Inappropriate Analogy Watch

Times Higher Education of April 21st has a rather disconcerting cover, a close up picture of a bonobo ape. Inside there is a long article by a graduate student at the University of British Columbia that argues that humans may have been too hasty in assuming that their current aggressive behavior is rooted in their ancestry. He suggests that humanity is more closely related to the bonobos than to the common chimpanzees. The former are peaceful, promiscuous, egalitarian, dominated by females and without hang ups about homosexuality. They sound rather like a mix between a hippie commune and a humanities faculty at an American state university or least like those places would imagine themselves to be. Common chimpanzees on the other hand are notorious for behaving like a gang of skinheads on a Saturday night.

This is a variant of a common theme in popularized social science writing. For a long time, western feminists and leftists have looked to contemporary or historical pre-modern societies for validation only to find disappointment. Margaret Mead’s free loving Samoans tuned out to be rather different while the search for mother earth worshipping matriarchies has been equally futile. Now, it seems they are forced to go back several million years. Perhaps the bonobo really are what primatologists say they are. But it would be unsurprising if they turn out to be  as politically incorrect, competitive and unpleasant as the chimpanzees.

In any case, it is pseudo-science to suggest that humanity can take any other species as a model or inspiration . There are dozens of extinct species and subspecies between us and the bonobos who may have been even more gentle and promiscuous than the bonobo or even more violent and competitive than the chimpanzee.

 The point of the article is found in an editorial by Ann Mroz in the same issue.

In higher education, we appear to moving from an approach based on cooperation to one based on competition, from the bonobo compact to the chimp reforms, if you like. The Browne Review launches us into a quasi-market world, which in itself has far-reaching implications. Unfortunately, it comes on top of a range of pre-existing and co-existing factors: the concentration of research funding; tighter immigration rules; cuts in teacher training and NHS cash; and internationalisation.

Some post-1992 institutions facing immediate financial constraints are moving swiftly to deal with their problems. London Metropolitan University, for example, is cutting about 400 of its 557 degree courses, and the University of East London is planning to axe its School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Staff at the former institution describe the move as "an attempted reversal of widening participation...of everything that London Met...came into existence to promote". Staff at the latter describe its social sciences and humanities as high-performing areas. "Are UEL's non-traditional students going to be denied an academic education on the basis of managers' assumption that all such students are good for - and will be willing to pay for - is training?" they ask.

She therefore concludes.

UK universities have survived for 800 years through successful evolution in a relatively stable habitat, a context they share with the cooperative bonobo. The competitive chimpanzee, however, has had to adapt to more hostile conditions. In shaping the next stage of its evolution, the academy has the choice of emulating either the aggressive ape or the better angels of our nature.

There is a problem with this. The bonobo are close to extinction. There are only 10,000 of them left, compared with 300,000 common chimpanzees and the only reason those 10,000 have survived is that they are separated by the Congo river from the chimpanzees.

If Ann Mroz thinks British universities have evolved though cooperation over 800 years she should start  by reading the novels of C. P. Snow. No doubt they have become thoroughly cooperative over the last few years as diversity workshops, collaborative projects, performance appraisals, quality audits and professional development seminars have eradicted most signs of individuality in their faculty.

But there is no Congo river separating British universities from all those nerds and buffs in Korea, China and Singapore who work 80 hours a week  and refuse to cooperate and are quite uninterested in diversity, safe and comfortable environments and collegiality.  

And just what is so bad about training?