The Impact of "Impact" on Humanities

There is a very good posting over at EAS Manchester addressing the ways in which the implementation of the Browne report will harm higher education in general and humanities in particular. It is useful to pull out from this posting the following crucial points that can sometimes get lost or receive insufficient emphasis:


1.The Arts and Humanities Research Council is directing funding for research into areas that have been determined for it by central government which includes research on the government idea of the so-called "Big Society".


2. The British Academy has ended the small grants scheme that was particularly heavily used in research in fine art.


3. There is increasing pressure to push humanities research that is connected to business, something that will ensure the marginalisation of research in all kinds of areas. In philosophy, it impacts on everyone who is not engaged in applied ethics programmes and even they will be pushed in a very specific direction.


4. There is virtually no support within the universities for the very notion of "impact", something on which the government is silent as it is has generally been in response to the criticisms that have been made of the Browne report's de-emphasis of humanities research in general.


It is clearly the case that humanities research, if carried out anywhere other than a select elite of institutions, will be increasingly difficult to sustain. Under these pressures, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of us are determined either to leave the university to pursue research elsewhere or are desperately trying to make it into the few places that will still deserve the name of "university".

Holiday: Back soon

Just a quick note to explain lack of postings: on holiday and will be back soon! In the interim, one good point of news is that the UK government have decided to delay "impact assessment" for at least 12 months given the "lack of consensus" over how to apply it in the REF. It would be better news if they abandoned it altogether!!

The Liberal Democrat Manifesto

The manifesto of the Liberal Democrats is, in many different respects, the most attractive of the three main parties. Its layout is, for a start, much preferable to the other two. Whilst the Labour Party manifesto is divided into 10 sections and the Conservative Party into five, the Liberals, traditionally the "centre" party, have 7 sections! The cover, however, leads on 4 areas that are presented as central to the whole document and each of which includes the term that is meant to guide the overall understanding of the policies set out, the term "fair". So we have fair taxes, a fair chance for your child, a fair future and a fair deal. I'll say something about each of these but, first of all, let's record the contents page in terms of its seven divisions. Each of these is laid out with a stress on how they belong to us, the voters and citizens, so here we have your money, your job, your life, your family, your world, your community and, finally, your say. After all this the manifesto closes with a detailed costing of all the proposals made, something not included in either of the other two party manifestoes.


The four areas that are stressed on the cover and with which the manifesto opens are clearly indicative of a general stress that the party hopes will be remembered and also meant, in some sense, to provide orientation in the wealth of detail that follows. The key "fair tax" pledge is to take the first £10,000 earned out of income tax entirely. This has one good and one less obviously good consequence. The clear good side is that it removes the lowest earners entirely from consideration for income tax and also ensures that all lower-income earners have a large tax break. The less good element of it is that this tax break is extended to all so that it will be enjoyed as much by the wealthiest as everyone else. Since income tax is the most progressive tax this is, in some respects, a strange move though it is likely the thought behind it was one of not increasing means-testing in tax and benefits and so may be a price to pay for a generally worthy objective. Under the "fair future" area is included a pledge to break up the banks and get them lending again to businesses, both good objectives. The "fair chance" is indicated by focusing spending on struggling pupils, a pledge specifically costed. Finally, the "fair deal" includes a specific freedom bill. Since these headline areas are clearly meant to attract most attention it is notable that two of them (the tax pledge and the chance pledge) involve focus on lower income people. 


Going past the staged setting of the four areas the details of the general approach begin, as was the case with both the other parties, with focus on the economy. In addition to the removal of the lowest-income groups from taxation the response to the economy includes emphasis on reduction of tax evasion and taxing capital gains in the same way as income, both policies clearly targeted at the wealthy, as is the introduction of a Mansion tax. All of this amounts to the basis of a clear social democratic programme. Similarly, like the Labour Party, they pledge to wait before cutting spending programmes, delaying at least until 2011-12 on the assumption, shared with Labour, that cutting too soon will damage the recovery.


When it comes to tackling the budget deficit the manifesto also includes more specifics than are found in either of the other two programmes. Like the other two parties they will effectively freeze public sector pay and, like the Conservatives, will restrict the scope of tax credits (though, unlike the Conservatives, they do not say how they will restrict their scope). There is a mention of a specific Banking Levy so that banks pay for the support they have received, something not mentioned in the other two manifestoes. The basis of the cuts to come is assigned to the findings of a proposed review based on the findings of the National Audit Office and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. The general response to the whole credit problem is, however, assigned to a Council of Financial Stability on which there would be all-party representation. These proposals effectively indicate that there is no specific plan going to be laid out in the rest of the manifesto over how to tackle the crisis and rather suggest the format of an effective National Government to deal with it.


