April 2000
After publishing a book on intelligence that argued there are race-based
differences in intelligence, Chris Brand, a tenured psychology lecturer
at the University of Edinburgh, was “investigated,” and suspended for nine
months. He was subsequently fired for “disgraceful behaviour” and “gross
misconduct” after he supported an American academic accused of paedophilia
in an Internet newsletter. [See SAFS Newsletters 14 (Sept. 1996),
16 (March 1997), 17 (August 1997), 18 (Feb. 1998).
The final act of this drama came at the end of October last year, when
the University settled out of court just before an employment tribunal
was to hear the case. The University agreed to pay Mr. Brand the maximum
that he could have been awarded by the tribunal.
“What happened to me is a total suppression of academic opinion and
evidence, which is comparable only to the kind of thing that used to go
on in the Soviet Union,” Brand said in an interview with John O’Leary,
Education Editor of The Times (London) (October 29, 1999).
I tend to agree, while recognizing that the punishments metered out
by the Soviet totalitarian regime were far more severe than the one from
this distinguished British university.
The Edinburgh University approach fits what I have called ‘velvet totalitarianism.’
One of the indicators of subtle but insidious repression is the freezing
fear exhibited by faculty and their organizations when one of their colleagues
is treated unfairly. In the Brand case, no British academic organization
came to his aid or spoke out on the issues involved. This includes the
British Council for Academic Freedom, whose president (at the time) was
Lord Russell, grandson of the great philosopher and the author of a fine
book on academic freedom.
As far as I know, SAFS and our sister organization, the National Association
of Scholars in the USA, were the only groups to speak out on the issues
of academic freedom in the treatment of Chris Brand. (See SAFS Newsletter
18, Feb. 1998, p. 2, for our joint press release).
The decision of Edinburgh University to fire Brand was given legal rationale
by a Commissioner’s Ordinance passed by parliament. The ordinance allows
that “disgraceful behaviour” is sufficient cause for dismissal from a workplace.
The law was passed in 1988 during the Thatcher government, but it is my
understanding (from a conversation with Dr.Malcolm Lowe, the Secretary
of Edinburgh University, August 15, 1999) that this is the first time that
a university has used the ordinance to justify a dismissal.
Dr. Lowe, like many other British university administrators, is uneasy
about the ordinance’s application to universities, as against other workplaces.
Behaviour that some would consider “disgraceful” has often been tolerated
as allowable and even as facilitating the mission of institutions of higher
education. The fact that British universities so meekly accepted the ordinance,
that one university has applied it and others did not challenge this, seems
to me to suggest that an inhibiting fear pervades academia there.
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