The current fight for academic freedom, led by former TUI president Paddy Healy, kicked off on January 20 with a letter published in The Irish Times calling for “a public gathering open to all academics... to express opposition to the threats [brought about by the Croke Park Agreement] and to inform the public of their consequences”.

The Croke Park Agreement, along with the recently published Hunt Report on Higher Education, proposes measures that imply unsettling changes in contracts for third level staff members. These include longer working hours and shorter holidays, tighter managerial control, performance-related pay, and the possibility that academics deemed to be substandard by management could be fired.

The letter - signed by 160 staff members from the universities and institutes of technology – stated that “there is now a serious threat to academic freedom, Irish scholarship and indeed, Irish democracy, arising from the proposed implementation of the Croke Park Deal in third-level institutions”.

“The right to permanency and tenure to retirement age is the bedrock on which academic freedom rests. This is now under threat. The imposition of managerialist structures and business models is to be greatly intensified. These proposals have far wider consequences than worsening of conditions of service, though this is extremely serious and related to the above matters,” the letter said.

The proposed meeting took place in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin, at 2pm on Saturday January 22, with a significant number in attendance.

A diverse group of speakers addressed the gathering, including former Taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald, who challenged those present to form a body “concerned with academic issues – not the interests of academics”. The Irish Federation of University Teachers was initially intended to fulfil such a function, he said, before it became a trade union for university staff.

Martin O’Grady from IT Tralee attacked the “tyrannical and destructive growth” being applied to student numbers by “educational industrialists”, and condemned government targets to increase participation in higher education.

“We cannot have a university which educates the most intellectually capable and the less intellectually capable,” Mr O’Grady said.

UCD senior lecturer Dr Geraldine Moane highlighted the difficulties of research for those with part-time or insecure contracts and said the idea of tenure should be associated with "freedom to think" rather than "freedom to sit around”.

Associate professor of French Studies at UCD Mary Gallagher said the job of the academic was never finished and educationalists were entitled to privileges.

Senator David Norris highlighted the successful amendment made to the 1997 Universities Act by Senator Joe Lee and himself, which enshrined the responsibility of the universities to “preserve and provide the traditional principles of academic freedom in the conduct of its internal and external affairs”. The amendment formed the basis for Swedish legislation on the issue soon after.

The meeting concluded by recommending that academics petition their respective governing bodies to call for a declaration on academic freedom similar to the one passed by the Board of Trinity College Dublin earlier this year.

Almost two weeks later, on Friday 4 February, the seven university presidents issued a statement through their representative body, the Irish Universities Association (IUA), denying that the new contract arrangements in the Croke Park Agreement “represent an attack on academic freedom and tenure and thus the very essence of the university”.

While the presidents are “unambiguously committed to academic freedom of thought and inquiry”, they warn that the notion of “unsackable” academics undermines public confidence in our higher education sector and does no service to the sector itself.

They say that the Croke Park Agreement is about accountability and not control and they contend that it is reasonable for the deal to set down minimum attendance hours for academics. 

“Some have suggested that this is to have the effect of physically shackling academics to the university and banning remote working etc,” the university presidents state.

“We want to stress that this is categorically not the case. Our concern is fundamentally about accountability for work and, in practice, this provision is simply to consolidate a framework which protects against cases of obvious abuse of the freedoms which currently exist and which we support.

“Thankfully, those abuses are extremely rare, but it cannot be denied that they have occurred.”

The presidents claim that concepts of tenure and academic freedom have been “conflated in some commentary on the Croke Park deal with the implication that any contextualisation of tenure will be used to attack academic freedom by facilitating the dismissal of staff who express unpopular ideas. This is a completely wrong characterisation as will be reflected in the section on academic freedom, where we vigorously uphold and support freedom of thought and inquiry.”

According to former DCU president Ferdinand von Prondzynski, writing in The Irish Times, academics do in fact work “exceptionally hard”.

“Most of them have a working week of more than 50 hours, and many work longer than that," he said.

“People read about lecturers’ ‘contact hours’ and conclude that that’s it; but lecturers need to prepare; they need to update their scholarship; they need to correct assignments (and there can be several bunches of these in a week); they may have to deal with outside bodies and organisations in relation to teaching programmes; they need to provide individual support and pastoral care for students in difficulties; they need to attend university meetings and provide administrative support; they may be asked to provide support to external bodies in matters of which they have expert knowledge.

“And all of that before you even start talking about research.

“So, many lecturers go home late at night and feel exhausted."

Von Prondzynski suggests that politicians and opinion-formers stop the barrage of unsubstantiated criticism of the sector so that public trust in higher education may be restored. 

As for the higher education sector, it “must accept that we now live in an age where we all have to be seen to be accountable, and that reform is unavoidable, including some mechanism for identifying and dealing with under-performance where it occurs”.

“Ans all sides have to re-commit themselves to intellectual integrity and academic freedom, in the service of national regeneration,” he concludes.

(Sources: Irish Times; University Observer; Trinity News)