THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
" The Universities Some Queries"~
The Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies, M. P.
Prime Minister of Australia
THE INAUGURAL WALLACE WURTH
MEMORIAL LECTURE
28th August, 1964
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Photograph by courtesy Sydney Morning Herald'
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The Chancellor, the Hon. Mr. Justice J. S. J. Clancy, C. M. G.
Prime Minister, members of the University, ladies and gentlemen-
This evening is an historic occasion in the life of this University.
We are to hear the inaugural Wallace Wurth Memorial
Lecture. This was established by the Council of the University
to commemorate our first Chancellor, the late Wallace Charles
Wurth, in recognition of his great work, not only for this University
but for he community. We are privileged this evening
that the Right Honourable Sir Robert Menzies, Prime Minister
of Australia, has consented to deliver this lecture. We had
always hoped that this would be, so we waited, and we are
very grateful that tonight Sir Robert is with us on this very
important occasion. I now invite you, Sir Robert, to deliver the
Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture.
The Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies, M. P.
Wallace Wuth was a civil servant. I am occasionally told
that I use this expression wrongly, and that I should refer to
people like him as " public servants", working under what in
Australia are called the Public Service Acts.
However, I believe that there are many people who are public
servants who are not under the Public Service Act at all, and I
therefore have fallen into the habit of calling people civil servants
when I intend to refer to those who are in the direct
administrative :; ervice of government.
Because he was a civil servant, Wallace Wurth was a member
of a class of people who constitute a recurrent theme of criticism,
usually by those who are not well-informed.
I have heard civil servants referred to with monotonous regularity
as " bureaucrats", as " clock watchers", as " red tape merchants",
as repcetitive and costly " tea drinkers".
My experience shows that such criticisms come most loudly
from those with the least information. When I cast my eye
around the upper brackets of the Commonwealth Civil Service
and realise the devotion and talent and experience and objectivity
which they bring to their work, I could laugh to hear
them dismissed with a sneer. There are, in fact, few people who
work harder and who think more assiduously. They are in a
very real sense among the custodians of continuity and sanity in
government. It is now many years since I first heard a friend of mine say,
with a certain touch of irony, that " the Civil Service produces
a level of efficiency below which no sensible government can
fall". This is, of course, not to say that politicians, and in particular
Ministers, should become the mere spokesmen of their departmental
officers. This would be all wrong. Indeed, it would be
seen to be wrong by their senior officers themselves. It is the
duty of those civil servants who are in the position of advising
Ministers and of administering policies subsequently created to
give the most objective advice and the most intelligent service
that they can. When they have done that, they have discharged
their task.
It is for governments to determine policy. It is then for the
Civil Service to give effect to those policies whether they
assume legislative or administrative form, and to do so without
fear, favour or affection.
For myself, I have never wanted to know the Party political
alignment of any officer of mine. Indeed, I would resent it if he
told me. For the truth is that whatever Party is in power, it has
exactly the same right to expect honest, disinterested, and competent
work from the Civil Service as any other Party should
expect if it came into office.
These general remarks are by no means irrelevant to the late
Wallace Wurth. He was, as his record showed, a man of most
versatile talents, of rich character and personality, and great
achievement. There was, indeed, something elusive and yet
compelling about him.
For ter. years, until his death, he attended Loan Councils and
Premiers' Conferences at Canberra, as Chairman of the New
South Wales Public Service Board. From my place at the top
of the table, my eye would frequently catch the sight of Wallace
Wurth sitting caldmly on the front Treasury bench-as to the
manner born--hearing all, but, so far as I could judge, steeped
in silence. At fir:; t I used to wonder vaguely what he was doing
at the conference as a member of the New South Wales team.
After all, I had known a few Chairmen of Public Service
Boards in the Commonwealth but had seldom found it necessary
or appropriate to take up with them such matters, financial
or otherwise, as come to be argued when the State Premiers
march on Canberra.
The Chairman of a Public Service Board has great responsibilities,
but they do not commonly fall into the arena of the
political cut and thrust of a Premiers' Conference.
