TRANSCRIPT
Of
SENATOR MITCH FIFIELD
Radio 2CC Canberra
Mike Jeffries
5 December 2008
8:10am
E & OE
SUBJECTS: Academic freedom inquiry
MIKE JEFFRIES:
I thought you might be interested in this for a couple of reasons. One, after all this is a university town. The other is the general concern about left-right bias, whether it’s in the media or more particularly in this case at universities. Now a report came out, this had been the result of a Senate inquiry and I thought this was worth noting, the Chairman of the Committee, Gavin Marshall, said the Committee’s finding is “in view of the relatively tiny number of submissions received from the hundreds of thousands of students who were said to be affected, there can be no basis for arguing that universities are under the control of the left.” He, Senator Marshall, said the inquiry was “a waste of time.” Commenting further on this is Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield who I believe sees it rather differently. Mitch Fifield is Senator for Victoria. Good morning senator, thanks for your time.
SENATOR MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Mike. How are you?
JEFFRIES:
I’m well thanks.
FIFIELD:
Good.
JEFFRIES:
So was it a waste of time?
FIFIELD:
No certainly not. The committee report broke along party lines so there was a Government majority report and an Opposition minority report. So you’d expect Senator Marshall to give that short of response. But the genesis of the inquiry was the concern which had been expressed by many students at both secondary and tertiary level about the perceptions of academic bias on campus, the reasons for it and the avenues of redress. We did uncover some quite startling evidence. The Government senators as you mentioned stated that the inquiry itself was as a result of requests from the Young Liberals and Liberal Students and other campus Liberals. To some extent that’s true, they did request the inquiry. But Senate inquiries are often instigated by concerns expressed by members of the community and this inquiry was no different.
JEFFRIES:
Anecdotally what you hear is students tell their lecturers what they want to hear so they get the kind of marks that they need. Whether that leaves a lasting impression on the remainder of their life is an interesting question. What’s your view on that?
FIFIELD:
Yes it is an interesting question. There’s no doubt that some students feel the need to be strategic in how they frame their essay responses, in how they frame their exam work and that they do try and take a tack which will appeal to their particular lecturer. I guess that’s just human nature. If you’ve got a university academic who’s marking your work you want to please them and try to get a better result. My concern, and I think what was borne out of the evidence, isn’t so much that we have lots of individual cases of bias by academics. I think the greater concern is the curriculum and the course content which tends to be pretty monochromatic and doesn’t give a wide range of perspectives. Just one example, there’s a course at one university called Contemporary Ideologies and in this series of 12 lectures there was one lecture on liberalism and conservatism and 11 lectures on different sorts of socialism. Now I think what’s needed is a bit of balance and clearly that wasn’t the case in that course. But we also had some disturbing examples outside of university in primary school where one of my Senate colleagues came across a display at a primary school which had a picture of Mao Tse-tung displayed under the banner of “freedom fighter.” Now, you know, that’s certainly someone’s perspective. I think what we need whether it’s primary school, secondary school or university is a range of perspectives which are taught, a range of perspectives which students are exposed to. I don’t think that’s happening to the degree that it should.
JEFFRIES:
That’s interesting. I was talking to a colleague of mine and discussing the events in Mumbai and reports from what are generally considered to be left-leaning media. I said “oh about half the time they’re calling them ‘terrorists,’ the other half they’re calling them ‘anti-government protestors.'” And he said “well that’s an improvement.” Maybe so. But you hit on an interesting point, and I think this applies to media and certainly applies to education, it’s not where there’s obvious (inaudible), it’s not where there’s obvious editorialising, anybody can see that. The real bias comes in what you’re not told, what you’ve not covered, as in your example about, what was it, 11 of the lectures on socialism and one on the more conservative side of politics that might be offered.
FIFIELD:
That’s exactly right. It’s so often what students aren’t exposed to. And in that particular example of the 12 lectures, 11 of them on socialism, that was at Melbourne University and Melbourne University in light of our report have no agreed to change that particular course and to provide a little more balance. There are other isolated instances which are disturbing. We had some students, or one student in particular, give evidence that one of their colleagues who was Jewish was referred to in a lecture as “our resident Zionist.”
JEFFRIES:
Really?
FIFIELD:
Yes. Which is, you know, there’s no excuse for talking to students that way or seeking to characterise individuals according to their religion. And that’s one of our concerns, is that at universities there are already processes in place to protect students against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, disability, but I don’t think at universities there’s adequate protection for students to express their political or religious views. And that’s one of the recommendations which opposition senators have put forward is that we look to have some sort of a charter of academic freedom which would be a condition of funding to universities and that charter would guarantee not just the academic freedom of the faculty but also the academic freedom of the students themselves.
JEFFRIES:
(Inaudible) to at least investigate while they are at uni. It’s been interesting to me over the years, and it’s just one man’s observation but young blokes, particularly who’ve come to work on my programs for example, and friends that I’ve had in the past, while at uni they’ve talked about rapacious capitalists and even gone in protest against conservative governments as they see it, but as soon as they get out of uni they think “hmm if I play my cards right I could have a nice townhouse and a Lexus,” and the whole value system can shift very quickly.
FIFIELD:
It can. It’s incredible what paying tax does to your outlook on life.
JEFFRIES:
Yes I think it’s called ‘reality bites.’ Interesting. So anyway, at bottom this was not a waste of time. It did identify some issues and some suggestions have been made as to how those issues could be addressed.
FIFIELD:
It certainly did. Opposition senators, as I mentioned, we’re proposing some sort of charter of academic freedom. We think that there also needs to be a review of the complaints processes at universities. They’re not really publicised sufficiently by the institutions themselves and we need to make sure that those complaints processes are transparent and robust. Also the issue of donations to institutions, we think that past a certain threshold there should be public disclosure of those so that you don’t have a situation where you could have a foreign government giving a donation to a particular faculty, say an international relations faculty, and having a concern that that might skew what is taught in that particular course. And we also think that it’s a good idea that we have some random sampling and double-marking of essays and exam papers to check that there’s not systemic bias in a particular course.
JEFFRIES:
Okay that would be interesting. Not just interesting, but provoke some lively discussion in the staff room I would think.
FIFIELD:
That’s right. And that’s one thing, I don’t think there’s nearly enough peer review in tertiary institutions. Very seldom would one lecturer or tutor spend any time in a room viewing a colleague teaching. And I think it’s very important that we have that sort of peer review. If for no other reason that we keep an eye on teaching standards in tertiary institutions and it would also have the added benefit of ringing an alarm bell if there was a particular problem with bias in a particular course or with a particular academic.
JEFFRIES:
Interesting. Appreciate your time senator, thank you very much.
FIFIELD:
Thanks Mike. Cheers.
JEFFRIES:
Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield.
ENDS