One might think, after this has become clear, that there would be less left to say in this manifesto than in the others unless one recalled that neither of the main two parties said very much at all about the deficit. Some specific proposals are forthcoming, such as the notion of setting up a National Infrastructure Bank that would determine ways of directing investment for the general economy and is surely a good idea. Similarly the commitment to implement a version of Glass-Steagall by distinguishing between retail and investment is a clearly necessary requirement, surprisingly missing from the manifestoes of the other two parties. 


The first mention of higher education is, as with the other two parties, in terms of science budgets. This depressingly familiar picture is accompanied by proposals with regard to research that are less adventurous than the ones set out by the Conservatives. Unlike the Conservatives, who pledge to suspend the Research Excellence Framework until a review reports, the Liberal Democrats are very vague and merely state that research funding should be dependent on peer review though they do attack reliance on "narrow impact factors". Despite these disappointments the Liberal position on student finance is easily the boldest on offer, pledging, as it does, abolition of tuition fees, starting immediately for final year students. Like the Labour Party, however, they drop the notion of expanding higher education to 50% of young people, suggesting instead a balance of "college education, vocational training and apprenticeships", a policy, like that of Labour, that involves a clear devaluation of higher education. As with the other two parties nothing is said at all about the place of humanities and the social sciences. 


The discussion of foreign policy is fronted not by terrorism and the army as is the case with the other two parties but instead with suggestions concerning climate change and the environment. Reform of the World Bank and the IMF is mentioned but the principles of such reform and the mechanisms of achieving it are not spelled out. The claim that there should be an inquiry into allegations of torture carried out by British forces does, however, indicate a welcome commitment to an ethical foreign policy of a kind that was once expected to emerge from Labour. 


As with the other two parties immigration is primarily thought of as a problem with the argument advanced that there needs to be created a National Border Force and regional points-based systems in terms of migration instituted. This is, to an extent, off-set by the commitments on asylum which include ending detention of children and ending the detention of people for whom there is no imminent possibility of deportation unless there is substantial risk from them. Housing policy is focused on bringing a quarter of a million empty homes back into use, something eminently desirable and the mechanisms of grants and cheap loans are plausible ones. The pledge to introduce a Freedom Bill also makes this party the one with the most developed view of civil liberties.


This manifesto contrasts to a certain extent with that of the other two major parties. It is more accessible to the reader, being fuller of specific pledges and containing much less by way of padding than the other two and clearly it is expected that it will be read by both party members and independently minded people, unlike the other two manifestoes which are evidently not expected to be read by anyone other than journalists. The general feel of it is one in which there is an understanding of the scale of the problem although, disappointingly, most of the response to this problem has been pushed to the creation of large investigations to be carried out later. The priorities of the party are, however, clear. From reading it one definitely comes to the view that it is the most philosophically informed approach, guided by Rawlsian kinds of convictions. Whilst not all of its recommendations are different enough from the other two it is evident that this party is the only one open to ideas and debate of a sort that has any chance of reinvigorating politics. Although the Liberal Democrats are pretty much incapable of attaining a parliamentary majority, increase in their representation, on the basis of reading the manifesto, is certainly desirable.

Academia and New Technology (II)

As mentioned in the previous posting David Campbell has prompted me to think through some questions about the impact on the university and academic practice of the rise of new information technologies. In the last posting I concentrated on the challenges thrown up in terms of teaching and learning and in this one I am going to look at questions concerning research.


Campbell rightly points out that the main feature of academic publishing that is peculiar is the way in which we publish in journals that require paid firewalls. Publication in such journals ensures restriction of circulation of academic writing as does publishing books with presses that only circulate copies of a few hundred. The general effect of these practices is to ensure that academic writing has its potential audience artificially restrained.  Only those who are either wealthy enough to subscribe to journals and pay for books whose prices are very high relative to the general book market or, alternatively, are part of institutions that subscribe to and purchase such material, are able to consume the contents of them. This is a bizarre situation, not least since the content of such works is donated free to the publishers who then sell it back to the same public from which it emerged at a hefty price.


Given this situation the circulation of academic writing is not only artificially restricted but the high cost of this restriction is something that works as a public tax since institutions that are financed by the tax-payer are the source of the income the publishers receive. This situation is slightly different in the US given the high number of private universities there but elsewhere the restriction of academic content is effectively purchased by the taxpayer who is thereby excluded from such content. In recent years there has begun to emerge some resistance to this situation from within universities since it is correctly understood that such restriction of content militates against the idea that the "impact" of academic research should be measured. In response some universities (including my own) have begun requesting that some form of indication of research be set up in various versions of e-space. However, this requirement can often only mean that notification of the existence of the publication is made available to those who know that such depositories exist.


