Knowledge, democracy and the Russel Ward Case

conference abstract: comments welcome.

In 1961, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies sent a short note to economic historian Max Hartwell, arguing “that the extent of government interference in university matters in Australia has been grossly exaggerated … much time is being wasted in defending something which is not in danger in Australia – academic freedom.”[1]

The time-wasting issue, in Menzies’ view, was the Ward case. In 1955 historian Russel Ward had applied for a job at the NSW University of Technology. He did not get it. The scandal that followed was deemed the highest profile case of Cold War political repression in Australian universities. That is, until 2004 when Frank Crowley wrote a short article for Quadrant where, based on recollections of a conversation with University of NSW Vice-Chancellor Philip Baxter nearly ten years after Ward’s application, he said Ward’s exclusion was about his sex life, not his politics.[2] When Keith Windschuttle took the opportunity to ridicule Stuart Macintyre’s continued reference to the Ward case, the Cold War found renewed expression in our own history wars.[3]

Beneath the veil of cold conflicts over history and politics however, the Ward case embodies important questions about academic freedom. New trust had been invested in university knowledge after the Second World War. Knowledge was to support democracy, academics to prevent its collapse into totalitarianism. In reconsidering the evidence around the Ward case, this paper also considers the changing relationship, in the 1950s and 1960s, between democracy and knowledge.

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[1] Menzies, Robert G. "Letter to Max Hartwell 6 November 1961." In Hartwell File: Ward UNSW/CN99A81. Sydney: UNSW Archives, 1961.

[2] Crowley, Frank. "The Ward Fabrication." Quadrant 48, no. 5 (2004): 30-33.

[3] Windschuttle, Keith. "Stuart Macintyre and the Blainey Affair." Quadrant 52, no. 10 (2008): 30-35.

Three ways that democracy needs knowledge

As far as I can glean, there are three ways that democracy needs knowledge:

1. If citizens are to rule themselves, they must be competent to do so. This requires knowledge. And this is why we have universal education (this is Dewey and many others)

2. What makes democracy democracy is the diversity of knowledges that inform self-rule. Society thus needs to encourage thinkers as well as knowers. Dissent is important to democratic processes and it is enabled by this diversity of knowledges (Habermas and lots more)

3. Not every member of society can know everything there is to know, so democracy needs to be able to draw on experts (Dahl). This is linked to Plato's Philosopher Kings - rule is enabled by knowledge see earlier post. When we can print and distribute it easily, it functions nicely as a shared resource (Dewey). But after the Second World War, experts (not just their knowledge) were also seen (by Keith Murray) as a mechanism to prevent the collapse of democracy into totalitarianism.

The guardians must recognise each other as owners

"Commodities cannot themselves go to market and perform exchanges in their own right. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are the possessors of commodities...In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to each other as persons whose will resides in these objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and alienate his own, except through an act to which both parties consent. The guardians must therefore recognise each other as owners of private property."

Guess Who?

Thesis Draft

Although this is the first time I worked on the thesis in a single document, I had to split it up again to upload it. The following should link to each section of the thesis draft.

Introduction (incomplete - just a potential first draft beginning of it)
Chapter One: knowledge and technology 1939-1965
Chapter Two: knowledge and the nation 1945-1957
Chapter Three: knowledge and revolution 1967-1975
Chapter Four: knowledge economy 1980-1989
Chapter Five: knowledge and property 1986-1996
Conclusion not yet written
Epilogue not yet written
Bibliography

This is a full-ish second-ish draft. It is my hope to complete a final draft in August (ish). Please feel free to send me comments, suggestions, feedback etc.

Knowledge, legitimacy, republicanism

"Until philosophers are kings or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, -- nor the human race as I believe,-- and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."

-- Plato's Republic, c.380 BC

"Kings can become philosophers; or else philosophers Kings. Let once society be most rightly constituted,- by victorious Analysis."

-- Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, 1837

University, democracy and politicised knowledge

"The link between our postwar democracy and the traditional university - a link that seems almost attractive - is coming t an end. Two tendencies are competing with each other. Either increasing productivity is the sole basis of a reform that smoothly integrates the depoliticised university into the system of social labor and at the same time inconspicuously cuts its ties to the political, public realm. Or the university asserts itself within the political system."

- Jurgen Habermas, 1967

Thesis wordle

Wordle of my thesis to date. I thought it might reveal lots of things I hadn't realised about my research. But no. It is immensely predictable.