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Excerpt below from an interview with US historian Howard Zinn by Gabriel Matthew Schivone, 'The Citizens Among Us. Science, The Public, and Social Change', August 29, 2008; http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18617 Well worth reading in full. David == GMS: Here's an interesting example from the University of Arizona, in my home town of Tucson: There's a yearly memo proclaimed and circulated by the president of the university (the one most recently appointed being Robert N. Shelton) addressed to the campus community, very strictly barring all "political activity" for university employees. It encourages UA faculty and staff not to engage at all in political activity while on "university time" or with "university resources," but rather to do be political if they so wish-"on their own time." Now, although it is explicitly stated the memorandum is enforced to protect state funding and the outcome of elections, one of the implications is that, in order to be effectively objective in their scientific professions, and to be good scholars, there must be a calling for disinterested scholarship in the face or shadow of political matters. HZ: This is the president of the University of Arizona? GMS: Yeah. HZ: Yeah, well, this just shows how little wisdom you need to become the president of a university. Obviously this president has no understanding of the fact that neutrality is impossible, that objectivity is a myth. All intellectual work has a moral component and works either on behalf of the human race or against it. And, in fact, to claim neutrality and to dissociate yourself from participation in the world of ideas and the ideological and real conflicts in the world is really to permit the world to go on as it was. In other words, to refuse to intervene-to refuse to use your energy, your talent, your knowledge for the betterment of the human race-means that you are allowing those people who have been in charge of policy to continue in their ways. It means that they can go in their ways unimpeded. They can do whatever they want because, essentially, you have withdrawn an enormous number of people who have potential power-brain power, political power-you've withdrawn them from the political arena. And you've left the field to the so-called "experts"-who are not experts at all-and whose continued dominance is actually a danger to the human race. It is ironic that the university, which provides itself on its intellectual superiority, should discourage faculty and students from using their knowledge and their analytical abilities, their moral judgment to participate in the social struggles outside the university. In other words, the university then becomes the servant of the dominant powers in society, who prefer that knowledge be used only to maintain the status quo, to train young people to take their obedient places in the existing society rather than challenging the people in power.