The term multiversity was coined by respected University of California president Clark Kerr in a famous 1963 lecture. Kerr’s vision was originally received as a prophetic acknowledgement of a splendid technocratic future. But Kerr believed himself to be misunderstood. He was never so sure that the multiversity, inevitable as it seemed to be, was a great idea. In later writings he pointed out some of its flaws, flaws which have led to a huge changes to the university as it has existed for almost a thousand years. The multiversity is now indistinguishable from a business, a business that largely lost sight of its proper function.
Kerr listed the often-conflicting tasks of university presidents in this new age. Three stand out:
- “a seeker of truth where the truth may not hurt too much”
- “to keep the peace”
- “service to society”
Number 1 often loses out to Number 2 and Number 3 justifies almost any activity, truth-seeking or not. These tendencies have come to fruition in the modern research university where clarity of vision has dimmed as the enterprise has expanded. UCL is an example.
A Modern Multiversity
University College London is not a college but a university, a very large one, in fact. It is the largest ‘college’ in the University of London, rated one to three as a U.K. research university and between eight and 16 in the world rankings, depending on who’s counting. Its tag line is “London’s Global University”. Its student body numbers over 40,000. Its problems are shared by many large U.S. research universities. Appropriately, the new President of UCL, Michael Spence, an Australian, has wide interests, from theology to intellectual property theory.
UCL is embarking on a Five-Year Plan and in March 2022, President Spence invited alumni to help, with a memo entitled “How can UCL remain a world-leading university in a rapidly changing world?” As an alumnus, I feel obliged to respond.
UCL is a vast organisation embracing multiple more or less independent entities. Coming up with a mission statement is a formidable undertaking. Nevertheless, UCL is a university and should presumably adhere to core intellectual values. In order to find out if it does, let’s look at Paper 1, “2022-2027 Strategic plan. Introduction: Vision, Mission and Values,” one of five that are up for discussion. I will just discuss Part one, “Our vision and mission”, and “Our values”. The section begins:
Vision
Our distinctive approach to research, education and innovation will further inspire our community of staff, students and partners to transform how the world is understood, how knowledge is created and shared and the way that global problems are solved [emphasis mine].
Well, at least it’s short, but it reads as if written not by an intelligent human being, but by a bot programmed to string together fashionable words (boldfaced) in grammatical sequence. UCL is apparently “distinctive”, but how or even why distinctiveness is important not clear – but, never fear, it “will inspire” not to mention “transform.” The statement actually says almost nothing and what it does say is not obviously related to the functions of a real university. Suggested alternative:
Vision: Our purpose is the search for truth, verifiable in the case of science, but always a subject of rational debate, i.e. Wissenschaft.
Incidentally, the word truth does not occur at all in the 4,300-word Vision, Mission and Values statement. So much for Veritas.
Next is:
Mission
London’s Global University: a diverse intellectual community, engaged with the wider world and committed to changing it for the better; recognised for our radical and critical thinking and its widespread influence; with an outstanding ability to integrate our education, research, innovation and enterprise for the long-term benefit of humanity.
The buzzwords now become global. Does UCL really know why or even where it exists? “Committed to changing [the world]”, why? Isn’t that what the politico-legal system is for? For “better”, what is “better”? Define or discuss. “Widespread influence” – well, new ideas have influence but influence should not part of a university’s mission. Why should a university seek to influence anything beyond the world of ideas (see politico-legal above)? “Radical and critical thinking”: critical, yes, but radical, why? What’s so good about radical? At least part of a university’s purpose surely is to pass on an intellectual tradition, i.e., to be conservative rather than radical – and, above all, truth. “[A]n outstanding ability” — sez who, not ourselves, surely? Evidently modesty is not one of our “values” (see also “Vision” above). “Long-term benefit of humanity”? Indeed, scholarly and scientific work may benefit humanity, at least in the long term, but is that why we do it? Knowledge should be an intrinsic not an instrumental good for a university. No sign of that here.
