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…

Israel’s Dan David Prize and vaccine apartheid

Samah Sabawi and Nick Riemer, Al Jazeera English, 2 March 2021. Read the original here. When we circulated an open letter calling on Australian Professor Alison Bashford to reconsider accepting Israel’s Dan David Prize, we expected there would be overwhelming support for our call from academics around the world. We were right. More than 300…

Follow The Leaders? The Role Of Universities In A Collapsing Climate

New Matilda, 18 February 2020. Original here. In a few days, amid the most serious environmental crisis since European invasion, students in Australia will begin the new university year. Only a small number of them will have been evacuated from holiday beaches during the worst of the summer bushfire inferno; even fewer will have lost…

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…

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…

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…

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…