A troubled future for the University of Tasmania

A major concern is reputational risk. According to the Times Higher Education survey, the most authoritative of the four main university rating agencies, the law School has not fared well. This is despite its record in recent decades with awards for teaching excellence, Rhodes Scholarships and inter-varsity mooting, as well as research output, contributions to law reform, support from the legal profession and good student/staff relations. In 2018 it was ranked 61 globally and 6 nationally in the Times report; this was from over 6oo university law schools throughout the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. In the past four years it has slipped back to 85.

This decline is likely to continue given the policy of the Council to casualise staff and maximise online teaching. Another reason is the 'small-group' teaching program which, as the Vice-Chancellor has explained, means up to 25 students. Some see this as misleading, others as oxymoronic.

More important than reputational risk is the integrity of the University as a community of scholars. The question is whether the self-financing scheme and city move will compromise principles fundamental to a university and defended as such by Newman in his famous essay. It might help if more politicians were to read his views, which transcend the theological dogma he also defends. Like all intangible values their merits are not immerdiately obvious. It is time, however, to consider their importance and ask if they are still worth defending.

Among the leading critics are Emeritus Philosophy Professor Geoff Malpas, Professor Pam Sharpe, Independent MP for Clarke Andrew Wilkie, Law Society President Simon Gates and Bar Association President Phillip Zeeman, along with human rights lawyer and journalist Greg Barns and Simon Foster, a Hobart lawyer, UTAS graduate and founding member of the Save UTAS movement. Also Fletcher Clarke, a final year Law & Economics student and President of the University Law Students Society. Their arguments have still not been addressed by the University. Instead, it repeats the mantra of educational and financial benefits and sees itself as the prototype for a new model of Commonwealth tertiary funding.

There are two notable absentees - the Labor Party and the Greens - neither, it seems, will risk dissension by taking a stand. Worse still is the silence of individual members, including party leaders and household names. Labor may support the master plan but will not say so, but the Greens' silence is especially disappointing. It treats the future of the State's only university as a minor policy matter rather than one which raises important issues of principle. It is impossible to reconcile with their long-held view that issues of principle are matters of personal conscience. The media should ask both parties to explain their position.

In an ideal world the government would review its support for the master plan. This is still possible despite the initiative being taken by the Upper House. The Premier has recently surprised commentators across the political spectrum with a U-turn to support pokies reform and minimise the harm to problem gamblers and their families. This was despite the power of the hospitality lobby and the party's concern to win the next election. No previous Tasmanian Premier would risk leadership on this issue. Many hope he will support a moratorium if the case for reform is made sufficiently clear.

The need to review the governance structure is clear from the submission to the Legislative Council by Damian Bugg AC, a distinguished former Tasmanian Solicitor-General, University Chancellor and Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. His comprehensive historical account explains how the present system evolved from a widely representative model to one better able to compete with mainland universities in a rapidly expanding Asian student market. This task was completed by 2012, when he was succeeded as Chancellor by former Tasmanian Labor Premier Michael Field. This enabled UTAS to compete with large Australian and overseas universities.

No comparable problems would arise during Field's tenure despite changes in the relocation of teaching and research units where necessary and appropriate. It would be another seven years before the new top-down, streamlined model created its own problems. These have been examined at length in a submission by (among others) retired Adjunct Associate Law Professor Terese Henning, a respected teacher and former Director of the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute. Her analysis makes a compelling case for another review of the governance structure in light of the current problems.

Patrick Naughtin, in a lengthy submission to the Upper House, reminds us that never before has the University appointed a Chancellor who lives outside the state and concludes, passionately, that "Vice-Chancellor Rufus Black will eventually return to Melbourne too, but if he and his appointed cronies get their way with the city relocation of UTAS aided by a spineless government and unquestioning city council, they will leave behind a city and university irretrievably damaged." While the argument, to have any value, must assume good faith, it give a sense of the feelings aroused. The same passion is seen in the more general remarks by Emeritus Philosophy Professor Geoff Malpas.

There is, finally, a risk of ideological capture, whether by the left or the right. This has national and international implications, including for Australia's troubled relationship with China. To appreciate it we need to go back to the early years of the cold war, when the silence of American universities helped to justify US wars fought on geo-political grounds. This was a major factor in Asian wars which killed millions of innocent people. Many of the same arguments continue today, with Newman's views on the responsibility of universities defended, as they had been from the beginning, by MIT Emeritus Professor Noam Chomsky, now in his mid-nineties but still razor-sharp and still black-listed by the US mainstream media.