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Tuesday, 14 March 2000. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Reports:
The Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, dated 28 February and 25 February 2000, on the Cambridge-MIT Institute (p. 491).
Professor B. F. G. JOHNSON (read by Mrs S. BOWRING):
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, my remarks today follow from formal discussions by the Council of the School for the Physical Sciences of the proposal to establish the Cambridge-MIT Institute. We have noted that the proposal is not exclusive and will not preclude collaborations with other universities. Granted that essential, we consider that the proposal gives a unique opportunity and that our responsibility now is to devise imaginative collaborations for research and teaching, within the requirements of the Institute, for the benefit of our staff and students and of the United Kingdom. A serious concern for us would be that any prolonged period of uncertainty about the Institute might jeopardize extensive collaborations which we already have with MIT and which we value very highly.
Dr D. J. REYNOLDS (read by Mrs S. BOWRING):
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am making these comments in my capacity as Secretary of the Faculty Board of History. Because of a regular meeting of the Board this afternoon, no officer of the Faculty can be present at this Discussion. But, as a matter of information, the Board has discussed the CMI initiative and indicated its keenness for History to be involved.
It may surprise some members of the Regent House to learn that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranges far more widely than its title and reputation suggest. Undergraduates there are required to take at least eight courses in the humanities and social sciences. The Institute includes a flourishing history department of fifteen scholars who cover many periods and regions of world history, and the departmental web page is at pains to stress that MIT is not 'a fancy vocational school for science nerds' (its phrase, not mine). There is also a doctoral programme in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology whose explicit goal is to 'reconnect the two cultures' by encouraging communication between 'the disciplinary approaches of the social sciences, humanities, sciences, and engineering'.
With this in mind, the Faculty Board of History has signified its wish to explore possible contacts and collaboration in two main historical areas: (1) the cultural and institutional preconditions of economic competitiveness; and (2) the role of government in technological research and innovation. As to the first, there is a substantial literature on British economic performance and international comparisons over the last two centuries. On the second, what is colloquially known as the military-industrial-academic complex of the Cold War era deserves to be studied in its broad historical context. Within the History Faculty there is a cluster of research in these fields, and this is already reflected in Tripos offerings. In view of MIT's parallel capabilities there is scope for collaboration in two of the programme areas envisaged in the CMI initiative, namely integrated research and student education.
History, like other large Faculties, is a broad community of scholars, who hold various views about the nature and function of historical studies. But many believe that 'thinking in time' yields real benefits, that taking a historical perspective on matters of current interest can be an essential antidote to contem-porary parochialisms. That is the spirit in which the Faculty Board of History wishes to participate in the Cambridge-MIT initiative. Others in the humanities and social sciences may take a similar view, in the belief that technology is too important to be left to the technologists.
Professor J. E. FFOWCS WILLIAMS:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am taking the opportunity afforded by this Discussion of the Council and the General Board's Joint Report on the establishment of the proposed Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) to comment on the place of our University in stimulating economic growth. That is an aspect of Cambridge that I care about a great deal and believe that my professional experience here, which has always been directed to learning new things that are capable of influencing industrial activity, has given me a good perspective on what works and what does not. Many of my attitudes to the University-industrial interface were formed while employed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a scientific consultancy operating at the interface between MIT and industry. At the research level the boundaries between academia and commerce were completely blurred in those days. MIT's leaders and the heads of the innovative enterprises growing out of academic discovery knew the importance of support-ing bright people, giving them encouragement and resources to follow through on whatever seemed most exciting to them, and rewarding them for success. The leaders were aware of the damage that can come to innovation when management interferes. It was a wonderfully stimulating environment to be in and the economic benefit that has flowed from the enterprise around MIT is obvious to all.
It came as a particularly welcome surprise to me to hear of Gordon Brown's move to bring MIT into Cambridge, and I fully expect the joint Institute to become a focus for new good things. I suspect that these good things will not be so very different from the things that are going on here already and I want to warn against the damages of trying to make them appear different in order to satisfy some bureaucratic constraint of 'additionality'.
I see my job as a senior academic, and I speak as the longest-serving Professor in the University, as doing my utmost to encourage colleagues to use their own judgement of what they should study and research and what to emphasize in their teaching. We go to very great pains to attract the best people here and we stand to gain very much more by encouraging them and enabling them than in directing them. In fact the very idea of a director has little place in academic life and I hope that the CMI directorate, once it has played its part in facilitating the operation of the limited company, will be kept well away from interfering with academic enterprise.
Universities stimulate economic growth best by doing well what they are supposed to do. By extending knowledge through research and by disseminating knowledge through publication and teaching, the University extends the scope of what industry can exploit. The discovery of really new things through academic research can transform the economic outlook of business; very satisfactory that is from all points of view. Government and industrial encouragement of research takes the form of investment that brings with it a tendency for investors to improve the efficiency of the discovery process by putting strings on the money, through which to steer and manage research. It does the opposite. I hope that this new initiative will be constructed in such a way as to minimize the involvement of investors while discovery is still going on. Their anxiety for its success would actually impede it.
There are, of course, great cultural differences between MIT and Cambridge. My experience at MIT is that staff are rewarded according to what they can earn MIT rather than at a standard rate. They are paid for only part of the year and can buy relief from academic duties by bringing income into the Institute. That arrangement tends to make personal rewards more of a private matter than it can be here and it seems to work for them. Here we pay people very low salaries but provide greater freedom to own the intellectual products of academic work. In this Cambridge we value the fact that our University does not pry into our private professional affairs and I think that attitude has been extremely important in the stimulation of the Cambridge phenomenon and the emergent Silicon Fen. Academic freedom is probably more important here and, as long as it is, it must be protected.
