Cambridge Dons Smell Academic Freedom Under Threat. (February 5, 2009)

On December 20, 2006 TFW reported:

On November 29 by a vote of 730 to 456 Oxford dons rejected plans that would have brought academic self-rule to an end and handed decision-making at the university to outside business leaders. However the matter was then subjected to a postal ballot of 3,770 members of the university's academic, library and administrative staff.
    The reforms would have given lay members from outside the university a narrow majority on a slimmed down governing council. The current 26-member council, with four lay members, would have been replaced by a 15-place council, with eight outside members including the chairman, who would be the university chancellor, Lord Patten (see below), for the first five years.
    In fact 2,537, i.e. 67.3% of those eligible did cast a vote, and the results, tallied yesterday, were 1,540 (60.7%) against the plans, 997 (39.3%) for the reorganisation.

Nicholas Bamforth, a fellow in law at the Queen's College, Oxford, has written a critique of the rejection of the proposed governance changes for The Guardian which makes observations of some cogency for the current situation in Australian Academe.

He begins:
Oxford's decisive rejection of the governance white paper is important for the whole higher education sector. Contrary to caricature, it is not a victory of old-style conservatism, nor a rejection of reform. Instead, Oxford academics voted against a package that seemed likely to bring about the type of short-term managerialism that has sadly come to dominate - and undermine - so many UK universities in the past 15 years.

Now it's Cambridge's academics who are in a stoush with university administration.

The Guardian's Jessica Shepherd reports: "Cambridge dons are accusing the university of trying to change its centuries-old constitution to make it easier to sack and silence them."

Currently academics who face redundancy or disciplinary hearings have the right to have their cases heard by the vice-chancellor, the university tribunal, or its highest appeal court. However, under the proposed reform they would be "on an equal footing with librarians, lab technicians and other non-academic staff, who have their cases heard by a tribunal of three people chosen at random by a head of a department at the university.

According to Ms Shepherd she is told by Cambridge academics: "These tribunals have never found in favour of one of the university's members of staff. They argue the reforms would make it easier for lecturers to be sacked and stripped of the freedom to criticise the university – a right they believe lies at the very core of being an academic."

Senior university administrators disagree and say the changes would "reflect modern employment law and practice through the establishment of fair and timely processes... [and would allow] "more expeditious and effective [handling]".  Which is the sort of language that makes most academics' skin crawl.

On the other hand Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering, told The Guardian the reforms "clearly undermined academic freedom by reducing the employment guarantees academics had against being sacked for speaking their minds", while Dr Mike Clark, a reader in the department of pathology, said: "There are very good reasons why employment protection within universities needs to be greater than is normally expected in other occupations. A fundamental expectation in a university is that individuals should have the academic freedoms to pursue lines of inquiry and to espouse views that might not be widely accepted and which could even bring them into conflict with some of their colleagues, or with those in positions of authority."

At present the issue is under consultation and could result in a postal vote of almost 4,000 members of Regent House, make up the academic staff, heads of colleges and university officers. A university spokesman said: "The proposal is one which the university will discuss and come to a decision on."