Libya and the London School of Economics CONOR GEARTY


are a cocky lot, proud of our international repu tation as a leading social-sciences uni- versity, confident in our cutting-edge scholarship, uplifted daily by our fabulous public events and by the power and global pervasiveness of our alumni. Now we are laid low by what had seemed to be one of our grandest coups, the links we had fostered with the Libyan Government of Colonel Mu’ammer Gaddafi, and in particular with the second of his seven sons, Saif. Our acceptance of substantial sums of money from a charitable foundation run by Saif, fol- lowing closely upon the award to him of a now allegedly plagiarised PhD, together with the substantial training programme that we have established in Libya, have combined to put a pressure on senior management that it has been unable to withstand. Our boss (in LSE terms, “the director”), Howard Davies, has announced his resignation. A no-holds- barred inquiry overseen by the former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf is about to get under way. Goodness knows what this will do to the morale of students in the place and to the intentions of those who have been minded to join the school in the future. Things may be about to get worse before they get better. How typical of British universities is LSE?


Price of enlightenment R


ecently it has been a bad time to be part of the London School of Economics and Political Science, or LSE as everyone calls it. Usually we


however, come at a cost. Maybe I was lucky when I became the LSE’s first Rausing Director for its Centre for the Study of Human Rights: my benefactress (who has since received an honorary degree) is a wonderful scholar and publisher who happens to have large sums of money from her family’s asso- ciation with Tetra Pak, makers of milk cartons. I assume that this is about as ethical as it gets, but did I check? No, it never occurred to me. What about the visit of Rwandan President


Having worked there for nearly 10 years, I’d say it is a brilliant exemplar of what we have come to believe to be the right way of doing things in such places: teaching, sure; indi- vidual research as well, of course; but also pushing ahead with big research projects, and driving forward with private money not only to add this or that building but also (through training, outreach and policy influence) to change the world. Putting Gaddafi aside for a moment, LSE has its Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment; its links with Dubai delivering new research and teaching on private equity; its African initia- tive; its large-scale forums in Washington, Mumbai, Singapore and Hong Kong; and much else besides. LSE thrives in a way that most UK universities aspire to; it is simply better at it than the great majority of its insti- tutional peers. Needless to say, none of this activity is paid for by the government- approved undergraduate student fee. The Gaddafi affair shows us that it does,


8 | THE TABLET | 12 March 2011


Paul Kagame to my centre, and my organ - isation of a conference in Kigali the following year – maybe I shouldn’t have done these since Kagame’s record is much excoriated in human- rights circles? Or the lecture hall I was in yesterday, the Sheikh Zayed theatre – should we have taken that money? Sheikh Zayed seems to have been a model ruler of theUnited Arab Emirates, but he was explicitly opposed to democratic reform and a centre bearing his name appears to have adopted some anti- Semitic stances. A benign Gaddafi, then? How far might all this go? One of my col- leagues was clear that ethical purity should not be restricted to bad rulers but should reach bad corporations as well, the oil com- panies and other large businesses that we also try hard to draw within our orbit. Some years ago, one such business – BP – had a similar kind of shock to that now being experienced by the LSE, when it was impli- cated in serious human-rights abuses in Colombia. Its response was a process of long and hard reflection about the values that underpinned its operations, and this led in


It would be extraordinarily sad if, under pressure of


current events, LSE were to play safe


turn to the development of a human-rights perspective that has become part and parcel of the company’s modus operandi (and that has survived the Deepwater Horizon catas- trophe in the Gulf of Mexico). Perhaps when Lord Woolf has reported on the details of this particular case, the time will be right for uni- versities in the UK in general (and the LSE in particular) to engage in a similar exercise. There has been a vast expansion of the uni- versity sector while at the same time public


After the embarrassment caused by Saif Gaddafi’s relationship with the LSE, many are questioning the financial courting of individuals and organisations by British universities. But the LSE’s professor of human-rights law fears there are other dangers in closing the door on the world


funding has been reduced. The Government’s addiction to a business model rooted in the assumptions of capitalism (most recently evi- dent in the review of university financing by ex-BP chief executive John Browne) has put a squeeze on finances but without there being any class of social entrepreneur in the UK will- ing to ride to the rescue. (Before the fabu lously wealthy get too irate about the LSE chasing dodgy foreign money, they should remind themselves that it only happens because the rich at home are so notoriously stingy.) The latest pressures are from the Prime


Minister, David Cameron, calling for more controls on speech on campuses, and Home Secretary Theresa May determined to reduce the number of overseas students that come to Britain. Should the universities be ethically pure but impoverished places, with home stu- dents packed into dilapidated buildings in vast numbers to be taught by fearful lecturers without anybody different from themselves to meet, and without the breadth of experience in their lecturers that foreign engagement can bring (which, yes, can end up with embra cing a Gaddafi)? Is this the model that taxpayers truly want for their children? Last week I hosted Archbishop Vincent Nichols at LSE. It was a great evening and the lecture can be heard on the web. LSE funded this, just as it is contributing substantially to former Irish President Mary Robinson’s visit this week to talk about climate change and climate justice. An American benefactor has just confirmed that he wants to give the LSE US$100,000 to bring scholars to the school to work on the same topic. None of this is part of LSE’s core teaching mission, but it is part of its wider goal “to understand the causes of things”. It would be extraordinarily sad if, under the pressure of current events, the LSE and other universities were to play safe with a return to basics, giving up on the entire wider world and not just the seedy authoritarian and oppressive parts of it. Our culture needs the kinds of minds that


are attracted to scholarship – sometimes naive for sure, but mainly independent, and enthu- siastic in their pursuit of knowledge. This should not disintegrate into grovelling at the feet of the rich and powerful, but nor should it embrace insularity as a price worth paying for an easy but dull life.


■Conor Gearty is professor of human-rights law at the London School of Economics.


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