The well-meant expansion of universities has created a Left-wing fifth column that hates the values of those who pay their wages
On Saturday we asked: Are universities fit for purpose? Here we continue the debate
WHEN I was at university 40 years ago, students sometimes protested. They risked being rounded up by so-called ‘ bulldogs’ — bossy university police acting on behalf of the authorities.
How times have changed. A few weeks ago I noticed a protest of perhaps 100 angry people outside the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. Were they students? No, they were dons, some of whom evidently acquire their clothes in a local charity shop.
They were demanding an improved pension settlement. Placards were held aloft. Slogans were chanted. Students were discouraged from attending to their studies, and they weren’t going to be taught anything while this rabble was on strike.
This incident provides a snapshot into what has happened to our universities over the past few decades. To an extent inconceivable in the Seventies, they have become bastions of Left-wing (sometimes extremely Left-wing) thought.
And this, I submit, is a very big deal. When I was a student, between 5 and 10 per cent of my age group went to university. Now almost 50 per cent of young people attend one of these institutions. So if any cultural brainwashing is going on — as I suggest it is — there are likely to be significant repercussions for our society.
The idea of expanding higher education (which seized the mind of John Major, and was developed by Tony Blair) was on the whole a noble one, offering opportunities to people which had previously been the preserve of a fortunate minority. Disgruntled
What was not predicted was the way in which these rapidly growing institutions would increasingly become dominated by Leftist dons, not infrequently teaching academic subjects of doubtful merit.
An insight into the nature of our new universities was provided by a letter recently sent by 42 academics to the Guardian newspaper. It defended Jeremy Corbyn from charges of antiSemitism, and suggested he was being subjected to an ‘unfair trial by the media’.
Among the disgruntled signatories was Jane Dipple, a lecturer at Winchester University School of Media and Film, whose special interest is ‘ zombies in Britain: from cinema to counterculture’.
William Proctor, a senior lecturer in journalism, english and communication at Bournemouth University, also set a hand to the pro-Corbyn missive. So did Dr Peri Bradley, a media studies lecturer who earned her doctorate in film at Southampton University.
And so on. The list is a long one. Suffice to say, few, if any, of the signatories could be described as distinguished academics teaching what used to be thought of as proper academic subjects. And yet there they are, drawing salaries, and sounding off in support of Jeremy Corbyn.
It could be argued that such people proliferate at lesser universities which are former polytechnics. This may be true. But they, or people like them, are still teaching tens of thousands of students, each of whom is paying a sizeable £9,000 a year in tuition fees.
Oxford may not yet be specialising in Mickey Mouse courses, but the fact that there is a preponderance of Leftwing dons at the university can’t be doubted.
A Tory-minded history don tells me that 70 or 80 per cent of his department inclines to the Left.
Another illustrious academic confides that 90 per cent of the dons at his very famous Oxford college are of the Left. On account of his unique pro-Brexit views, he is regarded as something of a freak, indulged by kinder souls, and shunned by others.
And then there is the undoubted fact that, whenever a new head of college is appointed at either Oxford or Cambridge, it is practically certain to be a someone of the Left, who may have cut a figure in the media.
Alan Rusbridger (formerly of the Guardian), Mark Damazer ( ex- BBC), Will Hutton ( fashionable Left- wing journalist) and Helena Kennedy (Lefty lawyer) are examples of Oxford college heads of such a stamp. There are at least as many at Cambridge from similar backgrounds.
In fact, a distinguished person of the Right, whether or not from the media, can no longer become an Oxbridge head of house.
When a new perfect candidate of the Right exceptionally emerges — such as renowned ex-editor Sir Peter Stothard — his or her eligibility is disregarded. Connivance
What happens is that increasingly Left-wing dons choose increasingly Left-wing college heads, and a self-perpetuating circle is created from which anyone with even mildly Right- wing sympathies is excluded for the rest of time.
This can’t be right. Our public institutions should reflect the society they serve. Our society is not overwhelmingly Leftwing, so why should our universities be?
There used to be a balance. In the Oxford of 40 years ago, the Marxist historian Christopher Hill was Master of Balliol while his Right-wing intellectual adversary on the causes of the english Civil War, Hugh Trevor-Roper, was Regius Professor of modern history.
In the days before monochrome Leftism, it was possible to have a Marxist don teaching you about 19th-century novels, and a Tory don expounding on Shakespeare.
Above all in the humanities, the exchange of ideas is of paramount importance. If those ideas are exclusively vetted though a Left- wing prism, there will be a narrowing of minds.
And I believe evidence for this can be found in the growing intolerance of Right-wing or non-conformist views in many of our universities, often with the connivance of the authorities. Thinkers out- of-step with the new orthodoxy are increasingly being denied a platform.
For example, the feminist writer Germaine Greer has been routinely ‘no-plat-formed’ for her allegedly ‘transphobic’
views. Ms Greer has asserted — incontrovertibly, I would have thought — that it is impossible to truly swap one gender for another.
Others are exposed to insufferable bullying. As a result of suggesting that Empire can have good aspects well as bad — again, a pretty indisputable contention — Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of moral and pastoral philosophy at Oxford, has been subjected to appalling insults, as my colleague Guy Adams describes on page 17.
I fear the real bigots are often to be found on the teaching staff of universities.
We got another whiff of intolerant views when 21 prominent academics wrote to the Guardian complaining that the newspaper had welcomed the Government’s decision not to re-open the Leveson Inquiry into (in the words of the signatories) the ‘crimes’ and ‘wrong-doing’ of newspapers.
It’s much more difficult to imagine Right-wing lecturers writing in support of a free Press, though some brave souls did recently circulate a pro-Brexit letter. If you are a rare Tory don, it’s wise to keep your head down lest it be blown off.
The decision dramatically to develop our universities has produced a vast new army of Left-leaning academics — many of them not very bright or scholarly, but no less intolerant of opposing views for that.
Hating as they often do the allegedly ‘exploitative’ and ‘racist’ history of this country, they are sustained (if hardly overpaid) by the eyewatering tuition fees which students are now obliged to pay.
What is to be done? Perhaps students will object to being bound in an intellectual strait- jacket. Political propaganda usually backfires. We must pray that our universities don’t produce a nation of Corbynistas.
In any event, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the well-intentioned mass expansion of university education by politicians has resulted in the creation of a Left-wing fifth column that is increasingly bitterly opposed to the values of the majority of Britons who pay their salaries.