Sydney Sparkes Orr, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania (1952-56) produced the open letter below on October 29, 1954 demanding an inquiry into what he perceived to be gross deficiencies in the administration of the university. Thirty-five colleagues, about half the university staff, sign it.

    Richard Davis* writing in The Subversion of Australian Universities believes the royal commission which followed in 1955 would probably have occurred in any case. However, what effect the letter may have had on the commission's terms of reference and the effect it had on the commission's ultimate findings can only be matters of speculation. But in the event, the Tasmanian establishment made sure that Orr would suffer for his "outrage".

    As Davis summarises, "The Commission pointed out that 'Universities of the highest quality have survived and continue to flourish without Council; they cannot even exist without academic men.' It was the vice-chancellor's duty to mediate between staff and Council. He could not remain neutral in this role, remembering that 'the present method of control in a Commonwealth university is only a substitute for true academic self-government.'"

    It must be remembered that at the time the council was externally appointed and it included no academic representation.

*The battle for collegiality in Tasmania -The 1955 Royal Commission and the Orr aftermath, by Richard Davis in The Subversion of Australian Universities, John Biggs and Richard Davis (eds). (Wollongong: Fund for Intellectual Dissent, 2002).

OPEN LETTER TO THE PREMIER, THE HON. ROBERT COSGROVE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, TASMANIA

Sir,

    It is rarely that a Professor is compelled to make a public appeal concerning the welfare of his University. But the attitude of the University Council, as revealed at its meeting on Friday, 22^nd October, and its continuous failure, even under pressure from staff and students, to give any concrete evidence of its willingness to effect any of the improvements necessary to create a genuine University, leaves me no alternative. For the issues at stake, which are concerning members of the academic body, are far wider and graver than any question of staff remuneration. My decision to step down from the academic rostrum into the arena of public discussion is taken in the light of experience in the Queen's University, Belfast, and in the Universities of St. Andrews and Melbourne, and is strengthened by the knowledge that for well over a century the law of England and the law of Tasmania, reflecting as they do the fundamental political principles of our democratic way of life, recognize in each and every citizen, however humble, however weak, the right to comment on and criticize public institutions, public affairs and the men who, by participating in them, are trustees for the community. Only by the exercise of this right can freedom be preserved. …

 

… I consider it my public duty, both as a citizen and as a Professor of the University to re-emphasize that, under existing conditions, we are still along way from having in Tasmania what in most British communities is dignified with the name of a University. The responsibility for this falls directly upon the University Council, whose primary function it is to ensure that the State of Tasmania shall have a University. This does not mean merely ‘tertiary education.’ It means that there shall be, as part of the Tasmanian way of life, a forum for the dissemination and discussion of those principles and values in which our democratic civilization is cradled and upon the vitality of which its life depends. It means further that members of the academic staff are not servants and students are not children, and neither can be, nor should be, treated as such. It also means that a University is a community within a community, and upon the continuance of the freedom of its members, be they professors, lecturers, or students, the freedom and dignity of the individual citizen, that is, of the larger community, depend. The consequence of failure to maintain this ideal has been sufficiently demonstrated in the totalitarian regimes during our own lifetime. The function of the Council of a University is not that of the Board of Directors either of a public utility or of a private industrial undertaking. Its function is to make available and maintain the material conditions which are necessary to enable the academic community (staff and students) to carry out in the community the vital role already mentioned. Beyond that it cannot and should not go. On matters academic, whether of qualifications for entrance to the University, of research and the pursuit of truth, in all fields, and the methods deemed desirable, the senior academic body (in the University of Tasmania the Professorial Board) is, and should be, the final arbiter.

 

It is self-evident that the Council of the University of Tasmania, as a result of apathy, neglect and maladministration over recent years, has failed completely to discharge its most vital duty to the Government and the people of Tasmania, of maintaining the traditional ideals of, and essential prerequisites for, a University.

 

What is most significant is the attitude of the Chancellor and the Council at its last meeting towards the Professors, lecturers and students (the academic community, as stated above) of the University, in answer to their well-founded and fully documented request that the present grievous state of the University be remedied. Instead of such requests receiving a patient and courteous hearing, they were treated with resentment as ‘general reviling and vilification’ of the Council. Efforts by the University Staff Association to obtain an independent assessment of salary claims were stigmatised by the Chancellor as ‘a grave affront’ and the student who, on behalf of the student body, requested to speak to the motion before the Council was treated as if he were a juvenile requiring correction. Does this mean that the Council regards itself as above criticism?

 

Equally typical is Council’s intervention in wholly academic matters, as exemplified by its extraordinary treatment of the Professorial Board some years ago, when, in defiance of that body’s unanimous and repeatedly given advice, it drastically lowered the standard of matriculation, and, as if to emphasize the fact that its word was absolute, resolved that it would not permit the question of matriculation to be raised before it for another twelve months. Is it to be wondered at then, that one of the University’s most senior professors, Professor Pitman, was at length compelled to say at the last meeting of Council ‘the Professorial Board no longer has confidence that the Council will treat its recommendations with the consideration and respect they deserve’? WHY? The only possible explanation can be that the Council has nothing but contempt for the opinion of the Professorial Board on academic matters.

 

The effect of this serious state of affairs on staff and students is already public knowledge. But what must be of equal concern to the Government and people is the fact that any weakness in the structure of higher education, or distortion of the academic ideal, must inevitably be reflected throughout the whole educational system, and result in a deterioration in the quality of leadership in every department of community life, and a general lowering in the appreciation of, and attachment to, spiritual and cultural values. …

 

… This is an appeal, therefore, to the Government of Tasmania to take, in performance of its duty to the people of Tasmania, the one step that the present situation clearly demands, that is, the immediate institution of a searching and thorough inquiry into the whole question of University conditions. In this way, and this way only, will we keep faith with those who, in more difficult times and under conditions of greater stress of circumstances had the courage and the vision to found a University in this State. In this way and this way only will we be enabled to maintain the ideals of the distinguished scholars who have served this University in the past. In this crisis there is clearly now an opportunity for the public to decide whether or not this State is to have a University measuring up to the ideals and conditions existing in other parts of the democratic world, whether or not, that is to say, there is to be created in this island a worthy home for scholars and scholarship, in which present and future generations of young Tasmanians may acquire those qualities of courage, magnanimity of mind and enlightened leadership which are so urgently needed in the modern world.

 

Yours etc.,

Sydney S. Orr, M.A.,

Professor of Philosophy in the University of Tasmania.

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web