I know that close collaboration with MIT increases the performances of us both. I know that together we can do things that transform the prospects for innovative commerce and make us confident enough to tackle issues that would otherwise daunt us. I have seen us work together to control damaging instabilities of powerful engineering systems and I know that together we are on the point of accepting the challenge to effectively silence the jet engine. I have spent most of my working life near that problem and it would give me enormous pleasure to see it done. Many of my colleagues are excited at the improved prospect for research that this Institute promises; they are also impatient that it is taking so long to get underway and irritated by the fact that it is subject to so much bureaucratic inertia.
I am sorry that I have gone on a bit about what may seem to be peripheral issues, but they are important to the well-being of our intended collaboration with MIT. I would have said something more to the details of the Report - if there had been any real information contained in that Report. The almost total absence of anything substantial in the information so far released to the University is raising doubts about the wisdom of the proposal, and I would urge the Council to get on with it and to do so by encouraging those who know what to do to do it. It is the academic staff of Cambridge and MIT that will make this Institute great - a success that I hope will come also to the directorate. But the directorate's success will best be measured by its invisibility.
Mr T. RABAN (read by Mr G. CHESTERMAN):
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I speak as Director of the Careers Service. I very much welcome the Report from the Council and the General Board on the proposed Cambridge-MIT initiative.
The University, in its mission statement, makes an explicit commitment to 'produce graduates of the calibre sought by industry, the professions, the public service, and the academic world, and to enable graduates to compete on the international stage'.
It is clear from the extensive contact which the Careers Service has with employers of every sort across the world that graduates do now have to be capable of operating on that 'international stage'. The CMI initiative offers the possibility for a number of students to benefit from a unique exposure to another culture and another education system.
The Careers Service very much hopes that, within the programme of activities, there will be explicit and organized provision for students to add to the skills which will make them employable in the global economy. These skills include entrepreneurial awareness, lack of which has often been commented on by recruiters who look for graduates who can contribute to the competitivity and productivity of their organizations.
The Service also believes that it should be possible to extend these benefits beyond those students actually taking part in the programme to a wider Cambridge audience, to include students of any discipline, and not just scientists or engineers.
We very much hope, therefore, that the Regent House will welcome and support these proposals.
Professor K. GLOVER:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I speak as Chairman of the Council of the School of Technology and hope I can represent the views of that body with regard to the proposed Cambridge-MIT Institute, although my specific text has not undergone any review by them. In brief, we welcome the opportunities of the Cambridge-MIT initiative but are very aware of the many difficulties that we face in realizing these opportunities.
There has been a tradition of close interaction between many individual academics at Cambridge and MIT, and there is genuine enthusiasm for these and additional collaborations to be put on a firmer institutional footing and to encompass both research and teaching.
The development of joint courses with MIT, especially in areas within manufacturing and management, will enable us to enhance our provision in important subjects that have had rather little support from the University Education Fund in the recent past.
The exchange of students with MIT will cause substantial administrative difficulties, but these are consistent with any moves towards a more flexible approach to international exchanges. We are confident that the opportunities for some of our students to spend six months or a year at MIT will provide an educational package that will uniquely distinguish the Cambridge course.
We wish the Director of the project every success in his intricate negotiations with the OST and, whilst the total budget is non-trivial, when it is divided into the many constituent parts, the pounds per item is not large, and we remain concerned that the funds be apportioned so that all the mainstream activities of the CMI are indeed fully funded.
Mr C. BAILEY:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the establishment of the Cambridge-MIT Institute promises to strengthen the University's reputation for stimulating entrepreneurship and technological innovation. For this reason it should be welcomed, even by those who feel that the terms on which the Institute is to be set up strongly favour the MIT.
I am concerned, however, about the disparity in the Framework Agreement between the plans for developing existing graduate and undergraduate programmes. While undergraduate student education is likely to receive £20m for new courses and £25.5m for exchanges between Cambridge and the MIT, graduate students (who constitute 40% of the University's full-time student population) are left with the unsatisfactory assurance that the 'MIT and Cambridge University will identify other opportunities for trans-Atlantic collaboration on graduate education'. It may be argued that benefits will accrue to graduate students from the Institute's research programmes and 'cultural exchange', but such trickle-down effects are no compensation for the lack of proper consideration for graduate students.
It is graduate research students who are working on the technology that the Cambridge-MIT Institute will learn how to exploit productively. It is graduates with proven technological expertise who will be required to nurture technology-based enterprises from their academic base. Graduate students have already demonstrated considerable interest in the commercial exploitation of technology, for which evidence is the performance of Cambridge graduate students in two successive national finals of the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs' Scheme and substantial graduate involvement in the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs' Society, including that of several of the winners in their latest competition. The prominence of holders of Cambridge Ph.Ds. amongst the leaders of numerous technology-based enterprises around Cambridge and elsewhere also suggest the importance of a strong research training in the effective exploitation of technology.
