Cartoons of the Week

Andrew Dyson

Cathy Wilcox

John Shakespeare

Alan Moir

Member for Lismore and Tweed City Council remain strongly opposed to "NSW Government's ill-advised proposal to close four Murwillumbah public schools and replace them with a mega campus"

It seems that less than ten months out from a state election the NSW Perrottet Government is still not listening to local communities in the Northern Rivers region.....

NSW Labor Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin, media release, 9 June 2022:

Janelle Saffin MP has reaffirmed her 'rock solid' opposition to the NSW Government's ill-advised proposal to close four Murwillumbah public schools and replace them with a mega campus. Tweed Shire Council is also opposed.

STATE Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin remains ‘rock solid’ in her support to maintain Murwilumbah’s four public schools.

The NSW Government’s plans to close these schools and replace them with a mega school campus is nothing but a cost-cutting exercise, Ms Saffin says.

“They (the Government) have not demonstrated any educational benefit to students and to boot will sack 20 teachers and four support staff.”

Ms Saffin further reaffirmed NSW Labor’s commitment to keep Murwillumbah East Public School, Wollumbin High School, Murwillumbah Public School and Murwillumbah High School open for the community into the future.

Ms Saffin said Tweed Shire Council’s damning submission and formal objection to the Murwillumbah Education Campus development application, combined with the school communities’ concerns, should be enough for NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell to scrap the Government’s ill-advised plan and heavily invest in existing schools instead.

“My position has not changed; if anything, my opposition to this proposal — which is half-baked at best, silly at worst, does not contain a performing arts centre as touted from the original announcement all the way along, is vague on assessing flood impacts and is generally lacking in detail — has solidified,” Ms Saffin said.

“Some issues identified by Council include inadequate playing fields; indoor halls too small to be used as shared community spaces; a lack of shading for students; a 90-space shortfall in car parking spaces (which would put serious pressure on surrounding streets); and an incomplete bushfire management plan.

“It all adds up to a half-baked plan which sells the local community short, prompting Tweed Mayor Cr Chris Cherry to say the State Government should be a ‘model applicant, but is flouting all of our requirements and at this stage is being anything but’.”

Ms Saffin noted NSW Teachers Federation Deputy President Henry Rajendra’s call for the NSW Government to immediately halt its merger plan, and engage with local parents and teachers to permanently protect the staffing entitlement for existing schools.

In Education Quarterly Online, Mr Rajendra said: “The issues raised by Council are in addition to the staffing cuts that will result when the schools are amalgamated. Primary school provision will, at a minimum, lose a classroom teacher, up to two assistant principal positions, a principal position and a reduction in teacher-librarian staffing.

“The situation is far worse for high school staffing. It is predicted that at least 16 positions – 20 per cent of the teaching staffing entitlement – will be cut, including classroom, head teacher, teacher-librarian, careers adviser and principal positions,” Mr Rajendra said.

Cartoons of the Week

 

Cathy Wilcox

David Pope

David Rowe

Messaging in new Morrison Government-funded high school consent videos seem confused and often focussed on perpetrator’s feelings and continuing in an unhealthy relationship.

Snapshot from "Stop Ask Listen" 3 minute video

Tacos, milkshakes, popcorn, a brave male & cowardly sharks, as well as a very aggressive young woman, are all found in Morrison Government's initial publicly released four short videos for high school students 15 to 18 years of age on the subject of ‘respect in relationships’.

Highschool students are being told that to be human means wanting "food, money, power and love" (in that order).

The webpage and training videos appear to have been created by Interactive Animation Pty Ltd of Queensland, trading as Liquid Interactive, at a cost to the taxpayer of est. $3.79 million.

The "Moving the Line" video mentioned in the article below, along with another video "Yes No I Don't Know", were removed from the federal government website https://www.thegoodsociety.gov.au/playlists/the-field-model sometime before midday on 20 April 2021.

 Leaving only two example videos visible on the website, along with what appears to be an extensive hidden video playlist for public school teachers. What distorted messages do those hidden videos send to Australia's children?

Crikey, 19 April 2021:

A bizarre educational video for students in Years 10-12 suggests maintaining relationships even after disrespectful behaviours are called out.

