Students vs Richard Dawkins

So the students, as expected, came for Richard Dawkins last night. Here’s why:

A group of well-known academics are setting up a private college in London which will charge students £18,000 a year in tuition fees. There will, as usual, be scholarships for the deserving poor. As a kind of Oxbridge by the Thames, the New College of the Humanities will offer students weekly one-on-one tutorials. For that kind of money, I would demand a team of live-in, round-the-clock tutors, ready to fill me in about Renaissance art or logical positivism at the snap of a finger. I would also expect them to iron my socks and polish my boots.

There will, however, be teaching from 14 “star” professors as well, including Linda Colley, Christopher Ricks, Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson and David Cannadine. Somehow it’s hard to imagine these guys rolling in at 9am and teaching for 12 to 15 hours a week, which is what you do in the real Oxbridge. Prospective students should talk to these professors’ travel agents and insist on obtaining photocopies of their diaries. Students can, however, be fairly relaxed about the prospect of being kicked out. It would be like JK Rowling being kicked out by her publishers.

New College of course is an odious idea – you get an ‘Oxford’ education with ‘star’ professors, with the bonus of it being in London, but only if you can afford it. And indeed with academics notorious for turning up when (and if) they choose, how often will superstars like Dawkins actually turn up? At a time when the higher education system is being fundamentally marketised, Dawkins et al, including the ‘master’ of the school AC Grayling, have decided that rather than rock the boat and stand up to the Tories, they’d much rather just go along with it and make a tidy profit.

Last night Dawkins and PZ Myers held a public discussion under the auspices of the British Humanist Association, at the Institute of Education. Unsurprisingly the topics of discussion were evolution, atheism and to please their fawning audience they did as much as they could to say offensive things about religion. But before they even had a chance to start, the gathering was invaded by students, outraged at Dawkins’ participation in Grayling’s venture. They clearly intended to sabotage the evening, and expected the backing of the audience. When they started facing increasingly abusive heckling back, and eventually a full audience rebellion against them, they were quite bewildered and got increasingly petulant.

What they didn’t get was that a significant proportion of the audience agreed with them: Dawkins’ participation in the NCH venture is vile, but the battle against Tory marketisation of higher education wasn’t to be had there that night. Most people were there to learn (ironically for free) from the star professors, or just to be entertained – as one irate man pointed out: it would have made more sense to attack Michael Gove, not Richard Dawkins. Much of the audience agreed with the invaders, but were there for entertainment and intellectual stimulation despite their misgivings about the evolutionary biologist’s decision. We’re complex beings – it’s entirely possible to enjoy someone for their talents, whilst disagreeing with wrong minded decisions they’ve taken. He was eventually successfully challenged in the auditorium and tried to defend his case, but did so poorly. He came across partly as an Oxford elitist who didn’t understand how the other 90% lived, but mostly as a typical academic on a different planet to everyone else.

It’s entirely possible that his standing against the Tories may not change anything about education policy in the UK. But if he’s so laissez-faire about marketisation, why not offer his star services to somewhere like London Metropolitan University, now on the brink of disaster? I’m sure a university prepared to cut 4 5ths of its courses would bend over backwards to accommodate whatever teaching system he thinks is so vital to important to export to London. But of course that’s not the point. Dawkins is going along with Grayling because he doesn’t understand what’s really important for most young people in higher education, (his precious ‘Oxford style’ is a red herring) and that helping to set up what might be a whole tranche of private universities for the rich and elite fundamentally undermines the mainstream system he professes to care about. Every member of Dawkins’ & Myers’ audience must have understood that as well, but by arguing that ‘Richard Dawkins insults the whole world’ the students opposed to him shot themselves cleanly in the foot.