Academic Freedom

Auckland was this year the scene of a great battle. War was declared over the perennial University question of academic freedom, and a long and dusty conflict ensued in the daily press, while rival candidates for a seat on the College Council, with their respective supporters, engaged in lengthy debate over the rights and duties of the staff of a university college.

Professor Segar, in the course of this correspondence, set out the position very succinctly as follows:—

"It became known (in 1932) that outside influence had been used to induce the College Council to restrain free expression of opinion by a junior member of the staff. The danger to freedom was appreciated by graduates and they took action. At a meeting of Convocation, Mr. Cocker proposed a resolution in favour of the recognised academic freedom, which included also a condemnation of outside interference. Dr. Ranston proposed an amendment which limited approval only to 'Legitimate' academic freedom, and which would, possibly unintentionally, have blocked even the protest against 'all intetference on the part of an outside political authority.' "

Dr. Ranston's amendment was lost, and the resolution proposed by Mr. Cocker, carried; and on this issue Mr. Cocker entered the lists against Dr. Ranston in the election for representatives on the College Council by members of the Auckland District Court of Convocation.

Each party sounded the trump of war in circular letters to the local graduates. Mr. Cocker announced it as his creed that "a University is first and foremost the guardian and disseminator of learning. Its responsibility is to truth and to truth alone. In this search for truth, diversity of opinion must be not only tolerated, but even encouraged, for it is only through free expression of ideas that truth can be found." He added the rider—obviously provocative to Dr. Ranston—that every authority which in the past had curtailed free expression of opinion had maintained that it was still allowing all the freedom that was "legitimate."

Dr. Ranston, the Principal of Trinity College, couched his war-cry in the following terms: "In the rare cases where such freedom may be wrongly used, all matters relating thereto should be dealt with by the Professorial Board or its Committee, as those specially interested in its due exercise." "The liberty of academic expression with its imprimatur of responsible university authority is too precious a right to be allowed to be abused without a proper protest."

From circular letters to the columns of the daily press was an easy step, and thither the rivals adjourned. Dr. Ranston, writing in critic-ism or one of Mr. Cocker's circulars, amplified his position, and brought from Mr. Cocker the statement that it was this idea of a superior authority or committee sitting in judgment "correcting" allegedly erroneous opinions of professors that was so abhorrent to the true spirit of a university. "Truth," he asserts, "is not a mere matter of counting heads .... One does not advocate irresponsible and ill-considered statements on the part of professors; but the harm done by occasional statements of this kind is infinitesimal compared with the loss which a university and the community sustains by a denial of freedom of speech."

Professor H. W. Segar, leaving the cloistered quiet of his study, now entered the lists in support of Mr. Cocker, and urged that it was ridiculous to maintain (as Dr. Ranston seemed at any rate to imply) that university teachers had "un-controlled license" until this license was docked by a controlling body and thereby turned into true liberty.

This was too much for Professor W. Anderson, and he too left the cool shade of academic retirement for the heat and dust of the plains where the conflict raged. In a letter which was as forceful and incisive in places as it was trifling and irrelevant in others he roundly declared that Dr. Ranston's attitude had been totally misrepresented, and here asserted the true position: "The system approved by the Board, accepted by the Council, supported by Dr. Ranston, and virulently opposed by Mr. Cocker, is that the Professorial Board should have the handling of all cases where the propriety of a university teacher's re-marks had been raised from whatever quarter." He lyrically announced that the Professorial Board would deeply appreciate Mr. Cocker's re-sounding declaration of its incapacity to manage its own affairs on the academic side.

Later again, Professor Anderson quoted English authority very effectively, and gave Mr. Cocker's brigade considerable food for thought. And the English parallel was taken further by the Reverend H. K. Archdall, Headmaster of King's College, who brought Dr. Ranston the page 51 most solid support received by either combatant in the whole dispute. And on the ground from which he aimed he was peculiarly difficult of attack. The University, he maintained, had a special kind of organic unity, and on this he founded a cogent argument for some form of control or review. He also referred to Bertrand Russell's case which had been mentioned by a previous write.. "It was considered," he said, "by the common mind of the Masters and Fellows at Trinity College, whence he drew his salary, that the standing of Cambridge University in the eyes of the British people was jeopardised by his further presence in the University as a lecturer." We are left to conjecture as to the exact repository of this "common mind," but just a clue may be contained in the remark: "The Professorial Board is the keeper of the academic conscience!"

Sir George Fowlds now joined the discussion, but with great good sense declared that he would take no part in the debate. He merely wished to set on record the history of the events leading up to the differences between the candidates, and having given the story, he very commendably re-tired to a safe distance. In his view, the proposals supported by Dr. Ranston preserved complete liberty for the University staff; and if and when that liberty should be improperly used, consideration of the matter rested first of all with the Professorial, composed of the colleagues of the person concerned.

Mr. Cocker descended on this statement with alacrity, and point by point sent home a barrage of shots: the reprimand to the lecturer was not fitting; the principle of "no political interference" should at once have been insisted on; the reprimand should not have been conveyed by the Registrar; the Memorandum was a most unfortunate document; the action of the University Teachers' Association indicated disapproval; and the verdict of time would show whether the resolution of the Profesorial Board was right. The election issue was: what was to be the function of this Committee of the Professorial Board?

There followed further parrying of thrusts over the suggestion that Dr. Ranston's attitude implied a form of censorship, and also over the practice in England and Russell's case. Professor Segar, in reply to several assertions of Dr. Ranston, wrote as follows: "I have never ceased to be associated with a university since I first entered Cambridge as a student, and never once, that I remember, have I associated a statement by a professor with his university. I have always taken it as his individual opinion, not as an ex-position of a school of thought by which he was limited or bound." And Professor Anderson, equally anxious to miss no opportunity for despatching the arguments of the opposition, contradicted one of Mr. Cocker's statements regarding the University Teachers' Association, and after a brilliant and disconcerting volte-face, suggested that the advisory committee was only a method adopted for "resisting any interference with the University's traditional right of academic freedom."

Mr. Cocker accordingly displaced Dr. Ranston on the College Council, and we at Victoria cannot but be relieved at the outcome of the contest. But there was one gentleman at least with un-conventional ideas on the whole subject, and he expressed disappointment at the result. Over the old tag, Desipere in loco, he offered us his views: "Had the graduates elected both the warring contestants (omitting Mr. Mahon) they would have proved the existence of something even more important in my humble judgment than this much-debated academic freedom, namely, an academic sense of humour."

On this delightful note the curtain fell, and as the scene of battle passed from view, "The Observer" appropriately concluded: "To-day there is new thought abroad in the land. The man who looks beyond the immediate political horizons is not necessarily a traitor to his native land. His patriotism may in fact be purer in motive than that of many who unthinkingly follow more orthodox creeds. The Council has been given a pretty good indication of the views its own graduates hold on the subject. They expect the college professors to be treated as men of integrity as well as men of intelligence."

The University has wisely and successfully defended itself from a most dangerous attack.

—I.D.C.