Some things are just plain wrong

What the Royal Commission into antisemitism failed to ask university leaders.

My wife and I were the first in either of our families to attend university. Everything that followed, the broadening of horizons, the raising of aspirations, and eventually the privilege of leading three universities, began there. Universities have been good to me, and I want others to share in the same benefits.

That is why I spent several hours watching Australian university vice-chancellors (presidents or rectors in other countries), give evidence before the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. I hoped to hear not only how universities had handled the events of the past two years, but also what those events revealed about modern universities.

The vice-chancellors struck me as thoughtful and well prepared. They explained policies, disciplinary procedures, complaints mechanisms, privacy obligations and reporting requirements. They described institutions trying to navigate difficult issues in a highly scrutinised environment. Yet, I finished with the feeling that the hearing had somehow missed the central question. The Commission spent a great deal of time asking vice chancellors what they did. It spent almost no time asking why universities find it difficult to say that some behaviours and ideas are just plain wrong.

This is not a criticism of the vice-chancellors who appeared, nor did any of them evade the Commission’s questions. Leading a modern university is among the most difficult jobs in public life. Governments tinker with universities regularly and everyone expects them to solve problems that extend far beyond the campus gates. In response to national regulators, universities have become extraordinarily good at explaining their processes while becoming much less adept at explaining their principles.

The current malaise did not begin with antisemitism, and it did not happen overnight. It has been unfolding for decades. Universities once regarded education as something more than the transmission of knowledge or preparation for employment. They believed they were helping to form judgement and character. Today’s strategic plans speak about employability and impact. They have much less to say about wisdom.

Students learn from what universities reward. If every moral judgement is treated as merely someone’s perspective, if every issue must be qualified and decided by lawyers, institutions eventually stop making judgements altogether. Faced with conduct that ought to be plainly condemned, they turn to legalistic procedures rather than principle.

The Royal Commission’s own hearings made the point better than any argument of mine could. The discussion continually returned to rules: whether complaints had been properly handled, whether privacy legislation prevented disclosure.

Take one exchange from Wednesday’s hearing. The University of Melbourne’s interim vice-chancellor, (someone who inherited this dispute rather than created it) told the commission he did not believe the names of twenty students who illegally occupied a Jewish professor’s office should be made public, since it would leave ‘a stain on the rest of their lives’. The professor who was the victim of this episode had asked for the opposite: that students’ names be released, for his own protection.

I don’t doubt the vice-chancellor’s compassion; perhaps internal university punishment was sufficient. But notice what the argument assumes. Permanent anonymity is mercy, and mercy outweighs a young person learning that frightening an academic in his own office carries a cost that follows you. Universities exist partly to teach that lesson, before life teaches it at far greater expense. Students shielded from the cost of serious misconduct are not being protected. They are being denied an education in something more important than any degree: that actions have consequences, and that facing them like an adult is not a stain but the beginning of becoming a grown-up.

It is vital to their future that universities see themselves as institutions with the authority, and the responsibility, to exercise moral judgement. This does not mean imposing orthodoxy or suppressing disagreement. Universities exist precisely because difficult ideas deserve to be argued about. However, intellectual freedom depends on more than freedom of speech. It also depends on a shared understanding that there remains a difference between disagreement and intimidation. A university worthy of the name does more than turn out skilled graduates. It teaches students to act fairly and argue honestly. It leaves them not just employable, but wiser.

No Royal Commission can restore that kind of education. It can recommend clearer reporting lines, stronger governance and better complaints procedures, and most of those recommendations will be sensible. But no inquiry can give universities back confidence in their own purpose. That task can only be done by universities themselves. Watching the hearings, I did not come away thinking our universities lack procedures and policies. They have plenty of them. I came away wondering whether they still have something far more important: the confidence to say, out loud and without embarrassment, that some things are simply wrong and some are evil.

An earlier version of this article appeared in The Australian newspaper.