The state of the universities

Amis, Bradbury and Lodge, very different as they were, all now seem like products of other, gentler ages, ones in which authors sought to offer academic satire with the shaming that hypocrisy deserves, while finding humour, and very much of it, in the varied adventures of protagonists and others. And so still with the more mordant Coming from Behind (1983) as Howard Jacobson, who taught at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, laid bare Wrottesley Poly and some of its members.

The black-comedy A Very Peculiar Practice (1986, 1988), became very much more biting in its second series as the American Vice-Chancellor took over and students were removed, with the last episode entitled “Death Of A University”. The writer, Andrew Davies, had lectured at Coventry College of Education and then the University of Warwick. Here, however, it was commercialisation, notably globalisation, that brought a traditional university to its abrupt close.

That topic could still be handled in fiction, but how can writers cope with the current evil confluence of the toxic effluvia of faddish management with woke-ish staff and students? Set in fictional Pembroke University, the American television series The Chair (2021) sought with some success to handle issues of diversity, gender and behaviour, but stayed off a number of the delights of the modern university, such as the sheer aggression that explodes these envelopes, the stress affecting so many staff and students, and the particular delectations of fighting the world’s battles on campuses let alone the “trans” and others policy of supposed aggressions.

In Britain, America and elsewhere, each week brings a new case of intimidation of staff, with administrators, “colleagues”, and students all joining to deal out the shit. Sorry if that word offends you, but only excremental imagery on the Swiftian eighteenth-century pattern captures the poisoning of the culture as well as the destruction of so many individual careers, and the deadening, nervous pall of concern that pervades universities, rather like a toxic smog.

ABBA in “Waterloo” proposed that “the history book on the shelf is always repeating itself”, but that is certainly not the case for modern academe in Britain or America. The present situation is more pervasive, invasive and brutal than the Cold War in these countries.

So, what becomes of academic satire? One approach is simply to print some of the nonsense emanating from universities. It is more ridiculous than most satirists could devise, and frees the latter from the danger of vilification through invention. Particular humour of a mordant type attaches to the idiocies surrounding decolonising curricula and enforcing authoritarian notions of equality and diversity. Racism directed against whites underlies some of the discussion of white “privilege”.

What is less clear to outsiders is how this world impacts on individuals,  indeed how it provokes the full range of human action from bravery to cowardice via complicity. How shocked can you be when you encounter the latter on the part of those you like and/or admire? So much for universities as a setting for tragedy in any fictional form.

But tragedy can overlap with satire: academics and students ignoring refugees from horrible wars, notably at present in Ethiopia, so that they can intone against the statue of Cecil Rhodes. Far better to hurl opprobrium at white on black violence in the remote past than to respond to black on black violence in the present.

Tragedy and satire. That, indeed, is the present situation. False values can always attract the satirist. The comic element is very rare and even then very black, if I am allowed (especially with my name) to say that, but satire does not have to be funny. What it should do is hit the target, and universities provide so very many.

So for example, for the University of Wolverhampton, a half-time lecturer in War Studies [post reference number 12785], required a “presentation topic” for the interview. It was described accordingly [form reference HR003]:

“A key part of the Lectureship will be to contribute to the development of our undergraduate and postgraduate War Studies programmes. Outline in detail the ways in which your research expertise would underpin your teaching and contribute to the Departments [I assume ‘Department’s’ was intended] work on de-colonising the curriculum.”

Indeed, the “criteria to be assessed (From PERS034)” [maybe “Form” was intended] includes “Ability to contribute to curriculum development” which is glossed as “ability to contribute to revalidated curriculum”.

Or talk “Dialogues on Decolonisation”, an e-Booklet from the University of East Anglia, designed to invent “a new curriculum for the Arts and Humanities”. There is so much pomposity, self-importance and self-satisfaction to satirise. So take this launch paragraph from one modern-day academic potentate:

“Our question, and the role of academic leadership in decolonising the curriculum, is vast. To be able to approach this via a keyword was really interesting: to be able to go in forensically into one idea. After doing various readings, which word jumps out at me and actually leads me down a path? I was quite intrigued by the word Undoing. I like the sense of process, the simplicity of it, as well as the vast complexity of it. I like the fact that quietly and gently, but hopefully explicitly, it presents subversion: maybe not full-on revolution, but certainly a sense of something happening. Undoing what? Well, that could be all sorts of things….”

And so to the University of Exeter, which also offers an opportunity to consider general trends. Having written the official history of the university (The City on the Hill, 2015), I have now been asked repeatedly if I have any comments on the reports in the Times and Telegraph late last year on the successful appeal in an industrial tribunal against the university by a female Jewish Physics Professor, in which the Tribunal lambasted the university for sacking her and there was a mention in the case of allegedly “Jewish characteristics in teaching”.

I have delayed writing in order to have the time both to reflect and to speak to some individuals. Two issues I think are relevant. First, this is not the first time the university’s disciplinary procedures have fallen foul of an industrial tribunal. There was, for example, the David Pugsley case, where the university was similarly found to be acting in a wrongful fashion over a dismissal and he was reinstated. I leave it to others to decide if there is, as some allege, a bullying habit.

As for anti-Semitism: from my research for the history of the university, I was well aware that it existed, but there was nothing to compare with the furore in the 1990s and early 2000s (on which see my history). As Vice-Chancellor during the 2000s and 2010s, Steve Smith certainly opposed anti-Semitism.

My own impression, however, is that anti-Semitism has become much more active in recent years (since my history) as Corbynista/BLM sentiment appears to have known few bounds in broadening the criticism of Israel. That is not the same as the university authorities themselves being anti-Semitic, and in the recent case the Tribunal rejected the charge. On the other hand, the situation may look less sanguine at the level of some parts of the university. Whether or not articulated in terms of “white privilege”, the inroads of critical race theory at both university and sub-university levels have been pernicious.

Moreover, any purge of reading lists for the sake of supposed diversity is apt to hit hard at established scholarship, among which works by Jewish scholars are prominent. At a broader level, “Decolonisation” of the curriculum arises from the same brittle intolerance as anti-Semitism, and, to a degree, can tend to be embraced by the same people. Thus, it is difficult for any university to embrace one form of intolerance without tacitly sanctioning the other.

In the meantime, the University of Exeter is fast going down the league tables, including, I am informed, falling to 98th in the student satisfaction tables. Something rotten in the state of the university since 2020? Conscientious staff let down by poor leadership and misconceived policies? The next historian of the university (I was the second) will have an interesting task, or maybe this one if I ever attempt a third edition.

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