a roll of the dice

A bit out of date now, but in February it emerged that the University of Sydney has agreed to ban stem cell research at a new facility built on land it acquired from a Catholic residential college.

According to the ABC:

The church’s deed on the land stipulates there should be no foetal stem cell research or procedures involving the termination of human life or artificial creation of it.

There isn’t enough detail to be clear what, in a legal sense, the university’s rights actually are in respect of the land. It does appear, however, that the decision to ban certain types of research in the new facility was voluntary, and not an actual legal obligation resulting from the terms of the sale.

It’s tempting to reason, along somewhat libertarian lines, that the university is an independent entity, and that it is entitled to limit research in whatever way it considers to be in its own interest. Fans of the free market would no doubt add that students and academics who object to the arrangement can always exercise their freedom of choice to go elsewhere.

However, such reasoning ignores the fact that the university is a public institution: it receives public funding, and members of the public attend via government-funded places. Furthermore, it is an institution which has been built over many years by the Australian community, and which forms part of a tertiary system which is an extremely valuable community resource. From a scientific perspective, it also (presumably) purports to produce objective, reasoned output which is in line with contemporary international standards.

This seems to be an increasingly problematic area in Australian education: the state funding organisations which take a religious, rather than strictly rational and academic, approach to certain subject matter. Of course with the Federal Government recently actually paying $90 million to put chaplains directly into state schools, it’s evidently not an issue of great concern to our politicians.

If state institutions are to be limited in what they research, surely there is an appropriate mechanism already in place to determine what is and is not acceptable: the Australian law, as passed by the elected representatives of the Australian people. That would be the very same Australian people who fund those institutions with their taxes.

There is also a serious question as to where one draws the line with such an arrangement. What about a new physics department built on land acquired from a religious organisation that believes in a strict interpretation of the book of genesis as the explanation for the origins of the universe? Or what if the new facility had been built on land bought from a group who were anti-evolution creationists? How about an arts department limited in the scope of its study by the social and sexual mores of, say, a fundamentalist Islamic group?

The university has done a Faustian deal [NB: the study of Faust may offend the orthodox version of the Devil] and has thereby done a great disservice to not only academic and intellectual tradition, but to the public which both funds the University and relies on its output. Perhaps the university Senate should read up on the Catholic Church’s historical record on supporting objective science before making such decisions - that is, if the study of history is still permitted on those parts of the campus which aren’t regarded as holy ground.