What then, I used to say to myself subconsciously, was Wurth
doing in this gallley? And then the answer dawned on me all
too slowly. Wall. ace Wurth was not for this purpose, and, except
in name, Chairman of the New South Wales Public Service
Board in the restricted or orthodox sense at all. He was the
friend, the consultant, the universal provider, the wise and
upright judge of issues. He was in a sense a muted noise off
stage. He was, to vary the metaphor, armed yet disarming, the
eminence grise of the New South Wales Government. In short,
he was present, not as Chairman of the Public Service Board,
but in a wider capacity. He was, of course, as his whole record
shows, a superb administrator, and I at no time doubted that he
managed the New South Wales Public Service very well. But
his essential contribution came through his pervasive influence
on general policy and action, an influence made possible and
perhaps inevitable by his luminous intelligence, his great force
of character and his unbiased integrity.
In my long experience of public life and affairs, Wallace
Wurth was, in his own right and in his own fashion, unique.
Bearing all these facts in mind, it was a happy stroke when he
was made Chancellor of this new University. For a good Chancellor,
if I may say so, should be a wise and experienced man
with enough kniowledge of academic people to understand their
problems, but also to be able on proper occasions to treat them
lightheartedly. He should, in these days when governments
have the major responsibility for universities in Australia, know
something about governments and how they think, something
of the qualities and something of the oddities of politicians,
and, at the same time, enjoy wide respect from people, many
of whom have never been in a university at all, but who represent
some of the great currents of knowledge and experience
which animate modern social and industrial life.
The significance of Wallace Wurth in relation to the University
of New South Wales could perhaps best be expressed if
I say that one of the functions of a university is to produce
individuals who can develop and preserve their individuality
while still playing in the team. This, after all, should be one of
the great purposes of a university; not uniformity, but developed
individuality.
When I was invited to deliver the Wallace Wurth Memorial
Lecture, .1 had a vagrant thought, built upon some previous
experiencs, that I would be allowed to select any topic and take
the opportunity of saying what I thought about it. This has
happened on a number of occasions and it was not unimportant
to me, because I do as a rule one of these lectures a year, and
sometime:;, through inadvertence on my part, two. I like doing
them, for the very good reason that, in public affairs we can
accustom ourselves all too readily to somewhat general thought
and speech and succumb to the endemic disease of politics,
which is a dislike of precision. I have, therefore, found it a
very good thing for me to have to sit down over a period of
many weeks, do some research, analyse some ideas, and work
them into a degree of clarity of which I would hope not to be
ashamed after they were delivered.
Full of these ideas, I said to my secretary " Find out whether I
am at large in the choice of a topic." The answer came back
with all the inevitability that one expects from a great scientist
like Professor Baxter, " We would like the Prime Minister to
speak about some topic connected with the universities."
Well, Mr. Chancellor, I have for some reason or another, or
perhaps for no reason, been the recipient of, I think, i8 honorary
degrees around the world. That has meant i8 speeches
about universities. I have made quite a number of such speeches
in the Parliament; I have delivered others at the opening of
buildings or schools in various Australian universities. I, therefore,
said to myself, with some feeling of despair, that, as no
doubt some of my political opponents would say, I was an
exhausted volcano. What was there with the faintest degree of
novelty that I could say about the universities? Under these
circumstances I decided on heroic measures. I would put some
queries and perhaps answer them.
I settled on I: wo queries; in each case because I thought it
related to something important about which comparatively
little is said, but about each of which there may be considerable
misconceptions. So, having said something, all too little, about the late Wallace
Wurth, I vwill proceed to deal with my two queries.
The first relates to the new axiom or dogma that university
education ought to be regarded as a right and not as a privilege;
in other words that it should be available to all persons, male or
female, who pass what I will broadly call the entrance examination.
Now in my younger days, if I may venture to go back so
long in history, this was neither axiom nor dogma. Scholarships
were few and had to be battled for in a highly competitive
field. A university education was not a right, nor indeed was it
the perquisite of the sons and daughters of the rich. In my own
time as an undlergraduate, great sacrifices were made by parents,
including my own, to give their children the opportunity
for a higher educational attainment. But times have changed,
and, for reasons to which I will refer a little later, for the better.
Could I start by referring to the celebrated Robbins Report
on higher education in Great Britain? In paragraph 31 of that
report the committee said-
" Throughout our Report we have assumed as an axiom that
courses of higher education should be available for all those who
are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and who
wish to do so. What type of education they should get and in what
kind of institution are questions we consider later on; and the
criterion by which capacity is to be judged is clearly a question on
which there may be a variety of opinions. But, on the general
principle as we have stated it, we hope there will be little dispute."
