Beyond the mainstream
Yes, universities have ventured into non-traditional areas of academic pursuit. That’s what they’re supposed to do.

by Dr. Rennie Warburton

here have been several editorial opinion pieces in the news media recently, expressing concerns about how universities are, and should be, run. For example, UVic professors Jim Cutt (public administration) and Bob Bedeski (political science) have alleged that sections of universities have been taken over by “left-wing cultural hegemony” and propose that “the public” be involved in holding universities accountable for their use of government funds.

Such adverse reactions typically come from those who belong to the privileged segment of our society that controlled universities and certified knowledge for centuries. However, as an older white-skinned man myself, after 37 years working at UVic, I see things differently and am deeply concerned about the implications of such analyses.

Universities are part of society and therefore influenced by streams of thought within it, most recently social movements like environmentalism, feminism, gay and lesbian activism, and anti-racism. Political correctness is used by many critics to condemn some of the academic developments influenced by these movements.

This language entered public discourse following a speech by then President George Bush senior in the early 1990s. The term purports to describe a set of values, but its sarcastic overtones are part of an attempt to ridicule public discourse on issues of inequality, abuse and oppression and to retain authority deeply rooted in unequal gender relations, heterosexuality and imperialism.

One target of the critics has been the progressive “soft” elements of new forms of social science, which are seen as inferior to the so-called “hard” data of mainstream science. The opposition between soft/feminine and hard/masculine notions has been an important insight of feminist research. There is certainly nothing soft about being raped or battered by a violent husband. Yet it is the failure of traditional social science to examine critically and analytically experiences like wife-battering and covert racism that has convinced many of us that earlier research and thinking neglected significant human experiences and overlooked how knowledge was inseparable from the use of power. Serious study of the real-life experiences of women, racialized and sexual minorities and other disadvantaged people has led many of us to adopt radical and progressive ideas which are helping to improve the quality of life for many.

By opening the doors to diverse people and ideas, universities have enriched the intellectual and personal lives of students, faculty and staff and strengthened the communities around them by educating citizens who think about things in ways unimagined in the 1960s and 1970s.

The opening up of administrative positions to previously disadvantaged groups is an important step forward from the days when universities were largely a white middle-class man’s world where the old school tie was worn with pride. And there are still ample opportunities for conservatives and mainstreamers to acquire research funds, publish their findings and teach about them.

Universities are also important spaces within democracies where ideas and social and political criticism flow and contest against each other as specialists pursue knowledge of many kinds. In order to encourage new kinds of knowledge universities must remain somewhat distanced from popular and state-controlled authority.

Calls for controls by so-called “public” representatives would seriously threaten their important democratic role. How would these representatives be chosen? Consider, for example, the B.C. political situation in which swings in government could result in one regime insisting that universities focus on a particular type of education and research and three or five years later its successor calling for a shift into radically different areas. Whether or not those public representatives would be government appointees, the prospective consequences within universities would be chaotic.

It is therefore highly dangerous to advocate that universities toe a line established by forces unknown. We cannot afford to risk granting control over the quest for knowledge to commercial or anti-intellectual interests. The authoritarian implication of such proposals threatens the important contribution universities make to the democratic process and to human well-being.

Rennie Warburton is a faculty member in UVic’s department of sociology and co-author of Voices for Change, a 1998 report on the learning, working and living environment for racial, ethnic and cultural minorities at UVic.