© Tudor Banus
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Restriction
on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge
among the people and thereby impedes national judgement and action.
Albert
Einstein,
German physician
(1879-1955)
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The
birth of academic freedom
Universities
as autonomous communities of teachers and students are a creation of the medieval
West. The earliest such centres of higher learning sprang up in Bologna and Paris
around 1200. Others soon followed in Oxford, Cambridge, Montpellier, Toulouse, Padua
and Salamanca. There were over 60 by the late 15th century. The men who formed them,
such as the philosopher Siger de Brabant, the theologian Thomas Aquinas and the physician
Arnaud de Villeneuve, met, often with scant resources, to study various disciplines,
including philosophy, medicine, law and theology. Soon they were fighting for their
autonomy, in other words for the freedom to organize their courses as they saw fit,
teach the students of their choice, confer diplomas and hire professors.
At a time when law was fragmented into many customs and essentially protected the
local people, universities, which drew teachers and students from far and wide, inspired
mistrust from the authorities and townsmen. They needed special protection.
Once acquired, autonomy did not necessarily mean total independence. It had to be
guaranteed by a higher authority who granted written privileges. For a long time,
the Church kept all forms of teaching under its control. It was the Pope who granted
the earliest university privileges, riding roughshod over those who traditionally
supervised schools: bishops, towns and the prince’s local representatives, insofar
as the secular powers also intervened very early on.
The expression libertas scolastica appeared in Paris in 1231. To a certain extent,
academic freedoms coincided with what we call freedom of teaching today, but they
still remained under the Church’s tight control. Above all they involved the right
to live and work in peace, and exemption from city taxes, military service and arrest,
trial and imprisonment.
Academic freedoms borrowed much from ecclesiastic liberties: students and teachers,
whether men of the cloth or not, were in a situation comparable to that of clergymen,
who were subject only to ecclesiastical courts, which had a reputation for being
more fair. They could only be tried by their own institution – professors and the
rector, the elected head of the university – or by the pope or his representatives.
As such, one of the main aspects of academic freedom was the emergence of separate
university courts that meted out their own justice, setting teachers and students
apart from the rest of society. The law was the same throughout the West for everyone
who belonged to those supranational institutions that were, in essence, the first
universities.
In the late Middle Ages, the rise of state-like entities meant that academic freedoms
became part of a new political framework, as simple practices exempt from common
law and still subject to revision. A venerable vestige of the one-time independence
and privileges granted by the prince, they now acquired an ambiguous status.
Jacques
Verger, professor of medieval history at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne,
author of “French Universities in the Middle Ages” (published in French by Brill,
Leiden, 1995).
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The basic role of the
university in democratic society is at risk. Alone among social institutions, the
university’s mission is the unqualified pursuit and public dissemination of truth
and knowledge. The university serves the broad public interest to the extent it treasures
informed analysis, critical inquiry and uncompromising standards of intellectual
integrity.
When those who make up the university, through their teaching, research and community
service, struggle to push beyond conventional wisdom, they often threaten those in
power with a vested interest in the status quo.Throughout history, academic staff
who take their mission seriously have sometimes found themselves at odds with dominant
religious groups, with governments and the state, and with the corporate sector.
Recently, corporate involvement in the university has provoked the most concern.
Strapped for funds because of public sector cutbacks, universities have turned increasingly
to the private sector for support, often considering corporate proposals that would
have been anathema previously. The very concept of philanthropy has changed. Gone
are the times when donations were made without strings. Today, the donor expects
something in return.
A good deal of discussion has focused on purely commercial deals which involve the
adornment of universities with corporate logos and advertising, or provide suppliers,
like soft drink companies, with exclusive rights on campus. While such deals raise
legitimate concerns and have provoked student protest, the bigger danger lies in
relationships that threaten university autonomy and academic freedom. For example,
corporate donations to universities are often made in utmost secrecy. The details
of the deal remain undisclosed to the university senate or the larger university
community. Canada’s largest and most richly endowed university, the University of
Toronto, signed secret deals in 1997 with the Joseph Rotman Foundation ($15 million
for the Faculty of Management Studies), CEO Peter Munk of Barrick Gold and Horsham
corporations ($6.4 million for the Centre for International Studies) and Nortel ($8
million for the Nortel Institute for Telecommunications). The deals allow the corporations
unprecedented influence over the academic direction of University of Toronto programmes.
Mounting
unease
For
example, the Rotman agreement initially called for “the unqualified support for and
commitment to the principles and values underlying the [donors’] vision by members
of the faculty of management.” The Munk donation obligated the Center of International
Studies to assure that this project would “rank with the University’s highest priorities
for the allocation of its other funding, including its own internal resources.”
In the U.S., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) gained considerable
notoriety in the early 1990s, when for a fee of $10,000 to $50,000 per year, it provided
corporations privileged access to its faculty and to their research reports. The
institute advertised its readiness to place the expertise and resources of all its
schools, departments and laboratories at the disposal of industry.
The trend has been gradual, but unease is mounting about overly close relations between
corporations and university-based researchers. Several high-profile cases have fuelled
the debate. In the UK, the editor of the British Medical Journal resigned as a professor
at Nottingham University over its decision to accept more than five million dollars
from British American Tobacco towards an international centre for corporate responsibility.
In the U.S. and Canada, the cases of Drs. Nancy Olivieri (see next page) and David
Kern, among others, stand as blatant illustrations of the corporate threat to academic
freedom and integrity. While serving as a consultant to a company producing nylon
flock, Kern, the director of occupational medicine at Brown University’s Memorial
Hospital (U.S.), found evidence of a serious new lung disease among the company’s
employees. Going against the will of his university and the company that threatened
to sue, Kern published his findings. His position at the university was eliminated.