This statement has been referred to with approval by our
own Universities Commission, and by quite a few educational
publications in Australia. Yet, of course, it is not completely
definitive. You will have noted the phrase " those who are
qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them", and you
will also have noted that " the criterion by which capacity is to
be judged is clearly a question on which there may be a variety
of opinion;".
Whether this means that the simple test, to apply it to Australian
conditions, is the passing of the Matriculation Examination,
I do not profess to know. For myself, I would like to
believe that the real point is that finance should not be the
limiting factor where the intellectual capacity and the personal
ambition are adequately high.
On this matter I have had my own mind improved, and no
doubt most of you would agree that that is a desirable state of
affairs, by my perusal, by courtesy of Professor Connell, of a
recent study made by the Department of Education in the
University of Sydney, under the title of " The University and
the Comrr. unity". I am much indebted to this publication and
would like to quote one most interesting passage from it. This
is of great historic interest I think.
" Tertiary education in the past has been thought of largely
as an education of an elite or specially talented segment of the
community. The falsity of this position is now becoming more
apparent every day. The more talented and productive the
elite, the more it becomes necessary to have it built upon a
highly educated community. This is the only way to ensure the
continuance of first rate education for the best brains in the
community. There are three good reasons for this. First, the
talented perform best, generally speaking, in a climate of sympathetic
understanding among people who have some reasonable
idea of what they are doing, and take an intelligent interest
in their success. Secondly, the higher education of the talented
is an expensive business, and it will receive adequate financial
support only from public monies. These will be forthcoming
only if there is a sufficient body of soundly educated people who
can see the value of such an education. And, thirdly, by increasing
the number of highly educated men and women in the
community, you not only ensure stimulation and support for
the specially talented, you also increase the pool of individuals
who aspire to further education, and from whom large numbers
of specially talented may be drawn for a higher education.
These argument; suggest that if we are to educate even our
gifted successfully, we must provide opportunity for as wide a
segment of the community as possible to proceed into some
form of higher education, and at the same time raise the general
level of educational achievement throughout the whole community."
I am sorry to inflict so long a citation upon you, but
this seems to be of singular quality and relevancy to what I am
saying. Accepting these views, I would like to say that they not only
present a statement of desirable rights, but they present an
enormous challenge. When I attended, earlier this year, the
University of Birmingham to receive a degree there at the hands
of my old friend, Lord Avon, I said a little about this problem
in my speech of acknowledgement. The Vice-Chancellor of
Birmingham later gave me a copy of his report to his University
for 1963. In this he referred to the implications of the initial
proposition in the Robbins Report.
In the course of his report the Vice-Chancellor said, " The
universities' task of sustaining quality is more important in the
long run than numbers." He also went on to say that " Another
consequence of the new philosophy will have to be watched.
The attitudes of :; tudents who come to the universities, claiming
their places as of right, will, or as I would have said ' may', be
different from those of students coming to enjoy and use a hard
won privilege."
He had other things to say which seemed to me to be of great
importance. But: speaking now for myself, and accepting the
new philosophy as an ideal to be aimed at, I do want to point
out a few practical considerations which cannot be ignored in
the enthusiasm of a new vision.
Far too many people in our country, when they urge the
creation of a new university, seem to think of it in terms of
financial provision by governments, and the bricks and mortar
of practical construction. Yet the fact is that the value of a university
depends primarily upon the standard of its research and
its teaching. In short, the greatest problem about the expansion
of universities, or the creation of a new one, is that of securing
a highly qualified staff. Any man who has any share of responsibility
for the general national balance and prosperity cannot
fail to be conscious of such problems as the pressure of numbers
on financial resources, the pressure of numbers and demand oei
physical resources, because these things form part of the economic
problems of the nation. They have to be considered. They
can produce some limitation upon the financial provision by
governments. But, in the ultimate, the capacity to establish new
universities or to expand old ones is primarily to be judged by
reference to the maintenance of the quality of research and
teaching and the value of the degrees to be awarded.
Gresham's Law, if I may say so, applies to universities and
their degrees just as much as it did and does to money. In short,
we have occurring under our eyes a tremendous explosion in
the numbers of those who seek tertiary education. Our task is
to see that they get it without lowering the standards.