A new government video designed to teach consent to Year 10-12 students is as damaging as it is bizarre. With a focus on the perpetrator’s feelings and “maintaining” an unhealthy relationship, the video echoes the arguments of men’s rights activists and fundamentalist Christians.

The Good Society is a new resource for “teaching respectful relationships in schools” as part of the Australian government’s Respect Matters program, featuring content for primary, middle and senior school-aged kids.

One video, titled “Moving the Line”, designed to teach Year 10-12 students about consent, stands out as being particularly strange. Overtly sexual without ever using sexual references, the video features a young teen named Veronica apologising for smearing milkshake cream all over her boyfriend Bailey’s face.

The decision to make a female the perpetrator of sexual violence is also a strange one: men’s rights activists often argue sexual violence is gender-neutral though 97% of sexual violence is perpetrated by men.

Instead of discussing consent in terms of bodily autonomy — which I’m sure teens on the cusp of paying taxes and reaching adulthood would be able to grasp — the video uses drinking milkshakes, eating pizza and “touching your butt” as examples of encounters that require consent.

More worrying still, the video has a perverse focus on maintaining relationships even when Bailey finds it disrespectful.

(The Morrison government has, against all expert advice, previously advocated victims of domestic violence sit down and talk out their issues in the presence of a couples counsellor with no training in family violence. $10 million was set aside for couples counselling. Of the groups invited to participate, a large proportion are faith-based.)

This ultimately downplays the victim’s experience and can put power back in the hands of the abuser, creating an illusion of shared responsibility for the violence......

The Guardian, 19 April 2021: 

Rape prevention and sexual education experts have criticised the federal government’s new consent education campaign, accusing it of creating “bizarre” videos and spreading misinformation about sex and consent. 

The Good Society website, launched as part of the Department of Education’s Respect Matters program, contains more than 350 videos, digital stories, podcasts and teaching materials to help teach sex and consent to school-age children.... 

The director of End Rape on Campus, Sharna Bremner, warned that the videos fail to meet the national standards for the prevention of sexual assault through education. She added that the videos are “bizarre” and “really trivialise an incredibly serious issue”. 

“This resource doesn’t give young people enough credit,” she told Guardian Australia. “It undermines their intelligence. It underestimates what they already know, and I wonder if anyone involved in it has ever met a 17-year-old boy. 

“It assumes that the problem is that people don’t know what consent is, not that they ignore it. Kids aged 15 to 18 are the most likely to be victims of sexual violence, and also perpetrators of sexual violence. So we need to be giving them correct information.” 

Dr Jacqui Hendriks, a sexual health academic at Curtin University, said the videos skirted around the issue of sex and consent. 

“Trying to talk about sex without actually talking about sex isn’t helpful,” she said. “We need to be specifically talking about consent in an intimate and sexual relationship.” 

The videos are built around a concept called “the field model”. Students are shown an image resembling a football field to explain how shared decisions are made. 

Bremner said neither she, nor other rape prevention experts she has spoken to, had heard of the field model. 

“The only thing I can find on it is that it is a communication theory created by a public relations expert to do with communication in the workplace,” she said. “This is not a theory based in anything to do with sex, consent or relationships.”.....

Indigenous academic women are in high demand but are often positioned as ‘black performer’ by their fellow academics and colleagues

@IndigenousX, 12 August 2020:

In recent decades it has become increasingly common for higher education institutions in so-called Australia to engage in institutional branding and marketing which position their organisations as ‘inclusive’, ‘equitable’ and committed to ‘indigenising’ their curriculums and research practice. Goals of increased Indigenous engagement, consultation, staffing, course content, and student enrolment and completion rates are often noted within formal institutional documents such as Reconciliation Action Plans (RAP). They may also be noted in speeches performed by executive members of the university, commitments made within Ethics applications as part of research project and grant applications; and communicated via the university’s online and community presence through social media and marketing campaigns. However, this study reveals that how and by whom such institutional goals and commitments are actually enacted within the academy remains an ongoing point of tension, and one which produces a significant burden on a minuscule workforce of Indigenous academics.