Suggested alternative:
Mission
To be a university that is faithful to its values, selects its faculty and students for excellence of intellect and character, and pursues both teaching and research with equal vigour.
Values
The final section of Part one, on Values, is the longest and most confused. Evidently UCL had an internal controversy in 2020 about decision making to which this section is in part a reaction. Earlier, it accepted the resignation of a Nobelist honorary professor because indignant feminists complained about a lighthearted, but probably true, statement in a conference talk: that women in a predominately male research lab can lead to emotional problems.
Perhaps for these reasons, accountability is emphasised:
The first of the four clusters [of values] being honest and transparent in our dealings with one another and the broader community. This entails a strong sense of collective and personal responsibility and accountability to each other, and to the communities that we serve.
So, be decent and responsible, which should be true for everyone, always, not special to a university or UCL. And does a university serve a community or an ideal?
And then on academic freedom:
[T]he one thing that all understandings of academic freedom have in common, and that must be maintained… is a strong bias towards maximising the autonomy of the researcher and teacher to determine, to pursue, and to promote their own intellectual agenda, and to do so free of unwarranted institutional or government interference.
Translation: We’ll be nice to you, academics, but we will not be too specific about how. No mention of the distinction between facts, which are the real business of the university, and the values/emotion and political activism often attached to them, which are not. Much of the rest of this section seems to be redundant repetitions of these sentiments plus the usual hyperbole and allusions to the 2020 inquiry:
Universities have a history of promising extraordinary things to the communities with whom they work: It is essential that we are absolutely clear with staff, students, alumni, donors, and external organisations about what we can and cannot deliver as an organisation of limited resources and competing priorities, even when pressure exists to deliver the impossible. The demands on universities are growing, and we must be able to say with clarity both what we can, and what we cannot, achieve.
All this sounds like agonised introspections of administrators trying to resolve conflicts, rather than anything to do with the values of a university. And do universities– should they – “promise extraordinary things”?
The last part of “Values” is a combination of wokeness and crypto-Marxism.
Sample quote: “Openness and inclusion.”
The first is the absolute priority of ensuring that our staff and student body (not least our academic and professional leadership group) [leaders?] is as diverse as possible… a duty to promote equality, both within and without the UCL community….This means…that all students of equivalent ability should be equally able to succeed, and that the so-called ‘awarding gap’ for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME [BIPOC]) students must finally be removed.
All must have prizes, and all must be equal, especially BAMEs. Yet a university has always been an elite organisation. Not everyone wants, or is able to profit from a university education. A commitment to equality (as opposed to equality of opportunity) subverts that objective. And why must leaders be “diverse” as opposed to merely excellent?
Sample quote: “Care and respect.”
[T]he university would be unable to achieve its academic mission without the contribution of its professional staff, who must enjoy a parity of esteem for the vital contribution that they make to our success. They must be accorded respect and parity of esteem for their professional skills, just as academic staff are for theirs.
Esteem must surely be earned not awarded. All this used to be covered by exhortations like ‘be polite’ and ‘don’t be rude to others’. But neither ‘rude’ nor ‘impolite’ is to be found in this document (or many others like it). The word polite does occur in the first paragraph, but only as a slur: “The university was to be… both open to all the world, and concerned at least as much with ‘useful knowledge’ as with ‘polite learning’.” So much for knowledge for its own sake.
One of two cited references is to the work of the delightfully named Chantal Mouffe who’s Wikipedia entry gives a hint as to where this section is coming from: “She is best known for her contribution to the development… of the so-called Essex School of discourse analysis, a type of post-Marxist political inquiry drawing on Gramsci, post-structuralism and theories of identity, and redefining Leftist politics in terms of radical democracy.” Perhaps ‘polite’ = ‘bourgeois’ for Mme. Mouffe?
Sample quote: “Rigour and innovation.”