Campbell also points out that the rise of impact assessment is, in its own way, a further indication of the failure of universities to meet the challenge of making research accessible to a wider public in an age of general information transfers. Prior to undertaking research, or at least prior to being able to apply for a grant to undertake it, it is first necessary that some form of "Impact Summary and Impact Plan" is filled out which is meant to show who will benefit from the research in question and how. As is widely recognised such an approach has a number of bizarre consequences. For a start, in many subject areas, it is almost impossible to do this. How would one start to indicate what public would be impacted and in what way by a new work on Kantian views of causality for example? Even in areas of philosophy where there are more clear ways in which research could be set out in response to this demand, for example, in applied ethics, the nature of the way in which research could be effected by such an approach has not itself been opened for discussion. Campbell also points out that the model implied in such an approach is still one that views the consumers of the research in a passive way and not as interactive with the research. Impact on further academic research is itself ruled out as part of "impact assessment" thereby ensuring that interaction with the research at the level of the material itself is ruled out of consideration.


What the implication of the rise of new technologies for the accessibility of research involves is surely a model of publication that moves away from firewalls. Publication in on-line journals is often now free and if such journals proliferate then there could soon come a time when there could be greater access to and interaction with such research. The impact of work in philosophy on debates concerning various aspects of public policy and concerns with matters evidently of general public interest should be relayed through such maximally transparent methods of publication. The time of the old journals and the old restrictive methods of publication is coming to an end but for this to be taken further it requires that academic writers turn more and more to publication formats that allow such engagement. The main problem with doing so is that such formats have yet to attain the prestige required for use of them to have value in academic career structures. To facilitate broader public engagement that does not need to be through the old style of media it is necessary that universities come to recognise publication in open access media as part of the duty of active researchers and to reward it commensurately.

Reflections on Philosophy

I was prompted today to think about philosophy in a general way, partly after browse reading the latest issue of the Times Literary Supplement. There wasn't anything specific in this issue that struck me as stating anything concerning philosophy in particular though there is the perennial suggestion in the periodical that there is something basically wrong with contemporary academic prose. This general attitude is one that always strikes me as odd from standard newspaper columnists and reviewers who are themselves rarely especially good writers and this was one of the sources of this posting, the consideration of philosophy as a mode of writing and specifically as a mode of academic writing. Connected to this question was a general one about the notion of philosophy as an academic discipline and its relation to the university. Finally, I have been thinking, on and off, for some days about the specific nature of practical philosophy and its relationship to political considerations in a more general sense. So this posting is going to provide some reflections on each of these topics.

Starting with the state of philosophy as a form of academic writing, I am struck here by the way in which academic writing generally has fallen into disrepute in the broader culture. I don't think is a phenomena specific to the UK, since general coverage of academia in the US also appears to bear it out. It may be, though I doubt it, that this phenomena has no wider resonance. The reasons for the disrepute into which academic writing appears to have fallen are due not to some general cause such as the alleged "decline of deference" but more, I think, due to the sense that such writing is, in its specialized character, often devoid of clear insight to those outside its specific mode of address. In other words, academic writing is deemed generally to be remote from general concerns and at risk of irrelevance. This generic verdict appears to bear heaviest on humanities and social science works since the natural sciences are thought to bear within themselves the means of their own application. This contrast is problematic in many respects, not least in that it remains true that scientific research, scientific theories and the possibilities of application of scientific results all call for skills that are not, to put it mildly, exclusively learned within the sciences themselves.

Leaving such caveats aside the general sense that the social sciences and humanities have "gone astray" is certainly due to a difficulty with their mode of address compared to the general culture's demand for accessibility and a clear form of "relevance". Applied to philosophy in particular this general temper cuts as much against analytical philosophy with its patient attention to very specific claims as it does against European philosophy with its alleged "obscurity". Effectively it cuts against philosophical reflection that does not concern itself directly with questions of "application" although anyone who reads works of social, moral or political philosophy might well feel that even these areas are not ready for any simple model of "application". So it might well be that academic philosophy as such is written in a way that does not match contemporary demands (and this may indeed be part of what fuels the demand for "impact assessment").