It is undeniable that Indigenous academics are in high demand, but with less than 430 Indigenous academics currently employed within Australian higher education institutions, and 69% of that cohort identified as female, what does it look like to experience this demand as an Indigenous academic woman? In 2019 I travelled this continent and spoke with Indigenous women who are presently employed within academic roles in Australian higher education institutions. Due to their belonging to a small, highly identifiable workforce, in order to ensure their anonymity, I cannot share the specific institutions they work in or identifying features such as which Nation group they belong to.

A novel finding of this study, and the focus of this article, is that despite being highly qualified within the academic system, and sovereign beings of these unceded lands, Indigenous academic women are often positioned as ‘black performer’ by their fellow academics and colleagues…..

Read full article here.

BACKGROUND

Academic Paper

‘Don’t make me play house -n***er’: Indigenous academic women treated as ‘black performer’ within higher education

Amy Thunig  Tiffany Jones

Received: 20 February 2020 / Accepted: 24 July 2020 © The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. 2020

Abstract

In an era where higher education institutions appear increasingly committed to what Sara Ahmed calls ‘speech acts’ whereby declared goodwill, through stated commitments to diversity, equity, and increasing Indigenous student enrolment and completion have been made; it is undeniable that Indigenous academics are in high demand. With fewer than 430 Indigenous academics currently employed here on the continent now commonly referred to as ‘Australia’, and 69% of that cohort identifying as female, what does it look like to experience this demand as an Indigenous academic woman? Drawing on data collected from a Nation-wide study in 2019 of 17 one-on-one, face-to-face interviews with Indigenous academic women, using Indigenous research methodologies and poetic transcription, this paper explores the experiences and relational aspects of Indigenous academic women’s roles in Australian higher education.

Response to the 12th Annual Closing The Gap Report: "We die silently under these statistics"

The Monthly, 12 February 2020:

Northern Territory Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy gave a devastating interview this morning, ahead of today’s annual Closing the Gap address, drawing a direct connection between the ongoing failure to meet targets to reduce Indigenous disadvantage and the policies of the Coalition government. 

Starting with the Abbott government’s decision to cut the Aboriginal affairs budget by half a billion dollars, McCarthy then cited the disastrous Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme (the Community Development Program), the cashless welfare card that “entrenches First Nations people in poverty in this country”, and the out-of-hand rejection by the Turnbull and Morrison governments of the First Nations voice to parliament requested in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. “All of these things are connected to Closing the Gap and improving the lives for First Nations people,” said McCarthy, who went on to slam as an “absolute disgrace” the abandonment of any referendum on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians after a backlash [$] in the Coalition party room yesterday. 

The key findings of the 12th annual Closing the Gap report, tabled in parliament today, received blanket coverage this morning: only two out of seven targets have been met, on early education and Year 12 attainment, while the other five targets on child mortality, school attendance, literacy and numeracy, employment and life expectancy are all off track. The government has responded by seeking to adopt new targets expected in April, drawn up after a year’s consultation by the Coalition of Peaks representative body chaired by Pat Turner, from the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, under a new national agreement to be signed by COAG. Both PM Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese gave set-piece addresses, and the debate continued into Question Time, with no real progress. Fine words every Closing the Gap day achieve nothing – as Crikey’s Bernard Keane writes [$], the sentiments are often the same, from PM to PM, from year to year. 

In a debate this afternoon, shadow Indigenous Australians minister Linda Burney gave a moving speech citing former social justice commissioner Mick Dodson, who said Australians suffered from an “industrial deafness” to the statistics of Indigenous disadvantage, accepting them as almost inevitable. “We die silently under these statistics,” Burney said, flagging that Labor looked forward to supporting new and ambitious Closing the Gap targets. Failure was not inevitable, she said, adding that “once again we offer bipartisanship from this side of the house”. In reply, Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt also stressed the need for bipartisanship, saying: “All of us have failed in the Closing the Gap journey over the last 10 years. The intent has been good … but the model has been broken.” Then he veered into unconvincing management speak: a different paradigm, turning the dial, joint and shared decision making, better ownership at local level, and the engagement of mainstream Australia. 

