University independence is much easier to sell when the transaction is called a strategic partnership. A recent perspective by Noel Healy and colleagues, argues that decades of corporate influence had already weakened universities before the latest political assault. Washington found institutions well practised in accommodating the interests financing them. Some university leaders now discovering the obscenity of political interference owe us an explanation: why did interference look so respectable when it arrived with a corporate cheque?
As I discussed in a previous post, university–industry collaborations can put academic independence and institutional reputation at risk. Berkeley’s controversial $25 million agreement with Novartis included company representation on committees overseeing the collaboration and allocating its funding. Such arrangements demand scrutiny before applause. University leaders should explain what influence accompanies the money, who can challenge it, and which conditions would make them refuse it. If they cannot identify a deal they would reject, on what grounds should anyone believe their independence is beyond purchase?
There is something particularly obscene about institutions that teach critical thinking while making its exercise conditional on whom it might offend. A university need not receive an explicit instruction to suppress an inconvenient question if everyone understands which questions might upset a benefactor. Censorship can arrive wearing a development officer’s smile, accompanied by a generous donation and assurances that academic freedom remains sacred. Once anticipated displeasure begins to influence intellectual decisions, independence becomes a ceremonial word: displayed in mission statements, celebrated at graduation ceremonies, and quietly negotiated whenever somebody sufficiently wealthy enters the room. A university’s reputation takes generations to build. Its leadership should have more demanding ambitions than discovering how much of it can be monetised.
The public pays twice: first to sustain institutions entrusted with independent inquiry, then to bear the consequences when their leaders discover that ignorance is an acceptable public service whenever knowledge might inconvenience a generous donor. The most accomplished censorship requires neither a banned paper nor a dismissed professor, because a university sufficiently attentive to its benefactors can learn to bury an awkward question before anyone has the vulgarity to ask it. There is no scandal to investigate, no prohibition to challenge, and nothing to interrupt the ceremonial exchange of cheques, handshakes and speeches about the transformative power of knowledge. The benefactor enjoys the prestige of financing inquiry without the discomfort of becoming its subject, while the university charges the public for its independence and collects a second payment for knowing when to suspend it.
As I argued in Civilizational Futures: Five Normative Imperatives for a Science-Based Civilization, advancing knowledge requires intellectual independence and the willingness to challenge power. Universities betray that responsibility when they teach society to question everything except the interests financing them. Their leaders’ courage is tested when defending a researcher costs a donation and telling the truth jeopardises a lucrative agreement. Courage paid for with other people’s careers is cowardice dressed in academic regalia. Until they can name the conditions they would refuse and the cheques they would return, their declarations of principle deserve to be read as sales brochures for an independence available to the highest bidder.
