Academic freedom for whom?

This is an open question. It’s arguable that declaring one’s viewpoint in advance actually reduces the potential for bias. Some academics tell their students if they are a member of a political party. When I teach human rights, I tell students that I am in favour of the protection of human rights. A declaration of viewpoint might occur because the academic does not want students to waste time trying to guess. It might happen because the academic thinks it is ethically responsible to declare one’s interest (that’s my reason). On the other hand, a decision not to declare might happen because the academic thinks it’s no one’s business, or because they don’t want the students to pre-judge them and close down their critical capacities when the academic speaks. These are also good reasons.

Most of the reasons an academic might decide to declare or not declare have nothing to do with wanting, or being able, to enforce one’s own view on the students. After all, university students are intelligent adults who are more than capable of making up their own minds as to the viewpoints they want to hold. More importantly, there is no direct correlation between declaring a viewpoint to students and “enforcing” that viewpoint. They are two entirely different things. To collapse the distinction is deliberately to misrepresent the purpose and effect of any such declaration.

The purpose of classes is to create a culture of critical inquiry and intellectual curiosity. People will disagree about things. Every academic I know worth their salary encourages disagreement, in a manner conducive to respectful interchange.

There are of course guidelines for behaviour, because civility rules permit an interchange of opinions to occur. There’s no point letting students yell each other down - then no one learns anything and only the most vocal get to have their say.

Free speech doesn’t mean that the most forceful get to drown others out. But that’s different from foreclosing the opportunity for disagreement. If the possibility of disagreement over contestable questions were foreclosed, that would be a concern. But I’ve never known this to happen, and evidence suggests it’s not what the accusers are talking about.

Something that would constitute bias would be an academic marking assignments according to their own personal beliefs of what is “right” and “wrong”, and giving better marks to those assignments whose viewpoints concurred with theirs. This would be extremely rare.

As an example, I’ve given a High Distinction to an essay which argued against the right to abortion in my human rights class. It was an extremely good essay, which was well researched, cogently argued and articulately written, and it deserved the mark. It was likely that some students figured out during class discussions that I support a woman’s right to choose, but this didn’t affect my marking.

If anyone can demonstrate that someone marks people down because of their viewpoint, this should be immediately condemned. But it’s extremely rare. And we hardly need a Senate inquiry to determine whether, and where, marking bias might occur.

It would be pretty easy for a student to appeal through the normal university procedures against an occurrence of that nature. It’s also true that although students sometimes believe their assignments have been marked down because the lecturer disagreed with them, that doesn’t make the student right.

Students can sometimes misunderstand the comments written on assignments, or can attribute an easier explanation to their lower-than-expected mark than the more complicated one on offer. At university students are often surprised by the range of marks. They come from an HSC system which gives marks as high as 100, and being university entrants they usually did pretty well at school. At university they can be shocked to discover a different grading structure, as well as a different method of enquiry.

Academic freedom is a fundamental cornerstone of a free society. And so is the valuing of the work of intellectuals. Without intellectual research and development of knowledge, society would founder and be unable to resolve the complex social, environmental and scientific challenges facing it. We need the best and brightest to be supported and left to their own enquiries.

It is inevitable that in this process academics will express views either in their publications or in the classroom that disagree with the status quo, or with the government of the day, or with the views of some students in the room. Doing this is not evidence of bias, it’s evidence of the success of intellectual enquiry. It is academics’ job to go against the grain, to critique, and to analyse.