The professor in government?

I first developed a strong interest in politics in my early teens. At the time I was living in what was West Germany, and the government was a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats. One of the key cabinet ministers was Professor Karl Schiller, who had previously been Head of the Economics Faculty of the University of Hamburg.

Fast forward to 2009. In its issue of January 16 of that year, the US journal Chronicle of Higher Education reported that ‘President-elect [as he then was] Obama’s transition team is raiding university faculties as it races to fill … jobs in the federal government’.  Some of those who had been headhunted included the Dean of the Harvard Law School (Solicitor-General), a Professor of Journalism at Ohio University (chief White House photographer), the Director of a Research Centre at George Washington University – and even the then new CIA Director (though he may in the past have been a Congressman and a White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton) had most recently been a professor at California State University in Monterey. The Chronicle suggested that ‘hundreds’ of academics would end up in government or in government agencies under the Obama administration.

Such a strong academic presence in government is not something we expect in these islands, in part because the career path for politicians is wholly different. Many frontline politicians graduate to that status from local government or from one of the professions (lawyers, accountants, consultants etc), whereas in many other countries there is much greater diversity of background. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that in Ireland there have been some prominent academic politicians: Garrett FitzGerald (Fine Gael and of course Taoiseach), Martin O’Donoghue, President Michael D. Higgins spring to mind. But despite that, academic politicians have been few and far between, and even political advisers have not on the whole been from the university world. In Britain I cannot immediately think of any academics who became frontline politicians, though readers may be able to correct me.

I suspect that this has been to the disadvantage both of politics and academia, as it has tended to keep principle and theory out of government and political reality out of academic circles, at least to some extent. So as not to be misunderstood, I am not suggesting that government should be dominated by academics, but some academic presence would probably be helpful, and would also make the workings and benefits of the universities more familiar to politicians. The gap in understanding between the two professions, which sometimes has consequences in government policy on higher education, might not be so pronounced.

Of course the opportunities for such involvement will remain few for as long as the politicians move along their current career paths. But maybe it would be a good idea to raise some questions around that anyway.