tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/university-of-melbourne-1491/articles
University of Melbourne – The Conversation
2023-07-05T05:25:46Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209120
2023-07-05T05:25:46Z
2023-07-05T05:25:46Z
Intake to the National Institute of Circus Arts has been ‘paused’. Where to next for Australia’s performing arts training?
<p>The 2024 intake into the Bachelors-level degree at the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/cirque-du-so-long-australia-s-only-tertiary-circus-school-in-limbo-20230630-p5dkrv.html">has been “paused”</a>, reportedly on the grounds of financial viability and “strategic alignment” with Swinburne University, which has auspiced NICA since 1995.</p>
<p>In the same week across the Tasman, Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/26-06-2023/killing-the-human-in-humanities-what-victoria-universitys-cuts-will-do-to-theatre">announced savage cuts</a> to its theatre and music programs. </p>
<p>These are just the latest blows to <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2021/october/julian-meyrick/drama-hell#mtr">a sector in crisis</a>. They arise from a decades-long suspicion of the place of arts training in the academy, which can be traced back as far as the 1950s. </p>
<p>Then, arts training was seen as insufficiently rigorous and incompatible with university structures. Now, those same concerns are framed in terms of strategic value and return on investment. </p>
<p>Whatever the rationale, they speak to a lack of imagination and creativity in the administration of the contemporary university.</p>
<h2>An independent institution</h2>
<p>At a meeting of its Professorial Board in December 1956, the University of Melbourne refused a proposal to establish a degree-level actor training program. The board declared the aims of the proposal could not “be fulfilled by a course which conformed to indispensable university standards”. </p>
<p>After this rejection, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-214611315/listen/0-1557%7E0-1775">a similar proposal progressed</a> at the University of New South Wales, with one critical difference. </p>
<p>While this actor training program would operate out of university facilities and be collocated with the School of English, it would remain separate. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535697/original/file-20230705-25-uqgch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Old Tote Theatre, pictured here in 1968, was used by NIDA and the Old Tote Theatre Company from 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Pashuk © NIDA</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) was born in 1958. From its start, NIDA was physically integrated with but academically apart from its institutional sponsor. </p>
<p>Throughout its history and to today, <a href="https://www.currency.com.au/books/theatre/an-eye-for-talent/">to paraphrase long-time director John Clark</a>, NIDA has revelled in its close association with the university – but closely guarded its independence.</p>
<h2>Intellectual rigour</h2>
<p>The suggestion in the late 1950s that the business of performer training was antithetical to the mission of the university was grounded in two related factors: matriculation standards, and the availability of suitably qualified staff. </p>
<p>Universities were sceptical of the intellectual rigour of artistic practice in the institution, both in prospective students and in staff. </p>
<p>Universities were also concerned about the lack of funding or teaching space for the higher intensity and longer hours demanded over more traditional tertiary subjects. </p>
<p>One exception stands out: the long-running actor training offered at Flinders University began in 1971, just five years after the university opened in 1966.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five students clap while two bow towards each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535696/original/file-20230705-27-x2win1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Drama students at Flinders rehearsing Abraxas, 1973.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flinders University</span></span>
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<p>Otherwise, performers trained outside of university level institutions. Some joined the profession directly and trained on the job. Others were apprenticed through youth companies or student theatre, and graduated onto the professional stage. </p>
<h2>Merging with the universities</h2>
<p>In the intervening years, between 1967 to the early 1990s, much Australian arts training was housed within Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE). These colleges sat between TAFE institutions and universities, focusing on more vocational disciplines and awarding certificates, diplomas, and eventually degrees. </p>
<p>In the early 1990s, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2518053881/view?partId=nla.obj-2520354289">the Dawkins Reforms</a> merged some technical and vocational providers with universities, and granted university status to others. This brought more arts training programs into universities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A maid and a man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535689/original/file-20230705-1050-21kvjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hugh Jackman performing in Thank in his final year at WAAPA in 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">WAAPA/ECU</span></span>
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<p>The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), which had been housed within the Western Australian CAE <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Actor-Training-in-Anglophone-Countries-Past-Present-and-Future/Zazzali/p/book/9781032050607">since 1980</a>, became part of Edith Cowan University. </p>
<p>The Kelvin Grove Campus of the Brisbane CAE, which had provided actor training <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/63083/">since the late 1970s</a>, was merged with the new Queensland University of Technology. </p>
<p>These new universities were beginning to articulate an academic identity. Their historical association with more vocational forms of training made them more open to maintaining the provision of arts training.</p>
<p>As part of this commitment, some institutions even founded new training programs. Swinburne established the National Institute of Circus Arts <a href="https://www.nica.com.au/about">in 1995</a>. The Griffith Film School <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.018784591043141">followed in 2004</a>. </p>
<p>By far the most contentious integration took place at the University of Melbourne in 2006, when the Victorian College of the Arts was first affiliated with and then fully integrated into the university.</p>
<p>Almost exactly 50 years after it was first rejected, actor training was now part of the business of that university – though not without a great deal of consternation and protest. </p>
<p>Various painful reorganisations followed, <a href="https://www.currency.com.au/books/platform-papers/platform-papers-28-the-fall-and-rise-of-the-vca/">elegantly documented by Richard Murphet</a>, as the university and the training institution worked through their differences – many the same as those identified by the Professorial Board in the 1950s.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-training-a-new-generation-of-performers-about-intimacy-safety-and-creativity-132516">Friday essay: training a new generation of performers about intimacy, safety and creativity</a>
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<h2>The value of arts training</h2>
<p>At its root, the uneasiness of the alliance between universities and performer training is a product of a perceived opposition between the intellectual and the manual. </p>
<p>This false binary discounts the ways in which knowledge is made by and held in the body, and the rigorous research-informed training cultures that have developed in university performing arts programs since the 1990s. </p>
<p>Too often, the universities themselves aren’t able to take on the very acts of imagination that characterise the training offered to students. Administrators instead see bloated programs that refuse to conform to increasingly rigid curriculum architectures.</p>
<p>Institutions that proclaim themselves to be innovative, agile and creative are increasingly unwilling to sustain the very programs that exemplify those qualities. </p>
<p>Budget bottom lines trump the values of the institution. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1675740724019736577"}"></div></p>
<p>Far from being expensive follies incompatible with the institution, arts training programs act as the shopfront for the university. These programs intervene in civic life and showcase the university publicly. Their students activate campus spaces and bring community audiences to the university. </p>
<p>To maintain them does not require a commitment to the arts as an intrinsic good – though that would not go astray. It merely needs administrators to think differently, to make new models instead of insisting we fit the old, to imagine a better future. </p>
<p>Funnily enough, an arts training program could teach them precisely that.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-world-of-pain-australian-theatre-in-crisis-168663">Friday essay: a world of pain – Australian theatre in crisis</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209120/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Hay receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).</span></em></p>
The relationship between universities and performing arts training in Australia has often been uneasy or contentious.