The competitive, entrepreneurial culture that the Cambridge-MIT Institute seeks to foster will require experts in technology who also have the requisite transferable skills and awareness of the wider commercial arena in which technology is used. These things, too, are essential if the University is to fulfil its own mission statement of producing 'graduates of the calibre sought by industry, the professions, the public service, and the academic world, and to enable graduates to compete on the international stage' - and I apologize for repeating that for those who remembered this being quoted in the previous remarks. At present the University does little to develop such skills or awareness amongst its graduate students. The training received by graduate students is almost exclusively focused on training for academia, and varies greatly from Department to Department.
I would urge the Council and the General Board to consider and rectify this omission, especially with respect to the Framework Agreement of the Cambridge-MIT Institute. In particular I would request that the following two ideas were considered: (1) the establishment of Faculty-wide graduate schools to organize opportunities for graduates to develop transferable skills and to co-ordinate aspects of basic training; and (2) access for graduate students to programmes concerning the commercial exploitation and management of technology.
Dr G. R. EVANS:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the reason why members of the Regent House are being asked to make this decision on the basis of a 'framework' document of last November is because vast tracts of this plan remain to be worked out and our political masters are not yet satisfied with the text of the full Agreement. It was seen by the Council on 31 January but it had gone back to the drawing-board again when we passed this Report for publication on 28 February. The very relationship of the University to the Institute remains undecided and, consequently, we still do not know what manner of beast is to be born.
Those who have tried to get into conversation with that website (cmi.cam.ac.uk) know how hard it is to get inside the dialogue. Even Dr Livesey, I believe, is having difficulties getting in so as to talk to himself. At the open meeting in the Babbage Lecture Theatre on 22 February, however, one could hear and see much to disturb. The proposed 'cultural change' was being tried out. Yet the glossy 'presentation' (I use the business studies term), with the background projections showing keen 'go-go-go' faces and carefully selected quotations from the Chancellor of the Exchequer on tasteful ochre squares, was curiously empty of content. I hope Dr Livesey will forgive me for quoting my contemporaneous note to the effect that he was 'speaking as a mouthpiece of the Chancellor of the Exchequer', 'delivering the Institute to Gordon Brown's agenda'. Such tags as 'focussed on productivity and competitiveness' and 'emerging fields ... of benefit to the UK economy' speak volumes about the political agenda here.
The questions on 22 February almost all came down to 'What is in this for me?', 'Will the money for my project be wrapped up first?' Someone from a local software company wanted a slice. There was something to trouble more than the ear in the tone of the Vice-Chancellor's remark about 'those who go around in their little green suits' in response to a question about the 'massive resentment this has caused around the country'.
The use of hype-words such as 'exciting' do not make it so. I would like in this speech to invite you to look beyond the short-term benefits and ask yourselves what this is really about. Are we simply planning to put elements of management studies into engineering and IT and cognate courses? That is surely too modest to need all this fanfare and funding. Or is the scheme really huge, a first move in joining us up with other universities on a global agglomeration run from a giant website?
When I read 'whilst coming to no particular view about the likelihood of globalization leading to the agglomeration of world-class universities into four or five major groupings ... ', I prick up my ears. So the plan is indeed to merge us first with MIT and then with other leading 'players' (I do wish that word did not have to feature so frequently).
There is reference to 'the significance that is attached in global markets to 'brand' names'. It is suggested that we ought to engage in 'those activities that will advance and enhance the core mission of the University', and avoid what will 'devalue the brand'. Sloppy thinking. You cannot say both that you want to change the mission and the culture and that you want to preserve it. This is about much more than 'what constitutes the University of Cambridge 'brand', how it should be preserved and/or developed'. The integrity of our eight hundred years of life and intellectual endeavour, of our long and patient pursuit of scholarship, is not a mere 'brand'.
Note that the IT university comes first in the Report. It begins with 'distance and web-based learning technologies' and the notion of the development of a 'virtual university'. This reminds me of where I am most at home, in the twelfth century when universities began. The study of logic was causing as much disturbance and concern as information technology is now. It was visibly upsetting the old balance. Some wanted to make it all in all for scholars. Some wanted to avoid using it altogether, just like colleagues today who will not touch a computer.
Medieval logic and IT had this in common. In themselves, both are instruments, empty containers, mere vehicles. It is still necessary to attend to the content. That is what a university is for and if we get so 'excited' about the packaging that we forget that we ought to be teaching our students to seek with rigour and penetration to get to the something worthwhile where the real satisfactions lie, we are going to be selling them a pup. I do not think I could have a class in fits of laughter about a cunning trick in Dante's logic by way of a standard course 'delivered' on a screen. I could certainly not through that medium respond to their response in the real human interaction of live teaching.
The statutory purposes of this University are to foster education, learning, and research, not to run a business. Oxford acknowledges in its Annual Review that there is a problem:
'The University's academic integrity and autonomy is not being compromised. Great care is taken ... to protect University research from short-term commercial pressure, by separating the roles of research professor and managing director, whilst still enabling the two to interact positively'.1
It is a problem we are in danger of losing sight of here. The Vice-Chancellor of the British Aerospace Virtual University, G. Kenney-Wallace, writing with S. Howison, gives us this picture of what a 'business' university is (I invite you to attempt a critical appreciation of the prose):
'British Aerospace, in a radical move, has positioned education, training, research, technology and development of its people at the core of its growth strategy towards international competitiveness. Announced in May 1997, the British Aerospace Virtual Uni-versity is a business strategy built upon strategic partnerships with academe and enterprise. This results in a dynamic co-mingling of two normally separate cultures'.2
On the purpose of a university: 'We had set out to twin business and academic excellence' on 'a group of well identified business needs'.3
David Blunkett, in his 'landmark' speech of 15 February 2000 at the University of Greenwich, referred to such 'corporate' universities as 'simply re-engineered human resource departments'. Unless we want to become one of those we have to resist the lure of easy money, for it will not be easy money. Blunkett spoke of 'the role of higher education in securing economic competitiveness and social cohesion'. That threatens to make us instruments of social engineering. I quote another out of this new mould, Anne Wright, Chief Executive of the University for Industry. She makes promises about what universities which are businesses can offer:
'They can source and deliver ... learning ... and locate it firmly within the framework of business objectives, company and employee development plans'.5
Are we being asked to sell our souls for this uncertain and short-term money? I fear we may be. Back to today's Report:
'It was pointed out ... that the possible availability of very significant funding from the Government was a factor that could not be overlooked'.
