The managed destruction of Australia’s oldest faculty of Arts

Overland, 17 November 2021, Read the original here. Four months ago, Mark Scott succeeded Michael Spence as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney. Scott’s predecessor was, in many ways, the Samuel Marsden of higher education—the ‘flogging parson’ who whipped the university into greater conformity with the prevailing sociopolitical order. Spence spent a decade at Sydney…

Six myths about unions, Palestine solidarity and the Israel boycott

Overland, 25 May 2021. Read the original here. On May 18, with Israeli missiles still raining over Gaza, Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank did something that the left in most parts of the world can only dream of: stage a widely-observed General Strike. Along with other organisations, Palestinian trade unions called on unionists…

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…

After Christchurch universities have a responsibility: abandon Ramsay

Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2019. Read the original here. There has been much discussion since Friday of politicians’ and parts of the media’s responsibility for promoting Islamophobia. But what of the role of institutions like universities? Since June last year, a heated debate has been underway on whether universities should collaborate with the Ramsay…

The Attack on Palestinian Universities

Jacobin, 30 December 2018. Read the original here. Israel’s efforts to cripple higher education in occupied Palestine continued relentlessly in 2018, with Israeli universities acting as key tools of the occupation. The systematic punishment inflicted on Palestinian academics and students didn’t attract anything like the global attention of Gazans’ March of Return, but it deserves…

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…

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…