There’s something very 21st century about the Wikileaks/Julian Assange affair. And not in a good way. The Wikileaks saga dominated the airwaves for the last months of 2010: the revelation of a huge mass diplomatic communications between the US and the world, drip-fed to newspapers and searched incessantly for data to support each and every pet theory in the world. The story undoubtedly has enormous colour, and superficially is a story for our time. The data is released on the web, and the authorities strain to close the offending site down. Pressure is put on service providers to withdraw support. This only leads to extensive mirroring of the site, frustrating any attempt to close-off access to the data, while the service providers are the subject of distributed denial-of-service attacks by outraged groups of hacktivists. The site’s founder has on-again/off-again troubles with the law, being threatened with everything from espionage to treason in the US (despite not being in the US, and despite not being a US citizen, which would seem to make treason rather a long shot), but is arrested and bailed in the UK on foot of a warrant from Sweden for a seemlingly unrelated matter. It sounds like a soap opera, and I’m rather afraid that that’s all it really is. Let’s start by recognising the legitimate tension between a desire for transparent government and a desire for anonymity and even secrecy in government communications. On the one hand it’s clearly in the public interest to have the whistle blown on unsavoury or illegal State activities, and a blanket claim that national security trumps this interest is absurd. On the other hand, some of the Wikileaks data identifies individuals who may be endangered by having their names publicised. Anonymity is often essential for people to reveal information; similarly, it’s in the public interest to have diplomats be able and willing to express their opinions openly without fear of public censure or ridicule, since the alternative would be to distort the open exchange of ideas. This is the principle that underlies scientific and other meetings held under what in the UK are referred to as Chatham House rules: any comments may be used in any context, but with no individual or institutional attribution. The Wikileaks disclosures are still on-going, but what strikes me about what’s been seen so far is the almost complete absence of anything that would justify disclosure — or indeed secrecy. It’s simply a recitation of diplomatic chit-chat that sometimes supports information already in the public domain but certainly provides nothing of any additional significance. It’s surely not a revelation, for example, that Arab governments are concerned about the Iranian nuclear programme, or that UK diplomats suspected that Sinn Féin knew about the Northern Bank robbery by the IRA (to take two stories at random): we either knew or could surmise this already. Many have made allusions between Wikileaks and the release of the Pentagon papers in 1971, classified information leaked to the New York Times which fuelled the growing sentiment against the Vietnam war. But in that case there actually was information revealed — the extent of the military’s prior analysis and its subsequent dilution — that could be argued to be of importance. Wikileaks lacks this sense of solidity. To me, the whole affair feels like a piece of reality television that happens to have happened over the web, happens to have a frisson of illegality, and happens to have a link to the diplomatic and intelligence communities. The chatter that we’re seeing is just that: chatter. It’s surprising only to the extent that it’s unsurprising. There are no smoking guns, no support for conspiracy theories, no examples of significant ineptitude or corruption — nothing. It is to a real journalistic coup what “Big Brother” is a television documentary. Perhaps we can draw three conclusions from this, The first is the fascination that the 21st century has with real-world data, regardless of its information content. People watch “Big Brother” despite the fact that most of the time nothing happens, and when something does happen it’s probably been contrived by the participants or the producers. But even when nothing is happening it can be obscurely compelling. Wikileaks is similar: no real content, but a compulsion to keep looking just in case. And of course if (for the sake of argument) some interesting revelation does surface, how will we know whether it’s real or contrived? How will we tell information from dis-information? The second conclusion is that data is no substitute for interpretation in context. The Pentagon Papers’ significance came from the fact that the journalists involved could see there was a story there, and link it to the rest of the news happening alongside, to the people and organisations involved. This journalistic addition is conspicuous by its absence in relation to Wikileaks. This of course goes against Tim Berners Lee’s recently-asserted position that the future or journalism is basically data analysis. I have the greatest respect for Tim, but on this point I think he’s badly mistaken. The problem is that real journalism isn’t exclusively, or even primarily, about the data: it’s about the people, their motivations and behaviours, which often aren’t represented in the raw data with which web science concerns itself. Thirdly, even though the Wikileaks affair is really just an old-fashioned leak to the press, we can see that the web has changed things somewhat. The US authorities moved quickly to attack the site initially hosting the data, but only succeeded in triggering its replication to a enough geographically-distributed sites to defy further suppression. Once data is out there and judged to be significant, it’ll stay out there through the independent actions of concerned individuals. This makes further analysis and contextualisation possible, but doesn’t guarantee that it’ll happen — and that’s where the real value lies.