Once the challenge is put on this level it becomes a question about the place of philosophy within the university and a problem about how the university shapes philosophy in a way that renders it not evidently "relevant". Put like this the challenge to academic philosophy has antecedents within the history of philosophy itself, in, for example, Schopenhauer's attack on university philosophy. Schopenhauer was certainly not an advocate of a clear model of applicability of philosophy though he does relentlessly pose as a champion of clarity in the same dubious way later philosophers often have done. The real charge Schopenhauer made however was that philosophy had failed in a way due to its assimilation to the university. The problem with such assimilation is that the university is really the home of bureaucrats who are acting on behalf of the state. In making this charge, however, Schopenhauer is attacking philosophy for attempting to present itself at the service of the state's general view of the common good whilst contemporary charges seem to be of the reverse order, namely, that it is precisely not concerned with the general problems that have been identified as of great concern by politicians!

How is that philosophy can be attacked in two such divergent ways and what is really at issue in its relationship with the university? Schopenhauer is right that the place of philosophy in the university is one that is uncomfortable and does leave it susceptible to being requested to proceed in a manner and a style that arise externally to it. This much is something that is evident both from Schopenhauer's attacks on university philosophy and from the present trends to request philosophy submit to a mode of accounting that has itself arisen from models that have not been subjected to philosophical questioning. If the problem is thus one in which philosophers as recipients of public funding can be called to account by those who disburse such funding does this lead to the conclusion that the culture would be better served if philosophy was not, as an endeavour, so completely assimilated to the university?

In one respect this seems the right answer and surely if a multiplicity of forms of philosophical practice would arise then this would be a good thing. There have been, in some respects, for some time, moves in this direction. There is, for example, the model of philosophical counselling, in which philosophy is turned to as a guide for life which acts as an alternative to psychology, which even has its own society of practitioners. Similarly, there are philosophical ventures such as the attempt to address a broad general public by such medium as the Philosopher's Magazine and the proliferation of philosophy webcasts, podcasts and, indeed, blogs!

Such general proliferation of modes of address does, to an extent, succeed in freeing the practice of philosophy from the models of writing demanded by academic publishers and journals and does, to some degree, inaugurate a practice that is not solely determined by the needs of research exercises on the one hand or the direct needs of pedagogy on the other. So, to an extent, philosophers have been responding to the fix that the relationship between academic conditions and a general culture that operates in a manner apparently antithetical to its mode of operation appears to have created. However, whilst this is a matter for some interest and a certain amount of applause there is still the problem that philosophical writing, should it be of any sustained and serious kind, does require a pace and mode of operation that does not readily fit modern media or its demands.

Moving on from this point I'd like to look next at the particular situation of practical philosophy, philosophy, that is, that is concerned with social, political and ethical matters. Such a mode of philosophy is one to which there would appear good reason to request insight into matters of general relevance and hence such philosophy should help to orient judgment in relation to, for example, international affairs and the structure of institutions. Again there is much that points in this direction. The explosion of interest in practical ethics and professional ethics is a case in point. The former engages with clear matters of contemporary concerns including the environment, the status of animals and life/death issues that have been given extra sharpness by contemporary technology. The latter, by contrast, concerns itself with medical practice, business ethics and questions that arise in specific professional settings, again addressing matters of evident import.

There is still lacking, however, a generic framework for practical philosophy such that the move from tackling such evidently philosophical questions as the relationship between the right and the good or the status of formalism in ethics to the nature of human rights and the implementation of policies that have some claim to be just often appears somewhat tenuous. Perhaps the sharpening of such connections and the formulation of ways to bring them together would be one activity that philosophers in general could adopt as a project of some importance for the future.

Research Excellence Framework and Impact (III)

The latest issue of Times Higher Education features an article indicating that managers and academics are at logger-heads over the notion of impact assessment with managers being apparently sold on the idea. However, no manager is willing to be quoted on the topic. See the article in question here. Meanwhile, the same issue of the newspaper in question includes two letters attacking the general way in which impact assessment is being used as a measure of research quality, letters mentioned in this article. The first is signed by 48 people, including 10 Nobel Laureates and 26 members of the Royal Society. The second, more pertinently for the readers of this blog, is signed by all except one of the members of the last RAE philosophy panel, including my colleague, Professor Joanna Hodge.

However, given the insight into the general opinion the government has into evidence-based research, as demonstrated in its handling of the recent case of Professor Nutt, it is fairly evident that none of this will matter. They'll simply proceed in any case since none of the above have any right to be taken at all seriously. All of which demonstrates well what kind of political calculations really underlie the support the government is offering to "scientific" education. This is clearly something that really means: listen to managers, ones, that is, we have ensured will dance to our tune by means of financial incentives and ignore anything said by anyone who might have some means of being able to make evidence-based claims on the area.