The price of free thinking

It’s time to fight for academic freedom by agitating for a national charter of human rights, says George Williams.

Academic freedom is essential to the work of Australian universities. Their role in educating students and advancing human knowledge depends upon academics and students working and learning in an environment in which they can freely exchange ideas, challenge conventional wisdom and debate controversial issues.

In countries such as New Zealand and South Africa, academic freedom is protected by legislation or even in a national constitution. By contrast, Australia does not protect academic freedom in its Constitution or by statute, nor does it have a national bill or charter of rights from which it might be implied.

The protection of academic freedom in Australia is limited. Industrial agreements can provide protection, but this is vulnerable.

Furthermore, this and other possible sources of protection can be overridden by federal law. Such laws can, and have, displaced the employment arrangements of a university or even any future recognition of academic freedom under state law.

Even though it has limited legal protection, academic freedom is still recognised in other ways. In law at present the freedom is mostly a set of conventions and assumptions for those who work in the university sector. In this form, academic freedom is fragile and easy to breach. Its maintenance depends on the vigilance of those who work in the sector and on the goodwill of those who have the power to undermine it.

Australian academics face the possibility that academic freedom will continue to be whittled away over time. There are many recent examples of the freedom having been compromised, such as through political interference in the allocation of Australian Research Council grant funding, the pressure on universities to become more like commercial enterprises and restrictions on teaching and research under Australia’s antiterror laws.

This is a problem not only for the academics, but also for society. We all depend on the quality of academic work to better understand the problems facing the nation and to promote economic development and social progress.

The federal parliament should legislate to protect academic freedom. The law should be drafted, however, to allow legitimate scrutiny of academics’ work and rigorous processes to ensure they operate in an accountable manner.

To protect academic freedom over the longer term we must also realise it is part of larger debates about other important values. These include the independence of the public service and its capacity to provide government with frank advice and the ability of non-government organisations to engage in public advocacy and not lose their funding as a result.

Attacks on these values are all too possible because Australia does not take seriously enough the need to protect our most important democratic rights. Even freedom of speech has no secure protection in Australian law and instead depends upon the goodwill and good sense of the government of the day. When such goodwill is in short supply, or during a climate of popular fear, freedom of speech can be curtailed and with it a number of other important principles like academic freedom.

If we do not take freedom of speech seriously, it is hard to argue for the maintenance of something like academic freedom. The best way forward is not only to legislate to protect academic freedom, but to support, with a coalition of like interests, broader reform to our system of government and legal rules. That reform should include a national charter of human rights. Although such a law has been enacted in the ACT and in Victoria, Australia remains the only democratic nation without a national law of this kind.

Experience elsewhere shows that a charter would give real protection to rights like freedom of speech and could have a powerful impact in shaping public debate. While no such law provides the whole answer, it would be a valuable tool in preventing the further erosion of academic freedom in Australia.

George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, UNSW. He is also an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

This article was originally published in the November/December 2009 edition of Uniken, the bi-monthly magazine of the University of New South Wales.  It is reproduced by Science Hub Australia with permission from the author, Professor George Williams, and the editor of Uniken, Susi Williams.