Academic freedom and the governance of the neoliberal university

Dr Sean Phelan is an associate professor at the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University and a member of the Tertiary Education Union.

It might seem peculiar to begin a commentary on the current crisis in Aotearoa universities by citing a United Nations’ document with the dull bureaucratic title “UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) Recommendation Concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel”.

However, in a context where 100 jobs are already gone at Otago, and with potentially another 250 jobs to go at both Victoria and Massey, perhaps the 1997 landmark statement on academic freedom may help us grasp some of the disquiet and alienation felt by university workers – and students – when the future of universities is shaped by neoliberal imperatives that displace academic values.

The UNESCO document contains many of the things you would expect to see in a statement affirming the importance of academic freedom.

It suggests member states have an obligation to “protect higher education institutions from threats to their autonomy coming from any source”. It suggests “all higher-education personnel should enjoy freedom of thought, conscience, religion, expression, assembly and association”.

And it recognises the right of academics “to contribute to social change through freely expressing their opinion of state policies and of policies affecting higher education”.

These commitments are similar in kind to the principles enshrined in New Zealand’s Education and Training Act 2020 and the internal policies of New Zealand universities. They are most notably expressed in the statutory obligation of New Zealand universities to “accept a role as critic and conscience of society”.

However, in other respects, the UNESCO statement offers a much more robust conception of academic freedom than the one normally assumed in New Zealand.

It does this by linking the concept of academic freedom, and the speech rights of university staff, to questions of self-governance, collegiality and participatory decision-making.

For example, one clause asserts that academics “should have the right and opportunity…to take part in the governing bodies and to criticise the functioning of higher education institutions, including their own”.

Another defines collegiality as including “the policy of participation of all concerned in internal decision-making structures and practices” that should encompass “the administration and determination of policies of higher education, curricula, research, extension work, [and] the allocation of resources”.

And another ties these principles to the cultivation of a “democratic atmosphere” within the university which should serve as an exemplar of democratic practices for the wider society.

UNESCO statements (in this case one endorsed by all member states) do not have the status of statutory law in New Zealand or anywhere else; they are instead recommendations that member states are encouraged to follow.

However, anyone familiar with how key decisions are made in New Zealand universities will not need me to dramatise the gap between UNESCO’s vision of academic freedom and the on-the-ground reality.

That reality is perhaps still best described as the world of the neoliberal university, a term which underlines how the crisis facing New Zealand universities today has its origins in the ideological changes initiated by the “Rogernomics” revolution of the 1980s.

The meaning of the concept of neoliberalism can be confusing. Sometimes it is used as a codeword for the rise of a libertarian free-market ideology that somehow landed on earth without the help of the state.

The vast interdisciplinary literature on the global impact of neoliberalism tells a rather different story. The normalisation of market-based policy prescriptions since the 1980s has been driven by a state-driven political project which compels universities (and other institutions) to internalise competitive mechanisms and corporate values.

This is the hand-me-down governmental script that shapes everyday managerial practices across New Zealand universities, irrespective of how an individual manager might feel about neoliberalism.

It is given a notionally democratic form in legislative commitments to accountability, and the not unreasonable idea that universities should be financially accountable to citizens and taxpayers.

However, in practice, it is a regime of accountability that has become so colonised by financial calculations and economic incentives that many university workers no longer trust its capacity to be accountable to the idealised historical mission of the university.

In short, it is a world where the ambitious vision of academic freedom articulated by UNESCO is undermined by developments within the neoliberal university itself, and a top-down managerial culture where big decisions are sometimes made in ways that seem indifferent to academic values.

Creating a different kind of university that challenges the colonising logics of the neoliberal university will not be easy, particularly in a reactionary political atmosphere where academics are the habitual targets of disparagement.

But thinking about how we might collectively do so is a political question that deserves the attention of anyone concerned about the future of the public university in Aotearoa and elsewhere.