Madam, – It is well known that when Prof Morgan Kelly wrote his first article on the impending insolvency of the Irish banks ( The Irish Times, September 7th, 2007) – more than a year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the worldwide financial crisis – he was subjected to pressure from the bankers to silence him. And, within UCD, attempts were made from on high to find a colleague in the school of economics who would be prepared to write a rebuttal of Prof Kelly's argument. As is now well known, Prof Kelly was right then and in his subsequent articles over the following three years.
But what if he had buckled under the institutional and business pressures? This is what the debate on academic freedom is about. It concerns the freedom of the academic expert to speak the truth in the public interest. That freedom is underpinned by the right to tenure in the Universities Act (1997). Tenure offers no protection to academics against allegations of wrong-doing or breach of duty.
The rights to academic freedom and tenure are now being endangered by university implementation plans under the Croke Park Deal.
These rights are internationally recognised by Unesco as necessary to protect the public interest and to maintain integrity in research and in other forms of scholarly activity.
The business-orientated model of university funding being pushed through by politicians with the help of some university presidents could mean that the gaining of research grants from business interests would override the publication of research like Prof Kelly’s that is in the general public interest rather than in the interest of our (failed) business elite. – Yours, etc,