Chris Hay, Professor of Drama, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206591
2023-05-30T20:08:23Z
2023-05-30T20:08:23Z
Does the Fight Transphobia UniMelb campaign against a feminist philosopher violate academic freedom?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528954/original/file-20230530-18771-fnjtie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3823%2C1978&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anonymous posters such as this one have campaigned against philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith, author of the book Gender-Critical Feminism.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>A campaign by the activist group Fight Transphobia UniMelb against feminist philosopher <a href="https://hollylawford-smith.org/">Holly Lawford-Smith</a> <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/class-warfare-lecturer-targeted-by-trans-activists-over-rally-role-20230505-p5d5vr.html">escalated</a> recently. There have been calls to boycott her course on feminism at the University of Melbourne. Posters and stickers around the campus and its environs have declared “Our demands: Transphobes and Nazis off campus” and that: “Only a Fascist takes ‘Feminism’”. </p>
<p>In response, Lawford-Smith has lodged a formal complaint with WorkSafe Victoria. She accuses the university of failing to provide her with a safe work environment, and to uphold academic freedom.</p>
<p>Fight Transphobia UniMelb has <a href="https://fighttransphobiaunimelb.tiiny.site/">since stated</a> it will revise some of its stickers, but the activism continues.</p>
<p>Melbourne University, meanwhile, is <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/university-closes-book-on-lecturer-transphobia-complaints-20230518-p5d9c4.html">reportedly</a> preparing to deploy security guards outside Lawford-Smith’s second-year feminism class. </p>
<p>University provost Nicola Phillips told The Age it has a “resolute commitment” to academic freedom, which extends to gender-critical perspectives being debated on campus and Lawford-Smith teaching her course. It also has a “positive obligation” to ensure transgender or gender diverse students can “participate fully in the life of the university”.</p>
<p>The campaign raises a host of challenging ethical questions.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-essentialism-and-how-does-it-shape-attitudes-to-transgender-people-and-sexual-diversity-203577">What is essentialism? And how does it shape attitudes to transgender people and sexual diversity?</a>
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<h2>What’s all the fuss about?</h2>
<p>Lawford-Smith is a “<a href="https://hollylawford-smith.org/what-is-gender-critical-feminism-and-why-is-everyone-so-mad-about-it/">gender critical feminist</a>”. (The term usually used by her opponents is “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF">terf</a>”: trans-exclusionary radical feminist.) Lawford-Smith’s scholarly research and public engagements are critical of gender identity, arguing for the significance of biological sex.</p>
<p>Lawford-Smith is <a href="https://hollylawford-smith.org/censorship-timeline/">no stranger</a> to controversy. In 2021 she <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/gender/transphobic-website-puts-melbourne-university-academics-at-odds-20210225-p575u4.html">launched a website</a> collecting anonymous stories from women about their safety in women’s spaces opened to trans women. The website was <a href="https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/holly-lawford-smith-transphobic-open-letter/">condemned</a> by more than 1400 staff and students. In particular, <a href="http://perfors.net/blog/academic-integrity/">sustained critiques</a> were raised against the website’s scholarly standards, challenging whether it warranted protection on the basis of academic freedom.</p>
<p>More recently, Lawford-Smith spoke at the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-26/kellie-jay-keen-minshullanti-trans-rights-liberal-party-debate/102142130">controversial</a> “Let Women Speak Rally” in Melbourne, attended by far-right extremists – complete with Nazi salutes. In response, the activism against her intensified, linking her (and, it seems, her students) to fascism.</p>
<p>The case bears striking similarity to that of UK philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/sussex-professor-kathleen-stock-resigns-after-transgender-rights-row">Kathleen Stock</a>. A long-running campaign from trans activists made Stock fear for her safety, driving her to resign.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-public-safety-trump-free-speech-history-suggests-there-is-a-case-for-banning-anti-trans-activist-posie-parker-from-nz-202118">Does public safety trump free speech? History suggests there is a case for banning anti-trans activist Posie Parker from NZ</a>
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</p>
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<h2>What’s academic freedom? Why is it important?</h2>
<p>A key concern in considering the case is academic freedom. As Carolyn Evans and Adrienne Stone argue in <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/open-minds">Open Minds: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech in Australia</a>, academic freedom differs from the more general notion of free speech. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528772/original/file-20230529-27-wmgf5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Free speech is a right held by everyone, justified by – and limited by – ethical concerns with truth, autonomy and democracy.</p>
<p>In contrast, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/academic-freedom">academic freedom</a> is a narrower principle that specifically protects university scholars. Academic freedom provides academics with autonomy over what they research, the results they draw, and their dissemination of that research. It also grants them some autonomy over the subject matter they teach. </p>
<p>Academic freedom is important because if scholars are constrained from arguing against prevailing views, then universities cannot fulfil their socially critical role of challenging dogmas and unearthing new truths. The progress of science and the development of knowledge depends on new and contrary ideas being aired and tested.</p>
<p>Academic freedom doesn’t allow scholars to do whatever they want. Academics must still use scholarly methods of providing evidence and reasoning, publishing in peer-reviewed outlets, and obeying ethical constraints on how they research. But the academic chooses what they research, and – critically – <em>what conclusions they draw</em>.</p>
<p>Academic freedom can be threatened, in different ways, by domestic governments and security agencies, foreign governments, industry (through leveraging research funding), and even the increasingly commercial nature of university administration. </p>
<p>But can it also be threatened by student activism?</p>
<h2>Students have rights too</h2>
<p>University students have rights of free speech, including rights to protest and to call for boycotts. Indeed, an important part of university life is for students to find their voice and learn to vigorously defend their ideas.</p>
<p>While lawful and non-disruptive protests are clearly protected, peaceful but disruptive protests, like sit-ins, can also be morally justified. Student protesters have historically been drivers of vital moral change – such as in the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/sit-ins">civil rights movement</a> in the US, and Charles Perkins’ <a href="https://deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/Students_lead_%E2%80%98Freedom_Rides%E2%80%99_through_segregated_NSW_towns#:%7E:text=The%201965%20Freedom%20Ride%20%E2%80%93%20led,New%20South%20Wales%20country%20towns.">freedom ride</a> here in Australia.</p>
<p>The question is what to do when peaceful protest tips into personalised attacks aiming to remove specific university employees, or into sustained disruption of classes that other students want to take.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528951/original/file-20230530-39262-eelg8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students have a right to protest – as in this recent demonstration over university fees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span>
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<h2>Is this campaign consistent with academic freedom?</h2>
<p>A campaign spokesperson <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/class-warfare-lecturer-targeted-by-trans-activists-over-rally-role-20230505-p5d5vr.html">told The Age</a> that the activists believed in academic freedom, but that universities only had the right to “propagate unpopular ideas, not bigoted ones”.</p>
<p>The problem is that determining what speech counts as bigoted or harmful – outside of the most obvious cases of (say) racial slurs or incitements to violence – is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/ethics-of-responding-to-arguments-with-allegations/12588796">acutely informed</a> by a person’s beliefs, values and politics.</p>
<p>It is common for groups (on all sides of politics, and throughout history) to believe that those speaking out against their cause are not only mistaken, but morally wrong and actively harmful.</p>
<p>It’s hard to see what is left of academic freedom if small groups of students can, through tactics of targeted attacks on individual scholars, deliberately impose their views on what counts as prohibited research ideas and harmful speech. </p>
<p>After all, if the campaign is successful, there’s no guarantee that the practice would not continue and even expand. The present activism aims to remove Lawford-Smith from teaching one course. However, the arguments presented, and the rhetoric accompanying them (“Transphobes and Nazis off campus!”), could potentially be used to have her, and others who share her views, removed entirely. </p>
<p>Even if existing gender critical theorists were not systematically purged from universities, aspiring academics nevertheless would be well-warned to steer clear of research that could get them cancelled. <a href="https://quillette.com/2023/04/17/philosophys-no-go-zone/">Some</a> argue this process of chilling gender-critical research has already begun.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-differences-between-free-speech-hate-speech-and-academic-freedom-and-they-matter-124764">There are differences between free speech, hate speech and academic freedom – and they matter</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Should courses be taught by controversial public speakers?</h2>
<p>It has also been argued that, while perhaps gender-critical ideas can be taught, they should not be taught by someone who <a href="https://fighttransphobiaunimelb.tiiny.site/">publicly holds such contentious views</a>. Trans or gender-questioning students in Lawford-Smith’s courses might feel personally attacked and marginalised by her public statements.</p>
<p>This is an important concern. Universities should foster respectful relations between teachers and students. However, the argument in this context looks inconsistent. </p>
<p>After all, scholars supporting trans rights also take clear, public positions on controversial issues. Sometimes they can use extremely strong moral language to condemn opposing thinkers as <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/transgender-disputes-threaten-split-university-unions">bigoted, hateful, or phobic</a>. This is the language of <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/uncivil-wars">contempt</a>, and it attacks not only the idea but the character of the person who holds it.</p>
<p>Yet there is every reason to believe those same scholars might teach students who have gender-critical sympathies, and even identities, who feel excluded and morally attacked for their beliefs.</p>
<h2>Should students have academic freedom?</h2>
<p>Some of the most valuable university learning occurs when students discuss their own controversial ideas, and engage with other students’ opposing arguments. To this end, students can deserve academic freedom (as they are granted in <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0080/latest/DLM183665.html">New Zealand</a>).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, <a href="https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2020-college-free-speech-rankings">international evidence</a> suggests that many students suppress their views out of fear of repercussions. (<a href="https://www.qilt.edu.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/2021-ses-national-report.pdf">Australia’s current situation</a> seems somewhat better.)</p>
<p>Fight Transphobia UniMelb <a href="https://fighttransphobiaunimelb.tiiny.site/">has said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We in no way seek to intimidate those who take Holly Lawford-Smith’s subject, and we apologise to anyone who has felt this way. We do hope however to equip students with the knowledge required to make appropriate enrolment decisions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the worries with this anonymous boycott campaign is the way it targets students, and might intimidate them from taking controversial courses or airing unpopular views. If it did, then the students’ academic freedom would be imperilled. </p>
<p>Still, there are no easy solutions here, as these freedoms apply equally to those supporting, and those questioning, the boycott. It’s been alleged that Lawford-Smith has shut down contrary views in her classes (a claim she strongly denies). </p>