A couple of weeks ago I attended my professorial inauguration.
In most universities (in the UK and Ireland, anyway), a professorship is just a job that doesn’t involve any particular ceremonial: it doesn’t come with a degree, and so doesn’t require a graduation. In St Andrews, of course, things are rather more formal. All new professors have to attend a St Andrew’s Day graduation in order to swear an oath to the university. I should have been inaugurated last year but couldn’t make it because of a prior engagement, so this year I attended along with my colleague Aaron Quigley and ten other new profs.
(Photo courtesy of Brad Herbert.)
The day took place in sub-zero temperatures with swirling snow at times, despite St Andrews overall having the mildest climate in the UK: I had to stay up overnight just to make sure I’d make it in, since commuting in from Edinburgh as usual would have been a bit risky.
We started in chapel for a thanksgiving for graduation, where I discovered that the “school song” (or at least the hymn to St Andrew) is sung to the tune of Deutschland uber alles, for reasons that remain unclear. Immediately afterwards was the graduation ceremony, held next door in the university’s Younger Hall.
Like most “ancient” universities, St Andrews’ graduations are full of symbolism. Most of the important parts of the ceremony are conducted in Latin,although not to the extent of excluding all English as happens in Cambridge and in Trinity College Dublin. The academic procession happens juniores priores, with junior staff preceding senior — and new professors coming first of all, since they’re regarded as nobodies until inaugurated. We sat at the front of the hall while the other academics processed into the stage, and waited while the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees were conferred — which involves being hit on the head with the birretum, a piece of cloth allegedly taken from John Knox’ britches.
Academics always play spot-the-gown at these sorts of events. There are basically two classes of gowns. University officers performing their function wear gowns related to their office, so the Principal, while officiating, wears a black-and-white Principal’s gown rather than the one for her Harvard doctorate. Regular academics wear the gown related to their highest degree, with the colours, hoods and patterns being determined by the awarding university. A lot of doctoral degrees involve red and gold; St Andrews doctorates are sky blue. (Mine is a fawn/grey gown and hat with a red hood, being a DPhil from the University of York. It’s quite understated in comparison to a lot of others, which suits me fine.) St Andrews is unusual in also having an undergraduate gown, different to the gowns for graduates, which is bright red and made of fleece rather than cotton. Useful for keeping warm on the pier walk. A surprising number of undergraduates wear their gowns around town, which just goes to show the bond that exists between the university and its students, and isn’t something one encounters in many other universities.
The inauguration of new professors involved us all coming onto the stage and being asked to swear the oath to uphold the rules and traditions of the university (in Latin, of course — the important word was polliceor, “I so promise”). At this point I discovered the term for computer science in Latin: computandi ope machinali promovendae. After that we were each presented with a book as a token of our new office (which they took back immediately after we left the stage, although they did buy me a nice copy of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s “History and the Enlightenment” later, with a commemorative bookplate in it). The Principal then addressed us, in Latin again: Quod felix fortunatumque sit, spartam nacti estis: hanc exornate (“I wish you all happiness and good fortune. You have been allotted Sparta: do it credit.”). And it was done. We processed out of the hall (in reverse order, seniores priores, this time) and back to the main quad of St Salvator’s college for photos in the snow and lunch. There was a garden party in the afternoon (thankfully in a heated marquee), and a formal graduation dinner in the evening.
Several years ago, after I got married, someone asked me whether it had made a difference to how I felt. I replied that I’d expected the answer to be “no”, in that the important thing was the deciding to stay together and not the piece of paper and the public promise — but that in fact it did make a huge difference. The public act had a significance in and of itself (for me, at any rate), and did make the whole thing feel more real and more certain. Slightly surprisingly, inauguration feels the same way. In practice it makes no difference to my holding or doing the job, but the public act gives a significance to it that I wasn’t expecting (again). The common theme between the two situations may be that the commitment is two-way, between myself and my university colleagues and students in this case. A number came up to me afterwards to welcome me — despite my having been here for over a year — which makes one feel rather wanted.
There’s a lot to be said for ceremonial like this. It’s important for the students, of course, to mark their achievement: but it’s perhaps equally important for the academic staff, for holding an institution together, especially at times like these when there’s something of a feeling of being under siege in a world that doesn’t necessarily understand or appreciate what universities are for or what we’re trying to accomplish. The coming-together to mark key events, and to affirm that a university is a community with shared goals, is something that can only be good for morale, and is something we should do more of.