A Response to Alston and Bradley on
The place of CSU and the purpose of the Professoriate
Stephen Kemmis
October 20, 2004
Professors Alston and Bradley have raised important issues about the role of
professors as public intellectuals, and the possible role of Charles Sturt University as a
site for moral leadership and engagement in public issues affecting our region. Their
argument that professors, as academic leaders, have a moral responsibility is
undeniable, and that our University has a significant role in offering advice and
expertise to and beyond our region, is undeniable.
The argument that academic leadership entails or requires moral leadership is
compelling on the grounds that leadership in the construction of knowledge is always
laden with moral values – not least, the value of truth, but, in addition to that, values
about what knowledge is worth having in a society at any particular historical
moment. What research to do, and how the findings of that research might be applied,
always requires a moral judgement about the location of the researcher in relation to
the social field of which she or he is part. It also requires a recognition that the
findings of research are always likely to benefit some at the expense of others. For
example, a new drug may benefit malaria sufferers, or prevent people contracting
malaria, and thus be in the interests of many people who now suffer. On the other
hand, it may be a pharmaceutical company that initially benefits by the development
and patenting of the drug, and the researcher her or himself who benefits from an
intellectual property agreement or royalties or licensing agreement, and the University
as part-owner in such an intellectual property agreement. These are not reasons to
doubt whether the malaria drug was worth developing, but we need to recognise
frankly that particular interests are being served by the development of the drug in
addition to those general benefits to malaria sufferers or potential sufferers. As
researchers, teachers, professors, we always act in a moral and political space.
The argument that the University has, or should have a role in the
advancement of the interests of its region (though not jingoistically, and also in the
service of interests beyond any region) is compelling on the grounds that universities
have always claimed as central – the creation, transmission and critical development
of knowledge for the societies in which they exist. There is almost universal
agreement that universities have this social charter – that is, that they do not exist
simply to serve the private interests of those they teach, or of university teachers
themselves, or of the ‘owners’ of universities, whether state or private universities.
Today, as throughout their history, universities confront the issue of how they serve
private interests, on the one hand, and public interests, on the other. Moreover, the
question does not arise only at the level of the university as a whole, but also has a
practical resolution in the day-to-day conduct of (and many taken-for-granted
assumptions about) all of the diverse forms of academic practice – in teaching,
research and community service in all their forms.
As Alston and Bradley recognise, Charles Sturt University, and probably most
of its professors, are already engaged in the exercise of moral leadership and
community service in their current practice as teachers, researchers, members of the
body politic of the University, and members of the society in which they live. They
ask us two things more of us, however: (1) to move beyond our ‘comfort zones’ to
612946028
become more active as public intellectuals, and (2) to see the University more frankly
as a site for political struggle towards meeting the deep needs of our region.
It is often said that university professors are too little evident as public
intellectuals. Despite our reserves of knowledge and expertise, we play too small a
role in public debates about contemporary issues. Perhaps it is so. My reservation
about this claim is that too often it makes one fractured court – the court of the media,
particularly television and the newspapers – the court of public opinion in which we
are invited to appear. In fact, there are many public spheres, not just one, and they
intersect and interpenetrate in many ways. Often, it may be because we have taken no
Chomsky-like public stance on an issue that we may be invited to evaluate a policy,
chair a committee of review, or conduct research in an area of moral and political
consequence. This is not to say that we have no strong opinions on the issue, but that
we have reserved our expertise for serious interrogations of issues, rather than
expended them in a court of public opinion which may be deeply disfigured by
powerful, sectional, private, undeclared interests. (Here I am thinking of radio stars
like Alan Jones or John Laws.) In short, sometimes we will best serve moral and
social causes by acting within the limits of our expertise, of course, and then within
the ambit of our intellectual fields or our fields of professional practice – in our
teaching, research and service. This is not to argue for quiescence or timidity, just to
counsel against too hasty an entrance into the field of what some say being a ‘public
intellectual’ is – meaning, being in the papers, on the radio, on TV. There may be
more ways in which we are public intellectuals than that, and many may be quieter
than life in the media. In our speeches to learned societies, our publications and in
our teaching – in much of our everyday work – we already serve the wider public in
one of the best ways we can. And it is from that ordinary work that journalists and
others frequently do pick up on our advocacies, bringing them to a wider audience.