While nobody is doubting that Wyatt is genuine about his portfolio, it will amount to little if his government colleagues are not behind him. It will be a tragedy if it turns out the first Indigenous minister for Indigenous Australians was appointed for cynical political purposes, and was nobbled from the start....

Read the full article here.

Closing The Gap Report 2020, exerpt:

Progress against the Closing the Gap targets has been mixed over the past decade. 

As four targets expire, we can see improvements in key areas, but also areas of concern that require more progress. 

• The target to halve the gap in child mortality rates by 2018 has seen progress in maternal and child health, although improvements in mortality rates have not been strong enough to meet the target. 

• The target to halve the gap for Indigenous children in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade (by 2018) has driven improvements in these foundational skills, but more progress is required. 

• There has not been improvement in school attendance rates to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous school attendance within five years (by 2018). 

• The national Indigenous employment rate has remained stable against the target to halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade (by 2018). 

Two of the continuing targets are on track. 

• The target to have 95 per cent of Indigenous four year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025. 

• The target to halve the gap for Indigenous Australians aged 20–24 in Year 12 attainment or equivalent by 2020. 

However, the target to close the gap in life expectancy by 2031 is not on track. 

Jurisdictions agreed to measure progress towards the targets using a trajectory, or pathway, to the target end point. The trajectories indicate the level of change required to meet the target and illustrate whether the current trends are on track.

BACKGROUND

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics; The final estimated resident Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of Australia as at 30 June 2016 was 798,400 people, or 3.3% of the total Australian population.

It has been estimated that the pre-1788 resident Aboriginal population could have been as high as over one million people, or 100% of the total Australian population.

Science never was the exclusive property of Western civilisations

News Corps goes to battle in the seemingly neverending culture wars, 2  November 2018

The Guardian, 2 November 2018:

I have recently been involved in working on a project that aims to provide teachers with some insights and elaborations on how to teach the mandated science outcomes in the Australian National Curriculum by using historic and contemporary examples from Indigenous people and communities.

The work combined various Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists, science educators, curriculum experts, teachers, academics and editors. It looked at examples of traditional land management practices, understandings of chemical reactions and processes, astronomy, medicines and any number of fascinating topics of how Indigenous peoples have worked scientifically for millennia in Australia, and still do. It was a great project to be a part of.

I was quietly hoping this important project would fly under the radar of the ongoing culture wars that exist within Australia, but it seems that was wishful thinking.

It began with a piece on the Daily Telegraph website titled “Fire starting and spear throwing make national science curriculum”. Not quite unfortunately, it would be great if they were though.

I can see how it makes for a better headline though. “Fire starting and spear thrower are two examples of 95 different optional elaborations that teachers can use to help them meet the mandatory outcomes of the National Science Curriculum if they want to” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

"I can’t fathom the hubris required to think that after 60,000 years or so of being in Australia, Indigenous people wouldn’t have picked up a thing or two that the rest of the world could learn from."

If you want to understand the science of how a lever works, about stored energy and kinetic energy, or about mass, acceleration, inertia, and lots of other cool stuff that is mandatory in the curriculum, then a spear thrower is a great way to teach it.

And did you know that before the match was invented in 1826, most people around the world had to light fires the old fashion way? And by “old fashioned way”, I either mean by a fire saw, fire drill, fire plough, or by using flint. All of these examples can be found traditionally in Australia and you can use these methods to teach about combustion, friction, heat energy, kinetic energy, density, and any other number of cool sciencey things.

The article goes on with the standard emotive phrases we see in the culture wars: “racial politics”, “dumbing down”, “slammed by critics” – literally all just in the first sentence.

The front page of the Daily Telegraph carried the story on its front page on Friday with the headline “School Kooriculum: outrage over Indigenous school scheme”. Sure, “Kooriculum” is awesome and I am definitely stealing that in future, but there is no “scheme” and very little outrage.

There is Kevin Donnelly decrying this work as “political correctness” and claiming it is “dumbing down the school curriculum” even though, again, these resources are entirely optional, and have been created in response to requests from teachers.

