The last days of academic freedom

I strongly believe that academics should have the full freedom to have their say no matter how unpalatable or unpopular their views are. They should not be controlled or held back from expressing their opinions. I think their freedom to hold their views, even in the most controversial nature, can only be beneficial to their students.

University students should be able to debate, discuss, understand and comprehend various different views and then make up their own mind based on their educated and logical reasoning.

I know it has been very common in the Third World to have their academics under tight leash as not to influence their students to move away from the establishment. These governments are not keen to have a student population that will question its every policies and act as a check and balance against corruption and abuse of power.

These governments realise the power of student revolts – as have been seen from Paris to Bangkok in recent decades.

In Malaysia for example, there is the notorious Universities and University Colleges Act which bans students from participating in political debates and politics. Academics here are compelled to sign a pledge to the government not to be anti-establishment. And they also have university regulations that effectively control their academic freedom.

This is the situation throughout in the Third World – the fledgling democracies. I would have thought it was very much different in the west, especially in the UK. But is that the case really?

Even in the UK, they have laws, such as the Race Relations (Amendment) Act, which among others prohibits academic freedom. And its very first victim is a university lecturer who has been suspended pending his disciplinary hearing after expressing his views on some controversial matter.

Prof Frank Ellis, from the University of Leeds, has been suspended after claiming that black people were less intelligent than whites in an interview with a student newspaper.

The good professor has apparently backed a theory set out in The Bell Curve, a book published in 1994 by Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which claimed that the white people had higher average IQs than blacks.

No doubt a controversial issue from the professor and this prompted demonstrations from the students at the university, calling for Ellis to be dismissed.

The university initially stated that Ellis had a right to express his views. Furthermore there is no evidence to show that his beliefs had led him to discriminate against students or colleagues.

However, yesterday the university said that it had a duty to apply the Race Relations Act to promote racial harmony in the UK, and as such the suspension and the disciplinary proceedings.

For me the Act was just another tool by the government to be politically correct and win votes to continue ruling.

So here too in the UK, just like in the Third World, the government is placing barricades to bar academic freedom.

This Ellis situation could have been handled in a far better manner. The university could have distanced itself from Ellis’ comments while stating that he was entitled to have his own opinion.

Alternatively, it could have had other academics disprove Ellis’ theory. Surely they could have found some academic to disprove this controversial theory.

Similarly, the student newspaper too could have had other contributors to debunk this theory.

I won’t blame the protesting students as I think protesting is a democratic process. However the students, led by its union, could have turned this into an educational experience by holding debates, seminars and even a talk by Ellis and a proponent.

But the bottom line is that it is the UK government which had interfered and limited the freedom of expression by passing the Race Relations Act in 2000.

It is very sad indeed that governments everywhere are the same. These are politicians who aspire to continue leading and to remain popular, they won’t mind introducing politically correct policies and inane laws that will keep eroding our freedom to think, express and act.

And at the same time they also don’t want a thinking society to question them. And where else is a good place to begin if not the universities?