The la:; t thing that I want to do is to encumber you with
statistics, but I would ask you to carry in mind just a few
figures which I derived from the last report of the Australian
Universities Commission.
In 1960, which is, after all, not long ago, the number of
students at Australian universities was ( and I will quote figures
to the nc: arest thousand) 53,000. By 1963 this had grown to
69, oo000. The prediction of the Commission ( and it is not likely
to be over the mark) is that by I966 the figure will be 95,000.
( I96o-53, ooo, 1966-95, ooo).
These figures represent an enormous increase in what I will
call demand for tertiary education. They must be accompanied
by the observation that graduation rates, either in total or in
minimum time, were, over the period from 1951 to 1956, deplorably
low. The figures seem to be improving, but they are
still not as good as they should be. This is, of course, important
because the amount of money spent and the amount of teaching
energy put forward in the training of students is wasted to the
extent that the result is not achieved. Any community like ours,
which accepts large financial burdens for universities, cannot
afford this kind of waste.
The reasons for what I have called wastage are, I think, clear
enough. We have not yet reached a completely adequate level
of training in ithe secondary schools, and, therefore, too many
matriculating students go to university with a considerable risk
of failure. This has deeply impressed me ever since Sir Keith
Murray, now Lord Murray I am happy to observe, presented
the original report. It explains why my own Government has
initiated schemes for secondary school scholarships designed to
give extra time in secondary studies, which is very important,
and for science teaching facilities in the secondary schools so
that on the science side students may, if they decide to go on to
the university, go on much better prepared. Again, most universities
have felt inadequately staffed, that is in terms of numbers I
hasten to say, and that the staff-student ratios were unsatisfactory.
What I have said means that I believe that before we
become too rhapsodical about the increase in numbers and the
rights of people to have university training, we should face up
to the problem that the greatest task, and in a sense the most
difficult one, is to find the necessary trained and competent
staff. There was a time when quite a number of professors and
lecturers came from overseas. That was true in my own time.
That time has come to an end. We must,, as never before, generate
in our own universities our own future staff.
This is a problem by no means overlooked by our own
Universities Commission. It must not be overlooked by governments.
I certainly don't overlook it myself. Unless we can, by
one means or another, encourage and produce an increasing
percentage of university students who aim at higher degrees
and research work, then we will do a gross disservice to university
education by concentrating our minds exclusively on numbers
and on money.
I would sum up my own views about which perhaps I've said
too much, on this matter by stating the new rule in my own
fashion. I believe that we should aim at a state of affairs in
which all young men and women capable of, and likely to benefit
from, a university education are not denied their opportunity
for want of means. But I believe that this opportunity will
find them pursuing false lights unless they can go through a
period of training and inspiration which can come to them
only through the work of teachers of the highest order.
My second query-and this is, I think, rather a bold one; still
one mu:; t be bold occasionally-relates to " academic freedom".
For various well-known reasons, there has been, during the
last few years in Australia, considerable discussion about the
nature and extent of the academic freedom to be enjoyed by
academic people.
I want to say something about the problem tonight, for two
reasons. The first is that I think that I am at liberty to express an
objective view, for, although I have had, fortunately, much to
do with university developments in Australia over the last
decade, I have at all times been careful to maintain my own
belief in the autonomy of universities and in the utter undesirability
of governmental executive direction to the universities as
to what they are to study and teach. It is, I think, well to remember
that in Australia the universities are in a substantial
sense government universities, relying to a major extent upon
monies provided by governments. Under these circumstances,
it might be feared that the governments which find the money
might wish to call the tune, and might interfere with those
university activities which it is the function of the university to
promote. As I think it will be agreed that I have at no time
sought to interfere with university autonomy, I may feel justified
in offering some views about academic freedom.
My :; econd reason is that I think that a good deal of what has
been said in the press and otherwise about academic freedom
has been over-emotional; it has, I fear, promoted more heat
than light. It is, therefore, I think, a valuable exercise to pose
the question " What is academic freedom?" and to endeavour to
answer it. I
The first element in academic freedom is the liberty of
thought. This has never been better defined than by Charles
Morgan in his remarkable book, and my favourite book,
" Liberties of the Mind". I quote his words-
" I mean by it the mind's freedom from any external pressure
designed to drug, intimidate or otherwise reduce its full exercise
of natural capacity."