<p>Perhaps the best policy for universities in this space is to engage in pro-active, deliberate and sustained efforts to “<a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/free-speech-campus-calls-both-hard-heads-and-soft-hearts">enlighten up</a>”, developing <a href="https://theconversation.com/actually-its-ok-to-disagree-here-are-5-ways-we-can-argue-better-121178">students’ capabilities</a> to disagree well, and stressing the need for tolerance of opposing views.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/feel-free-to-disagree-on-campus-by-learning-to-do-it-well-151019">Feel free to disagree on campus ... by learning to do it well</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A self-defeating success?</h2>
<p>A final concern is that successfully silencing gender-critical feminist thought through these forms of protest and targeting might ultimately prove counter-productive to trans rights.</p>
<p>In some US states, Republican governments have recently pushed through <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/us/texas-transgender-care-ban-children.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20230518&instance_id=92831&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=71689150&segment_id=133217&te=1&user_id=81faa0c1caf44cb65829484db51acca1">extreme anti-trans legislation and policy</a>. These policies can be trenchantly critiqued on the basis that they are out of step with the medical science. But that critique can only be levelled if the science is itself trustworthy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528963/original/file-20230530-21-t1y3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Opponents of a Texas bill banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender children protest at the Texas Capitol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mikala Compton/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the universities that produce the science have silenced rather than refuted gender critical scholars and other opposing viewpoints, then universities will not – and, indeed, should not – be trusted as a reliable source of knowledge.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the student campaign raises serious and challenging ethical issues. Students must be allowed to give voice to their social justice values, and to publicly criticise their own universities when they transgress those values. But at the same time, protesters need to be sensitive to when their actions slip into the territory of bullying, intimidating and threatening individuals. </p>
<p>More fundamentally – if the above arguments on academic freedom are correct – were universities to allow protesters to effectively determine what standpoints scholarly researchers could take and disseminate, they would betray their social role as universities.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>An earlier version of this article stated Lawford-Smith has been critiqued for shutting down contrary views in her classes. This sentence has now been amended to reflect the fact she has denied these allegations.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Breakey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Trans activists are running a campaign against University of Melbourne philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith. It raises a host of challenging ethical questions.
Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law. President, Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics., Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176462
2022-02-04T06:03:57Z
2022-02-04T06:03:57Z
News Corp’s deal with Google and the Melbourne Business School questioned by journalism academics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444471/original/file-20220204-25-z0c3h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1040%2C4333%2C2312&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>News Corp Australia and Google have announced the creation of the <a href="https://www.digitalnews.academy/">Digital News Academy</a> in partnership with the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne. It will provide digital skills training for News Corp journalists and other media outlets.</p>
<p>Is this a good thing or a bad thing? </p>
<p>The academy won’t provide full degrees, just certificates and a chance to upgrade digital skills in a fast-changing media environment.</p>
<p>Many companies in various industries have partnered with universities to deliver what used to be in-house training programs. Strengthening the links between industry and the academy has been welcomed in many sectors and certainly encouraged by governments for many years.</p>
<p>Why then are we as journalism academics concerned? </p>
<p>There are several reasons. The first and most obvious is the incursion of a high-profile and controversial media company into the higher education sector and the extent to which that is funded by a large disruptive digital search company.</p>
<h2>Antagonism towards academia</h2>
<p>It is telling that the Digital News Academy will be housed in the University of Melbourne’s private arm, the Melbourne Business School, rather than its Centre for Advancing Journalism within the Arts faculty.</p>
<p>Australia’s largest commercial media company has long criticised university journalism education, and journalism academics, including each of the authors of this article and many of our colleagues. The company even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/13/student-indoctrination-claim-unethical-and-untrue-say-media-lecturers">once sent an incognito reporter into a University of Sydney lecture</a> to <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/uni-degrees-in-indoctrination/news-story/9f67f148e0c75c3d0d34af2416f5ab1a">uncover criticism of News Corp in the classroom</a>. That reporter, Sharri Markson, is now investigations editor at The Australian and a member of “the panel of experts” that will oversee the Digital News Academy. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444475/original/file-20220204-25-1q0dv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444475/original/file-20220204-25-1q0dv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444475/original/file-20220204-25-1q0dv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444475/original/file-20220204-25-1q0dv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444475/original/file-20220204-25-1q0dv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444475/original/file-20220204-25-1q0dv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444475/original/file-20220204-25-1q0dv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">DNA.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>So it comes as no surprise that News Corp has avoided journalism programs.</p>
<p>News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman, Michael Miller, has said part of the academy’s role will be building a stronger Australia by keeping society informed through “strong and fearless news reporting and advocacy”. </p>
<p>Yet partnering with a journalism program would have facilitated that. It might also have helped assuage News Corp critics, some of whom have been active online during the week with reminders about News Corp’s unethical conduct during the hacking scandal and its disregard for scientific evidence in its reporting on climate change. </p>
<p>University journalism courses teach ethics and critical thinking alongside practical skills such as new digital ways of fact checking, gathering information and telling stories. Google Australia already offers free tutorials to journalism programs about smart ways to use its search engine to find and check investigative stories.</p>
<p>University journalism programs also distinguish between training and education; the former is predominantly about skills, the latter places those skills in context and teaches students how to think critically about the industry and environment in which they work. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-protection-australian-journalism-needs-better-standards-171117">More than protection, Australian journalism needs better standards</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By placing this course in a business school and not a liberal arts or humanities faculty, the venture gets the kudos of the University of Melbourne’s backing without the challenging academic culture News Corp dislikes. </p>
<p>News Corp and Google are corporate clients, paying the university for these courses, so the capacity for independent criticism of Australia’s most dominant newspaper company is eroded even further.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The Digital News Academy will be within the Melbourne Business School, rather than the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444504/original/file-20220204-19-iru8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444504/original/file-20220204-19-iru8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444504/original/file-20220204-19-iru8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444504/original/file-20220204-19-iru8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444504/original/file-20220204-19-iru8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444504/original/file-20220204-19-iru8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444504/original/file-20220204-19-iru8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Digital News Academy will be housed within the Melbourne Business School, rather than the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What will the Digital News Academy do?</h2>
<p>All we know so far about the academic credibility of the Digital News Academy comes from its promotional announcement, in press releases <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/digital-evolution-news-corp-google-unite-to-train-journalists/news-story/e2e0dfa37dba21b135dccfa02280affa">reported</a> in the Media section of The Australian (published by News Corp). </p>
<p>The publicity says the nine-month course will take 750 enrolments from journalists at News Corp Australia, Australian Community Media (the stable of 160 regional publications formerly owned by Fairfax) and smaller media partners.</p>
<p>A “governance committee” will select candidates (who nominate themselves or are put forward by their employers). These students will be expected to use the Google suite of tools as they collaborate online at the Melbourne Business School, to generate, build and sell stories to the course’s “Virtual Academy Newsroom”.</p>
<p>Each year there will be what is being billed as a major journalism conference and a US study tour for a select group of trainees.</p>
<p>There are no public details yet of the academic credentials of the certificate program but the academy has drawn on a “panel of experts”, almost all of whom come from inside News Corp and Google.</p>
<h2>Google gains influence</h2>
<p>It’s easy to see why Google was motivated to fund a News Corp training academy above and beyond what it is required to do as part of its bid to stop further intervention in its workings by the Australian government under the terms of the News Media Bargaining Code.</p>
<p>But there are some deeper questions about why a company that has such a stranglehold on the new digital economy is involved. By funding the academy Google may be undercutting full university degrees specialising in journalism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-news-media-bargaining-code-could-backfire-if-small-media-outlets-arent-protected-an-economist-explains-155745">The news media bargaining code could backfire if small media outlets aren't protected: an economist explains</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Relying on Google to make up the shortfall in news organisations’ training budgets is a problem. It allows Google to shape curriculum while appearing to be a champion of the same journalism industry it has been accused of undermining.</p>
<p>As journalism academics we respect the need for specialised training and skills development. But journalism programs should never be captured or constrained from being critical of the industry for which they prepare students. They should continue to embed ethics in their courses. The aim, after all, is to improve journalism, for everybody’s benefit.</p>
<p>As it is often said, <a href="https://biblio.com.au/book/just-another-business-journalists-citizens-media/d/665176342?aid=frg&gclid=CjwKCAiAl-6PBhBCEiwAc2GOVK3MhOR3JubEbpE5gFZkdlJUIcRSrMUbLODaMj_bpEKyTPtUbY4WlBoCB0MQAvD_BwE.">news is not just another business</a>. While studying journalism often involves the study of business, business imperatives should not drive the study of journalism itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dodd worked as a journalist at The Australian newspaper and has provided in-house legal and news writing training for News Corp. He is currently employed as the director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, which is mentioned in this article. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Wake provided in-house training for the ABC and for Australian Provincial Newspapers. She is the elected President of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia and is the current programs manager for journalism at RMIT.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ricketson has worked on staff at The Australian, among other news outlets. He was a member of the Finkelstein inquiry into the media and media regulation which was sharply criticised in News Corp Australia publications. His appointment as the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance's representative on the Press Council was also criticised by News Corp Australia. </span></em></p>
Does Australia benefit from Google paying for News Corp training?
