Ramsay’s groupthink

Arena, 26 July 2019. Read the original here. Does anyone want to hear another word about the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation? Since the ANU rejected Ramsay last year, the centre may, as its ‘chief executive’ Simon Haines acknowledges, have been slower than it anticipated in starting collaborations with Australian universities. But the prospect of…

On free speech on campus, and why the French code will be no help

Overland, 1 July 2019. Read the original here. Following conservative hysteria after a short-lived student protest when Bettina Arndt’s ‘fake rape crisis tour’ came to Sydney University last year, many universities have now agreed to implement the code of practice developed by the former Chief Justice, Robert French, in his review of freedom of speech…

The Ramsay Centre and the reality of ideology

Overland, 28 March 2019. Read the original here. Along with all its other horrors, 15 March was a terrible reminder of the reality of ideology. With the ideas behind the massacre of fifty Christchurch Muslims a click away in the gunman’s manifesto, there was, for once, no shortage of commentators ready to pinpoint how racist…

Ramsay course offers stark choice to Australian universities

Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 2018. Read the original here. Pared down to its essentials, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation course confronts Australian vice-chancellors with a stark choice: are they willing to let their institutions’ authority to be used to bolster xenophobia and national chauvinism in our society? The entire educational mission of the…

Weaponising Learning

Sydney Review of Books, 12 June, 2018. Read the original here. Suddenly, the right has discovered an enthusiasm for funding universities. Not with public money, of course: the government’s moratorium on Commonwealth grant funding – retribution for the Senate’s ongoing refusal to legislate fee rises and funding cuts – remains truculently in place. Instead, government…

Not just a culture war: the Ramsay Centre and Sydney University

With David Brophy. Overland, 19 September 2018. Read the original here. The best that can be said about the Ramsay Centre’s proposal to sponsor an elite course in Western civilisation is that it has revived a flagging discussion about the intellectual and political considerations that shape the humanities curricula of Australian universities. But instead of…

Will our v-c continue resisting decades of social progress by refusing to give casual staff the sick leave they deserve?

Times Higher Education, 23 November, 2017. A contribution to the collective article 'Tossing and turning: what keeps university staff awake'? Read the original here. What keeps me awake at night is the thing that stops me getting to bed in the first place – work. Everyone knows that there just aren’t enough hours in the…

Roz Ward, Barry Spurr And What Universities Are For

New Matilda, 9 June 2016. Read the original here. When for any reason… the administrator of [a university] attempts to dislodge a professor because of his political or religious sentiments, at that moment the institution has ceased to be a university. So affirmed the University of Chicago’s first president in 1892. Going on recent experience,…

BDS creates the conditions for a real dialogue

The Australian, 26 July 2017. Originally published under the headline 'BDS encourages Israel to enter into a two-state dialogue', which misrepresented my position. Read the original here. A major national conference on the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign for Palestine will be held at the University of Sydney this week. Predictably, the conference has been…

Academics, the humanities and the enclosure of knowledge: the worm in the fruit

Australian Universities' Review 58:2 (2016) 33-41. Read the original here. Download a pdf here. My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. – 1Kings 14 The Biblical Rehoboam’s promise to his subjects distils the same shocking…