The case for universities in a civilized society

St Spyridon College 21st Anniversary

Gavin Brown
Vice-Chancellor and Principal
University of Sydney

03 June 2003


It is both an honour and a very special pleasure to present this inaugural lecture in your series "Appreciating Culture" and to have this coincide with the 21st anniversary of the College. I feel some kinship on this occasion, for my original university experience was at St Andrews in Scotland, named for a shared patron saint and espousing a motto which you will recognise, "Aien Aristeuein""to strive always to excel".

This is a good time to speak of the essence of universities, for we are engaged in the debate over a major review of Australian Higher Education. What is it that we are arguing over?

The Federal Labor Party is sure that 'it' should be equally available to everyone. There is much less commitment to making 'it' worth having, to making hard choices over the balance between access and quality. The quality, that is, of whatever 'it' should be.

The Liberal Party, on the other hand, knows that 'it' should provide for national economic development but that 'it' confers private benefit; that the costs to the community of 'it' should be kept in check and 'it' should be delivered with business efficiency.

The recent Budget Package emphasized four themes: Sustainability, Quality, Equity and Diversity. For each of these there were given two to five brief explanatory phrases. Let me choose one from each.

Under Sustainability we find "ensure course provision addresses labour market needs".
Under Quality we find "creating incentives to promote collaboration between institutions and business/industry and local communities".

Under Equity we find the government looking for "incentives for students to undertake courses in national priority areas".

Under Diversity we find "provision of a range of performance-based incentives not mandated requirements".

What is there in that to make the soul rise in spontaneous song?

I know that I am being unfair. I know that the budget package is the first serious effort in over a decade to enhance the quality of public higher education in Australia. I know that I spent last evening asking the Senate of the University of Sydney to consider economic reality as a key factor in determining a response to the proposals. I know, too, that the reason that I have devoted my life to working in universities is not reason at all but a romantic aspiration to higher cultural ideals.

Tonight you have given me an opportunity to explore such things.

In 1873 Benjamin Disraeli told the House of Commons that "A University should be a place of light, liberty and learning". Let's see how far that takes us. I choose to interpret 'light' as open-eyed research.

This may be in the humanities, where we seek to understand ourselves as intelligent and spiritual beings. This may come through poetry and literature as much as through history. Some philosophers will see their task as analysing whether questions are well-posed, whether the question is properly conceived, and whether it is in fact a question, rather than evaluating the truth or falsehood of the answer. Others will be bolder in thinking about and writing of eternal mysteries, mind, consciousness and moral sense. Is the so-called dismal science of economics the study of social behaviour, or should we strive for objective metrical analysis? No doubt the two must be blended. Do we learn to solve today's problems of corporate governance Enron, HIH, OneTel by evaluating contemporary models, or is true insight dependent on a knowledge of Roman commercial law and the financial practices of the British in India? The world knew a time when tulip bulbs were synonymous with wild speculation. Does this help us understand, even prevent, our modern e-commerce bursting bubbles?

The new education minister in the UK has famously remarked that medieval historians are a waste of space - perhaps we can tolerate a few for decorative purposes but certainly not at public expense. But we have all been warned that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. The precise quote is from George Santayana's 'Life of Reason', "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

Light as open-eyed research concerns also the natural world and we do not measure the value of such knowledge by its economic potential. When I studied physics as a student, it was still called natural philosophy (and mine was an Arts degree, by the way). It was still called natural philosophy because its business was to understand nature and natural phenomena. As Thomas Barlow noted, we have learned to use words like 'precompetitive', 'enabling', or 'generic' to disguise basic science in respectable utilitarian clothes. He pointed out that the Australian Research Council, which is the major source of research funding in this country, now describes basic research as "a strategic investment in realizing national goals". The scientific researchers I know are motivated, however, by curiosity, by a thirsting desire to bring light. It is a great bonus for a medical scientist if her work contributes to the treatment of diabetics but it is the thrill of new understanding that drives her careful experiments.

My own discipline is pure mathematics and I still write research papers in harmonic analysis. The things that I do are not far away from applications to signal processing or to the interpretation of data provided by oscillating waves. This is the theory that underpins the technology of tomography, of CAT-scans or of ultrasound diagnosis. My motivation and interest, however, is aesthetic. It is much more in the mathematics, music, poetry stream than along the mathematics, digitisation, engineering process line.