Donnelly argues that “western scientific thought, based as it is on rationality, reason and empiricism, is not culturally determined”. He quotes Professor Igor Bray as saying that “science knows nothing about the nationality or ethnicity of its participants, and this is its great unifying strength”.

He talks about how Western science is “preeminent” in its value to the world, and can be traced back “through the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment to the early Roman and Greek scientists, mathematicians and philosophers”. So it seems that while science knows nothing of nationality or ethnicity, Kevin Donnelly does know that it traces back to the Greeks and Romans, and clearly thinks that what he calls “western science” is superior to all others.

Thousands of years before western science was even dreamed of, Indigenous Australians were developing a detailed and intricate understanding of, and relationship with, the world around them.

It allowed people to intimately understand the relationships of the moon and the tides, measure the equinoxes and solstices, develop a deep wealth of knowledge of plants, animals, seasons, the stars and countless other amazing feats of intellect and ingenuity that have long been denied in the ongoing narrative western civilisation has created about Indigenous peoples.

The ways in which this knowledge was interwoven with a holistic view of the world and the place of humans within it, the ways in which it was encoded and handed down through the ages is fascinating as well. Instead, Indigenous people have long been framed as primitive, backwards, deviant, having nothing of value to offer apart from free land and free labour, in constant need of saving, and deserving of countless punitive measures.

Western science can indeed trace much of its origins back to Greek and Roman societies and in exploring its rich history over the centuries, it’s not a bad idea to look at all the unscientific beliefs that were once science fact.

Read the full article by Luke Pearson here.

Let's talk about education funding under a hard-right Morrison Coalition Government

If one attempts to assess access and equity in education across Australian society there is a measurement tool available which gives some indication.

The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) is a scale that represents levels of educational advantage based on the relationship between the educational advantage a student has, as measured by the parents’ occupation and level of education completed, and their educational achievement.

This measurement as applied to a school is broken down into five factors:

1. Parents’ Occupation

2. Parents’ Education

3. Geographical Location

4. Percentage of Aboriginal students

5. Percentage of disadvantaged LBOTE students.

Therefore if the majority of a school's population come from families where one or both parents had a tertiary-level education and the employed parent/s has a profession, or is self-employed or in a management position and these families live in suburbs where the median household income is above the average for the region and, there are fewer indigenous and/or disadvantaged students in the school population – then the community socio-educational advantage score will be higher for that school.

According to http://www.schoolcatchment.com.au  the Top 20 Australian Primary Schools for 2016 were:

PRIMARY SCHOOLS  (combined ICSEA score as a percentage of all Number One schools)

Sydney Grammar School – 100%

Presbyterian Ladies' College – 99.69%

St Aloysius' College – 97.57%

Abbotsleigh – 95.26%

Yarwun State School* – 95.20%

St Andrews Christian College – 94.39%

Northcross Christian School – 94.20%

Huntingtower School – 94.14%

Haileybury College – 93.98%

Meriden School – 93.86%

Matthew Pearce Public School* – 93.81%

John Colet School – 93.79%

Arkana College – 93.61%

Burwood East Primary School* – 93.33%

Artarmon Public School* – 93.28%

Camberwell Girls Grammar School – 93.09%

Woollahra Public School* – 92.96%

Fintona Girls' School – 92.92%

Hornsby North Public School* – 92.68%

Serpell Primary School* – 92.68%.

Only 7 government schools across the country are in the Top 20 Primary Schools.

While 47 of the Top 100 Primary Schools are government schools.

Conversely the Top 20 Australian Secondary Schools for 2016 are dominated by government selective schools.

However, 73 of the Top 100 Secondary Schools are non-government schools.

When it comes to the total Australian primary & secondary school student population, Independent schools enrol 5% of children from below the ICSEA benchmark average, Catholic schools enrol 11% of children below the benchmark average and Government schools which enrol est. 65% of all children also enrol 52% of children below the benchmark average.

Therefore the non-government sector is weighted overwhelmingly to the upper end of the ICSEA scale and is required to do much less of the educational heavy lifting.

Yet under a Morrison Coalition Government $4.5 billion in additional funding is to be given to private schools – most of which do not appear to require this additional funding to produce high education outcomes.

