Protest, pain anticipation and sustainability of public services

A post written for Platform Ten discussing the possible benefits that could come out of the shock of the cuts package.

Is the use of a dildo in a lecture ever appropriate?

Yes.

I suppose I should elaborate.

A US university psychology academic was giving a lecture on sexual arousal with specific emphasis on the psychology and behavioural links with physiology. He obtained permission slips and just under 100 students attended. Why the permission slips? The lecture involved a naked woman felating herself with a sex toy.

Odd way of teaching the subject, I thought. Do I have a problem with it? Not at all. University is for many things - expanding student horizons and imparting knowledge, we all agree. But there is no rulebook that specifies how this should take place.

Life art involves studying the nude human form. Medicine involves the dissection of human cadavers. Why not in a physiology lesson?

The mission of the university according to its "disturbed" President, Mr Morton Shapiro, is to 'teach and research controversial topics.' This isn't a controversial topic. It isn't even, I argue, a controversial method. What it is, is public misunderstanding.

The closed-minded American Christian right have deplored the act. One parent was appalled at the "orgy" in the university. Despite this gross overreaction, this attitude is worrying and embodies a fear of mine: the public just don't get higher education.

Similar to my last post on media hype surrounding the LSE donations, the public have one perception of 'university' and anything that vaguely detracts from that dictionary unit is an abomination. Similar to many of my academic peers, there was a sense that tutors should spoonfeed students the right magical formula to get a degree. They wanted extensive reading lists for each lecture, notes of themes for essays, and powerpoint sheets of course content. Anything to get out of doing some divergent thinking or creative academic spontenaity.

Any academic that refused to take a register or hand out notes - ones that demanded thoughts and opinion rather than rote-learned fact - was seen as a pariah. In the same way that Professor Michael Bailey is being treated in the states for creatively teaching physiology.

Higher education needs to get out it's metaphorical dildo and start to brazenly expose it to the world.
It is not the universities job to force it down your throat and it is not their job to make it pleasant for you. But it is the responsibility of the student to take as much of it as they can.

If the pursuit of innovative approaches to teaching and shirking the rulebook becomes prevalent in HE then we will be blessed with a strong pool of creative graudates entering the world.

Does the LSE really have blood on its hands?

The LSE are currently being dragged through the mud, burned by the righteous fire and experiencing the 13th labour of Herakles: trial by media.

Yes they were silly not to think of the political repurcussions of accepting the money, but I’m convinced the situation is much more innocent than the press would have us believe.

Despite his heritage, Saif Gaddafi was a student and therefore is now an alumnus of the LSE. The man made a generous donation to his college of £300,000 to be used on unspecified research.

The donation was not conditioned to be directed towards enslaving or massacaring Libyans. The funds were being used to research and developing ways of supporting and improving quality of life and infrastructure in northern African countries.

At the time when the donation was made, the Gaddafi’s were flavour of the month. Blair and Brown made several unashamed visits to Gaddafi Snr. and following his refute of weapons of mass destruction surely it is easy to justify politically the acceptance of a measly £300k?

Alumni relations are an important stream of funding in any university. They collectively generate millions of pounds worth of donations to support the student experience, matinenance of facilities and in this case potentially pioneering research.

If Saif had been anyone else’s son then the money would be (and was) welcomed as it would enhance HE in the United Kingdom and research impact abroad. The question I ask is this: does it matter that the money came from a Gaddafi?

I’m not sure it does.

Gaddafi is a bloodthirsty tyrant responsible for the deaths of countless people. But I know I would be happier knowing that at least some of his funds were out of his hands and, irrespective of the politics, was helping people in Africa to achieve a better quality of life.

LSE’s director resigning is an unfortunate consequence of media hype needing its pound of flesh. Handing the money back is, in my view, tantamount to funding the Gaddafi regime. This is unacceptable.

When good comes from the investment of funds into HE at a time where investment in HE is sorely needed, it should not matter where it comes from.

As a result of emotional bandwagon jumping, LSE’s reputation is in tatters; the media will swarm onto any relatively large donation to HE for a dodgy angle; the image of HE in politicians eyes will harm future budgets; and the perception drastically harmed in the eyes of the public.

And worst of all? Some research that could lead to a safer, healthier and happier world won’t get done. 

That is the real tragedy of this.