What is a university for?

 There is a "discussion" going on at present between the classicist and academic Mary Beard and a Charlotte Gill about the way universities function. 

Dame Mary held a professorship in her own right at Newnham (Cambridge University). She spent many years teaching there. She was teaching in London (King's?) when I was a student in another part of the university. I managed to get to a lecture by her, a friend took me. I remember it well enough to think I would very much like to have been taught by her. She welcomed discussion.

I am not sure what Charlotte Gill's qualifications are. She is not the Canadian writer but she does write about what she calls "woke waste" - funding for woke projects. 

The "discussion" or argument seems to revolve around whether universities are involved in teaching and questioning ideas or whether they are places where you regurgitate the "correct" ideas.  The "what is a university for" argument. Trying to debate this at all on "X" let alone properly is almost impossible.

It is a topic I have commented on before and will no doubt comment on again. I had a discussion about it with the mature age student who lives across the dividing footpath where I now live. He has strong opinions about the way he is expected to abide by the ideas being put in front of him. He has been marked down for arguing against them. This is not "my lecturer/tutor doesn't like me and I am only getting a pass grade" but something he has been told he cannot afford to do. He is passing but he is not getting the grade he should be getting. He is getting distinctions but not high distinctions.  He is studying "counselling".  He refuses to accept there is only one correct answer to the questions he is being required to answer in assignments. His hopes of doing a masters have been cut to zero. There is no room for someone who does not follow the correct ideology in counselling. 

The late Senior Cat used to tell the story of how one of his lecturers slashed a line through an entire page of a student's work saying, "X (a critic) will not do. I won't have him mentioned."  How do you write a reasoned argument if you are not free to refer to and use all the resources you have at your disposal?

I have seen this happen more than once. I was a victim of it when I was doing my teacher training. There were "guidelines" and we were expected to follow them. There was only one way to write a lesson plan and we had to stick to that lesson plan. As a teacher if a child asked a good thoughtful question the rest of us would be off that plan and I would be getting them to argue the point being made. It meant we sometimes had to make up work to cover all that needed to be covered but the only complaints came from one or two lazy ones.

At tertiary level there should be room for argument. If a student raises an issue in a way which suggests they do not understand then they need one sort of help. If they raise an issue because they have done their "homework" and they are questioning something then they need to be encouraged. They don't need to be told "this is what you have to say even if if it not what you think".

My doctoral thesis turned an idea in psychology around another way. It was not what I set out to do. It just happened as I was searching for answers to the problem I had set myself. It came as a surprise to me, to my supervisor and everyone else. Even now I realise I was incredibly fortunate that I did not fail because the external examiner, a big name in the field, found his own work being questioned. It was one of those times when things could have gone either way. At my viva he really pushed me hard. The other two examiners barely asked a question. I know they were worried and I was very, very frightened. At the end of it though he told me, "I don't like it but I have to accept we need to change our thinking here." The data was there.  

The result might have been very different if my thesis had been in the area of "gender studies" or "indigenous studies" or one of the other current woke ideas. It will also take a brave student to argue against the meaning given to a particular word when studying one of the indigenous languages of this country, or suggesting that nuclear power might still be something that needs consideration. Try saying indigenous children should be taught in English from the start and you would lose any chance of a job working with them, perhaps of working with children at all.  The list of topics that may not be argued is long.

I suspect both Dame Mary and M/s Gill still have much to say to one another. I also believe it is both the university you attend and the course(s) you do there which will inform you of whether you are permitted to argue other ideas. Here they are not always welcome, particularly in woke areas or if their purpose is to train you for employment or both. 

Myself? I think universities are there, or should be there, for the exchange of ideas and the development of them. It won't happen if you have to agree in order to pass.