Apparently Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison and his hard-right cronies consider only families from the likes of Vaucluse, Point Piper, Toorak, Bulimba, Cottesloe, Mosman Park, Forrest, Red Hill, Rose Park and Sandy Bay are the type of people who "have a go" and therefore deserve to get "a fair go".

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull supports an attempt by former prime ministers Howard and Abbott to impose an elitist world view

Here is public comment on and by the main characters in what looks remarkably like an ill-considered and rather crude attempt at a beer hall putsch against academic freedom.

With one of the eight Ramsey Centre directors, Tony Abbott, giving the game away when he revealed that half of the proposed four-person Partnership Management Committee had an expectation that this committee would directly set the Bachelor of Western Civilsation curriculum and hire academic staff.

An expectation which appears confirmed by a statemet attributed to the Ramsey Centre CEO that; “If we feel like it’s not going to go to appreciation of Western Civilization, then we can withdraw the funding.”  

Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation vision statement:

Paul Ramsay was a leading Australian businessman who was passionate about education and wished to educate future generations in the traditions and practices of western civilisation: its history, philosophy, literature, science, theology, music, art and architecture.

He also wanted to create over time a cadre of leaders – Australians whose awareness and appreciation of their country’s Western heritage and values, of the challenges that have confronted leaders and people, with that broad heritage in the past, would help guide their decision making in the future.

The Ramsay Centre Scholarships will provide students from across Australia the opportunity to study western civilisation in this spirit at one of our partner universities. Places will also be available within the BA degrees to non-scholarship holders. [my yellow highlighting]

The ANU Observer, 8 March 2018:

ANU announced plans for a $25,000 a year scholarship associated with a proposed Bachelor of Western Civilization on Tuesday, subject to student consultation. The announcement occurred at a forum for staff and student feedback, where more details of the proposed program were given, though some students voiced concerns.

At $25,000, the scholarship is the largest ever offered at ANU. It will be larger by just above 15% than the Tuckwell Scholarship, which is set at $21,700 for 2018.....

In a question at the forum, one attendee quoted the CEO of the Ramsay Centre, Simon Haines, as saying, “If we feel like it’s not going to go to appreciation of Western Civilization, then we can withdraw the funding.”  [my yellow highlighting]

Australian National University, FAQ - Potential ANU-Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation Partnership, excerpts:

*The proposed program comprises 16 core courses, typically taken over three years, with an additional Honours year sequence open to outstanding students. Students may replace up to 4 of the 16 BWC courses with 4 courses of classical or modern European language study. Students will be able to take the program alongside other disciplines offered by the University and (in the case of double-degree students) other degrees.

*The different courses within the program consider books from a variety of genres or disciplines (predominately works of literature, history, philosophy, religion, politics) but also including architecture, art and music, 

*The program will be capped at 60 students consisting of up to 30 scholarship recipients in the first year and up to 30 non-scholarship recipients. Up to 10 further scholarships will be made available to students in the second year of the degree.

*A distinct aspect of the proposed program is the use of the ‘Socratic’ approach. The program aims to create active learners engaged with primary texts in classes of no more than six to eight students. These small-group discussions will be supplemented by a series of panel-style discussions where academics from different perspectives engage in discussion with each other and with students.

*Curriculum recommendations will be made by the Partnership Management Committee (consisting of two academic staff from the Ramsay Centre and two academics from the ANU, one of whom is the Dean of CASS) and considered through the normal ANU academic processes. [my yellow highlighting]

Liberal MP for Warringah Tony Abbott in Quadrant Online, 24 May 2018:

“The key to understanding the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation is that it’s not merely about Western civilisation but in favour of it. The fact that it is “for” the cultural inheritance of countries such as ours, rather than just interested in it, makes it distinctive. The fact that respect for our heritage has largely been absent for at least a generation in our premier teaching and academic institutions makes the Ramsay Centre not just timely but necessary. This is an important national project. It’s not every day, after all, that such a big endowment is dedicated in perpetuity to raising the tone of our civic conversation…..

