The ivory tower of academia has never really existed. As long as there have been institutions of learning, there have been political pressures on them. Want to ensure a subject is studied? Pay to employ a Chair in that discipline.

In England today, HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council For England) applies a number of criteria to the funding it provides to HE institutions. The government’s widening participation agenda is a key example, as is the notion of quality assurance. Institutions who do not buy into those agendas will lose out on funding. In the USA, most institutions have a much lesser reliance on government funding, but federal funds still carry some weight. In a cash-strapped sector, any income is important income.

What most ‘enlightened’ societies have attempted to ensure is that that pressure does not impinge on “academic freedom.” Once again, that is very difficult to ensure and academics are often subject to a form of ‘market forces’ which influence which articles will be published in influential journals (without which an academic is unlikely to receive much funding), but by and large the notion remains.

In the 1950s, America suffered through what are now referred to as the McCarthyite Witch Hunts. Anyone suspected of communist sympathies was hounded out and to a greater or lesser extent persecuted. Recently that nomenclature has been floating around once again in whispered conversations, and now the US Congress has decided it’s time to shout its name proudly from the Hill.

As highlighted in this article at salon.com:

“On Oct. 21, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that could require university international studies departments to show more support for American foreign policy or risk their federal funding.”

Worried by the fact that Middle-Eastern Studies departments in universities across the USA are (shock, horror) filled with Middle-Eastern people, and concerned that they don’t emphasise the role of terrorism in Middle-Eastern society, neocons have passed a bill which constitutes the greatest threat to academic freedom which the USA has seen in 40 or 50 years.

It is difficult to understand how the “International Studies In Higher Education Act Of 2003″ came to pass without outcry. The irony of it passing on the same day that one representative commented: “Mr. Speaker, I hope our elite universities will strive for true diversity and academic freedom” (Mr. Duncan, in the speech Conservatives Not Welcome On College Campuses) should not be missed. We can only hope some subsequent outcry will nullify the implications of this legislation.

A little time to catch up with the news never seems to be time wasted. In the absence of anything else to say I thought I’d share my favourite stories from BBCi today. There have been some good ones:

• “The US-appointed governor of Iraq’s holy Shia city of Najaf, Haydar Abdul Munim, has been jailed for 14 years on charges of corruption, extortion and false imprisonment.”
• “A man who was imprisoned by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is suing the Pakistani and US governments for damages worth over $10m”
• An attempt by America’s National Rifle Association (NRA) to “out” Hollywood stars who support gun control appears to have backfired.

  The NRA published on its website a blacklist of famous people who are opposed to certain forms of gun ownership.

  But after news of the list leaked out, thousands of Americans have asked to be added to those of the stars.

More on that last one at nrablacklist.com. If you have speakers, make sure they’re on.

I’ve been trying to find a link for this, and not succeeding. So much as it irks me it will have to be without reference that I refer to Paul Wolfowitz’s comments that the recent spate of bombings in Iraq could be directly attributed to Saddam Hussein and his cohort.

That those comments were made publicly is intriguing. The party line has been that these attacks are being not only carried out, but also co-ordinated by ‘foreign fighters’, extra-nationals who are taking advantage of the situation to work out their aggressive feelings towards the western world. If that is the case, it is entirely possible to pass the bombings off as acts of terrorism.

But it Wolfowitz is right and the party line is wrong, then the attacks look not so much like acts of terrorism but more like continued actions in an ongoing war. Hussein’s army may have been largely decimated but that doesn’t mean the war is won. War is not defined by the weapons available to either party and perhaps we should be asking questions about what grounds the president of the aggressor needs to declare that a war is over?

It is difficult to judge as yet whether Wolfowitz’s comments mark a change in official policy. As a driver of official policy it is unlikely that he is speaking unbriefed. Surely that has to raise questions?