Andrew Dodd, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne
Alexandra Wake, Program Manager, Journalism, RMIT University
Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119990
2019-07-23T20:02:02Z
2019-07-23T20:02:02Z
Hidden women of history: Flos Greig, Australia’s first female lawyer and early innovator
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282984/original/file-20190708-51278-k66k2y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grata Flos Greig, First Female Law Graduate, c1904, University of Melbourne. Flos was the first woman admitted to the Australian legal profession.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> University of Melbourne Archives, UMA/I/5131</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/hidden-women-of-history-64072">this series</a>, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.</em></p>
<p>When Grata Flos Matilda Greig walked into her first law school class at the University of Melbourne in 1897, it was illegal for women to become lawyers. But though the legal system did not even recognise her as a person, she won the right to practice and helped thousands of other women access justice. In defying the law, Greig literally changed its face.</p>
<p>That she did so is a story worthy of history books. And how she achieved this offers key insights for women a century later as they navigate leadership roles in the legal profession and beyond.</p>
<p>Flos, as she was known, grew up in a household full of possibilities unlimited by gender boundaries. Born in Scotland, as a nine-year-old she spent three months sailing to Australia with her family to settle in Melbourne in 1889. Her father founded a textile manufacturing company. Both parents believed that Flos and her siblings – four sisters and three brothers – should be university educated at a time when women rarely were. </p>
<p>She grew up firm in the knowledge that women could thrive in professional life, and witnessed that reality unfold as older sisters Janet and Jean trained to become doctors. Another sister, Clara, would go on to found a tutoring school for university students. The fourth sister, Stella, followed Flos to study law.</p>
<p>Women could not vote or hold legislative office, let alone be lawyers, when 16-year-old Flos began to study law. Yet she did not let this deter her. As she approached graduation she focused on, “the many obstacles in the path of my full success. I resolved to remove them”.</p>
<p>Other feminine aspirants, she noted, had previously wished to enter the profession, “but the impediments in the way were so great, that they concluded, after consideration, it was not worthwhile”. </p>
<p>Flos felt otherwise. She declared, even in 1903 when women were largely excluded from public life: “Women are men’s equals in every way and they are quite competent to hold their own in all spheres of life.”</p>
<h2>‘The Flos Greig Enabling Bill’</h2>
<p>Six years after entering the University of Melbourne, Flos witnessed the Victorian Legislative Assembly’s passing of the Women’s Disabilities Removal Bill, also known as the Flos Greig Enabling Bill. Suddenly, women could enter the practice of law. How had she made this happen?</p>
<p>While childhood had provided Flos with role models from both sexes, she did have to rely upon a series of men to navigate her entry into the exclusively male club of the legal profession. Her male classmates had initially questioned the capabilities of a woman lawyer and resisted her presence, but she soon persuaded them otherwise. </p>
<p>Not only did Flos graduate second in her class, but the men took a vote to declare – affirmatively – that women should be allowed to practice law. Their support undoubtedly fuelled her ambitions.</p>
<p>Next, Flos turned to one of her lecturers, John Mackey, who happened to also be a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Together they worked with other supporters to craft the legislative change. Mackey argued that by passing the law, Parliament could ease the concerns of women who believed they could not get justice from a legislative body made up only of men.</p>
<p>Still, Flos needed to complete a period of supervised training known as “articling” before she could be sworn into the bar. No Australian woman had ever engaged in the “articles of clerkship” before. A Melbourne commercial law solicitor Frank Cornwall employed her, and she was officially admitted to the practice of law on August 1, 1905.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284019/original/file-20190715-173347-es0gkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supreme Court of Victoria circa 1905 when Flos was admitted to practice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At her swearing-in ceremony, Chief Justice John Madden described Flos as “the graceful incoming of a revolution”. He also expressed some scepticism about her future success: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women are more sympathetic than judicial, more emotional than logical. In the legal profession knowledge of the world is almost if not quite as essential as knowledge of the law, and knowledge of the world, women, even if they possess it, would lie loth to assert.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Flos would prove him wrong about her knowledge of the world, both in law and in her other passion, travel.</p>
<h2>‘What did I wear? Don’t ask me!’</h2>
<p>At the ceremony, her name was the third called – in alphabetical order – before what was reportedly an “unusually large gathering of lawyers, laymen, and ladies … seldom seen in halls of justice”. Attendees noticed smiles that “flickered over the faces of the judges as they entered the crowded chamber” at the sight of Flos among her “somberly-clad male” counterparts.</p>
<p>News accounts focused more on the physical attributes of the first lady lawyer than her qualifications. When questioned by a reporter about her clothing choice for the occasion, Flos blushed, “What did I wear? Don’t ask me!” But then confessed, “Well, if you insist! I wore grey, with a greenish tinted hat, trimmed with violets!” </p>
<p>Another news reporter critiqued the flower-adorned hat as “a most unlegal costume”. As if there was any basis for making such an assessment – until that moment the nation had never seen the “costume” of a female lawyer. The <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1711344">media’s fixation with female lawyers’ appearance endures</a> more than a century later.</p>
<p>Flos soon established a solo practice in Melbourne focusing on women and children. Among other endeavours, she represented the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in lobbying to establish the Children’s Court of Victoria.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284018/original/file-20190715-173347-14t8nq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A news clipping about Greig and her work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creative Commons, Courtesy of Australian Women’s Register.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Media fascination with Flos’s attire did not diminish once admitted to practice. She delivered a speech in 1905 to the third annual National Congress of Women of Victoria on a paper she wrote titled, “Some Points of the Law Relating to Women and Children”. </p>
<p>The reporter noted that Flos “treated her subject in a masterly manner, and gave an immense amount of useful and, at times, startling information”. But Flos’s “stylish, yet simple, gown of grey voile, with cream lace vest” was equally newsworthy as were “her pretty black hat and white gloves”. The fashion choices of other (male) speakers went unmentioned.</p>
<p>Flos also helped open the legal profession to other women. She founded The Catalysts’ Society in 1910. Two years later it became the prestigious Lyceum Club in Melbourne, devoted to advancing the careers of women and offering networking opportunities. </p>
<p>After the launch of the Women’s Law Society of Victoria in 1914, Flos was elected its first president. She cared deeply about the right of all women to vote, arguing in a 1905 debate that if “politics were not fit” for women, “the sooner they were made so the better.” (In 1908 Victorian women won the right the vote.)</p>
<p>Law was not Flos’s only pursuit. She travelled extensively. Two decades after graduating from law school, she took a lengthy trip through Asia, spending time in Singapore, China, Bali, Java, Malaysia and two weeks in the Burma jungle. She stayed in local homes and on her return, spoke to audiences about the experience, delighting them with tales of “leopards, tigers, wild pigs, peacocks, … and wild jungle fowl”. She lectured publicly and on radio stations about the geography, religion and race.</p>
<p>The end of her career took Flos to Wangaratta in Northern Victoria. She practised at a law firm headed by Paul McSwiney, and was known to explore the countryside in a “Baby Austin” tourer. She remained an activist, supporting higher education for women and the Douglas Credit Party, a political party that aimed to remedy the economic hardships of the 1930s depression. </p>
<p>Flos died in 1958. While she did not live to see other female firsts, such as the appointment of the first female Chief Justice of the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.vic.gov.au/about-the-court/our-history">Supreme Court of Victoria</a> in 2003, Flos’ capacity to envision women as equals under the law places her among the profession’s greatest innovators.</p>
<p><em>Renee Newman Knake’s book <a href="http://www.shortlistedproject.org/">Shortlisted: Women, Diversity, the Supreme Court & Beyond</a> will be published by New York University Press in 2020.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Renee Knake receives funding from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission.</span></em></p>
When Flos Greig first entered law school, it was illegal for women to become lawyers. Undeterred, she lobbied for change and became the first woman admitted to the legal profession in Australia.