Our work will only have impact if we engage and if we reduce the barriers to cooperation… One particular challenge here is in the balance of work addressing the complex problems of our communities, which is almost always cross-discplinary [sic]…
Cooperation is often good but often either irrelevant or simply annoying (Isaac Newton, q.v.). Is it right for a university to recommend it for all? And is addressing community problems a prime purpose of a university? This section concludes:
The four clusters of value that seem to be emerging as important for our work are thus:
• Integrity and mutual accountability
• Openness and inclusion
• Care and respect
• Rigour and innovation
In short: be honest and responsible, be politically correct, be polite, be a good scholar, be novel but tough. In short, values that work for any institution from a university to a Chevrolet dealership. Nothing about truth or the separation of fact and value. “Inclusion” is favored over colour-blindness.
Conclusion
It is hard to know just what to make of this document. It avoids ideas basic to a university, like truth, excellence and the intrinsic value of knowledge. It is jargon-filled and rambling almost as if the intent is not to transmit information but to hide it. Bromides abound. The obvious conclusion is that the document is a muddle because the real purposes of the multiversity have very little to do with traditional academic values.
This document and many others like it was written not by scholars, but by successful bureaucrats, using tactics that work in any large organisation: keep your ear to the ground and your finger to the wind. No matter how awkward the resulting posture, you can be sure to offend no one and gain a reputation for soundness. Abiding adherence to principle is rarely to be found in a system so organised.
In practice, the multiversity has become a rootless business enterprise in which the core departments, the sciences and humanities, are subordinate to what used to be the periphery: the professional schools of law, medicine, engineering and business. All of these serve different functions, have different missions and different values. It is no wonder that any attempt to unify them leads to a stumbling convergence on values that apply in effect to any organisation whatever.
John Staddon is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology, and Professor of Biology and Neurobiology, Emeritus at Duke University.
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I’ve just read a article on rueters about Italy, the alps and Venice apparently there’s not enough water in the sea causing drought and empty canals in Venice but sea level rise is a disaster at the same time! and theres not enough snowfall in the alps causing drought in Italy, oh and at this time, antarctic ice is at an all time low but not changing! This is all getting bloody stupid!
And climate change is increasing due to continuing global warming despite there having been no increase in the rate of warming since just after 1996 (and the end of El Niño) and a slight net decline.
The temperature increase for the last 100 years is between 0.65C and 1.12C depending where your dart lands.
As I noted the other day it takes a special kind of logic to think that a rise from -57c to -55c will cause the ice to melt…
Since there are only a handful of weather stations on the West (warmer) coast and none in the interior, temperatures are ‘estimated’ thanks to triangulation, algorithms and everyone’s favourite… computer modelling.
By curious coincidence, most global warming is ‘happening’ in Polar regions.
My “Contingency Theory of Climate Change”
Everywhere on the planet is very slightly different. So:
Climate change is the net result of all local, regional and global climate change variables, and CO2 is NOT the planet’s temperature control knob.
CO2 is just one of many climate change variables, including:
1) Earth’s orbital and orientation variations towards the Sun (aka planetary geometry)
2) Changes in ocean circulation. Including ENSO and others
3) Solar energy and irradiance, including clouds, albedo, volcanic and manmade aerosols, plus possible effects of cosmic rays and extra terrestrial dust
4) Greenhouse gas emissions (of which CO2 is one, and water vapour the most abundant)
5) Land use changes (cities growing, logging, crop irrigation, etc.)
6) Unknown causes of variations of a complex, non-linear system
7) Unpredictable natural and manmade catastrophes
8) Climate measurement errors (unintentional errors or deliberate science fraud)
9) Interactions and feedbacks, involving two or more variables.
——
So it is a soup of pretty much whatever flavour you like somewhere.
I think you can apply that very sound logic to pretty much any social phenomena. There is enough of everything going on somewhere that you can create any impression you like by taking the subset of events that supports your story and report those.
I have no doubt that is exactly what happens.
Yes, I started years ago with the contingency theory of management on an MBA course – sometime in the last century.
