The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation failed to give assurances on academic autonomy and asked for a reference to it to be removed from an agreement with the Australian National University, the university’s chief has said.
On Tuesday the vice-chancellor, Brian Schmidt, broke the ANU’s silence on the controversy surrounding strings attached to the healthcare mogul Paul Ramsay’s $3.3bn bequest, in part to set up the centre.
Earlier in June the university pulled out of negotiations to set up a degree in western civilisation, citing a “fundamentally different vision”.
The move followed an article by Tony Abbott – who is also a Ramsay Centre board member – in the conservative publication Quadrant, stating that the centre was “not merely about western civilisation but in favour of it”.
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Schmidt revealed on Tuesday that Ramsay representatives wanted to set up a management committee with equal numbers from the Ramsay Centre and the ANU, and to conduct “health checks” by sitting in on classes to assess the lecturers and material taught.
He told ABC’s AM program that the proposal would go “against the autonomy of the university” because it would amount to “an external group that sets what the university does”.
“The university – under the way western universities work – is responsible for its course content. “We’re not meant to be influenced, we’re not meant to be pushed, we’re not meant to be nudged into taking an external point of view. We’re meant to internally go through and do what we believe is best.”
Schmidt said although the Ramsay Centre purported to believe in academic autonomy, the proposed agreement did not reflect that because the centre asked for those words to be taken out.
He said that omission from the 70-page memorandum of understanding was “inexplicable” but there was no particular deal breaker, rather the university had rejected “the whole sum” of its contents. Schmidt denied the ANU had been cowed by students or academic unions.
In a joint statement with the ANU chancellor, Gareth Evans, Schmidt said: “From the outset ... the centre has been locked in to an extraordinarily prescriptive micromanagement approach to the proposed program, unprecedented in our experience …
“It has insisted on a partnership management committee to oversee every aspect of the curriculum and its implementation, with equal numbers from the Ramsay Centre and ANU, meaning an effective Ramsay veto.
“It has been unwilling to accept our draft curriculum and has refused to accept our preferred name for the degree, western civilisation studies. While acknowledging that any curriculum would have to be endorsed by ANU’s academic board, it has made clear that to be acceptable to the Ramsay Centre it would have to find favour with the joint management committee, whose representatives wanted to sit in the classes that we teach and undertake ‘health checks’ on courses and teachers.”
Responding to Abbott’s statement, Schmidt noted that his piece was first published in early April and explained that the ANU had then asked for a public declaration on the university’s autonomy which “never actually happened and still has not happened to this day”.
Schmidt said more recent statements by the Ramsay Centre chief executive, Simon Haines, about academic autonomy came “six weeks after ... we decided we weren’t going to negotiate any further”.
The vice-chancellor said if the board had provided a public assurance on academic autonomy and the memorandum of understanding had reflected it “then we would’ve been happy to work with them”.
Asked to address the historian Geoffrey Blainey’s criticism that the ANU would take Chinese money for astrophysics research, Schmidt said it was an “irrelevant comparison” because grant funding allows academics to set their own research direction.
The ANU did not hold grudges and if the Ramsay Centre were prepared to “completely rethink” its approach the university would still consider a deal.
Asked what he had learned, Schmidt said: “In the modern era it is quite difficult to get the truth out there.”
“It’s amazing how by saying – and misstating – something, for example the ANU is not supportive of western civilisation studies again and again, and again you can actually transform the narrative into something that is not true.”
Schmidt said the ANU had been “circumspect” so far because it wanted the Ramsay to “get on with its business” of setting the centre up elsewhere.
“We really do think that what they want to do – on a larger scale – is a great thing for Australia. But it is incredibly unfortunate that we were not able to come to an agreement with them.”