Read that sentence carefully in its context of the expression of uncertainty on the General Board. I say uncertain because £2.9m we should otherwise have had has already been withdrawn with an 'understanding' that it will 'be restored' as 'part of' the MIT money. On my calculation that means we have actually lost £2.9m overall.
The DTI has raised a number of questions about excessive figures to which answers do not appear to be forthcoming.
Item after item comes with a large figure, mostly going to MIT, for which no rationale appears to be available.
So we are not even going to get a fair share of this cash so festooned with strings in exchange for our souls. Big powerful MIT insisted it got the lion's share. 'Equal partnership' it says in the Report. I wonder. He who gets most of the dosh may well wish to call the tune. It is already admitted that the reason why MIT 'needs' the greater part is that it is going to be rewriting its courses for use here. Surely that should be reciprocal in an 'equal partnership'?
In about 1386 Pierre D'Ailly wrote two texts against the Chancellor of Paris, accusing him of selling degrees for money. Money is the root of all evil and today that root runs everywhere, even into the venerable corporation of the University of Paris, he says. It is leading to two scandals. The first is the selling for money of the 'free gift of knowledge' and of degrees. The second is the heresy of claiming that that is acceptable.6 On the business model we are being invited to embrace in the proposed culture change, it is going to become acceptable to 'market' everything we do.
Then there is governance. The proposed governance of this outfit causes me profound concern. It appears to be going to be a business: 'a company limited by guarantee with the status of an exempt educational charity', owned jointly by Cambridge and MIT. Yet it says that 'for the purposes of this agreement it is assumed that CMI will not count as a UK charity'.*
And who is going to run it? From our end, the last I heard, the Vice-Chancellor and two Directors he will 'advise' the Council to appoint. I should be surprised if the Council were capable of doing anything but what it is told here. So in effect the Institute is to be directed by a small group appointed by the President of MIT and the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge. (Nomination, no advertisement, no criteria for appointment.) The draft Agreement I saw on the Council, and which I tried hard to get them to print for you when it is finalized, contains a number of verbs which give cause for concern. The present Director was appointed without advertisement on the authority of the Council of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge therefore cannot be relied upon to behave with Nolan or Neill propriety in making appointments.
Once in existence this Institute is going to take powers over us. This business will be able to appoint to posts in the University of Cambridge and tell our employees and students what to do. It says that the funding 'will enable new staff to be hired'. 'The two CMI Directors, the two CMI deputy Directors, and one external reviewer will make appointments to Faculty Fellow status'.* Fellows of the Institute will be appointed to 'a permanent relationship at the partnering Institution with regular visitation privileges supported by resources provided by the Institute'. Cambridge does not have permanent Professorships except those graced by the Regent House, but it seems to be envisaged that the Institute's directorate will identify the Fellows and back them with public money direct. Will it be giving them Chairs in the same way?
Public accountability and consulting the University are to be achieved by 'annual operating statements'.* Will those be of the quality of our current general audit with its admitted failure to meet required national standards?
It is simply not true of this plan that 'the issues it raises do not breach any fundamental principles'. They throw everything we have been doing here into the melting pot. That is admitted in all this talk of 'culture-change'. Nothing new about becoming part of globalnetU? The logic is untidy, in so many respects. 'Globalisation', says Blunkett, 'has ... led to significant changes in patterns of university research. Research networks have proliferated as the knowledge economy has expanded'. But at the same time we see scientists unable to publish or to give papers at international conferences because their commercial masters will not let them. So where is the world-wide freedom we are being promised? Oxford is neck and neck with us without this noose around its neck.7
I hope the Council will give us a ballot on this to save one having to be called. If you vote for the two recommendations when they become Graces, you are voting to change Cambridge into a lopsided technological and management University, under the direct control of the State, and, moreover, to let the Council and the General Board, those two trusty and vigilant bodies, enter into contracts and arrangements as they are told to do without ever coming back to you for permission (though the creation of such an 'order' would presumably not be of effect for more than a year or so). Statute D, I, 9 allows us to insist, when we let someone enter into contracts on our behalf, that they are 'subject to any restrictions which may be imposed by the authority concerned'. That is the Regent House. I have reason to fear from what I have heard round the Council table that if you once let them get this started without proper full explanation of what is entailed, you will lose control.
We really do have to find out whether the Regent House wants this, whether the short-term hunger for project money is really enough of a bribe for us to disregard all the huge warning signs. Thank goodness the administrators are not yet allowed to 'summarize' what I have said and cut out the bits they do not want you to read. Challenge is a form of 'excitement' for which business management is not known to have an appetite. Use your democratic power or lose it, Regents. Make it clear what you want.