—
Anyway.
There has been a generation or more taught or rather indoctrinated that the climate doom is all caused by the trickster devil/god carbon dioxide. This is so patently not the case that I look at adults who spout it as if they were saying they still believe in Father Christmas, or God.
The current cooling in The Antarctic (and other places) whilst there is warming elsewhere at the same time seems to show how versatile the magic carbon dioxide molecule is. So I feel rather generous in crediting it with any role.
Every bit of extreme weather from anywhere in the world gets beamed straight to our living rooms. This might give the impression that everything is getting worse. But actually, that is all it is.——-An impression. Because in reality there is no increase in floods, droughts, storms, wild fires, or any other type of weather related events. So where you have a reason for getting masses of people to believe something and to come onboard with an idea then it is easy to cherry pick a bunch of data or facts the seem to support that agenda or idea. And that is exactly what is happening with climate. So then you need to ask yourself WHY. My brother once said to me “Why would they say there is global warming if there isn’t any”? ——–A good question, and to understand why you need to know something about the politics involved. If you let yourself think it is all just about science, then you are missing most of it. Climate Change is a highly politicised issue, and a moral economic and social one as well. It is not purely about science. Infact the science is very weak and often the facts do not fit the theory, and in any case it mostly emanates from climate models, which to this point have all been totally wrong. —–Real science rejects it’s theory when the facts do not fit the hypothesis. In politics you seek “consensus”, which as someone once pointed out is “the last refuge of scoundrels”.
“It recorded its coldest six-month winter since records began in 2021…”
I think the year is a typo.
Just not clearly written methinks – should read ‘ In 2021 it recorded its coldest six month winter since records began’ or something similar.
Excellent article, just a small chip out of the climate change/net-zero wall but we must keep chipping away. Covid and climate change have seen a reversal in the normal way things work, usually we have technological innovations and scientific findings and then society subsequently adapts and develops to make best use of the technology and the science. With climate change and with covid we seem to have started with a diabolical and sinister narrative and then insisted that science and technology come up with answers and developments to fit the desired narrative.
Increasingly with climate change the evidence is lacking, whether it is high level scientific measurement or just looking out the window and noticing that over my three score years and ten, the climate has not noticeably changed very much and the sea has not risen very much. However the global tyrants and megalomaniacs have now got so much political, power, money and capital tied up in this net-zero scam that is going to be very hard to get them to climb down at all.
Many ordinary people who are busy with work and family life switch on their 6 o’clock news expecting that the TV News channel has done it’s homework and knows something about the issue they are reporting on. Nope. What they do is repeat what officialdom like the IPCC WEF and politicians and bureaucrats PRONOUNCE. ——-But pronouncements are not science. And computer models that do not reflect what the real world is doing are evidence of NOTHING. ——What we are all presented with is reporting on “official science” in support of a political agenda by a bought and paid for media. Most people do not have time to investigate every issue and they rely on NEWS programs to inform them without bias. ——–In that regard mainstream media have failed, and they fail deliberately in support of the political agenda called “Sustainable Development”
Meanwhile the BBC reports that there is a shortage of fruit and vegetables in the UK and Ireland “largely the result of extreme weather in Spain and north Africa, where floods, snow and hail have affected harvests.”
Where’s Global Warming when we need it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64718823
Ah, but they’ve got you every which way. Whatever the weather, whether hot or cold, dry or wet, extremely sunny or extremely cloudy, its all down to ‘climate change’. Many people seem so brainwashed by, principally, the msm, especially the BBC, they can no longer just accept weather as weather, but as some portent of forthcoming doom. It seems a shame when many people can no longer enjoy a crisp winter’s day or a warm summer’s evening without niggling fear that the end is nigh. Their loss though.
The earth’s climate has been changing naturally for at least the last few hundreds of millions of years.
It would be abnormal for the earth’s climate not to be changing.
There is no evidence that the current climate change is caused in any significant degree by humanity.
