By Michael Shapland and Jamie Boucher
Simon Hix, Pro-Director for Research, professor, and lecturer at LSE, is a significant figure both within LSE’s leadership and the university culture itself. Coming from a state school background to study at the undergraduate level at LSE during the 1990s, Professor Hix has seen the profound change LSE has undergone over more than two decades.
In this interview, Brexit the impending threat (at the time of 12 March) of COVID-19, Hix’s role as Pro-Director for Research at LSE, and LSE’s ties to China were discussed. At each part of the interview, Hix’s intricate roles in LSE and political opinion emerged ever clearer, leading both Boucher and Shapland closer to the question preying on all the minds of politically-inclined LSE students: who is the real Simon Hix?
When asked about (the then impending threat of) COVID-19, Hix responded that it actually “could result in a return to grown-up government. It could be a return to evidence-based policy. Suddenly we’ve got experts at the centre of politics, where before they’ve been taking a hit.” He suspected an emergence of a greater populist rhetoric, noting that “part of the attraction of populism is a deep suspicion of the elite.”
“I think the US will even come out of this much worse than Europe or Asia. If you look at Singapore, they stepped in early and they’ve got this under control. Trump, as far as I can see, has not. For Brexit, however, it’s too early to say.”
Hix, throughout the year, has been vocal on Twitter about the Beaver’s reporting, especially surrounding LSE’s supposed stance on Brexit. “LSE is an incredibly pluralist place, and we’re far more pluralist than most other British universities,” he says. “I think the average view amongst my colleagues at LSE is that the public have voted for Brexit and that Brexit should be delivered. Yet we also believe that the Government is making a complete hash of how it’s delivering it, and if we’re going to go for Brexit, we probably should do it in a way that tries to minimise damage to the economy.”
Alongside teaching GV101 (Introduction to Political Science), Hix also works as the Pro-Director of Research, a role elusive to many: “My work covers PhD students and postdocs and everything else like that. It also involves finding resources to support faculty research and so working with the leadership on research-led teaching. All of [the senior management team] do that job half of the time, the rest of the time it’s just running the university, which we do collectively.” “Half of what LSE does is teaching and half of what LSE does is research… If you’re a faculty here, you’re core faculty, [and] your contract is essentially 50% research, 50% teaching, and the expectation is that you’ve got to deliver on the research, you’ve got to get the grants, deliver the research papers, write the books to disseminate your research, the research has got to have an impact, public engagement around that research.”
As Pro-Director for Research, Hix also has a significant role in LSE’s research agenda: “I chair the school’s research committee, and the research committee oversees major budgets. All the research centres at LSE go through review, and so they are evaluated through the research committee. We have millions and millions of pounds of research grants. So they have deliverables, we have to make sure we’re delivering all of those deliverables, so the research side of the school has to oversee that.”
In terms of the main sources of funding available for research, he notes that “the main source of funding for the research is the government. We have what’s called QR funding, which is quality-related funding that comes as a result of the REFs, and we get a block grant every year related to our REF performance.” Alongside the British Government, he notes other sources of funding to be the EU, private funders, and philanthropic organisations such as the Marshall Institute.
Controversial rumours circulated this year about LSE’s ties to China, given the debate around Huawei. Hix notes that Huawei “weren’t actually funding research, it was a private consultancy contract,” despite many rumours saying it was a donation or gift. “Any gift to the school has to go through our EDGP [Ethical Donations and Grants Panel]…which is a panel that academics sit on. None of the leadership is on it… we never make the decision, so they have criteria that they work on, and then they apply these criteria.”
They’re looking at if this is a dodgy company or a dodgy person, but they also look at how money is made, so they care about things such as ‘is this extraction’- Hix suggests that the main things the EDGP look out for are whether they have large ties to pollution, or if they have made money from, or have significant ties to counties with poor records of human rights.” A lot of this stuff was put in place after Libya,” he says, referencing a scandal LSE was involved in in 2010, whereby the university accepted a significant amount of money from the Gaddafi government.
“As a result of Libya, we implemented [some recommendations], and one of the recommendations was to remove all the approval of these types of contracts and grants from senior management; it’s done by a specialist panel that’s not us, so you know they’ve got no vested interest. None of them have any direct contact with any of the staff. You may occasionally see the fact that they approved …small consultancy contract with Huawei they were doing some data analysis from some of the Huawei data processes, but what you don’t see is the stuff that doesn’t get approved.”
Following on from questions about LSE’s relation to China, Hix is quick to state that “we have not taken money from alumni or from donors who are very close to the Chinese government. We look very carefully at the fact that they have made their money privately….The British government is actually doing business with Huawei, so do you hold the British Government to different standards than you hold British universities?”
How accurate Hix’ predictions will prove to be will only be clear in time, but enterprising LSE students will be sure to find him on stage for GV101 for years to come.