I would also like to quote with warm approval the words of
the report of the Murray Committee on Australian Universities
-it is as well to recall these words:
" In the middle of the twentieth century universities are very
much in the public eye and in most countries they receive a
good deal of attention, and also very substantial financial support,
from governments. In most parts of the free world they
are accorded a high degree of autonomy and self-determination
on the ground that the particular services which they render,
both to their own country and to mankind in general, cannot
be rendered without such freedom. Even in time of war and
national danger, the nations of the West have sought to honour,
so far as they humanly could, the right and duty of the universities
to pursue new knowledge without fear or favour and to
educate in a liberal spirit and with integrity; and even in times
of economic depression they have shown increasing signs of
seeking to maintain the life and work of universities in full
vigour." The integrity of the scholar would be under attack if he were
told what he wa: to think about and how he was to think about
it. It is of the most vital importance for human progress in all
fields of knowledge that the highest encouragement should be
given to untrammelled research, to the vigorous pursuit of
truth, however unorthodox it may seem. It is for this reason
that in Australia we have established the autonomy of universities,
and have, so far as I know, and I hope I am right, consistently
refrained from interfering in their work with what I
will call political executive directions.
If no limits can sensibly be put to the search for new truths
or the better understanding and expression of old ones, it follows
that the scholar must work in an atmosphere of freedom
and with a free mind. True, in a democracy, Parliament, acting
within its constitutional jurisdiction may, under some circumstances,
pass legislation which limits the rights of expression.
Such circumstances may arise in time of war or other special
times where national security may require, under an appropriate
law, some limitations upon freedom of expression or of
individual activity. But I know of no law in a modern civilised
country which has made it an offence to think. There is, of
course, in s; ome philosophies in the world, an attack made upon
the mind in order to constrain it into habits of thought which
are agreeable to the rulers. There are philosophies in the world
which aim at reducing the power and significance of human
volition in order to pave the way for what has been called a
mechanistic conception of life; in which people are to be pawns
in the game of economic and material conflict. But I think we
may say that in Australia we have never accepted these philosophies
and that we still retain our passion for freedom and for
the development, not only of the individual, but of every faculty
that he may possess for investigation and discovery.
Now I said just now that some discussion has appeared to me
to be over-emotional. I have, indeed, if I may say so prudently
in this assembly, detected some disposition on the part of some
academics to claim a freedom which puts them outside the substance
and procedures of the ordinary law. Now, quite frankly,
this is a claim that cannot and must not be sustained. Freedom
is one thing. Privilege is another, and privilege cannot be
claimed unless the law recognises it. There are, indeed, some
privileges recognised by the law. For example, the privilege,
under some circumstances, of communications between patient
and doctor and between the priest and a confessing member of
his communion. But these, I repeat, are within the law.
But, putting such matters on one side, freedom is to be seen
as a faculty enjoyed by all citizens, not because they are
academic or because they conduct a newspaper, but because they
are citizens. The freedom of the press, for example, like yours
or mine, is a freedom within the law. It is subject to all the legal
rules relatinlg to defamation or sedition or violation of the criminal
codes. A rich private citizen achieves no new or special
freedom when he purchases a newspaper and controls its policy
and utterances. Similarly, a barrister practising his profession at
the Bar and enjoying the normal freedom of mankind and the
special legal privilege which attaches to what he says in court,
does not acquire a new body of either freedom or privilege if he
becomes a Professor of Law at a university. It is, I think, and I
speak subject of course to your correction, Mr. Chancellor, well
to remember some of these basic truths.
The whole matter has been somewhat confused for some
Australian minds, I venture to think, by the great masses of litigation
and debate which have occurred in the United States, the
reasons for which are, as I will point out later, largely peculiar
to the United States itself. But before I come to that let me consider
what the position is under our own legal system and that
of England. I will give one example which always ought to be
remembered; t.. e famous trial of Thomas Paine, the author of
" The Rights of Man". Now this was a very peculiar trial because
the defendant was not present, and a stranger trial still
because a hand-picked jury had been specially bribed to produce
a verdict of guilty. A very satisfactory state of affairs from the
point of view of the prosecution.