A management committee including the Ramsay CEO and also its academic director will make staffing and curriculum decisions.” [my yellow highlighting]

Brisbane Times, 7 June 2015:

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will personally intervene in the ANU's decision to pull out of a controversial new degree in Western Civilisation, saying he wants to talk to the university's vice-chancellor about it directly.

On Thursday, Mr Turnbull became the latest Liberal politician to wade into the furore over the course, which was to be funded by the John Howard-headed Ramsay Centre.

The Prime Minister said he was "very surprised" by the ANU's decision last week to end six months of negotiation with the centre and would be speaking to vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt personally "to get his account of it".

"I find it very hard to understand why that proposal from the Ramsay Foundation would not have been accepted with enthusiasm," Mr Turnbull said….

[my yellow highlighting]

Professor Brian Schmidt AC, Vice-Chancellor and President, Australian National University, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 2018:

The news came yesterday that Australian National University remains ranked by QS as number one in Australia and in the top 25 universities in the world. It is a global reputation we take seriously. One that is built on the basis of academic autonomy and free academic inquiry.

ANU has declined donations in the past and will again where we are unable to meet the wishes of the donor within our normal practices. It is right that we explore opportunities openly and in good faith, but it is also right that we let prospective donors know when we cannot provide them with what they want.

Our decision to end negotiations with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilization has attracted a great deal of interest. In this case, the prospective donor sought a level of influence over our curriculum and staffing that went beyond what any other donor has been granted, and was inconsistent with academic autonomy.

This would set a precedent that would completely undermine the integrity of the University.

While there has been plenty of noise from all ends about the merits of the study of Western civilisation, the decision at our end has nothing to do with the subject matter.

In fact, the reason we entered into discussions and, no doubt, why we were of interest to the donor, is our global reputation for scholarship and teaching across the full breadth of the Western liberal tradition from classics, history and literature to philosophy, art and music. We offer more than 150 courses in western scholarship. It would take 18 years of study to complete all of those courses.

The opportunity to augment our teaching and research in these areas, along with a generous scholarship program for students, was an attractive proposition for ANU and we were grateful to the Ramsay Centre for considering ANU as a partner.

But at the end of the day, the University operates on the same principles with all donors, whatever their area of interest. Whether it is funding to support the study of Persian language or the study of classics, the same principles apply. The University retains full control of all curriculum and staffing decisions. This actually gets to the crux of the issue here for us. In this case, the donor sought a level of influence over our curriculum and staffing that went beyond any existing arrangements we have.

[my yellow highlighting]

UPDATE

VC's Update - our viewpoints on Ramsay, 25 June 218:

On 1 June The Australian National University announced that it was withdrawing from negotiations to create a degree program with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. We took our decision for no other reason than the Centre's continued demands for control over the program were inconsistent with the University's academic autonomy.

We anticipated attacks from some for even contemplating introducing the degree, and from others for being anti-Western civilisation. What we had less reason to expect was the protracted media firestorm which has continued daily for nearly a month, in certain sections of the press, with ANU constantly assaulted for capitulating to pressure from those hostile to the Ramsay Centre, but without evidence or new information being offered. Scrutiny from the press is crucial in western democracies in holding public institutions to account - and universities should not escape it. But does stating over and over again a false narrative make it true? 

We have intentionally refrained from going into the details of the University's negotiations with the Ramsay Centre, partly because of our respect for what we had understood to be the confidentiality of those negotiations, partly to allow the Centre clear air to rethink its position after exploring options with other institutions, and partly because of our unwillingness to personalise the arguments in the way that others have been all too ready to do. But it has become obvious that we need now to further explain our decision "in the public square".

If ANU had withdrawn from the program simply because some people within our ranks were uncomfortable, for essentially ideological reasons, with the very idea of it, we would deserve all the criticism hurled at us.  But that was absolutely not the case. There was, and remains, strong support across the University for a major enhancement of our teaching and research capacity in the area of Western civilisation studies. We are attracted by the wide-ranging liberal arts courses taught in some prominent American universities, and remain wholly willing to craft a similar degree course here. Designed to convey understanding and respect for the great Western intellectual and cultural traditions - albeit in our own way:  analytically rigorous, not triumphalist, and open to comparisons being drawn, as appropriate, with other major intellectual and cultural traditions.