* Extracts from an unpublished draft agreement.
1 University of Oxford Annual Review (1998), p. 10.
2 Technology, Innovation and Society, 15 (1999), p. 6.
3 Ibid, p. 6.
4 http://cms1.gre.ac.uk/dfee/.
5 Technology, Innovation and Society, 15 (1999), p. 10.
6 A. Bernstein, Pierre d'Ailly and the Blanchard Affair (Leiden, Brill 1978), p. 198.
7 Oxford Today, Hilary Term 2000, pp. 6-7.
The Second Annual Report of the General Board, dated 23 February 2000, on the establishment of personal Professorships and Readerships (p. 496).
Dr A. W. F. EDWARDS:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am going to ask for the revision of Recommendation II since it is not in the form required by the regulations, and the withdrawal of Recommendation III since it unnecessarily asks the University to authorize the General Board to announce the title of each office in due course.
Regulation 4 for Readers (Ordinances, p. 643) states 'When the creation of a Readership for a particular person is contemplated, the proposal shall be submitted to the University on the recommendation of the General Board in the form of a Grace authorizing the Board to appoint that person'. This formula nicely separates the Ordinance creating the Readership from the Order authorizing the General Board to fill it with a particular person. The customary wording is 'That Readerships be established as follows, and that the General Board be authorized to appoint to each Readership the person for whom its establishment is proposed', which seems to be precisely correct. May it please be the basis of a revised Recommendation II, adapted for the case of a single person?
Personal Professorships, by contrast, are filled directly by Grace and a different formula is needed. Recommendation I attempts both to create and to fill two Professorships, though it has to be admitted that on a careful reading it creates them and says for whom they are intended, but it does not actually fill them. Indeed, since this wording was adopted in 1990 the Uni-versity has created a very large number of personal Professorships, but not filled any of them!
Perhaps I might be allowed in connection with Readerships to take up the question of the inclusion of Readerships in Ordinances. In 1995 we poor Readers had our Readerships summarily removed by an editorial decision (see Supplement, 1994, p. 1503 for a last glimpse); even the wording of the accompanying regulation was adjusted without authority. We had happily resided there since the first volume of Ordinances was published in 1885 for the simple reason that a Grace promoting a Professorship or Readership is an Ordinance and not an Order. The General Board, in particular, often seem not to be entirely clear about the difference, so let me explain by referring to the four Regent House Graces approved on 10 March.
Graces 1, 2, and 3 are Ordinances and not Orders because they are of continuing validity until rescinded. These three Graces all involve changes of existing Ordinances and so are self-evidently Ordinances. Grace 2, it may be noted, changed the title of a Professorship, and Professorships, unlike Readerships, have survived the editorial delete key and are listed in Ordinances.
Grace 4, however, is an Order, and therefore does not need to be included in Ordinances. It is an executive decision of the University, allowing the Librarian to lend one of our manuscripts. All other Graces submitted in the Reporter of 1 March are similarly Orders, dealing as they do with the executive acts of the appointment of persons to the Nomination Board and the conferment of the titles of degrees honoris causa. In the words of the Statutes (A, II and III) we enact Ordinances and we issue Orders.
In fact the first honorary degree Grace provides an opportunity for me to reinforce my general point. It states that Mr Beckwith is a member of the Guild of Benefactors. Now I have a vague memory of a proposal for some such body - perhaps I read it in the Newsletter - but I cannot recall if it was ever set up. I cannot find an Ordinance for it, so I have to assume that either it was never set up by the University or the Grace establishing it never made it into Ordinances, in which case it could simply be incorporated in the next edition without further ado.
I now turn to Recommendation III. Titles of Professorships and Readerships are conferred in this University by means of the approval of the necessary Grace, and I imagine the happy recipients would prefer this regular procedure to be followed unless there are compelling reasons against. The General Board give as their reason a desire to avoid delay in the publication of this Report. But since no delay would be occasioned by Gracing the titles at a later date, this argument has no force.
I should point out that the wording of Recommendation III would not achieve the Board's intention in any case. They do not need authority to announce the titles, but they would need authority to determine the titles, delegated to them in the ordinary manner under the provisions of Statute K, 9. It is true that this Statute expressly states that such delegation 'shall not extend to any election or appointment to a University office', but that does not seem to include the determination of the title of an office.
I was not able to make this point at the Discussion of the Board's First Report because I was on leave abroad, but the question of the status of the titles announced in connection with that Report by the General Board on 23 February does arise. They have neither been approved by the University nor did Grace 11 of 15 December 1999 have the intended effect of delegating the University's power to the General Board, for the reason I have already given.
So why don't we honour all our new Professors and Readers by doing the business properly and Gracing all the titles in a single Grace once the three new officers have agreed their proposed titles with the General Board? And will the Registrary please then place the new Readership in the next edition of Ordinances where it belongs, and restore the Ordinances for all the other Readerships?
To sum up: please revise Recommendation II, withdraw Recommendation III, and Grace the new titles in due course.
Dr D. R. J. LAMING:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, in their second Report the General Board propose three further promotions following appeals against decisions of the General Board's Promotions Committee. I wish the three belatedly promoted candidates well. If the Board had planned its procedures a little more carefully, these three might not have had to wait so long.