But in that trial although he was absent, and although the
result was pre-determined, he was defended by Thomas
Erskine. This, I hasten to say, was before Erskine succumbed to
those rather sordid ambitions which led him to the House of
Lords; before he had entered into that process of deterioration
in which he ro:; e in favour but fell in grace. But his speech in
defence of Thomas Paine remains a classic. He did not attack
the law, for that would have been futile. He did not claim that
Paine, as a thinker and writer, had some special immunity from
the law. On the contrary, he said this:-and these are memorable
words with which a great number of you will be very
familiar: " If I were to ask you, Gentlemen of the Jury, what is the
choicest fruit that grows upon the tree of English liberty, you
would answer SECURITY UNDER THE LAW. If I were to ask the
whole people of England the return they look for at the hands
of the Governraent, for the burdens under which they bend to
support it, I should still be answered sEcURInTY UNDER THE LAW".
I am not sure that a modern jury would make that answer but
still that was a magnificent statement.
The whole basis of this famous passage was that Paine's freedom
to write was consistent with, and therefore protected by,
the law; not that it was superior to the law.
I will make one more citation. It is from a play, but it expresses
with great accuracy the spirit of the law. My former
colleague, and our recent Ambassador to the United States, Sir
Howard Beale was good enough to direct my attention to it.
The play is Robert Bolt's play about Sir Thomas More, " A Man
for All Seasons".
More, as you all remember, was the Lord Chancellor, and, in
those days particularly, the Lord Chancellor was more than the
head of the judiciary, he was a man of immense and, at that
time, in some respects, arbitrary power. In the play, his wife
Alice is protesting to him because he will make no move to
arrest a man named Rich, who, although pretending to be a
friend, she thinks and believes is preparing to change sides and
become a dangerous enemy. She is joined in this argument by
William Roper and so the dialogue proceeds-
ALICE: While you talk [ she is talking to her father] he's gone!
Mor: And go he should if he was the Devil himself until he
broke the law!
ROPER: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
MoRE: Yes, what would you do? Cut a great road through the
law to get after the Devil?
ROPER: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil
turned round on you-where would you hide, Roper, the
laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws
from coast to coast-man's laws, not God's-and if you
cut them down-and you're just the man to do it-d'you
really think you could stand upright in the winds that
would blow then?
To continue, I would venture to say something more on this
matter that a professor or lecturer at a university is an employee
of the university acting through its governing body, and that,
as an employee he is subject to the normal rules relating to
master and servant [ I am not talking about some special contract
made with somebody outside] to dismissal without
notice if his employer can prove good cause, and to all the risks
of not being re-appointed if his original appointment has been
for a specific term. To deny this proposition would be to say
that he is taken out of the usual Common Law relating to
master and servant and put into a category which is either above
the law or which is subject to no law. This is not a tenable
proposition. I hasten to add of course that any university, which
treated a professor or lecturer as if he was just a man hired to
study as directed and to teach in accordance with rules laid
down by other people, would be an extremely strange university;
it would have failed to understand the immense importance
of true academic freedom.
There is, of course, great scope for discussion of the rules of
practice that may properly be applied in a university; rules of
practice which may warrant consultation and exchange of views
on the facts between the lecturer and the governing body before
some action affecting the lecturer is taken.
These are matters which fall within the principles of natural
justice, which are not inconsistent with the law, and of course
may freely tend to the improvement of academic morale. But
it still remains true that academic freedom is freedom within
the law, subject to the law, and that if recourse is made to the
law, the ordinary rules of law will apply. For all these reasons I
am convinced that it is a disservice to academic freedom, a freedom
to which I attach the most tremendous importance, to seek
to promote it into a doctrine of privilege outside the law; a
privilege which sets the academic free from obedience to the
ordinary legal rules which govern the lives of all the rest of us.
It is perhaps because these things are pretty well understood
in countries familiar with the rule of law and not so familiar
with special constitutional provisions, such as those which
appear in two of the amendments to the American Constitution,
that, so far as I can discover, and I do not speak at first-
hand, there have been no notable instances in the United Kingdom
of interference with academic freedom.
I recently read an article by Lord Chorley in a compendium
on academic freedom, published by the School of Law at Duke
University. He says that academic freedom is taken for granted
in the United Kingdom. He, of course, concedes that there have
been other pressures or dangers of pressures, religious or political,
in the course of history. But, on balance, he thinks it is
safe to say that academic freedom is enjoyed as fully in English
universitie3 as anywhere else in the world. He points out, as
indeed I endeavoured to point out a little earlier in other words,
that " in the modern age there can be no doubt that the main
enemy to academic freedom has been the powerful State".
