EmailDavid Shuker, an English-born academic, was educated at the University of Nottingham and is now a senior lecturer in behavioural ecology at the University of St Andrews
After 13 years as an English academic in Scotland, the prospect of an independent Scotland comes as a shock. There are so many questions. Not least, can an enlightened, advanced society really tear itself apart on nationalist lines after centuries together?
When I first came to Scotland, I was terrifically excited to join a world-famous department in Edinburgh, and am equally fortunate now to find myself in St Andrews among one of the largest groupings of animal behaviour researchers anywhere in Europe. It is not clear how independence would influence these institutions financially or intellectually. While academics have traditionally been very mobile, it is not insularity they look for, but openness and opportunity. What would a new Scotland offer, and could it retain or attract world-leading talent?
Perhaps closest to home is the question of funding for scientific research, and the university sector as a whole, in an independent Scotland. The real fear is whether we will continue to have access to UK research council funding and the major science charities such as the Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust. The Yes campaign believes we would still be able to share these funding sources in some new bureaucratic structure, discarding parts of the UK they don’t like, keeping others they do. I find it hard to see this as realistic though.
There is also the bigger question of what Scotland could and would fund. Would a smaller country support as broad and as creative an academic community? Intellectual activities are risky, and often the pay-offs for society appear in the future, or via circuitous routes across disciplines. The size of the UK science base provides the space for the creativity needed for ground-breaking discoveries. That breadth also allows intellectual dissent. Would a smaller Scottish funding agency be able to take the same risks?
The biggest question, however, is: what is independence for?
The independence on offer so far, the separation of “them” and “us”, has been almost entirely political. “Them” are (mostly) English Tories. “Us” are mostly social democrats. A robust social democracy able to stand up to and reform neoliberal capitalism is very close to my heart (although exploiting damaging fossil fuel reserves and lowering business taxes seems a strange way to go about realising it). But independence is not about being a social democrat or not. It is about being Scottish or not. If social democracy was the real goal, then no-one north of the border would run away from a government they didn’t like to go and form another one. They would fight for what they believe in.
I am not sure where this aspect of independence leaves me, or how I feel about it. Effectively I would become a foreigner in a new country, a strange feeling when not made out of choice. I think my main emotion would be one of sadness, not just for the UK, but for the broader notion of union. Where is the belief that together we are stronger, more socially just, more able to take care of the weak and dispossessed, more able to stand up to the haves on behalf of the have-nots?
Science is a global endeavour, breaking down borders, not building them. We can all aspire to political change, and argue to make that change a reality. But we should be wary of creating new borders, creating more people who are no longer “us”. This is not the way to social democracy. Risking Scottish science is one thing, sleepwalking towards nationalism is quite another.
Darren Reid is a Scottish-born academic who was educated at the University of Dundee and is now a lecturer in American history at Coventry University
If there is one word that describes my current predicament as a Scottish academic working at an English institution it is uncertainty.
Despite the debate about what it means for Scotland to be independent or part of a broader union, there have been few discussions on what it means to those who live the embodiment of union. What will it mean to be a Scot living in a country that might well become a foreign state? As someone born in one part of the UK but working in another, I am a direct beneficiary of the union. But the intellectual and long-term security provided by my new appointment could, in a matter of weeks, become a matter of deep uncertainty.
As I write this article I am travelling to Edinburgh to attend one of the most important conferences in my academic calendar, the annual meeting of the British group of early American historians. The conference brings together scholars from across the world (but mostly from the UK) to discuss our chosen field. In future, new fields will emerge that will require their own professional networks. But if Scotland votes for independence, then it may no longer be possible to easily bring together groups of academics from all over Britain.
Academics may well continue to build organisations and professional societies around an outdated national structure; but if they do, will it mean that the concept of the UK, including Scotland, would continue to exist on some cultural level after independence? And what of the practicalities, the crossing of a border that may or may not make any journey or ad hoc collaboration that bit more difficult and, consequently, offputting? And what of my return trips home (Scotland will always be home, after all)?
Divorce is a common metaphor used to characterise a vote for independence, but a more accurate analogy might well be the separation of conjoined twins. My PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), a body that will likely suffer in the budgetary crisis independence would provoke. And what of the AHRC’s analogue in an independent Scotland? Would they fund PhDs in England, even if the candidate in question identified their desired supervisor south of the border? Might the rest of the UK, in a fit of reactionary nationalism, limit the PhD funding to those young scholars who want to study in Scotland under the supervisor of their choice?
Of more importance, at least to me, however, is how a vote for independence might affect my own quiet sense of identity. When I took up my appointment at Coventry, not even two months ago, I was moving from one part of the UK to another, leaving my homeland, but not my home. In a matter of weeks that situation might well change and something key about my current sense of self might need to be reassessed. I often tell my students that historians are “strangers in a strange land”. Depending upon the result of the referendum, I may find that I come to embody that idea in a much more literal way than I would like.
Are you an English academic working in Scotland or vice versa? Share your thoughts on how independence would affect your role and sense of identity in the comments below.
Join the higher education network for more comment, analysis and job opportunities, direct to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter @gdnhighered.
;