Work Forsyth Carillon

Leisured inquiry and heroic discovery: Eric Ashby’s descriptions of academic work in Australian universities in the 1940s and 1950s

Hannah Forsyth

University of Sydney

This presentation (1)

Eric Ashby’s work

Work, work, work and the university in Australia in the 40s and 50s

Academic work according to Ashby

The resilience of Ashby’s academic

(1938) Photo from University of Sydney Archive

(1973) Photo from University of Sydney Archive

My Sources

Ashby’s published work

Obituaries, ODNB & similar biographical

Letters to and from Ian Clunies-Ross 1949-1959

Eric Ashby’s work

The university in Australia in the 40s and 50s

Re-thinking the university

Liberal education underpins civic responsibility and democratic participation

Science, technology and graduates that have strategic and economic importance to nation

Ivory tower versus Service station

Impoverished

State governments struggled to fund

Commonwealth limited funding

Funding for items of national significance

Created complicated issues between Federal and State

Generally future Federal funding expected

Source: Foster, SG, and Margaret M Varghese. The Making of the Australian National University . (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1996). P. 13

work work work?

Free inquiry

Intellectual honesty

Trust in rationality

Communicate results

Values humanity

Practices self-discipline

Six Virtues of Academic Work (Pelikan 1992 The idea of the University: a re-examination, Ch 5) (Perceptions of the university has implications for academic work and vice-versa)

Eric Ashby’s work

“It is the vocation of universities to cultivate the intellect so that disinterested thinking can go on”

“It is a matter of cold fact that most of the discoveries and ideas which have shaped history began as speculations, as disinterested curiosity”

Eric Ashby, Universities in Australia, 1944, pp.77-8

The Murray Report

Sir Keith Murray, Report of the Committee on Australian Universities

“ These men [sic] have no immediate practical aim or profit in view” “ they are simply kn owledge-intoxicated men ” “ love the life of intellectual effort and inquiry for its own sake” “ will devote their lives to it if they possibly can”

Academic authority is based on academic work as a vocation.

Not for profit

“ Heavenly” reward, not mean Gain

Intrinsic value of the work

Morally superior

No grubby talk of money

(McSherry, Corynne. Who Owns Academic Work? Battling for Control of Intellectual Property . (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001).

“ Intellectual revolutions are often the product of leisure, even though they cannot be completed without immense industry.”

aristocratic leisure + moral superiority = academic status

Reasons to ask for funding

Universities train people for the professions

Universities contribute knowledge to the economy

Universities contribute to technological progress

Universities help us understand more about this strange post-war world

Ashby’s reason to ask for funding

“Today our universities are the trustees of Australian intellectual life; despite their weakness, despite their unworthiness of this high office”

Dissuading meddling

1970, Ashby describes his task:

“ Something like 85 per cent of he cost of running our autonomous universities comes from public funds. Alarmists in the British academic world fear government control and cry: 'Hands off the universities!' I do not share this alarm, for universities have always depended upon patrons to finance them, and over a stretch of seven centuries they have learnt how to dissuade their patrons - princes, bishops, tycoons, alumni - from meddling in their affairs.”

Dissuading Meddling

In the 1940s in Australia, he was working to “dissuade the patrons” of Australian universities from interfering, while giving them reasons to offer increased patronage

Secure funding, prevent control

Ashby’s version of Academic work is:

A high calling

Intrinsically rewarding

Fulfils the sacred duty of protecting intellectual life

Does not care about money

Therefore, Government should fund them, but can never purchase them

Eric Ashby’s work

“Give us the money and be done with it” (To RC Mills, 1946) Politely invited Vice-Chancellors whether they would make available scientists to the war (1942) In the eternal dispute between the concepts of ‘ivory tower’ and ‘service station’, universities were forced to make some concessions. (Submission to Murray Review 1957)

Funding contingent on service “ The universities will have to give the Committee a full measure of trust if, in the end, they are to gain for themselves the facilities which they feel that they need and to play the part which the country expects of them.” (Murray, 1957)

Eight years later…. “ It is no longer a wry jest: universities are now, in considerable part, public utilities or instrumentalities. They are being increasingly supported by governments from public funds because they carry out public functions, as hospitals and public transport systems do.” (PH Partridge, ANU, 1965)

academic work (Orr) Master-Servant

Undermined the separation of academic work (and knowledge) from other kinds Starts to undermine the authority and status of academic work

melodramatic?