emails or discussion groups and podcasts are new forms in which academics and students can explore ideas freely without permission from any authority. [University managements] view academic freedom of speech as something that happens in the classroom and not something that is to be tolerated elsewhere.' In truth, academic freedom cannot be limited to classrooms, but depends on the more general freedom to speak freely in a variety of contexts, blogs included.
Dolan Cummings
Dolan Cummings
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