Academics quit fund body over plan to embrace ‘big society’

Critics say the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s adoption of David Cameron slogan represents political interference Academics are co-ordinating a mass resignation from one of Britain’s biggest university funding councils in protest over plans to fund research into David Cameron’s “big society”. Organisers of the protest have told the Guardian that more than 30 professors will resign from their posts as peer reviewers for the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the next fortnight because the AHRC’s chief executive has refused to back down over plans to promote the big society as a topic for humanities research. Critics of the AHRC’s decision say adopting the Tory slogan represents political interference, making the funding body an “arm of the Department for Education”. With a budget of £102m, the AHRC is the biggest funder of humanities work in universities in England and Wales and is sponsored by the business department. Under the long-standing Haldane principle, research funds are meant to be free from political interference . Since the publication of the AHRC strategy last December, which refers to the big society six times, thousands of academics, 30 representative bodies of academic disciplines, and UCU, the main college lecturers’ union, have signed petitions and passed motions objecting to the plans. The AHRC’s chief executive, Prof Rick Rylance, denied there had been any government interference in the decision, but told the Guardian he would have to go back to the business department before removing the big society references. AHRC peer reviewer and fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, professor Leslie Green, said: “It is just impossible to do the job of a peer reviewer when the chief executive is determined to make us an arm of the [education] department. If Professor Rylance thinks it’s over and done with, he’s wrong.” There are 1,280 members of the AHRC’s peer review college who oversee the allocation of funding grants. Those who are appointed to the unpaid positions are considered experts in their field. Two professors, Bob Brecher from Brighton University and Manucha Lisboa from St John’s College, Cambridge, have already resigned and the Guardian has spoken to another half a dozen academics who confirmed they intend to resign. Ritchie Robertson, Taylor professor of German at the faculty of modern languages at Oxford University, described the references to the big society as gratuitous and said that he was also prepared to resign from the peer review college. “I share the widespread regret that the AHRC included gratuitous references to the big society in its delivery document, and I’m not persuaded by Rick Rylance’s assertions that big society is now a technical term independent of its political origins,” Robertson said. “If the references to the big society are not withdrawn, I shall resign from the peer review college,” he added. Thom Brooks, a philosophy professor at Newcastle University and one of the organisers of the protest, said that mass resignations had been “a last option”. “We wanted to explore all the other options first and I think that has now happened. The only option left is to resign.” Brooks also referred to a recent Times Higher article by higher education minister David Willetts in which he warned of the “hazards” of research councils referring to “political slogans”. “The union is in opposition, over 30 learned societies and thousands of academics are in opposition. Even the minister seems to be opposed to this. It seems that the only people in favour are Rylance and his small team.” Rylance agreed with critics that the big society was “a government policy” but said that it included “a range of activities” from health to the arts which left room for many different projects and angles for research. “People have said this is about promoting the big society. It is categorically not about that. It is indicating an area of research which will fund individuals who may well come up and be critical of it. We don’t forecast outcomes of these things,” Rylance said. However Rylance said that removing all six references to the big society from the AHRC’s strategy would have to involve a renegotiation with government. “That is the document they [the Department for Business] also published. They are our funders and they fund us as against a delivery plan. So we’d have to look at ways with government of revising [it] … but this is not an intention.” Rylance also said that he’d be willing to meet with those who resigned. The current chairman of the AHRC, Sir Alan Wilson, said that he didn’t understand why people were getting “quite worked up about it” and warned against taking “a small group of people too seriously and as being representative of our community”. Research funding Higher education Research David Cameron Shiv Malik guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 19, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.