These impressionistic comments on 'Light' as a fundamental component of the University demand an effort at summary. I should try to provide some definition of the 'open-eyed research' to which I referred. It depends on pure discovery, pursued for its own sake. It is more than that because it is not mere episodic discovery, but part of a broad explanatory mosaic. It is not mere discovery of facts, however well-connected or powerful in the picture they paint of humanity and of nature, for there is an aesthetic dimension and a touch of mystery. We should be enlarging that small portion of the Universe which humans can describe and understand. We must not be seduced by reductionism.

Light in that sense is fundamental to culture, and universities bringing light are essential to a civilized society.

Disraeli's second motto was Liberty. In the second half of the 19th century, when he spoke, Oxford was still struggling with reform, Cambridge was yet to renew itself from an impoverished, although aristocratic, conservatism - impoverished, that is, compared to the "new" universities which were springing up with municipal support in less romantic cities. As an example: Cambridge medicine was underfunded and students were starved of practice, according to a contemporary witness who sang:

"When students to Cadavers are
As eighteen is to one
The dividend's inadequate,
The thing cannot be done

At Owens' and at Birmingham
One man, one leg's the rule:
And students have a head a-piece
At happy Liverpool"

But I digress and there were exciting developments at that time in Germany. These laid the foundations of the modern research university and the buzz-words were Lernfreiheit and Lehrfreiheit freedom in learning and freedom in teaching. Professors were empowered to offer courses of their choice and students were encouraged to choose widely from the offerings available.

I have to say that this contrasts with the proposals in the current Australian plan which is to replace university operating grants by a new system called the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. I quote: "The Commonwealth will negotiate with each higher education institution to deliver a specified number of Commonwealth supported places in particular course disciplines. This will ensure that universities provide the courses and the numbers of graduates that are needed by the nation".

Let me explain this system further. The government will calculate for each discipline the number of equivalent full-time student units (multiplying students by the number of units which they take and dividing the result by an average number of units taken by an archetypical full-time student) and weight that number by the assigned cost of that discipline of each unit, ranging from law at $1,500 to agriculture at just over $16,000. If the grand total is within 1% of the calculation based on the negotiated student profile then the university will receive its money. If the variation exceeds 2% then there are swingeing penalties. Overshoot and you lose about $21,000 per student. Undershoot and you will lose load to another institution. New places will be assigned after discussions over man-power needs with the State Governments.

There is enormous potential here for bureaucratic direction from central government and a serious danger that student choice will be inhibited. What implications might this have for the Classics or, for that matter, for Modern Greek?

George Bernard Shaw once said, "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it". I am not one of these men.

I believe very strongly that universities, with their own governance structures imposed by Act of Parliament, deliver most when their autonomy is respected. Of course, it is part of our mission to provide professional training and conscientiously we are responsive to society's needs in that regard. We are charged also with laying the framework for a civilized society and that extends far beyond second-guessing the requirement for mining geologists in 2015.

Liberty means more than university autonomy. It is fundamental to our value to society that we offer critical analysis, be it praise or blame. It is fundamental also that I do not control the minds of my staff, that they are free to articulate their views within their discipline areas without fear of retribution. It is a hallmark of a free society that we establish and nurture institutions which encourage debate and disputation, wherein the quality of an argument is treasured as much as, perhaps more than, its conclusion.

Students must be free to express their views even (or because) history tells us that today's radical will be tomorrow's pillar of society. Liberty does require responsibility, but liveliness must always be preferred to conformity.

Disraeli spoke of 'Light, Liberty and Learning'. Perhaps it is a commonplace that Learning must be at the core of a university, but let's be clear what learning means.

It is true that universities act as storehouses and repositories for knowledge. At Sydney University we have the magnificent Nicholson Museum, founded in 1860 with a donation from the first Chancellor, Sir Charles Nicholson, of what Senate then called "his large and valuable collection of Etruscan, Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities" and which today contains masterpieces of ancient art and objects of daily life from the ancient Near East, Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Rome and prehistoric Europe. Our library has treasures, including, curiously, the finest early Science Fiction collection in the Southern Hemisphere. For all of history, impatient zealots and crude philistines have destroyed precious and sacred objects. Professor Dan Potts from our Archeology Department is currently in Iraq on a frustrating salvage mission. I have read that one of the first uses of that sinister phrase 'friendly fire' described the destruction of the library at Louvain by allied bombing in World War II. Ray Bradbury gave a title to a book and to a horrible crime with the specification, Fahrenheit 451, for that is the temperature at which books burn.