I put some criticisms of the Board's procedures in a speech at the Discussion on 7 December last, complaining, in particular, that the Board had developed a habit of not responding to my criticisms. I am pleased to see that my speech of 7 December has elicited a substantial paragraph by way of rejoinder. The Board said, in part: 'Dr Laming asserts that Faculty Promotions Committees are rife with bias because, he appears to believe, only candidates supported, or encouraged to apply, by their Head of Department or Chairman of Faculty Board, have any chance of promotion. The Board rejects this assertion. … No single member of the Committee can ensure that the name of a manifestly weak candidate is put forward to the General Board's Committee, or prevent the Committee from putting forward a manifestly strong one.' (Reporter, p. 484)
But what does the Board mean by 'a manifestly weak candidate' and 'a manifestly strong one'? How does the Board know which candidates are 'manifestly strong' and which 'manifestly weak'? In default of any explanation, the Board appears to have in mind those candidates who are strongly supported in their Faculty Promotions Committee, that is, those candidates who benefit from a strongly favourable bias. And the 'manifestly weak' are likewise those who suffer an adverse bias. It does not require any great intellectual ability to see that the Board is begging the question. I do not mean this to impugn the intelligence of individual members of the General Board - I am sure they all perceived the fallacy in the Board's rejoinder - but committees of highly intelligent people nevertheless come, sometimes, to stupid decisions. What is curious is that none of the Board's members intervened to save it from issuing so unintelligent a rejoinder.
The General Board appears to need an elementary tutorial in assessment.
If someone makes an assessment without the aid of any measuring instrument, that assessment depends both on whatever is to be assessed and also on the disposition of the assessor. That is so, whether we are talking about marking a Tripos script, refereeing a paper submitted to a learned journal, or assessing an applicant for promotion. The disposition of the assessor biases the assessment. This is still the case when the assessment is made by a committee because the members of the committee discuss the case with each other and reach a corporate decision.
So long as the Board has only one assessment, it has no basis on which to separate the merits of the case from the bias. Two independent assessments are needed before it is possible to estimate the extent to which either assessor is fairly weighing up the merits of the candidates and the extent to which he or she is giving expression to personal bias. There is a mathematical theory to support all of this; it was developed in America in the first half of the last century. So the Board has no ground on which to reject my assertion of bias. It is simply 'making it up'.
But the actual position is worse than that. The promotion round is an annual event and the 'manifestly strong candidates' will, most of them, have already been promoted. So we are concerned chiefly with candidates for whom the case is equivocal. It may be true that 'No single member of the Committee can ensure [italics supplied] that the name of a manifestly weak candidate is put forward to the General Board's Committee' - but he or she can greatly increase the 'manifestly weak' candidate's likelihood of advancement. And a single member who might have been expected to speak in favour of a 'manifestly strong' candidate can obstruct that candidate's chances by withholding support. It is in the consideration of the greater number of candidates for whom the case is equivocal that bias matters most. I put that point in my speech of 7 December, but the Board has not replied to it.
A similar problem is faced by the law courts. They are only too aware that assessment by juries can be biased and accordingly exclude any juror who has prior knowledge of the case or who might otherwise be thought to be biased. We, in our Faculty Promotions Committees, do exactly the opposite. I put that point also in my speech of 7 December, but the Board has again not replied to it.
The Board went on to say: 'Dr Laming's argument ignores the fact that Promotions Committees are required to form a collective judgement of the merits of each candidate for promotion, on the basis of the documentation available.' (p. 484). But 'the outcome of deliberations in Committee depends, not on what the Board says, but on what actually happens in the meetings of Faculty Promotions Committees' (p. 295). I put that point also in my speech of 7 December, but the Board has not replied to it.
The Board also said: 'It is true that Heads of Departments and Chairmen of Faculty Boards can (and surely should as part of their job) sometimes encourage someone to apply for promotion.' (p. 484). But if the Head of Department is also a member of the Faculty Promotions Committee, that has the appearance - it may not have the reality, but it has the appearance - of collusion.
Throughout their recent revisions of promotion procedures the Board has repeatedly shown a lack of concern for both reliability in the matter of assessment and for fairness. It would have been easy, so very easy, to have instituted an independent investigation of at least some of the alleged unfairnesses, even if only to discover whether those allegations were justified or not. I put that point also in my speech of 7 December, but the Board has not replied to it. We have the Board of Scrutiny to conduct a critical and independent examination of the University's government; why is there not a similar body to cast an equally independent and critical eye over personal promotions? I made substantially that point in a previous speech at the Discussion on 10 November 1998, and the Board said nothing in reply to that one either. I can only infer that the Board so lacks confidence in the reliability and fairness of its promotion procedures that it cannot find anything to say; but that, at the same time, it has a much greater concern for keeping its nakedness covered than it has for an honourable administration of the affairs of the academic staff of this University.
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, when this University promotes one of its teaching officers, it sends a signal to the academic community affirming that officer's excellence in research. When promotion is denied, that signal is not sent. When that signal is repeatedly withheld in respect of someone who has acquired an international reputation, people in the academic community notice. They begin to ask: 'What is going on at the University of Cambridge?' We are concerned here not only with damage to the future career and prospects of the officer who is denied promotion, serious though that is, but with damage also to the reputation of this University.
