Former ANU Chancellor Gareth Evans has slammed the university’s change proposals for the College of Arts and Social Sciences in an open letter. Photo: Chris Hopkins/ANU.
Criticism of the ANU’s change management proposals continues to mount, with a former Chancellor calling parts of the suggested changes to the College of Arts and Social Sciences “gobsmacking”.
Former Chancellor Professor Gareth Evans took aim in an open letter to the university, stating that the College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS) document appeared to ignore or “gravely under-valued” the significance of the ANU’s national mission, as well as its national and international reputation.
He voiced concerns about the abolition of freestanding centres, the Humanities Research Centre and the Centre for European Studies.
“But what I find most gobsmacking of all are the proposals now to abolish the National Dictionary Centre (ANDC) and to dramatically downsize the National Centre for Biography (NCB), which maintains the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB),” Prof Evans wrote.
“These are both quintessentially national projects of exactly the kind that the ANU, with its national mission, should be maintaining and nurturing.”
Prof Evans said the NCB and ADB mobilised a “national army of scholarly goodwill for the public good” as the nation’s largest collaborative research enterprise in the humanities and social sciences.
“To drastically diminish its capability to go on playing that role makes no sense at all,” he wrote.
“I hope the leadership of the ANU will recognise the gravity of my concerns, which I know are shared by many others in the university community and am equally sure will be by the Minister for Education – and that you will act accordingly.”
An ANU spokesperson said that everyone was welcome to express their views.
“Former Chancellor Evans has, like other members of the community, provided feedback on the Change Management Proposal for the College of Arts and Social Sciences,” they said.
“We welcome a diversity of views and encourage constructive feedback, including ideas to help meet the university’s financial sustainability.”
Prof Evans’ criticism came as Our ANU Group called on staff to publicly share their feedback on the current change management proposals (CMPs).
Organisers said it was to “promote transparency” in the consultation processes surrounding the plans.
The group sent a letter to more than 600 staff in which it described the consultation process and opportunities to give feedback as “deeply unsettling”, pointing out that staff were only hearing about CMPs a day before their town halls.
“As the ludicrously short ‘consultation’ periods play out over 2-3 weeks, we’re invited to give online feedback. But we never see our peers’ feedback. Nor do we see evidence that the Executive is considering our issues and alternative proposals,” it stated.
“Instead, we get ‘high level’ summaries of our feedback in implementation plans and too-often little to no change in response to the colleagues’ needs and ideas.”
Our ANU Group is collecting staff feedback through the email address ourANU25@gmail.com and will be publishing them online.
There will be a march to the Chancellery at 12:30 pm during semester 2 ‘Bush Week’ Market Day events to protest the plans.
Music students will also be playing live music throughout the night from 8 pm to 8 am.
“We will not stop protesting until the cuts are reversed and Bell is sacked,” No Cuts at ANU co-convenor Lucy Chapman-Kelly said.
Some have already made their concerns about the CMPs public, ahead of the feedback deadline of Thursday, 24 July.
ANU School of History Professor Frank Bongiorno called the CASS proposal “alarming” in its “vague claims” about the College’s future earning capacities.
“[These] are founded on no evidence, research or even consultation beyond last-minute ad hoc discussions with some but not all heads of Centre and School,” he wrote.
Prof Bongiorno described the proposal to abolish the Humanities Research Centre as a “blatant disinvestment” from the ANU’s “excellence” in the humanities.
“If the intention is to undermine interdisciplinary humanities research, the proposal to abolish the HRC is well designed,” he wrote.
He called the ANDC’s reference in the proposal “remarkable for its consistent record of inaccuracy”, the disestablishment of the ANU Centre of European Studies as revealing the university’s “disengagement from political and diplomatic context as well as its abandonment of the ANU’s national policy research role” and plans for the NCB/ADB as a “significant disinvestment by the ANU in the longest running social sciences and humanities project in the country”.
“I have not seen such a lack of vision, such a vacuum of ideas, such general disorganisation, nor such cavalier decision-making about institutions and programs built up through hard work over decades,” Prof Bongiorno wrote.
“The end, I am afraid, will be an ugly one.”
The Australian Academy of the Humanities has called on the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) to coordinate a national audit of disciplinary expertise and to assess the implications for Australia’s “future knowledge base”.
“While universities have the autonomy to set their own priorities, there is no national assessment of the cumulative damage these cuts are causing,” Australian Academy of the Humanities president Professor Stephen Garton said.
“This is a sovereign risk that Australia cannot afford.”