Computer models are not evidence.
Grantham, Mayo, van Otterloo &Co. As well you know.
Ask – Who gains by the constant state of ‘crisis’, not just for climate but other areas too?
Who gains?
What do they gain?
Why?
Greta Thumberg RIP
Government is apparently less trusted than ever before. On every issue no-one believes a word they say. On the economy, on immigration, on education, foreign policy etc etc etc. Yet when they speak of the “climate emergency” most people do believe it. Maybe on sites like this they don’t, but if each person who visits this site thinks for a second about all their family and friends, how many of them simply believe most if not all of the “climate crisis” stuff. They think Polar Bears are in serious trouble, they think the planet is warming dangerously. They think weather is getting more extreme by the week. They will mostly believe all of that stuff because they see it on TV news and because they think it is all about “science” and people by and large will tend not to want to question anything that they consider to be “science” because they think they cannot possibly know more than a scientist.———- So if you have ever told them that Polar Bear numbers have increased 5 fold in the last 60 years, or that there has not been much in the way of warming of the planet for about 20 years, despite CO2 increasing all the time. Or that there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event, many of you will have noticed that those family members or friends will suddenly become like a rabbit in the headlights. They will look at you like you are from Mars.Most of the time when people get new information their reaction would be “Oh, is that right. I never knew that”, but on politicised issues where there has been powerful PR (propaganda) they cannot accept any new information. Propaganda works, and government knows it. The bought and paid for media know it as well. Despite almost everything we hear about the climate being a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency with zero evidence to back it up, the people still mostly accept it as ultimate truth and that reveals only one thing. —–The power of propaganda.
I’ve just read an item in the Times (01/07/23) – headline: ‘Antarctic ice melts to “shocking” low.’ Of course it looks authoritative, but I’d be grateful if anyone out there could help me see why it might be bullshit. If I can’t find that evidence, I’ll have to read Chris Morrison’s articles with more circumspection, despite my general feeling that he hits the nail on the head over and over again. Direct contact with me on this would be very welcome; my email is illman.clive@gmail.com. Many thanks. The Times article reads:
Antarctic sea ice has fallen to a “shock ing” record low for the end of June, with the missing mass equivalent to an area about five times the size of Britain. The loss comes as scientists warn that the Greenland melt has been “off the chart” as the area faces a heatwave.
“Despite the South Pole heading into winter, the Met Office said that the extent of Antarctic sea ice was at 11.8 million sq km on June 29, 1.3 million sq km below the previous record low. It is more than 2.5 million sq km below the average for this time of year.
Ed Blockley, of the Met Office Polar Climate Group, described the levels as “extraordinarily” low. The figures come after record sea ice lows in the Antarctic summer earlier in the year and a slow start to growth heading into winter in the southern hemisphere. Ice growth in May was 2.87 million sq km, far below the usual 3.25 million sq km for the month.
Blockley said it was too early to say if records would be broken when Antarctic sea ice reaches its maximum extent, usually in September, but he added: “We are concerned.”
The loss of such huge expanses of sea ice matters for the wildlife of the region and because it speeds up climate change. Ice reflects more of the sun’s energy into space than dark sea water.
One reason why Antarctic sea ice bas vanished this year appears to be that the region is up to 4C warmer than usual in some places.
The records this year come after about seven years of low sea ice extent in Antarctica. Previously the sea ice had been expanding for decades, but that appeared to flip in 2016 losses occurred linked with a weather cycle called the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
Blockley said such natural weather cycles could be enhanced by global warming. “As we get this climate warming, the extremes are becoming more extreme,” he said. The world ha already warmed by about 1.2C since the Industrial Revolution.
This month science agencies in the United States the world had entered an El Nino phase, typically linked with years that are hotter than average. Blockley said that was likely to exacerbate Antarctic sea ice losses.
The losses in the Antarctic come as Greenland records temperatures 10C above average. Jason Box, a glaciology expert, said the melt rates were “punching off the charts”.