I turn now briefly to the United States of America where
academic freedom has been, in contra-distinction to the state of
affairs in Great Britain and Australia, much discussed in the
courts and particularly in the Supreme Court-the highest tribunal.
To understand how such a matter can fall for judicial
decision, ii. is necessary to look at two provisions of the American
Constitution. It will be recalled that the Constitution of the
United States was amended very early in the piece. The first
Congress, when it met in 1789, submitted to the States ten
amendments to clarify certain individual and State rights not
named in the Constitution. These amendments were ratified.
The ten original amendments are always referred to in the
United States as " The Bill of Rights". I will just quote two of
the Article: s-
Article provided that [ and I am omitting irrelevant words
for this purpose] " Congress shall make no law abridging
freedom of speech or of the press that's Congress.
Article made a general provision, that is, not one directed
at Congre; s only, but of wider application, which was that " no
person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without
due proce; s of law".
Many years later, in i868, the i4th amendment came into
operation. It was stated in more comprehensive terms and
affected both the Congress and the legislatures of the States.
It is well to have this in mind because a great deal of what goes
on in the United States in the field of public argument has
relation to thi-integration, civil rights and so on. It said:
" All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive
any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of
law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws."
It will be seen that these celebrated Constitutional provisions,
commonly referred to in America as " the due process" provisions,
have brought into the arena of judicial determination
matters which in another Constitutional structure would not
reach the Courts at all.
I do not propose to engage in a close examination of the
decisions of the American Courts, but I think there are a few
things which can be said with advantage.
In a fairly recent case, Mr. Justice Harlan, whose name is
greatly respected among Australian as well as American lawyers,
summed the matter up and explained the reason for
judicial proceedings in a single paragraph. He said: " When
academic teaching-freedom and its corollary, learning-freedom,
so essential to the well-being of the nation, are claimed, this
Court will always be on the alert against intrusion by Congress
into this constitutionally protected domain."
After a considerable review of the decisions of the American
Courts, I have come to the conclusion that they have been astute
to protect the universities against any violation of the freedoms
guaranteed by the American Constitution. The protection has
not been given to a privilege claimed outside the law. It has
been given to a freedom guaranteed by the constitutional or
basic law of the nation. As one American writer has said-" In
the United States freedom is not an academic privilege; it is
a right constitutionally guaranteed to all residents."
In 1952, that very great judicial lawyer, Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
put the whole problem in a single paragraph.
" It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of openmindedness
and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible
citizens, who, in turn, make possible an enlightened and
effective public opinion. Teachers must fulfil their function
by precept and practice, by the very atmosphere which they
generate; they must be exemplars of open-mindedness and free
inquiry. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions
for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied
to them. They must have the freedom of responsible inquiry,
by thought and action, into the meaning of social and economic
ideas, into the checkered history of social and economic dogma.
They must be free to sift evanescent doctrine, qualified by time
and circumstances, from that restless, enduring process of extending
the bounds of understanding and wisdom, to assure
which the freedoms of thought, of speech, of inquiry, of worship
are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States
against infraction by national or state government.
" The finctions of educational institutions in our national life,
and the conditions under which alone they can adequately
perform them, are at the basis of these limitations [ which I
repeat were limitations of law] upon State and national power."
Here vwe have stated with clarity the whole reason for academic
freedom and the reason why, in the case of the United
States, special constitutional provisions, basic legal provisions,
were established to protect it. But the point that I want to
emphasise, though I become guilty of tedious repetition, though
it ought to be trite enough, is that in America itself, with these
special constitutional provisions, the guaranteed freedoms belong
to the community as a whole, and are not in some particular
or exclusive way sectional privileges outside the law. It is one
of the glories of a civilised democracy that we enjoy our freedoms
in common; that we are born with those freedoms, and
that they can be limited or taken away only by the principles
of the common law or by constitutionally competent statutory
provisions made by Parliament. In the absence of specific legal
provisions, no man may claim a greater freedom than another.
Yet, and I come back to it, the freedom of the enquiring mind
in a university is of vital importance, not only for contemporary
society, but for a developing future. For this reason it is important
that acadenmic people should not set their claims too high, so
that they appear to be claiming, as perhaps some of them do,
privileges unrecognised by the law. But they certainly should,
in their univer: ity community life, insist, within the law, upon
the maintenance of the freedom of their minds; and should at
all times resist: unauthorised political interference with their
work, or administrative procedures within the university itself
which could frustrate them in the kind of work they are in
a university to do.