If the General Board can do no more than beg the question when it has to reply to criticisms of its promotion procedures, then it has no rationale for the procedures it has put in place. It lacks understanding - of assessment, of reliability, and of fairness. It is not competent to have the oversight of promotions. But we have a recently appointed Director of Personnel who comes to us with fresh ideas and long previous experience. He is not encumbered with the baggage of past practice; he has no need to defend the Board's amateur bumbling. I am told privately that the Board's intention has always been to run the present procedures for three years and then to review them. We are now in the third annual round of these procedures. Review is urgent and needs to begin right now. It needs to be undertaken within the newly-constituted Personnel Division and presented for fresh approval to the Regent House. The General Board should now bow out of overseeing promotions.
Dr G. R. EVANS:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, it is a pleasure to welcome two or three more promotions. I am, however, puzzled that it stopped there. It is now apparent that the General Board's committee can lower an evaluation from a previous year without giving a reason and prevent a promotion that way since the candidate will then lack the solid row of top marks his Faculty gave him. This is one of the results of turning the 'very clear evidence' requirement into a 'reasonable doubt requirement', with the concomitant creep back towards control by those with an agenda about a candidate.
The recent General Board Notice (Reporter, p. 484) about the Discussion on the main list of Annual Promotions is an example of the General Board Notice at its worst. I invite members of the Regent House to go back over Dr Laming's and others' speeches during the last year alone, as well as mine, and ask themselves whether some of the points we have made about the conduct of the procedures have not been telling.
After you have re-read the remarks they are casually dismissing, read again those brave words about 'propriety and fairness' and 'in accordance with the requirements of the scheme as laid down by the Regent House'. Undue defensiveness suggests guilt.
I suggested that the Council, in collaboration with the Director of Personnel, who is tipped to be handed this poisoned chalice in the future, should add something on its own account along these lines: 'The new Personnel Committee, in consultation with the Council, the General Board, and the Regent House, will be considering carefully these and other remarks made in Discussions on anomalies in procedure and conduct in promotions and related issues. A number of lessons have been learned during the first three years of the new procedures and the Council is grateful to all those who have made suggestions for improvement.' They took no notice, of course. Yet after three years, the General Board officers admit we need a radical review.
I stand up today principally to ask more publicly that this little list persuade the General Board to reopen the debate about how to conduct the consideration of applications for promotions fairly. The very existence of the list before us for Discussion now (only scientists I see), is presumably an acknowledgement that something went wrong further down the line.
Since I expect by the time things have run their inevitable course in the History Faculty, speeches will no longer be appearing in print, or will be being cut in the Old Schools before you are allowed to read a sanitized version, I will take the opportunity to tell you a story which I may not be able to tell you later in the year. It is a duty of the Registrary (Statute D, VIII, 1(b)) 'to keep a record of the proceedings of the University', that is, to preserve for posterity a reliable account of our goings-on. I am a mere blip in the history of the University. I think it would be out of all proportion to bring the historical record of the Discussions since the mid-nineteenth century to an end just to get my speeches out of the pages of the Reporter. I hope the rest of you will feel the same if the Council obliges us in due course to force a ballot.
You may be wondering what lies behind the sudden appearance in the Reporter of 1 March (p. 487) of new Faculty Promotions Committees, seven in total. Notices can be put in the Reporter only by 'authority'. The authority for this one remains a mystery. The General Board did not approve it and I am not clear that they even formally ratified the changes to some of 'their' General Board members. No doubt there will be continuing silence about that.
But one thing is striking. Six of the committees have just one change, of a single individual. History is different. It has become a leviathan. I can tell you why. My Faculty Promotions Committee at last made itself unable to act this year because so many declared an interest in my case that it became inquorate. As everyone knows, I have been labouring for years to get it acknowledged that I can never have fair consideration for promotion at the hands of the historians. My spirits lifted a little, but not for long. I learned that the Faculty Board was simply going to enlarge the Committee until it was big enough to get me in its grip. It did so, after the closing date for applications when it says nothing is to be changed. After 14 February, the date it says in the 'Green Book' must be strictly adhered to for the first meeting of the Faculty Committee, a new gang of people met. So whatever met, it was certainly not the History Faculty Promotions Committee.
History candidates got a circular at the last minute telling them that this new body would be confirming the decisions of the legitimate Committee, which had met on 21 January. I pointed out that that was unlawful because the new body's discretion was being fettered and its members consequently could not form their collective judgement as the rules required. For the grotesquely swollen fourteen might not have agreed with the previous nine, might they? Arbitrary changes happen, as my friend, who did not succeed on appeal, found out to his cost.
It was a secret meeting. The Faculty custodian did not have it in his 'room bookings' book. But I was able to discover after the event that it had met in a room which was free only from 1 to 2 p.m. So it could certainly not have had time to go through all the candidates properly again and take the decisions afresh. But then it was never going to do that. Its sights were bent only on me.
When I objected, Chris Bayly told me that I must go back to the 'central bodies', for they had given this instruction and it Must be Obeyed. The Acting Secretary General was unwell during those two days and it was impossible for me to find out until too late that no 'central bodies' had been involved at all, only him. I was also brusquely told by the Chairman that when I made objections on grounds of procedural fairness and breach of the mandatory 'Green Book' procedures, they could have no force for 'we have been told otherwise'. But the Acting Secretary General had acted entirely without legal advice, because he honorably told me so. So why should he be right and I be wrong? The Chairman, Professor Chris Bayly, appears to have had no more procedural training than his predecessor, Professor Peter Clarke. (Naming names is one of the things they want to stop us doing. But Professor Bayly's name is on the published list. Surely he ought to take equally public responsibility for his actions? I did warn him I was going to make this speech.)