In the same year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control officially recognized the
new disease, flock worker’s lung.1
The fact that university administrations did not side with their faculty in both
these cases signals a profound change at work within academic institutions. Corporate-dominated
university boards increasingly choose top administrators who support a corporate
model of governance. And universities increasingly operate in market-oriented cultures,
in which social value is measured by short-term market relevance. There is money
for computer science and business administration, not for philosophy, history, theoretical
physics or the arts.
The risk, however, is that universities may quickly run up against the limits of
their own game. We know that public underfunding makes universities more vulnerable
to corporate enticements. But there is no evidence to suggest that private corporate
donations can even begin to replace cuts in public funding. In Canada alone, over
two billion dollars would have to be earmarked for universities to restore funding
to its level ten years ago. Proof that corporate funding is not filling the gap is
that many countries are dramatically raising tuition fees, which undercuts wider
accessibility for students.
But there are powerful pockets of resistance. On several occasions in recent years,
students and faculty have stood up against blatant commercialism on campus. In Canada,
the alarm was sounded two years ago when an expert panel published a report recommending
that commercialization become the fourth mission of the university, alongside research,
teaching and community service. It also recommended that tenure and promotion be
more closely tied to engaging in commercial activities. In opposition, the Canadian
Association of University Teachers drafted a letter to the prime minister that collected
1,500 prominent signatures in three days. At stake are concerns about corporate interests
shaping the research agenda.The issue gained renewed resonance this fall, when a
dozen of the world’s leading medical journal editors took steps to better protect
academic investigators (see
p. 23).
Without academic freedom and autonomy, universities cannot fulfill their public obligations.
Academic staff have no choice but defend their right to undertake critical analysis,
publish their findings so the public can decide, and encourage students to question
conventional wisdom. Upon these initiatives, the future of universities depend.
1. Eyal Press
and Jennifer Washburn, “The Kept University.” Atlantic Monthly, March 2000,
p.42.
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UNESCO’s
ongoing engagement
In 1950, UNESCO
convened a conference in Nice (France) at which universities spelt out three principles
for which every higher learning institution should stand: “the right to pursue knowledge
for its own sake and to follow wherever the search for truth may lead; the tolerance
of divergent opinion and freedom from political interference; the obligation as social
institutions to promote, through teaching and research, the principles of freedom
and justice, of human dignity and solidarity…”
Academic freedom became a subject of intense debate in the international community
towards the end of the 1980s, partly linked to the fall of many totalitarian communist
regimes and the spread of democracy. Since then, a string of declarations has been
passed relating to academic freedom. In 1997, UNESCO’s General Conference adopted
a recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel, which
states that the principle of academic freedom should be “scrupulously observed.”
The landmark World Conference on Higher Education (1998) also stressed that academic
freedom and university autonomy were basic and inalienable conditions required for
institutions to carry out their mission. UNESCO is preparing a world report on the
subject and is heading an initiative to draft an international instrument to reinforce
the principle. In June 2001, UNESCO also launched the Network for Education and Academic
Rights (see p. 30), which aims to bring greater international attention to academic
violations. For more information, see www.unesco.org/education/wche
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Nancy
Olivieri: “You can’t legislate integrity”
If fiction
is a gateway to understanding real life, then John Le Carré’s most recent
novel The Constant Gardener is recommended reading. Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a professor
of medicine at the University of Toronto, was among the top-notch scientists he spoke
to while researching his murder mystery that takes readers on a dark journey through
the pharmaceutical jungle, from Africa to the rich world.
An expert on thalessemia, a widespread and serious blood disorder, Olivieri has been
at the heart of a swirling controversy since 1996, when she stood up to Apotex, a
pharmaceutical company with which she had signed a contract. During clinical trials
in the mid-1990s of potential treatment for the blood disorder, she discovered that
it could have serious side effects in some patients.
When she approached Apotex with her negative findings, they shrugged the matter off.
She turned to the hospital’s Research Ethics Board, which reviewed the case and recommended
that she draft a revised patient consent form stating the contra-indications. “Seventy-two
hours later, Apotex sent me a letter saying ‘you’re fired. If you say anything, you’re
sued.’ Three days later, they came and swept all the drugs off the hospital’s shelves,”
recalls Olivieri.
Most disturbing is that neither the university nor its reputed affiliated teaching
hospital supported her efforts to disclose, calling the case “a scientific debate.”
She was stripped of her responsibilities as director of the hospital’s haemoglobinopathy
programme. The conflict of interest turned out to be blatant: the university was
expecting a $20 million donation from Apotex.
“Governments have to understand that pharmaceutical companies are filling a void
created by cutbacks in public research money,” says Olivieri, asserting that scientists
have “zero” margin of manoeuver. “If you blow the whistle there is nothing to stop
the university from firing you. Drug companies can destroy you. And you can’t legislate
integrity.”
The case provoked an international outcry, with the world’s leading thalessemia experts
travelling to Canada in protest. Under pressure, the hospital announced that it would
conduct an external review of its policies. Despite claims by Apotex that Olivieri’s
study was flawed, the New England Journal of Medicine published her findings.
“This is at heart a public health issue, and I have total confidence that the facts
stand. The story is not over,” says Olivieri. During recent work in Sri Lanka, she
spoke with several patients who had never been told about the drug’s risks, nor that
it was experimental. The drug was licensed in 1999 for specific use in Europe, where
Olivieri has brought a legal challenge to the EU’s agency charged with approving
new drugs. She affirms she’ll never sign another contract with a pharmaceutical company
although she’ll likely remain a whistleblower: she’s on a sabbatical in the UK, studying
for a masters in law and medical ethics.
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