Interestingly enough, and this is an almost irrelevant interjection
to myself, there has been a good deal of debate in the
United States about the position of a practising Communist in
a university. Some responsible and liberal-minded people have
queried the employment of practising Communists in a university,
for the intelligible reason that the whole philosophy of
Communism and the whole discipline of the Party are opposed
to that compl: te freedom of thought and objectivity of mind
which it is one of the functions of a university to maintain. I
will not try to pursue that argument to its conclusion, because,
as in all these contentious matters, the boundary line is very
hard to define.
One other matter that has engaged a good deal of attention
in the United States is the problem of the tenure of members
of university staffs. There can be no doubt that professors or
lecturers appointed at will could be much more liable to executive
interference or pressure than those who are appointed for
a substantial term. Even those appointed for a term of years
may find themselves complaining that a failure to renew their
appointment at the end of their term has been due to some
objection to their exercise of their academic freedom. These
are, of course, very important matters. I; for one, would offer
my own view that an academic appointed after due consideration
should not feel himself to be at the risk of arbitrary treatment
if his enquiries lead him to conclusions which are, in some
quarters, unpopular. But it still remains true that, whether the
staff member has a fixed short or long term or no term at all,
the rules which control the right of the university to dismiss
him are the same as the rules that apply in any contract of employment,
and that, if he is dismissed without notice, the onus
will be, as in any other case, on his employer, the university, to
justify in law the action that has been taken.
To sum. up, you will see from what I have said that when we
speak of academic freedom, we are not speaking of a privilege
given to academic people and denied to ordinary men and
women. It merely happens that, as universities are increasingly
in what I will call the limelight of current history, there will at
all times be two temptations. One will be a temptation on the
part of partisans, including partisans outside the university, to
seek to control the universities in what they think and what
they say, irrespective of the law. The other will be a temptation,
occasionally encouraged in circumstances of emotion or heat,
for university people to claim that those rules which apply to
ordinary men and women in the eye of the law, do not apply
to them. I would prefer to think of academic freedom as a
precious ; and shining example of that kind of freedom which
all thinking men and women in our community want for
themselves, and will not abandon without a struggle.
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor J. P. Baxter, O. B. E.
The Chancellor, members of the University, distinguished
guests-For us, this is a solemn occasion. We remember tonight the
first Chancellor of the University who led it through its early,
difficult and formative years and set it on the road to its present
success. We remember, with love and gratitude
Wallace Charles Wurth.
For us this is a great occasion, for our first Wallace Wurth
Memorial Lecture has been given by Australia's greatest leader,
our Prim,: Minister, the Right Honourable Sir Robert Menzies.
During his long period of office, Sir Robert's influence has
permeated every aspect of Australian life and progress, but nowhere,
I believe, have his actions cast ahead of them a greater
promise of benefits to come than his decision in 1956 to come
to the rescue of the Australian Universities which were then
facing complete collapse in the tide of mounting enrolments
and inadequate resources.
The Murray report, promptly implemented by the Prime
Minister, the Universities Commission, with its triennial grants,
have put us on the road to recovery and though we seldom
admit it in public, we are doing pretty well.
We are I believe creating an investment for the future, an
investment in young people's minds and abilities which will
mean more for Australia in the next fifty years, and beyond,
than anything else we could do.
We owe it largely to one man, the man who saw our needs,
realised the importance of our problems and who took the
action required to solve them.
But the Prime Minister has done much more than that. He
has shown a profound understanding of and sympathy for all
those things which are important in Universities, and the help
he has given has never been tinged with a desire to restrict true
freedom or genuine scholarship.
He has made it clear that he expects our standards of service
to be as high as his own.
When the history of our Universities comes to be written
Sir Robert's role during these years will stand clearly out, and
even in his own immense personal record of service to Australia
this will be an enduring chapter.
To you, Sir Robert, for the many things you have done for
the Universities, for the leadership and encouragement you
have given us, for your constructive and wholly delightful
address tonight, and for your presence here, with Dame Pattie,
on this occasion when we remember our first Chancellor, we
tender our sincere thanks.