Renee Knake Jefferson, RMIT Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Professor of Law at the University of Houston, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96116
2018-05-09T00:56:29Z
2018-05-09T00:56:29Z
As Melbourne University staff strike over academic freedom, it’s time to take the issue seriously
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218064/original/file-20180508-34003-1s4a9vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Academic freedom therefore encompasses the freedom to research the topics we choose, to draw the conclusions we find compelling from the evidence and analysis we undertake, and to speak publicly on those matters.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some staff at the University of Melbourne will today go on strike. The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) <a href="https://www.nteu.org.au/article/Media-Release%3A-University-of-Melbourne-Staff-to-Strike-on-9-May-20551">claims</a> the strike is over two issues, one of which is academic freedom. The other is management’s attempt to develop two separate enterprise agreements, one for academic staff and the other for professional staff. The union argues the university is trying to remove current academic and intellectual freedom protections from the agreement. If this is true, it would possibly be the first time a strike has occurred at an Australian university over this specific issue.</p>
<p>This is a highly sensitive subject. Universities are very concerned with reputational issues, and the protection of academic freedom is essential to their ability to attract and retain the best staff and students.</p>
<h2>What is academic freedom?</h2>
<p>The idea of academic freedom derives from the role of universities as places of higher learning and research. In order to produce new knowledge, universities must be places where academics can push the boundaries of existing knowledge. This means challenging orthodoxies, speaking out even on controversial topics, and being dedicated to the creation of new knowledge.</p>
<p>University researchers are also at the forefront of knowledge in their specific fields, and spend years building up expertise that is not available to those outside the academy. This means they are well-placed to contribute to policy debates in meaningful ways.</p>
<p>The topics on which academics may choose to comment cannot be arbitrarily restricted either, due to their special role in intellectual life and the pursuit of new knowledge. It would be wrong to allow someone else to determine what lies within an academic’s expertise, given the overlaps and interactions between fields. This is why universities do not try to limit the topics on which academics may speak publicly.</p>
<p>Academic freedom therefore encompasses the freedom to research the topics we choose, draw conclusions we find compelling from the evidence and analysis we undertake, and speak publicly on those topics and related matters.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/university-changes-to-academic-contracts-are-threatening-freedom-of-speech-66207">University changes to academic contracts are threatening freedom of speech</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Academic freedom is recognised internationally as an abiding principle essential to the mission of universities as institutes of higher learning. This understanding has been articulated by <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13144&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">UNESCO</a>, and by the American Association of University Professors since its famous <a href="https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure">Statement of Principles</a> on Academic Freedom and Tenure in 1940.</p>
<p>In Australian universities, academic freedom is routinely recognised as an important principle that is enshrined in a range of governance policies.</p>
<p>It is not an unlimited freedom, though. It is well understood that academic freedom does not extend to vilification, harassment, or defamation. Nor are academics protected by academic freedom if they engage in misconduct, such as making up research findings or spending research funds inappropriately.</p>
<h2>Protections in Australian universities</h2>
<p>These understandings have led to the protection of academic freedom - also called intellectual freedom - in all Australian universities, often through a combination of governance policies and enterprise agreements.</p>
<p>-The Australian National University’s <a href="https://services.anu.edu.au/human-resources/enterprise-agreement/21-academic-freedom-and-protected-disclosure">current enterprise agreement</a> protects academic freedom (Clause 21).</p>
<p>-The University of Sydney has a <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/policies/showdoc.aspx?recnum=PDOC2011/64&RendNum=0">Charter of Academic Freedom</a>, and also protects intellectual freedom in its <a href="https://intranet.sydney.edu.au/content/dam/intranet/public-documents/employment/enterprise-agreement/enterprise-agreement.pdfhttps:/intranet.sydney.edu.au/content/dam/intranet/public-documents/employment/enterprise-agreement/enterprise-agreement.pdf">current enterprise agreement</a> (Clause 315).</p>
<p>-The University of New South Wales recognises academic freedom in its <a href="https://www.gs.unsw.edu.au/policy/documents/codeofconduct.pdf">Code of Conduct</a>, and protects intellectual freedom in its <a href="https://www.hr.unsw.edu.au/services/indrel/Academic_EA_2015_Final.pdf">academic staff agreement</a> (Clause 23).</p>
<p>-The University of Western Australia recognises academic freedom in its <a href="http://www.hr.uwa.edu.au/policies/policies/conduct/code/equity">Code of Conduct</a>, and also protects intellectual freedom in its <a href="http://www.hr.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/file/0008/3068936/Academic-Agreement-2017.pdf">academic staff agreement</a> (Clause 5).</p>
<p>-The University of Adelaide protects academic freedom in its <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/hr/docs/enterprise-agreement.pdf">current enterprise agreement</a> as well (Clause 2.6). </p>
<p>-The University of Tasmania elucidates academic freedom as a <a href="http://www.utas.edu.au/university-council/university-governance/governance-level-principles/academic-freedom-glp14">governing principle</a> of the university, and protects intellectual freedom in its <a href="http://www.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/470098/UTAS-Staff-Agreement.pdf">staff agreement</a> (Clause 10).</p>
<p>The University of Melbourne also has an <a href="https://policy.unimelb.edu.au/MPF1224">academic freedom of expression policy</a>, as set out both in its <a href="http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/domino/web_notes/ldms/pubstatbook.nsf/edfb620cf7503d1aca256da4001b08af/489fcdb5278f3602ca25767f00102b11/%24file/09-078a.pdf">implementing act</a> and in its <a href="http://www.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/2024547/Council-Regulation-v03-13-Dec-2017.pdf">council regulations</a>.</p>
<p>However, management is proposing a change in the terminology in the enterprise agreement from the current recognition of intellectual freedom as a <a href="http://hr.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/909923/FINAL_UoM_EA_2013_with_undertaking_corrections_11_03_14_2.pdf">fundamental principle</a> of the university (Clause 10) to a more brief acknowledgement that the university is committed to academic freedom as stated in its council regulations. </p>
<p>The union is challenging this, because it sees it as a downgrading of the existing protections.</p>
<h2>Academic freedom must be protected</h2>
<p>Academic freedom is a touchstone for a wider debate about free speech, and when universities are seen to be putting pressure on it, staff tend to react quickly. </p>
<p>And rightly so. For example, in 2016, La Trobe University academic Roz Ward was <a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-freedom-and-the-suspension-of-roz-ward-60375">temporarily suspended</a> for calling the Australian flag racist in what many regarded as an <a href="https://theconversation.com/university-changes-to-academic-contracts-are-threatening-freedom-of-speech-66207">over-reach</a> by the university. She was then quickly reinstated.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/despite-what-politicians-and-the-media-say-freedom-of-speech-is-alive-and-well-on-campus-86929">Despite what politicians and the media say, freedom of speech is alive and well on campus</a>
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<p>There are other real concerns about free speech in universities. For example, in 2017, <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/policy/education/intellectual-freedoms-challenged-by-universities-uncritical-embrace-of-china-20170903-gya1pk">news reports</a> suggested some universities were feeling pressured to censor material that might upset the relatively large numbers of Chinese students studying here. An Australian academic was also detained in China and questioned by authorities. Others have criticised the broad <a href="https://www.humanities.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/AAH-Hums-Aust-08-2017-Fitzgerald.pdf">influence of non-democratic states</a> and political cultures on Australia’s internationalised university system.</p>
<p>This is all occurring as Australia is experiencing a plethora of <a href="https://www.policyforum.net/using-free-speech-weapon/">issues related to free speech</a>. The government has also launched its first attempt to assess the impact of <a href="http://www.arc.gov.au/engagement-and-impact-assessment">university research</a> on the broader community.</p>
<p>Now is the time to expand understandings of academic freedom and to institutionally support its status. Any attempt to remove the principle of academic freedom from staff enterprise agreements should be interpreted as watering down its protection. But there seems little prospect of that actually happening, regardless of claims by the union to that effect.</p>
<p>It is important for the reputation of all universities, and commensurately their ability to attract top-class researchers and students, that they do not go down this path. Doing so would undermine the very nature of the university’s public purpose.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Gelber has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Academy of Social Sciences Australia.</span></em></p>
Academic freedom is routinely recognised as an important principle that is enshrined in a range of governance policies - but staff at one university say it is under threat.