There is a question, then, about how much to be Noam Chomsky-like, and to take our
advocacies to that wider audience. One risks, as Chomsky does, sacrificing not an
unattainable impartiality or ‘objectivity’ but credibility, and one does so if one risks
being regarded not as an academic doggedly pursuing the best understanding or
explanation but as an activist or advocate for a cause as if this meant ‘regardless of the
evidence’. The issue here is one of alignment to reason versus alignment to a cause,
and it seems to me that the public intellectual must be seen to maintain the first in
order to be the second.
On the second topic, seeing and better using the University as a site for
struggle for good in our region, I think we are already making progress. We are here,
we serve our region economically, culturally, socially… To the extent we can make
them so, our resources are at the region’s service. If, however, we see the University
as a site for political action, to what extent are we attempting to set ourselves up as an
avant-garde for the region? Are we in danger of slipping into self-interested
advocacy of the kind just discussed, or of politicising the University in a way that
makes us friend to some (for example, to some governments, some political parties,
some lobby groups)? Perhaps we are already ‘political’ enough in the sense of party
politics and governments – we support some causes (judiciously, one hopes) and
argue, as calmly as we can, against others – for example, the election promises of the
major parties. Leaving aside the University as a kind of corporate agent in political
life, it should be remembered that the University is already a site in which many
contemporary issues are debated and discussed – in classes, in staff rooms, in
laboratories, in the pages of learned journals, and so on. It should be remembered that
612946028
the University is a site where ideas contend – we do not all agree with one another on
many topics, and we frequently explore these disagreements systematically and
through research and scholarship. Here again, I do not argue for quiescence, but in
favour of judicious, scholarly action. Scholarship is our best politics, one might say.
Herbert Marcuse was the darling of the student left in Berkeley in the Vietnam era,
and his trenchant critique of the military-industrial complex was grounded in a
tradition of critical social theory that had flowered in Germany after Marx, and in the
work of Marcuse’s colleagues Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno and others. He
argued from his current research. Jürgen Habermas continues that tradition of social
critique today. My point is that these were interventions out of scholarship, not
merely out of political alignment, and this is what I think our University should
continue to be – a site for struggle over ideas as much as interests, and against
irrationality and injustice wherever there is good reason to believe they exist – as they
do in many of the examples given by Professors Alston and Bradley (for example, in
threats to social work, and in relation to the social injustices that follow drought for
the families of many farmers).
For myself, however, I would be reluctant to take the view that ours should be
a campaigning university – one that takes the view that it is our task to speak on
behalf of our region – as if we had some mandate to do so. We have not been given
that remit in our Act – rather, we have the mandate to serve and support our region
through teaching, research, scholarship and other forms of service. When these forms
of service offer us the possibility to make critiques of existing social conditions in our
region, of injustices, of irrationality in government policy or the uses of technologies,
we should not forbear from making our critique available (freedom of academic
enquiry and of speech). In my view, however, we already have – and use – many
opportunities for taking this kind of action. Perhaps we do not notice enough how
often or how many of us do intervene in the theatres of policy and public life, on
scales from the international to the local.
Alston and Bradley have called us to the exhilaration of action, commitment
and making a difference. I hope our University, and our professors, share their aim.
But I also hope we can be judicious without becoming quiescent, and certainly not
timorous. We are a knowledge resource for our region, and we do intervene in many
ways in the service of our region. Perhaps we can do more – but not, I would argue, if
our activism, especially corporate activism, obscures our knowledge and its limits.
612946028