The University as storehouse, both in a literal and in a metaphorical sense, is an important facet of the University and Learning. This is but one interpretation however. It is not complete, just as Umberto Eco's blind librarian - desperately protecting the manuscripts entrusted to him from the danger of being read - is a sad figure.

The University must be a place of active learning. Unless the professors are engaged in creative learning the students are deprived. A research intensive environment of shared creativity is my ideal of the university. We expect students to rub shoulders with those who are pushing back the frontiers. The paradigm is not recitation from a textbook followed by regurgitation. Our students should learn together with those who are making the discoveries upon which the textbooks will be based.

This image of university learning does not fit well with the word 'learned', with its connotations of pomposity, grandiosity and stuffiness. It can be the child-like self within us that has the deep vision. You have all seen the picture of Albert Einstein with his tongue stuck out. Some of the most outstanding researchers in universities need time and space to be playful imps in order that Light, Liberty and Learning all come together.

So much then for Disraeli's prompts, which I have used to give a flavour of what I find exciting about universities. Have I made a case for them as a necessary part of civilized society? If not, no worries. As the Demtel man says, "There's more!"

Not too long ago, at a business breakfast, I was asked about the impact of information technology on universities. The man who posed the question said he had read a review of a book which demonstrated that universities would soon be replaced by internet courses.

"How far has the University of Sydney progressed down this track?", he asked. "Not at all", I replied, explaining that I believed IT to be a tool for enhancing existing programs not for replacing them. "You are a hopeless "Luddite
",he retorted, shaking his head at my ignorance.

It is still true today that much of the learning experience that a university offers, takes place outside the classroom. It is through sports, debates, drama, engagement in a wide range of community activities, that our students mature and develop. Employers snap up young graduates who are poised and articulate and our students create a rich developmental environment for each other by interacting and taking part in communal activities.

There are some outstanding individual successes, the World Open Water Skiing Champion is Ann Procter, one of our students, as is Loudy Tourky who won diving gold at the Commonwealth Games and recently an historic three gold medals on the world circuit in North America. Teams excel. We have won the Australian University Games for the last four years. More important, however, an amazing number of today's students combine academic success with part-time work and impressive community service or musical, sporting or other accomplishments. I firmly believe that this is a significant long term investment for society.

I am proud of what universities offer to society and reluctant to frame their achievements in ways which pander to some of the pre-conceptions that others may hold. I should add, however, that I believe that universities in general, and my own in particular, must continue to do more to tell people the good news about what we accomplish.

There seems to be a curious mixture of diffidence and arrogance in the personality of the academic. Perhaps I may illustrate this with a favourite story - which may or may not be true.

While Britain was at war in 1942, the year of my birth, an academic walked down High Street in Oxford. He was clearly from one of the colleges - bumbling, chaotic, of indeterminate age, somewhere between 35 and 55. He had a patched sports jacket, baggy flannels and unkempt hair. Under his arm he carried a pile of books. He was stopped by an inquisitive sharp-tongued woman with a born-to-rule accent which I cannot reproduce. "Young man", she said, "why are you not over there fighting to save our civilization?" With a slight stammer, but firmly, he replied, "Madam, I am the civilization of which you speak."

In the spirit of that Oxford Don, I have argued the case for universities from the inside, mostly for intrinsic characteristics, allowing you to deduce the benefits for a civilized society. Possibly some of you are worried that the culture of which I speak is that of the ivory tower. With the playful impishness of that place let me mix Light, Liberty and Learning by reminding you of the first use of that phrase "Ivory Tower". It comes from Holy Scripture, the Song of Solomon to be precise. Thus it appears in poetry, in a love poem no less. Let me quote:

Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is like a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.

After that let me assure you that those of us who work in universities are deadly serious people, working diligently to progress the national economy, conducting the research that ensures health, prosperity and quality of life, meeting the training needs of business and educating the leaders of the future. Please believe that we also preserve culture, propagate culture and help create culture.

I salute St Spyridon College on its commitment to fostering that culture.