An Open Letter on the Importance of Protecting Philosophy | Opinion - ABC News

You can listen to Moira Gatens, Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, discuss this Open Letter and the importance of philosophy more generally with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens this week on The Minefield.

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Australian philosophers such as Peter Singer (Princeton), David Chalmers (New York University), and Rae Langton (Cambridge) are in many places household names. Students from our universities routinely go on to pursue postgraduate degrees, and professional careers, at the world's most prestigious institutions, as ABC News reports.

The humanities celebrate diversity in an inimitable way. It is perilous to neglect their outstanding contributions to our liberal democracy, which is one of the most successful multicultural experiments in the world. 
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As philosophers, we are trained to consider controversial ideas with an open mind, to investigate our own assumptions, and to cultivate an even-tempered respect for our ideological opponents by Australia-based Philosophers.But when our discipline is subjected to unfair critique by powerful figures, and when this critique motivates consequential government policy, we feel a special obligation to correct misunderstandings. The proposed changes to university fees for Australian students are poorly conceived, and unlikely to accomplish their stated aim of preparing graduates for evolutions in the labour market. Just as importantly, they express dismissive attitudes towards philosophy and other disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), and they amount to an attack on the autonomy and well-being of universities. We object to them, and encourage citizens and elected officials to do the same.

The government’s plan to restructure fees for higher education makes implausible assumptions about how labour market trends and job prospects for students relate to individual courses of study. For example, the plan ignores evidence that philosophy prepares students for an unpredictable and changing job market by developing their analytical skills, their ability to solve complex problems, and their facility in negotiating interpersonal differences. It ignores evidence that employers already prize these very qualities. It ignores the broader social costs of trying to steer a generation of young people away from philosophical study. More generally, it ignores the fact that Australian Universities are increasingly prominent on the world stage because of their teaching and research excellence across diverse fields of human knowledge...

Ironically, the world has far more respect for Australian philosophy than the Australian government does. At Harvard and Oxford, at the National University of Singapore, at Cambridge and the Sorbonne, at Toronto and Princeton and Edinburgh, at the LSE and Berkeley and McGill, and at most other elite universities around the globe, Australian philosophy is held in the highest regard. Australian philosophers such as Peter Singer (Princeton), David Chalmers (New York University), and Rae Langton (Cambridge) are in many places household names. Students from our universities routinely go on to pursue postgraduate degrees, and professional careers, at the world’s most prestigious institutions. Decreasing enrolments in philosophy programs, and lending credence to shallow ideas about the impracticality of philosophical study, functions to undermine a discipline that should be a source of national pride. There is a particularly painful sting to this ingratitude, which could equally be described as a deficit of self-love. Many commentators have already observed a further irony, relevant in this connection: a great many of the plan’s architects themselves benefitted from highly subsidised degrees in law and the humanities.
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Source: ABC News