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Karl Schembri
Physics Professor Edward Mallia knows something about critical mass. He has been studying it for decades, and he knows it is nonexistent at the University of Malta.
From his crammed little office at the Maths and Physics Building at Tal-Qroqq, the 67-year-old professor has seen one university rector election after another and at all times the academics’ complacency has been astounding.
“I’m seriously concerned,” he says about this year’s uncontested nomination for rector. “It’s the same repeat every five years. We’re professors at moaning, we’re always whining about our autonomy, yet nobody stands up when faced with government’s choice and heavy handed manoeuvrings.”
This is the second consecutive time that a rectorship nomination goes uncontested. The last time there was a contest was 10 years ago, when Prof. Kenneth Wain was nominated by Prof. Mallia, who was then a university council member. In 1991, Prof. Mallia was himself a contender against Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott.
Now, Roger Ellul Micallef will leave his seat in June to make way for the new rector, Juanito Camilleri, nominated by all 13 government representatives on the university council.
Since Prof. Camilleri’s nomination, academics have been secretly decrying what they call “government’s imposition” but nobody would bell the cat in the exclusive and closed election process in which only council members can nominate candidates and which Prof. Mallia describes as “worse than a Vatican conclave”.
Not even Ellul Micallef, who had all the 10 university deans’ backing him for re-election, decided to stand for a third term.
“The situation has been the same since the Education Act was passed in 1988,” Prof. Mallia says. “We always complain and we never do anything.”
The physics professor had agreed with a council member that if Ellul Micallef would not stand, Prof. Mallia would accept a nomination by the council member.
“I urged Ellul Micallef to submit his candidature, he had to contest, but if he didn’t I would have contested,” Prof. Mallia says.
The council member however had second thoughts by Tuesday 7 March, the day before the nominations process closed, and given that council members are sole nominators in the rectorship election, Prof. Mallia could not contest.
“He informed me that he wouldn’t sign my nomination, so we ended up without a contest. Ellul Micallef must have calculated that his chances of winning were thin, but there was also a chance he wouldn’t have a devastating defeat. This obsession with contesting only if you know you’re going to win makes no sense.”
Prof. Mallia says everyone in campus corridors is saying government had “imposed” its choice.
“They have no right to say so if nobody contested,” Prof. Mallia hits back. “Heavy handed, yes, but not imposition. If the deans wanted Ellul Micallef, and Ellul Micallef would not contest, then one of them should have offered to stand for rectorship. There must be one bright mind among them who can stand. Not one genius out of the 500 academics here was found to contest Juanito Camilleri.”
The incumbent rector has veered away from the media in the last weeks, with only the university academics’ union (UMASA) to speak out, rather sheepishly, against government’s intervention.
“They shook the seismograph at Wied Dalam with their statement,” the physicist says mockingly. “I had proposed to UMASA to hold a poll among us all, before the close of nominations, to see who would be our preferred candidate. This was rejected on the grounds that if the usual quattro gatti bothered to answer, we would make public fools of ourselves. An offer to run the poll myself was made out to constitute a violation of the Data Protection Act.”
Despite his attempts to persuade Ellul Micallef to contest, Prof. Mallia is critical of the dean’s decision to back the incumbent earlier this year.
“Deans are the only academics elected by their peers, so they should have been democratic and consulted their faculty staff about who they wanted for rector. They did none of this and just sent Ellul Micallef a letter saying they wanted him to contest again.”
Mallia compares the university to a battle ground “full of barbed wire and minefields”. In their cloak and dagger meetings, academics are saying it was better not to contest Prof. Juanito Camilleri’s nomination so as not to “legitimate his candidature” and as a statement against “government’s imposition”.
“For the life of me, Juanito did nothing illegitimate,” Prof. Mallia says. “And government imposed nothing. Assuming that the government representatives who nominated him would have voted for him, there would have been another 13 who could back other candidates. This is not about being against Juanito; it’s about having a healthy debate, candidates presenting their programmes and vision, and that’s good both for the candidates themselves and for university.”
Although uncontested, the Melita Cable CEO still has to sit for a vote the coming Tuesday in an election for which only university council members can vote, half of whom are appointed directly by the prime minister and the education minister.
“There is a bit of a question about how the academics’ peers will vote,” Prof. Mallia said. “If they want to stick to their grand ‘delegitimation theory’ then their only way is to abstain. That would be a response of total impotence. Valid but impotent. It would have been totally different if only they presented a valid candidate.”
Come June, Prof. Camilleri will become the new rector as government plans to cut university funding and get every department to justify all its courses on the balance sheet.
“One of the fears here, and we’re experts in fears, is that government is going to change everything,” Prof. Mallia says. “Louis Galea has already set up the national commission for higher education, headed by Joe F.X. Zahra and with Camilleri as one of its members. There’s nobody representing university on that commission.”
About the Mintoffian rhetoric on the need to have a rector who would turn university into an employment agency, made by the university student councils’ president, Anthony Camilleri, Prof. Mallia does not have much time.
“The stupidities he said are amazing,” Prof. Mallia said. “It just goes to show the shallowness of his thinking, reminiscent of the dark Labour days when university courses were solely geared for jobs. University already services industry in many ways, but it shouldn’t be turned exclusively into a job provider.”
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
Links:
www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/03/12/t13.html
www.um.edu.mt
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