Katharine Gelber, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18153
2013-10-04T04:59:12Z
2013-10-04T04:59:12Z
Our past revisited: new Cambridge History of Australia gives us the big picture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32366/original/g83jqdcz-1380766499.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new academic work which covers all of Australia's history is a timely addition to Australian historical scholarship.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australia image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week’s launch of the two-volume <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/australian-history/cambridge-history-australia">Cambridge History of Australia</a> comes just as the Coalition government fires the opening salvo of a new battle in the Australian history wars. </p>
<p>Over the past 12 months, the Coalition has signalled <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/history-syllabus-needs-a-rethink-says-abbott/story-fn9qr68y-1226709354686">its intent</a> to review the teaching of Australian history in the nation’s schools and new education minister Christopher Pyne <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/say-after-the-minister-old-is-new-again-20130927-2ujhn.html">looks set</a> to deliver on the promise. </p>
<p>It just so happens that one of the editors of the latest Cambridge History is none other than the University of Melbourne’s Professor Stuart Macintyre, a veteran of the history wars and lead writer of the national history curriculum. </p>
<p>If historians are set to return to the trenches, what better time for the latest interpretations of Australia’s history from the nation’s leading scholars to appear?</p>
<p>Under the guidance of Professors Macintyre and Alison Bashford of the University of Sydney, the Cambridge History of Australia brings together the work of over 60 historians to present a “state of the field” of Australian history writing in the 21st century. Several years in the making, this history of Australia appears 25 years after the last large-scale, collaborative effort in Australian history writing in recognition of the Bicentenary. </p>
<p>Five years after the <a href="http://reconciliaction.org.au/nsw/recent-issues/apology-to-the-stolen-generations/">apology to the Stolen Generations</a>, and on the eve of the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli, the contributors respond to the ongoing tensions between past and present from post-colonial, feminist, cultural, transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives.</p>
<p>The editors have assembled an impressive team of contributors, who enjoy national and global recognition in their fields, and range from emerging to established scholars. This array of expertise allows experienced scholars to reflect on decades of research, while at the same time bringing exciting new voices to the table. </p>
<p>Collaboration and cooperation are key to the production of works of this scale, not just in its preparation but in the practice of history itself. Through extensive debate and discussion about the range of historical scholarship in Australia and abroad, the contributing historians have crafted their chapters to show the breadth and depth of academic Australian history today.</p>
<p>The Cambridge History of Australia spans Australia’s history from ancient times to the 21st century, with federation in 1901 dividing the two volumes. The volumes are structured both chronologically and thematically, so that in depth analysis of a particular aspect of the past complements the broader historical narrative of the nation’s history. </p>
<p>The contributors chart and contextualise enormous changes over time, not only in terms of the continent and its people, but also the writing of Australian history itself. Historians and the histories they write are products, after all, of their time, and like Australia, they have turned from the imperial to the national and, in recent times, to the global in their outlook. Meanwhile, the emphasis on place and locality, on particularity and distinctiveness, has strengthened.</p>
<p>Reflecting these trends, the project does well to draw out both national and regional histories, while highlighting Australia’s place as an island continent. In doing so, the contributors not only engage with Australia’s connections across its surrounding seas and oceans, but they also remind readers of Australia’s local empire and its legacies, particularly in the islands of the Pacific. </p>
<p>A common refrain and reference point for the contributors is Edmund Barton’s 1898 declaration: “For the first time in history, we have a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation”. These words open up a space to explore Australian history over a range of time spans: from geological or “deep” time, to prehistory to a more recent “national” history, through archaeology, environmental history, economic history and so on.</p>
<p>But Barton’s words also pointed to isolation and its attendant anxieties, which are also threaded through the volumes, not least in a chapter dedicated to “Security” in the 20th century. It is a theme that continues in the closing chapter by historian Mark McKenna, which offers a fitting and provocative conclusion to the volumes. In his reflection on “The History Anxiety”, he explores the self-consciousness of settler societies about their histories and the sensitivities that the search for a foundational narrative can stir. </p>
<p>McKenna maps the steps towards the Apology as an attempt to end the nation’s anxieties about its history of Indigenous-settler relations, and contends that the resurgence of the Anzac legend has provided a more “secure” sense of the nation’s past for many Australians that offers “honour and pride rather than guilt and shame”. This emphasis on emotion and attachment was striking throughout McKenna’s chapter, and a timely reminder of the significance and value that Australians place on the nation’s past.</p>
<p>Retailing at A$325 and extending to some 1,500 pages, the two-volume set is certainly not for the faint hearted. Nor will it sate the expert seeking in depth analysis. The natural habitat for such species is on the reference shelves of libraries in Australia and overseas, where it can be readily accessed and utilised as a synthesis of Australian history captured at this particular moment in time. </p>
<p>It offers valuable overviews of important historical moments and themes, ranging from Indigenous and settler relations, to the environment and religion, to the microeconomic reforms of the 1980s which teachers in high schools and universities will surely appreciate for their classes.</p>
<p>You might wonder whether, in our age of Wikipedia and with the enormous growth of history-writing in Australia, such encyclopaedic tomes have become defunct. The hunger for history that these trends suggest, however, highlights the significance and value of such works, rather than their irrelevance. </p>
<p>An authoritative text such as the Cambridge History of Australia helps the reader to navigate this vast ocean of research and to steer her through the field’s choppy seas. To continue the nautical metaphor, such works help to steady the ship, to take stock, and to seek new directions. Moreover, they reveal that the conversation between the present and the past is ongoing and enduring, no matter where and when or how the battle lines are drawn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Morgan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This week’s launch of the two-volume Cambridge History of Australia comes just as the Coalition government fires the opening salvo of a new battle in the Australian history wars. Over the past 12 months…
Ruth Morgan, Lecturer in Australian History, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/13787
2013-04-30T01:29:07Z
2013-04-30T01:29:07Z
The real story behind Melbourne University’s gender segregation case
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/23004/original/2838ws3g-1367215237.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C101%2C998%2C577&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A university event where women and men were asked to sit separately raises more questions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Islamic women image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The fallout from an event at the University of Melbourne where women and men were <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/academic-calls-for-end-to-ritualised-humiliation/story-e6frfkp9-1226629597535">asked to sit separately</a> has been intense. </p>
<p>The media coverage so far has focused on the issue of segregated seating in a public space, with many using <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/melbournes-hypocrisy-on-gender-naive/story-e6frfkp9-1226630187844">raw and emotive language</a> to denounce the university and the Islamic community group involved. </p>
<p>It’s clear that the university should be considering its role as a public institution and pay closer attention to communicating its guidelines for venue hire. But the university should be reproached for another reason.</p>
<h2>Seating and equality</h2>
