It is difficult to believe the presidents of such prestigious universities as Harvard and Pennsylvania State in the United States should be so threatened they felt they had to resign. This is an American phenomenon far removed from most other countries, and yet there are undertones we would be ill-advised to ignore.
The main spotlight has fallen on Claudine Gay, who resigned as president of Harvard University this month, a mere six months after taking up the reigns. As the first Black president of Harvard, it is not surprising a spotlight has been cast upon her and her performance.
Unfortunately, this has been accompanied by harassment and character assassination.
The issues are far from straightforward, encompassing race, antisemitism, and academic misconduct in the form of plagiarism, all within a febrile political environment. The emphasis placed upon any one of these varies depending on the commentator and their agendas. But underlying all of them is the nature and extent of freedom of speech, and the fine line between freedom and harassment and intimidation of some groups.
In no way can Harvard be compared to practically any other university on account of its immense wealth and its stunning academic reputation. But these bring problems — the power and secrecy of its corporate backers on the Harvard Corporation that runs the university.
Since the Gay incident, leading professors in Harvard have sought to make their voices heard by injecting into the debate academic concerns about the way the corporation power brokers have been making major decisions in secrecy. Threats to withdraw very substantial financial support have had repercussions for academic freedom and decision-making.
A further complication were accusations that Gay had committed plagiarism in her academic writings. On the surface this appears to be a red herring since it had nothing to do with concerns about her alleged antisemitism. And yet it added to the agenda of groups opposing her so-called wokeness, and the liberal leanings of many in the Harvard community.
This brings to the surface the clash between elite colleges whose staff and faculty are left-leaning, and the broader society increasingly dominated by political and populist conservatism.
It also brought home the inconsistent ethical stances of many in Harvard when comparing their pronouncements about the Russia-Ukraine war on the one hand and the Hamas-Israel conflict on the other.
This, in turn, raises the question of whether universities should become aligned with political and/or cultural forces in society. If they do, they jeopardise the opportunity for their own academic staff to question and analyse these issues and possibly emerge with dissenting stances.
This is the heart of academic freedom, which is jeopardised if a university hitches its flag to any one political or cultural mast.
Universities should be characterised by free unencumbered debate and deliberation. And they should be known for this and avoid pandering to prevailing political agendas. This will not always be easy, but it is the hallmark of academic excellence. Intellectual progress should be a hallmark of universities and is dependent on institutional autonomy and academic freedom. And this is what the community outside the university should look for and should expect of universities and their staff.
What lessons can we learn from all this?
One, universities should be acknowledged for their ethical authority, based upon demonstrable ethical values in all their dealings inside and outside the institution.
Two, our problem in this country is a lack of money, resulting in large part from insufficient government funding, and not from vast sums supplied by wealthy private donors. Nevertheless, care is always required that universities and academic staff do not acquiesce too readily in the priorities of external funders. Creative ideas and rigorous scholarship usually come from individuals and not from committees.
Three, universities need to be wary of following political dictates, since these vary from one government to the next. Not only this, but universities also have the role of being critic and conscience of society, a role that should be jealously guarded in a democratic society and that is lost when political demands outweigh all other considerations.
Four, once scholarly rigour is lost, universities have ceded their right to exist as special institutions. This is why the alleged plagiarism on the part of Claudine Gay has been seen as so critical. Unfortunately, accusations of plagiarism are riddled with uncertainty, especially when senior academics are being accused as a prelude to their ouster. The reality is plagiarism is sometimes weaponised for political purposes, and inadvertent minor plagiarism is becoming all too easy to detect with advanced computer tools. That does not justify it, but consistency is proving elusive. But that is another story.
A great deal is expected of universities and their leaders, no matter where they come in the international pecking order, and high-quality leadership is to be embraced and cherished.
— Gareth Jones is Emeritus Professor in anatomy at the University of Otago.
