Moral Confusion

Moral panics are a feature of contemporary public life, for individuals and organisations. Fed by a febrile media, they rise, crest and run out. One followed by the next. Executive pay and expenses, donations, tax avoidance and so on. Each has a seed but assumes a scale and shape determined by the complex interactions of political and cultural forces. Fairness, proportion and perspective can be readily lost in the eye of moral panics. This is sharpened by a tendency for holding individuals responsible without regard to their role or the framework of collective responsibilities.

Universities are particularly exposed. We operate as independent bodies, making judgments and taking risks in a fiercely competitive global setting, and yet we have an openness to scrutiny that reflects our public responsibilities. We also, as institutions charged with a mission to support scholarship, are bound to a higher standard of behaviour that will sustain our critical independence. What concerns me is the ease with which, in this environment, the issues of so-called reputational risk, that is fear of public censure, can be mistaken for risk more generally. As I overheard a colleague say: 'there is real risk and PR risk'. Exactly. To be direct, offending the media, and even public opinion, is not the same thing as being in the wrong.

Universities are nothing if they abandon risky thinking and challenging research. This means, necessarily, commercial and international partnerships, new forms of organisation and entrepreneurial activity of all kinds. These sorts of engagements are based on subtle judgements, not least of the behaviour of others. They are of the essence for education and research as we now understand them. If, as the result of a more censorious public environment, UK universities became less open, less willing to engage at the edge, and less willing to try new ways to prosecute our work and disseminate its results, we will have suffered a major loss. This is not an argument for recklessness, and certainly not for operating without moral constraint, but it is an argument for taking a more robust view of the risks universities must assume. It is also an argument for having some confidence in our own compass. We cannot undertake intellectual risks while looking over our shoulder or tuning ourselves to how a sensationalist media might judge the outcomes.