ANU has long been ranked number one in Australia in humanities disciplines, and we already teach some 150 undergraduate subjects addressing Western civilisation themes. The attractiveness of having major new resources to advance them, is why an enormous amount of effort has been invested by our staff in developing a very detailed proposal, including a draft syllabus, in support of a Ramsay gift, and why negotiations for common ground continued as long as they did.

So what went wrong? We withdrew from negotiations because there were irreconcilable differences over the governance of the proposed program, not its substance.  We were willing to accept the Ramsay Centre having a voice in curriculum design and staff appointments. But only a voice, not a controlling influence. From the outset, however, the Centre has been locked in to an extraordinarily prescriptive micro-management approach to the proposed program, unprecedented in our experience, embodied in a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of some 30 pages with another 40 pages of detailed annexures.

It has insisted on a partnership management committee to oversee every aspect of the curriculum and its implementation - with equal numbers from both the Ramsay Centre and ANU, meaning an effective Ramsay veto.

It has been unwilling to accept our own draft curriculum, and has refused to accept our preferred name for the degree ('Western Civilisation Studies').  While acknowledging that any curriculum would have to be endorsed by the ANU Academic Board, it has made clear that to be acceptable to the Ramsay Centre it would have to find favour with the joint management committee - with its representatives being able to sit in the classes that we teach and undertake "health checks" on the courses and the teachers.

It became clear that there are fundamental differences in our respective conceptions of the role of a university.  The Centre has gone so far as to insist on the removal of "academic freedom" as a shared objective for the program: this remains in the draft MOU as an ANU objective, not a Ramsay one. For us academic freedom doesn't mean freedom to underperform or to teach without regard to the disciplines or agreed objectives of a particular syllabus. But it does mean appointment or retention of staff on the basis of their demonstrated academic merit, not political or ideological preference.

A continuing concern has been that the proposed Ramsay funding is provided short-term, up for renewal in eight years. A time-limited gift is not in itself problematic, but building a major program involving the hiring of a dozen staff, and then being held hostage to its continuation by a donor whose most senior and influential board members appear to have manifestly different views to ours about university autonomy, is not a happy position for any university to be in.

Ramsay CEO Simon Haines, in an interview in last weekend's Fairfax Press (The Age, 23 June), has now at last engaged in a little circumspect distancing from the Tony Abbott article in Quadrant, which was very explicit about the controls envisaged. But that dissociation has been a long time coming, and it remains to be seen whether there will in fact be a change in the Ramsay board's position.  In successive conversations with the Centre, ANU sought public assurances that Ramsay's position had been misstated, and that the University's autonomy in actually implementing agreed objectives would be fully respected.  But no reply we have received has given us any cause to believe that the MOU, with all its over-reach, would be fundamentally revised.  In the result, it was simply impossible on our side to believe that there was sufficient trust and confidence for the project to proceed.

We withdrew from the negotiations for governance reasons of this kind. Boiled down, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation simply did not trust the ANU to deliver a program acceptable to it, and consequently asked for controls on the University's delivery of the degree that ANU could not - and should not - agree to.  

ANU, accepts gifts from individuals, foundations, groups, entities, government agencies, and foreign governments. In no cases are these gifts allowed to compromise the University's academic integrity, nor are they allowed to impose on our academic freedom, or autonomy. Regarding historical gifts surrounding our Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS), Australia's leading academic capability in its area, let us be clear: if the Ramsay Centre were to take the same approach to a gift to ANU as the donors to CAIS, we could reach an agreement in less than 48 hours.

The University has never accepted gifts with such restrictions as demanded by Ramsay, and under our watch as Chancellor and Vice Chancellor we never will.

Let us offer this frank assessment as things stand at the moment, as the Ramsay Centre seeks other partners: to succeed, either they will have to change its approach and trust its partners to deliver a program in Western Civilisation studies, or be limited to a university willing to make concessions on academic autonomy. If the Ramsay Centre and its board are prepared to understand and respect the autonomy of Australia's national university, our door remains open.

Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC and Professor Brian Schmidt AC are Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, respectively, of The Australian National University.

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