I sent my untrained Chairman a series of e-mails about procedural points. I was interested to see whether he would communicate with me at all (as he clearly should not have done). He promised in a series of replies that these would be put before the Committee. I think he meant well at that point. But he admitted later that only two had been offered to them, and one of those was merely read aloud.
Meanwhile, I had had what seemed to me a rather threatening letter from Professor Bayly which I did not receive until late on the Friday before this surely invalid and illegitimate meeting. It concerned the requirement that I nominate a single referee, presumably one able to speak to the whole spread of my work, since I am allowed only one. (It should be recollected that the Faculty can name as many as they like in the case of an interdisciplinary candidate.)
I had explained to him before the closing date that I was being put in an impossible position as an interdisciplinary candidate by the requirement to name a single referee when there is no single referee who can cover anything like all the aspects of my published work, and when I did not know what range of aspects were to be covered by the Faculty's choice. Professor Bayly asked me in writing before the closing date to provide a list of possibilities. I did so.
When the Faculty Committee held its 'real' meeting on 21 January, it met with that list before it. Now, on 18 February I was told that unless I provided a PP1 completed 'the Committee [what Committee?] will not be able to consider your application'. I pointed out that I had done what he had told me and that the 'Green Book' did not allow me to make any change of any sort after the closing date. He said the meeting of 21 January had decided to insist. How could the meeting of 21 January insist on anything concerning me since it had become inquorate with reference to me at the declaration of interest stage? It obviously could not act. And why did I hear nothing until 18 February, despite several requests to know who had been chosen as 'my referee'? Professor Bayly said face to face that he did not mean that they would not consider my application. But in his letter he had said exactly the reverse.
I asked Graham Allen to consider whether, if he had given instructions he did not have authority to give, he ought not to rescind them and, if there was any question that that pseudo-committee of 23 February had been acting invalidly, the General Board Office ought to refrain from approaching referees identified by it. But he was still unwell and could not deal with the matter from his sick bed.
By now Chris Bayly had made a new rule, that he was not allowed to correspond with me. On 6 March the Secretary for the Committee suddenly sent me a demand that I tippex out part of my list of publications. So I wrote to the Secretary: 'Am I to infer from the fact that it is only on 6 March that I am told that 'someone' has noticed an alleged failure on my part to conform with the requirement that no as-yet-unpublished work is included, that no one had bothered to read my application until then?' They are applying the tippex regardless, behind my back, although the 'pseudo-committee' has already considered my application in its unamended form.
From such bungling proceeds the possibility of unfairness. This is the result of requiring rigid application of inconsistent rules by untrained persons.
I am sorry if this is dull for everyone. It should not be dull reading for the historians, all of whom are now to be considered by a different and unlawfully-constituted body because the properly-constituted Committee found too many of its members had an interest for it to be able to consider my case at all. I do not see why they should suffer because the University has got itself into a king-size mess over me. As I put it in a recent e-mail: 'What about all the other History candidates who are being dragged hither and thither in the train of this fiasco as the 'committee' lurches about tripping over its own tail?'. (More of a dinosaur heading for extinction really.)
You all stand to suffer in the end if we cannot get a better match between the promises about procedures and the reality of what happens. I shall be appealing no doubt at the stage after my Faculty fails to put me forward again. But does anyone imagine for a moment that I shall succeed? And has it struck you that candidates being able to apply is a fiction if the Faculties can simply prevent one's application getting anywhere? We are back to the old bad system where one's Faculty put one forward when it suited it. Or not.
A Learning and Teaching Strategy document ought to be appearing in the Reporter [p. 550]. It was rushed off to our political masters on our behalf without the Regent House getting a glimpse of it or the Council putting some sort of considered 'policy' stamp upon it. This is called a 'strategy' document so the Council had a duty at least to approve the policy it contains. We never saw it at any stage in any draft until it came before us on 28 February for approval for publication as you see it now. 'It has already gone', said the officers in response to the question why not.
I am keen on our furnishing a spot of guidance, not to say training, to the persons drafting and implementing our procedures. I would like it to be compulsory, at least as compulsory as those absolute requirements in the 'Green Book' about methods of appointing members of committees and dates which must be kept to. That should not frighten them, since it seems that those requirements are without force when it is convenient to ignore them. Are the members of the General Board and Council big enough to put out of their minds the authorship of remarks made on promotions since 1994, go through them, and consider them on their merits? Frankly, I doubt it.
I feel a towering frustration at this wilful deafness, this meeting of well-founded procedural objections with a marshmallow vagueness, but what matters is not my anger but the consequence to all candidates of the continuance of this combination of amateurishness and arrogance in our procedurally untrained decision-makers. So let us promote these three people and then let us put our house in order.
No remarks were made on the following Reports:
The Report of the Council, dated 28 February 2000, on College contributions in the financial year 1999-2000 (p. 490).
The Report of the General Board, dated 9 February 2000, on the re-establishment of the Professorship of Aerothermal Technology (p. 496).
The Report of the General Board, dated 9 February 2000, on the establishment of a Professorship of Behavioural Science (p. 497).
The Report of the General Board, dated 9 February 2000, on the establishment of a second Professorship of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (p. 498).
The Report of the General Board, dated 9 February 2000, on the establishment of a Professorship of Psychiatry (p. 499).
The Report of the General Board, dated 9 February 2000, on the establishment of a Committee of Management for the Natural Sciences Tripos (p. 500).
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Cambridge University Reporter, 22 March 2000
Copyright © 2000 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.