Australia’s government is being asked to give legal backing to university autonomy, as “creeping authoritarianism and populist pressure” threaten to straitjacket the sector.
Universities Australia chair Carolyn Evans will tell the National Press Club that the “tide of government overreach” risks undermining the sector’s role as a bulwark of democracy, “especially when that means speaking truth to power”.
In prepared notes for her 26 August address, Evans will say that “the democratic threat is recognised” when governments attempt to regulate media. “The same is not true for universities,” the notes say.
“The creeping regulation over years, the creation of new federal bureaucracies seeking to impose their agendas and their judgment on our work, the populist backlashes from the Left and Right when they don’t like something we do – all this is creating an ever narrower space for freedom of both institutions and individual faculty and students.
“There is…a reasonable debate to be had [about] the limits of university autonomy and how accountability for public money is overlaid. But at present, there is no debate at all – just an endless sense that whatever regulation seems expedient can be introduced.”
