The triumph of ignorance

Edition: 1 – All-round Country
Section: Features, pg. 039

Brendan Nelson puts real research at real risk, writes David Lemmings

THE decision of Brendan Nelson, the federal Education Minister, to
abolish the board of the Australian Research Council is especially
alarming for researchers in the humanities and social sciences.
It is well known that Nelson rejected three grants in these areas
last year, despite their inclusion in the list of projects recommended
for funding.

It is common knowledge that he is sensitive to media commentators
who delight in taking pot shots at what they regard as wacky research.
Researchers are entitled to be concerned that under the proposed
executive management model, ARC grant applications will be
more exposed to ministerial intervention on the basis of uninformed
prejudices. Indeed, the upshot may be a narrowing of ARC-funded
research to avoid what may be regarded as controversial topics
in favour of strictly utilitarian research that can easily be defended
as immediately relevant to the national interest.

These are not uninformed speculations. I write as a chief investigator
on a history project that was funded by the ARC last year but
criticised by Andrew Bolt in his syndicated Herald Sun column.
The project is about moral panics, public opinion and the law in
18th-century England.

In the section of the application that addresses anticipated national
benefit we wrote that by revealing the origins of that well-established
contemporary process by which the media generates scares
about threatening “others” (eg, criminals, juvenile delinquents,
independently minded women, immigrants) which are then taken
up by law makers, we hoped to provide “a critical perspective on
modern politics, especially the perception that governments legitimise
their authority by helping to constitute popular anxiety
about threats to moral and personal security”.

Bolt cited this as an example of several “pathetic” attempts to
justify the expense to the community and blithely suggested we should
study modern Australia. At the time I was rather flattered at
the attention that the grant received, and simply dismissed the
criticism as a cheap jibe that could be safely ignored, but I now
realise this kind of attack has rather serious implications, given
Nelson’s plans for the ARC.

Here it is important to understand more fully the perspective on research
that is taken by conservative columnists such as Bolt. To
give him his due, Bolt did have some positive things to say about
some of last year’s ARC-funded projects. Practically useful scientific
research came in for high praise, and even some social science
grants were accepted as money well spent.

The criteria for approval are telling, however. Studies of suicide
bombers, the elements of successful school education, the prospects
for a democratic China, and the regulation of online investment
won Bolt’s endorsement, but he condemned projects on sex, race,
reconciliation and global warming as “faddish obsessions”, and
studies of genocide and queer studies were singled out for obloquy.

In other words, social science should conform to a conservative research
agenda whereby it is driven by contemporary applications,
rather than blue-sky curiosity, and it must avoid anything that smacks
of social or political radicalism.

Attitudes such as these constitute a general threat to legitimate
research in the humanities and the social sciences, wherein scholars
routinely seek new knowledge that informs reflections upon

the human condition, irrespective of its contemporary application.

Certainly, academics have learned to live with conservative assaults,
and are generally intellectually robust enough to defend their
practices. However, the changes to the ARC’s structure threaten
to apply such prejudices directly to the processes by which research
is funded in Australia, with potentially serious consequences
for the scope of scholarly investigation.

Why do I say this? Well, in the first place Bolt himself has embellished
his general criticism of “pointless” research projects with
specific and personal attacks on the ARC’s discipline panels,
especially the one responsible for awarding grants in the humanities
and social sciences.

He sees its members as a “mates club.” And he has trashed the whole
process of peer review — the heart and soul of the ARC’s decision-making
machinery — as an expensive waste of time and taxpayers’
money.

Second, with the removal of the ARC board, a body constituted of eminent
persons chosen, in the words of the ARC Act, to “reflect
the breadth of academic, industry and community interests in the
outcomes of research”, the deliberations of the ARC will be much
more vulnerable to the kind of uninformed opinion that Nelson appears
anxious to appease.

Like everyone else, academics are rightly accountable to the community
and its political leaders for their use of public money. Indeed,
funded researchers are held to account by the ARC for the outcomes
of their research, and the ARC is presently answerable to
the minister and to parliament for its processes and decisions.

But the abolition of the board removes a strong body that stood between
informed academic decision-making and narrowly political judgments,
and on past evidence it does seem likely that this will
undermine the integrity and independence of the ARC.

Of course, the existence of the board did not protect the three research
projects knocked out last year. But there will be more scope
for intervention of this kind in the future, and the humanities
and social sciences are especially vulnerable.

David Lemmings is an associate professor in history at the University
of Newcastle.

Copyright 2005 / The Australian

The advice was given to the researcher.

I don’t honestly think I’m drawing a long bow with Nelson and Bolt – it’s very difficult to explain the mysterious committee and the appointment of P.P. McGuiness except as demonstrating the intention of politically interfering – which was clear enough anyway from Nelson’s unprecedent vetoes of approved grants last year.

I’m honestly not trying to be alarmist.

on last year’s rejection of grants:

Labor accused the ARC funding process of lacking transparency, particularly when considering Dr Nelson exercised unprecedented power in 2004 when he vetoed three ARC grants approved by the peer review process.

“The minister has had total power over how $370 million in ARC grants have been allocated over the next five years,” Opposition education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said.

“Peer review and meaningful community consultation must prevail over any political opportunism by the Howard government.”

The press release from which that quote is drawn is at the ALP’s site where Jenny Macklin also highlights the role of P. P. McGuiness’ committee.

The context for McGuiness’ appointment, and Nelson’s interference in vetoing grants which passed all the hurdles, is an ongoing campaign by Andrew Bolt targetting grants which fit into either a perception of opposition to the government or the usual culture war targets. It’s been reported that McGuiness is seeking more power than just scrutinising grant titles.

In the 1980s, a grant made to a UQ academic in Classics and Ancient History for research on motherhood in Ancient Rome was held up to ridicule in the Senate by Liberal Senators. It seems reasonable – in light of the fact that Nelson’s caved in to the ravings of people like Bolt – to think that such scrutiny is being revived in train with the associated attacks on Universities as hotbeds of “leftism”, “postmodernism” and “feminism” etc which appear to be one of the current fronts in the culture wars.

I expect something about the latest round of grants will turn up in the Higher Ed. I have it on good authority that Nelson rejected at least 4 this time.

The context for my original comment was not trying to score points against the government or push conspiracy theories, but to highlight what I’ve been told in conversation by researchers, and also people involved in the education policy community. The difficulty with discussing these issues lies in the fact that under the legislation there is no transparency, as Jenny Macklin correclty highlights. Nelson is required to report to Parliament as to how many grants recommended to him by the ARC he has disallowed, but not to identify them or the researchers, or to give reasons for his decisions.

It’s also difficult to see why a committee with P.P. McGuiness was established specifically to scrutinise grant titles without drawing obvious conclusions from it.

I can’t be specific about the Griffith info – except to say that the project is in the area of gender and working life.

So I’m sorry – it’s not paranoia – I wish it was.

And of course applications have to be written in plain English. It’s an expectation of any funding request, particularly when evaluations are made by those outside your field, as they are in this case.