<p>Gender segregation is contested amongst Muslims worldwide. In Australia, a Muslim who walks into a gender segregated room instantly decodes the “culture” of that room. You can stay, you can leave, or you can argue. Freedom of choice exists. But if you want to join a club, you are obliged to play by club rules. </p>
<p>In the case of events at the Copeland Theatre on 13 April, no-one was forced to sit anywhere against their will. Seating was suggested with two signs, one pointing to an entrance for “brothers” and the other towards an entrance for “sisters”.</p>
<p>The event organiser, <a href="http://hikmahway.com/">Hikmah Way</a>’s preferred seating arrangements raise questions about gender differentiation in public settings and whether it is respectful and empowering, as they would argue, or <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/campus-leaping-back-to-dark-age/story-e6frfkp9-1226630341152">backward</a> and “humiliating” as <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/academic-calls-for-end-to-ritualised-humiliation/story-e6frfkp9-1226629597535">others believe</a>.</p>
<p>The university should have been aware that this group was likely to have specific guidelines for gender-mixed gatherings and provided clear directives on the matter. But alarm bells should have also rung for the University of Melbourne over the premise and content of this meeting. </p>
<h2>Violent rhetoric</h2>
<p>The promotional material for the event “Islamic rulings on Jihad in Syria” refers to Islamic scholars of great note. One is 13th Century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah who is credited with founding the Islamic political movement known as “Salafism”. Adherents to this movement seek a return to the Golden Age of “Al Salaf Al Saleh”, the first generation of Muslim leaders.</p>
<p>Ibn Taymiyyah’s teachings champion universal Islamic Sharia Law and urge any action that is Islamically possible against non-conformers to this vision. His fatwas explicitly promote violence to purge infidels - Christians, Shia sects, and Sunni Muslims who do not agree with Salafist objectives.</p>
<p>Salafists in Australia garner support for violent jihad in Syria by reference to the teachings of Ibn Taymiyyah, collecting donations for humanitarian aid for Mujahidin (Islamic rebel fighters) in Syria.</p>
<p>The Salafist modern era voices are Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi, an Egyptian now based in Qatar, and Sheikh Adnan Al Arour, a Syrian now based in Saudi Arabia. Both are outspoken in their call for violence in Syria.</p>
<p>Qaradawi pronounces that the death of one third of the Syrian population is a small price to pay for the downfall of the “infidel” government. Arour encourages killing not only people who actively oppose, but also those who do not support, the fight against the Syrian government. Last year he <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/sheikh-adnan-arours-meteoric-rise-from-obscurity-to-notoriety">infamously pronounced</a> that such “infidel” corpses should be minced and fed to the dogs. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&">religious agenda of combatants</a> in Syria is at odds with activists and the broader population who had hoped for a newly imagined democratic Syria achieved through peaceful means.</p>
<p>So when Hikmah Way’s promotion arrived in my inbox, it was not its content that surprised me. It was the venue. </p>
<p>Promotion of pursuit of an Islamic state ruled by Sharia Law at whatever cost - even through the slaughter of non-conforming humans - has no place at an Australian university. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/23005/original/bbpfnpj3-1367216808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The invitation sent earlier this month to the Hikmah Way event at University of Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is analogous to permitting a right-wing Christian group to promote a Crusade to Syria to “rescue” it from non-Christians. Or permitting a radical Christian group to promote ethnic cleansing of Israel to make way for the Messiah.</p>
<h2>The role of the university</h2>
<p>The event title alone should have alerted University of Melbourne venue hire. Ignorance of Islam and of politics in Syria is the real story here.</p>
<p>The University of Melbourne campus has been used as a cover of “legitimacy” for an Islamic political movement on the premise that universities aspire to be accessible to a full diversity of ideas. But the university shouldn’t be used in this way by these kinds of groups.</p>
<p>Ironically, prior to the rapid disintegration of Syria in the past 12 months in particular, Syrian schools and universities enrolled as many women as men, and all classes were mixed. But if the supporters of Hikmah Way and sectarian-based fighters in Syria get their way, gender segregation will be enforced. </p>
<p>Of course, we need discussion about gender segregation and whether it has any place in universities, even within external groups who use the facilities. But public commentators also need to look more closely at groups like Hikmah Way and what they’re espousing in our universities. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13787/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The fallout from an event at the University of Melbourne where women and men were asked to sit separately has been intense. The media coverage so far has focused on the issue of segregated seating in a…
Fiona Hill, Honorary Fellow, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/13776
2013-04-29T06:50:10Z
2013-04-29T06:50:10Z
Separation of men and women in lecture theatres: another Islamic controversy?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/22935/original/rmbwx88m-1367152800.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While it is not demanded by Islamic tradition, many Islamic countries practice gender segregation in public places such as universities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Roche</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, there was a troubling <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/academic-calls-for-end-to-ritualised-humiliation/story-e6frfkp9-1226629597535">news item</a> about possible gender-based “segregation” at an event held at the University of Melbourne. </p>
<p>The event was held by an external Muslim group, on the university campus, in which women were designated an area at the back of the lecture theatre, while men were seated at the front. </p>
<p>The issue now seems to have reached the federal parliament, with a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/higher-education/campus-leaping-back-to-dark-age/story-e6frgcjx-1226630341152">number of politicians</a> commenting on the issue. </p>
<p>For those fearful of Islam and Muslims, this is yet another example of out-dated Muslim views being stealthily imposed on Australian society; or even the sign of an imminent take-over of our higher education institutions by “extremist” Muslims.</p>
<h2>Segregation and religious observance</h2>
<p>There is no gender segregation for the activities such as classes or seminars at the university. If there were, it would be against the universities own policies. </p>
<p>But over the last few years, there have been some events, organised by some external Muslim groups that use university’s facilities, where the separation of men and women is practised. These are usually organised by Muslims who believe that such separation is a necessary part of their religious observance. </p>
<p>One question that then arises is whether this separation is one of the fundamental teachings of the religion, or if it comes from the cultural norms of the very few Muslim societies around the world that require the segregation and separation of women.</p>
<p>In fact, of the 57 or so Muslim majority countries around the world, only a handful practice or officially condone strict separation of men and women in public events and spaces. Where it is practised, this is based on cultural norms and values that are often demeaning to women, including the restriction of women’s roles and visibility in public life. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, such cultural norms and practices are often justified using dubious interpretations and selective reading of some religious texts.</p>
<h2>Going to the source</h2>
<p>In order to justify particular values, practices and ideas, Muslims often go to the Qur’an or the well-known practice of Muhammad. </p>
<p>However, there is no Qur’anic text that requires Muslims to keep men and women separate in public places. Nor does Muhammad’s own practice suggest that he required Muslims to practice such separation, let alone segregation. What is required by both is the need for Muslims — both men and women — to be modest and respectful towards one another in their behaviour. </p>
<p>In one telling Qur’anic text, the Qur’an asks men first to be modest and to lower their gaze, only then asking women to do the same. Modesty is not just for women.</p>
<p>In those few Muslim societies where practices such as gender segregation and separation are prevalent, any public mixing of men and women (even listening to a lecture on Islam by a respected Muslim scholar in a lecture theatre) would be considered an anathema and deeply offensive to the religious sensibilities of men in particular. </p>
<p>There are some Muslims who do not believe that men and women are equal, and who assert that women should not have a public presence.
