Media release
22 July 2008
Embargoed until 2pm on 22 July 2008
Fresh Threats To Academic Freedom
New Zealand universities are more than mere instruments of economic growth and development, a former vice-chancellor
warned in Auckland today.
They must be vigilant not just in defending themselves against familiar threats to academic freedom, said Bryan Gould
who led the University of Waikato for ten years from 1994. "They must also be alert to new challenges, which sometimes
come in unfamiliar guises."
Mr Gould chairs the board of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the main government funding body for
science and technology.
He was opening the University of Auckland's Winter Lecture series on "Challenges for research in modern academia".
The danger today was not so much that universities were threatened by direct, hostile and deliberate assaults from
governments or from the private sector, though it must not be assumed that these were things of the past, he said. "The
threat arises from the growing importance that universities are increasingly invited to assume in promoting economic
growth and development."
Commentators from across the political spectrum and from all parts of the economy agreed that universities were
essential agents of economic change. "Our economic future is increasingly said to depend on the research effort
undertaken by our universities and by their role in producing graduates with the skills needed to promote economic
growth.
"This view is naturally congenial to the universities, since it affirms their value to society and appears to guarantee
at least an approximation of adequate funding. But the argument comes with an unstated but potentially damaging downside
- that this role is what universities are essentially about and that it is only to the extent that they fulfil that
expectation that they will be supported and funded."
The danger then was that universities would find themselves compelled to follow particular paths to particular outcomes,
said Mr Gould. "If it is asserted by political or business leaders that the universities have failed to come up with the
required outcomes - that the economy is, for example, short of particular kinds of graduates or is handicapped by the
failure to undertake particular kinds of research projects - then continued support and funding for the universities
will be placed at risk."
The risk then was that universities would be tempted - so as to maintain continued public support and funding - to go
along with the inviting but dangerous assumption that their only true value was as instruments of economic change. "In
doing so, they would accept a barely recognised but increasingly damaging constraint on their freedom to pursue
knowledge - and we would have significantly misread our own intellectual history.
"The great seminal idea that underpins the whole concept of human progress is that knowledge is unlimited, that the
search for knowledge can be undertaken by anyone, and that it usually involves a voyage into uncharted waters.
"If universities were to limit themselves to only those voyages that identified their destinations in advance, this
would mean not only a significant constraint on academic freedom but would close the door on some of the most exciting
and rewarding contributions that universities are able to make to the total well-being of our society."
The Winter Lecture series continues for five further weeks. Details are www.auckland.ac.nz/winter
ENDS