Universities, society, and the law

The essentially mediaeval structure of universities has yet to address the existence of the printing press, let alone confront the revolution in power-sharing that the internet inevitably brings along. It has also missed out on the spectacular success of what have consequently become to be known as the “exact” sconces – physics and chemistry – and the relative failure of everything else, including biology, which has unsuccessfully tried to tie itself in to the “hard” sciences for about a century now.

The humanities and social sciences have fared even worse. The former have seen their funding reduced to the point that – in supreme irony – they often end up subsidizing the huge science laboratories across campus. For example, as I write, the well-attended English department at UC Berkeley subsidizes the “hard sciences”. The various trendy postx gimics have assailed the very basis on which the humanities operate, in that postmodernism will argue for an equality of narratives in a situation wherein the goal of the education is to refine the students' thinking and feeling, a move that requires discipline and reverence for the possibilities of the human psyche.

The social sciences are gradually being reduced to adjacency matrices in Facebook analysis. This will never do. Likewise, economics has lost itself in baroque and meaningless math formalisms that are really ultimately oriented to persuading us that, yes, the very rich do indeed deserve to take more of our money.

The very legal status of universities, which are ALL (public and “private”) very highly taxpayer-costly, is itself problematic. Since 2002, successive ministers have baldly stated in the Irish parliament that Irish universities can act outside the law of the land, if they so choose. Yet in that, the Irish “state” is simply following an American precedent, exemplified by three recent incidents, two of which bear witness to the malign influence of over-funded sports teams;

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/on-college-campuses-athletes-often-get-off-easy.html

What then is the solution? There are several options. First of all, ignore universities entirely – when asked what he would do were he very wealthy, Frank Lloyd Wright stated that he would buy universities up to close them down. He had a point; it needs to be said that the current configuration of academia is superb for entrenching absurdities (think “ontological behaviourism”, Freudianism, neo-Darwinism with its glorious “central dogma”!), brain-washing talented students, and buttressing a scientist-publisher-funder scam that has led us to the point that billions spent on “applied” science produces nothing of any benefit whatsoever. It is left to the likes of Larry Page to dig up obscure 1950's algorithms to create what is effectively a gargantuan ad. company with a misspelled brand name (It should of coursebe googol)

In the above scenario, “hedge” universities would use the brilliant lectures already available under various open source licenses to create centers of excellence in a manner I have already outlined on this blog. This is very 2011, and by no means the worst-case scenario. This move involves giving up completely on state engagement with superior tertiary education; the “private” universities would hobble along on alumni donations for a while as centers for the 1% to meet and interbreed, but “research” – such as it is – would dry up, absent taxpayers' subsidy. Some of this funding, in turn, could be transferred into highly costly and risky projects like drug-testing that are beyond the reach of most private companies, and given their role as a public good, might well be nationalized

It goes without saying that this scenario involves absolute academic freedom, reflected in the anarchic structure of the internet itself – outside China. But can we do better? In Ireland, very clearly, we cannot – even elementary corporate enforcement has proven beyond the scope of the “state”., and the current scenario whereby $ billions are stolen from the taxpayer to pay off non-secured “bondholders” while similar amounts are being lopped off social protection speak for itself. However, Ireland is an anomalous case, a colonial project, with a pampered elite still being paid extravagant salaries, mainly as administrators of this spectacularly failed new dispensation. In the meantime, immigration is still actively encouraged, and we have recently seen a case wherein a Nigerian woman was jailed for pimping out a 15-year-old girl. Ireland is due a new revolution; the last one failed to take.

To return to the nominal subject of this blog, it is my belief that – if the state is to be involved - tenure should NOT be given before 40 (effectively what happens in the USA), and should be reserved for a single academic in each undergraduate program. Of course, there should also be permanent lecturers; "tenure" refers to the fact that the employee cannot involuntarily be made redundant. The 30 or so tenured academics at each university, together with s student from each program, should constitute academic council, in turn the ultimate locus of power in the university. These degree programs may indeed include subjects that were previously taught by a private-sector college, and found to have legs, as I previously outlined

The temptations due to extravagant research funding, in mine and others' experience, are what turn collegial, effective departments into maelstroms of vicious competition. Research is indeed part of the task of a state university; so is schooled debate on issues of public concern, and the provision of sports and cultural facilities both for the university community and the nation. In particular, activists and artists should be encouraged to seek respite for a year or more with residential status at universities.

What of graduate students? The current paths available to them limit them to micro-specialization as an extension of a professor's ego, and spending 15 years in professional limbo as their peers learn in the real world how to deal with people and money. Graduate students should indeed have a year of full-time, absolutely unstructured research, state-subsidized; thereafter they should be encouraged to teach, to interact with people, to hone their skills. The market for teaching should be structured so that the better students can compete to make a living as teachers; precisely what young artists are encouraged to do.

What happened in Ireland 1995-2011 was no more and no less than an aggressive move by globalized corporatism on a critical part of the infrastructure of the state. It did not have to be so aggressive; as the immediately preceding post points out, the essentially fascist nature of the Irish “state” allowed the initiative, sans aggression. It has been left to writers to Naomi Klein to point out that this viciousness is part of the neoliberal dispensation. As of 2011, that dispensation is no longer in control, and there are interesting times ahead. In the meantime, all the information we need to advance our knowledge is available free, on the web and - thank to Mario Savio et al – in the few institutions that are still really public and really universities

Seán O Nualláin
13 u Samhain 2011 Stanford