Up Front

with the editor

PIM these days views academics with a more mellow ev< 1|: , p nce j dld ’ but whether this is because we now happer to be blessed with a decent bunch in our particular field o interest, or whether academics are changing for the better Fn not prepared to decide.

SOME people might suggest that perhaps PIM itself has mellowed, but 1 hope not. We don’t feel mellow.

There must, of course, still be nests of horrible longhairs in ivory towers of the kind we once shot at, but most of the academics I talk to on Pacific affairs these days are practical, often refreshing bods, with something to say, and a clear way of saying it.

On my desk at the moment I have a whopping volume on Islands shipping and trade by A. D. Couper, master-mariner turned academic; who is a nice bloke. What he has to say in this thesis (he did it for his PhD with the Australian National University) is of real value to the Pacific shipping world. There is nothing starry-eyed here, nor in the separate investigation he did for the Fiji Government in 1965.

Samoa

And there is nothing ivory-towerish in Professor J. W. Davidson’s analysis of Western Samoa’s develop ment to independence, just published as Samoa mo Samoa; which is a work that nobody interested in Samoa should really be without.

What he has to say is, as always, both practical and relevant, for Jim Davidson is one of those behind-the scenes men in the Pacific sphere, always involved with developments in one territory or another, chatting and advising.

Currently he has had a lot to do with the Nauruans; which reminds me that so has another academic whose approach to problems I find is to the point—Dr. Helen Hughes, whose fact-packed paper on Nauru’s economy helped set off the chain reaction on phosphate which has put the Nauruans where they are now.

You don’t have to know Professor

O. H. K. Spate for long before > admire his intellectual abilities a his wit—and, in my case, too, journalistic prowess. A few ye ago I asked this ex-military cen; for a review of the main points the Burns Report on Fiji. In the ti it took others to read the repc he read and digested this complica blueprint, and turned out 10,C words of constructive comment : me plus a 45-minute radio script ; the Fiji Broadcasting Commission,

Plenty of others

These folk—and I could name number of others, and probably v lose some friends because I haven’t have something in common. Tt have the ability to say what th mean. In my experience, 1 academics who know what they i at, usually are the ones able express themselves clearly.

I remember once, as a young : porter on a Sydney newspaper, cov ing a week-long scientific conferee at the University of Sydney, chairm of which was the British scientist !

Edward Appleton.

Sir Edward, with his Mor Woolley build, was a delight to reporters because of the way he coi explain complicated radio develc ments in plain terms. Also outstae ingly endowed in that way was CSIRO radio physicist at the cc ference named W. N. Christians (now Professor of Electrical E gineering at the University Sydney), who summed up a tw hour scientific paper for us in the terms: “The chap said the sun is n round—it’s more like a slight squashed orange!”

At the end of that conference thanked Sir Edward on behalf the Press for all the help he hi

yen us, and mentioned that for ery academic who could, like him, ve clear explanations to the re nters, there was another who ijected that as a scientist he ouldn’t possibly” explain the oblems of his field “to lay persons”.

Toffee-nosed

Sir Edward Appleton’s reply has /en me comfort on the occasions ice that I have run up against

[fee-nosed scientists and professional

ople. He said: “If any man here unable to make his point in terms at you can understand, you can sure he doesn’t undestand it very ;ll himself”.

Those academics who make me d, apart from the fellows who n’t explain themselves clearly, are 3 ones who insist on defending each ;p of their minor theories to the ath, apparently fearing that they ight lose face if their opinions turn t to be untenable in the light of her evidence. Since it is the ademics who most frequently tell that only the truth counts, it ther surprises me to find the imber of them who are sensitive their particular truths being cried. Another academic weakness to be found in the fellows work g in the Islands who see every iropean resident as a white

premicist, and are personally

! ronted at every loose comment at 5 bar.

But that’s just by the way. In my iendly mood, I do want to mention r. John Cumpston, historian th the Australian Department of dernal Affairs, and one-time Consul New Caledonia, who for years >w has been exercising his deep terest in Pacific history and itarctic exploration by digging out urces and truths for other people use, and not troubling to claim 2 credit. Perhaps John Cumpston an intellectual rather than an ademic, but whatever he is, some his shine rubs off on his friends d colleagues.

Stuart Inder