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)

1. Eric Ashby’s work

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

3. Academic work according to Ashby

4. The resilience of Ashby’s academic

(1938) Photo from University of Sydney Archive

(1973) Photo from University of Sydney Archive

My Sources

o Ashby’s published work

o Obituaries, ODNB & similar biographical

o Letters to and from Ian Clunies-Ross 1949-1959

This presentation (2)

1. Eric Ashby’s work

2. The university in Australia in the 40s and 50s

3. Academic work according to Ashby

4. The resilience of Ashby’s academic

Re-thinking the university

o Liberal education underpins civic responsibility and democratic participation

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

o Ivory tower versus Service station

Impoverished

o State governments struggled to fundo Commonwealth limited fundingo Funding for items of national

significance o Created complicated issues between

Federal and Stateo 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

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

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

work work work?

1.Free inquiry

2.Intellectual honesty

3.Trust in rationality

4.Communicate results

5.Values humanity

6.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)

This presentation (3)

1. Eric Ashby’s work

2. The university in Australia in the 40s and 50s

3. Academic work according to Ashby

4. The resilience of Ashby’s academic

Academic work according to Ashby

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

o “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 knowledge-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

o 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

This presentation (4)

1. Eric Ashby’s work

2. The university in Australia in the 40s and 50s

3. Academic work according to Ashby

4. The resilience of Ashby’s academic

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

“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)

“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)

Funding contingent on service

“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)

Eight years later….

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?

o Academic authority constructed as– Separation from Gain– Separation from The World– Knowledge having no immediate utility– The status of leisured inquiry

Academic work = purchasable