The Morrison government has introduced new laws which Minister for Education and Youth Alan Tudge says will “protect academic freedom and freedom of speech” at universities.
The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act to insert the terms “freedom of speech” and “academic freedom”. It also adopts a longer definition of academic freedom proposed by former High Court chief justice Robert French.
All in all, it’s some relatively trivial tinkering — “not highly significant”, Australian National University higher education expert Andrew Norton said. And it means that a long-running culture war over free speech on campus ends with something of a whimper.
That battle really kicked off in 2018, after a series of reactionary speakers, most prominently men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt, were met with protests at campuses. Those protests angered conservative media, and newly minted education minister Dan Tehan, who shelved a proposed taskforce into sexual assault on campuses to focus on the classic culture war issue of free speech at universities.
Despite universities insisting there was no real problem on campus, Tehan got French to do a review, which in turn found that “claims of a freedom of expression crisis are unsubstantiated”.
French’s wasn’t the only report either, with former Deakin University vice chancellor Sally Walker conducting a probe last year into the extent to which universities aligned with a model code for protecting academic freedom proposed by French.
Still, why this amendment now? It all comes back to Pauline Hanson. Last year, the government was adamant about passing funding changes which would charge students more for arts degrees, for some reason (despite the fee hikes, demand for humanities subjects has grown).
To pass the bill, they needed One Nation’s senate votes, and Hanson’s price was implementing a new definition of academic freedom.
At the time, Innovative Research Universities claimed the now legislated definition of academic freedom was unnecessary, and could protect employers airing racist or sexist views.
Meanwhile, universities have lost an estimated 17,000 jobs since the pandemic began last year, after they were frozen out of the JobKeeper package.
I note that the Innovative universities concern with the original dot point four of the definition, “The freedom of academic staff, without constraint imposed by reason of their employment by the university, to make lawful public comment on any issue in their personal capacities” has been removed, since that point is gone from the bill.
The vexed question, indeed a question raised by Kant, of the right of employers to punish employees for speaking or acting on their personal views while not at work, or even at work, thus remains open.
In the meantime the Coalition got to indulge their prejudice against critical thinking and inhibit the production of flexible knowledge workers at almost no cost. Another cost imposed on the young and their future.
Meanwhile, universities have lost an estimated 17,000 jobs since the pandemic began last year, after they were frozen out of the JobKeeper package – on three separate occasions.
A fudge looking for a distaction, and finding it. Mr Tudge, please address the central challenge for your Cabinet portfolio – the provision of quality, relevant and affordable education in our time. Stop worrying about everyone else’s portfolio – you haven’t been able to deliver in your own. Although, I must admit the attraction of getting onto someone else’s turf at no risk to yourself must be overpowering.
Remember, there is nothing original or creative in Australian politics. This free speech obsession is confected, transnational and is also about denigrating gender/minority rights, science and education (amongst uneducated voters, climate science deniers and white nationalists).
One needs to view this issue or strategy through a prism of transnational Anglosphere obsession developed in by the US Kochs et al. for GOP policy making (or not).
Locally exemplified by Koch/Atlas Network think tanks IPA, CIS etc., NewsCorp, Peter Ridd (climate science), Bettina Arndt (men’s rights), Drew Pavlou (perils of CCP/PRC) and Tim Wilson (HK protesters vs. PRC), while UK or internationally its the same ‘architecture’ plus UK based SpikedOnline (former middle class ‘astroturfing’ Marxists with seed funding from Kochs, promote Brexit, Tories and scepticism towards universities/climate science).
The outcomes through ‘PR stunts’ are numerous and include impairment of universities’ image, pressure on academia, disruption of women’s, LGBT, indigenous etc. rights or initiatives on campus, creating antipathy towards higher education research and learning including arts, skills of analysis, science and peer reviewed science (related to climate science).
Well said, I’ve noticed these free-speech absolutists emerge from cliques with near zero prior interest in politics.
Always strikes me that they seem obsessed with geopolitical imperatives but can’t tell you the name of their local member at any level of government.
Beam me up Scotty!
The concept of academic freedoms were traditionally bound by their area of expertise. There was never really carte Blanche freedom to freewheel on subjects that they had no knowledge of. It included a certain, untested, level of freedom in political expression as well, but business academics were never really free to spout BS on subjects like climate change, or epidemiology.
What the mad right seem to think is that anyone should be allowed to spout the latest conspiracy theory without getting any pushback. They then descend into ‘cancel culture’ diatribes if anyone publicly disagrees with them.
Their aim is not free speech, their aim is to shut down objections. Freedom for me, silence from you. Don’t be confused about what is going on here.