Muslims in such societies in many cases grow up with the idea that segregation and separation are normal. </p>
<p>Occasionally, Australian students who travel to such countries for their Islamic religious education sometimes come back with these ideas as well. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/22936/original/9gx25hpz-1367153254.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/22936/original/9gx25hpz-1367153254.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/22936/original/9gx25hpz-1367153254.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/22936/original/9gx25hpz-1367153254.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/22936/original/9gx25hpz-1367153254.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/22936/original/9gx25hpz-1367153254.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/22936/original/9gx25hpz-1367153254.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some Muslim countries do practice forms of gender separation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bismika Allahuma</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Separating culture and religion</h2>
<p>For most Muslims, however, such ideas have little to do with Islam and more to do with cultural factors. There are many religiously observant Muslim women who are very active in the community, and interact with men from all walks of life. </p>
<p>There are observant Muslim women academics, politicians, police officers, soccer players, factory workers and comedians, who see no difficulty - from an Islamic point of view - in doing what they do in mixed settings. </p>
<p>Neither the Qur’an nor Prophet Muhammad asked Muslims to keep women out of public view. Nor is there any religious requirement for gender separation when women and men are together in a public space, and certainly nothing to indicate that women should be relegated to the back of a facility.</p>
<p>More telling is that in the most sacred place on earth, the sacred mosque in Mecca, there is no separate section for men or women. Millions of Muslims visit the mosque and pray each year without the need to separate men from women. </p>
<p>In the second holiest place, Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in Medina, a part of the mosque proper is reserved (divided from front to back) for women and the other for men. Outside the mosque, in the large shaded courtyard, there are no separate areas for men or women. </p>
<p>If separation was such an important issue, it would have been maintained in the most sacred places of Islam.</p>
<h2>Religious freedom</h2>
<p>In Australia, a minority of Muslims do believe in separation, and as a society that respects people’s religious freedom we should perhaps accept that it is their right to that opinion. </p>
<p>In their own spaces, where there are men and women who share the view that such separation is important, they should have the right to follow what they consider to be important religious requirements. </p>
<p>However, the event at Melbourne University was held at an institution that is publicly-funded and where participants may have come from a range of Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds. As such, participants should be left to decide where they want to sit, regardless of their gender. </p>
<p>Historically, an important part of Islamic tradition has been respect for others. Muslims who live in a non-Muslim majority environment are to respect the right of others to hold different views and beliefs and to not attempt to impose their views on the majority. </p>
<p>Gender equality and associated values are fundamental to Australian society and those values must be respected by all, including those few Muslims who may not necessarily agree with them.</p>
<h2>A troubling development</h2>
<p>I find it very troubling that there are some who feel that they have a right to send women, whether Muslims or not, to the back of a lecture theatre as though this was the most natural place for women in such a setting. </p>
<p>For the men who organise public events to require women participants to go to the back of the facility is a breach of trust and a misuse of the facilities of the university.</p>
<p>It is also demeaning to women. I’m sure most Australian Muslims would also be deeply offended by such practices and would indeed question the connection between the practice and their understanding of Islam.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abdullah Saeed is Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies and Director of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne.</span></em></p>
Last week, there was a troubling news item about possible gender-based “segregation” at an event held at the University of Melbourne. The event was held by an external Muslim group, on the university campus…
Abdullah Saeed, Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/13774
2013-04-28T10:54:29Z
2013-04-28T10:54:29Z
Clash of principles, not cultures, in Islamic lecture case
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/22928/original/qpty3cx8-1367135957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The University of Melbourne has come under fire over reports of gender segregation at a public lecture on Islamic culture.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">avlxyz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Last week The Australian <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/academic-calls-for-end-to-ritualised-humiliation/story-e6frfkp9-1226629597535">reported</a> that female attendees at a recent Islamic studies event held at the University of Melbourne had been directed to sit at the back of the lecture theatre, in breach of the principle of gender equity.</em></p>
<p><em>Yesterday opposition leader Tony Abbott accused the university of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/higher-education/campus-leaping-back-to-dark-age/story-e6frgcjx-1226630341152">leaping back to the dark ages</a> while the Minister for the Status of Women, Julie Collins, described the university’s approach as disappointing.</em></p>
<p><em>Here, University of Melbourne’s Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis responds to those criticisms. Further perspectives will be published over coming days.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Australian’s report on gender segregation during an event held at the University of Melbourne has provoked condemnation by politicians, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/higher-education/melbournes-hypocrisy-on-gender-naive/story-e6frgcjx-1226630187844">academics</a> and letter writers, all keen to defend Enlightenment values.</p>
<p>The facts of the case are simple. A community group booked a room at the university, after teaching hours, to run an event about Islamic issues. The group did not claim any association with the university. </p>
<p>In hindsight, the university poorly communicated its expectations when providing space on campus. Hiring venues is a commercial transaction. The university needs to ensure the law, and its own policies, will not be broken by activities on campus. The standard University of Melbourne venue hire rules took for granted, rather than spelled out, requirements for equality when people use a university location. This omission will be addressed.</p>
<p>I acknowledge the error, and do not support gender segregation at a public event on campus. Before the rush to judgement, though, the issue still raises an important question. When discrimination is at stake what matters is the rule of law – a point overlooked by the original article, and little discussed in the controversy that followed.</p>
<p>The religious nature of the campus meeting was advertised: an Islamic gathering to discuss and promote aspects of Islamic faith. </p>
<p>According to The Australian, signs directed women to one part of the room, and men to another. As the report acknowledges, this was not always followed – some chose mixed company.</p>
<p>The report did not indicate whether the signs were an instruction or, as others suggest, a courtesy to those whose beliefs require seating separated by gender. </p>
<p>Belief is the operative word. This meeting was a voluntary religious gathering.</p>
<p>The report in The Australian stresses gender segregation. It opens with criticism of “sexual apartheid” and attacks the university for failing to condemn the practice.</p>
<p>Neither the original report, nor subsequent opinion pieces, consider Australian law. Yet the Sex Discrimination Act (1984), Section 37.d <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/other/media/MLWS%20Commentary/Defamation%20commenary%20-%20Kayser,%20P/6164.htm?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=%22an%20act%20or%20practice%20that%20conforms%20to%20the%20doctrines,%20tenets%20or%20beliefs%20of%20that%20religion%22">is precise</a>: the prohibition on gender discrimination does not affect “an act or practice that conforms to the doctrines, tenets or beliefs of that religion”.</p>
<p>Segregation is controversial within the broader Islamic world. Only some Muslim adherents see separation by sex as intrinsic to their faith – but for them, such segregation is a religious obligation.</p>
<p>Despite the one-dimensional commentary on the Melbourne meeting there is not one principle at stake but two – gender segregation, and the right to religious practice enshrined in Australian law.</p>
<p>When Tony Abbott finds it “absolutely extraordinary that a great liberal institution would take a huge leap back into the dark ages”, he defends liberalism by ignoring other liberal values such as tolerance and freedom of assembly.</p>
<p>Dr Jennifer Oriel <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/melbournes-hypocrisy-on-gender-naive/story-e6frgcjx-1226630187844">condemns any exemptions</a> for religious practice on campus. She knows this would close down Islamic prayer rooms at universities if they involve facilities separated by gender – even when such arrangements are entirely lawful.</p>
<p>Universities are committed to equality in everything from student selection to employment. They obey and promote the law on discrimination.</p>
<p>But a university must be careful when imposing its preferences on students, staff or community who rent a room on campus to hold a meeting.</p>
<p>If an activity is expressly protected under Australian law, the rationale for any ban must be articulated with care. Democratic liberalism accepts that others see the world differently, and are entitled to act on their beliefs provided no harm follows.</p>
<p>Both gender equality (<a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a2">article 2</a>) and a right to “religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance” (<a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a18">article 18</a>) are enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.</p>
<p>The controversy at the University of Melbourne is a clash of principles, not just a case of discrimination. It is neither naive nor hypocritical for the university to weigh morality, the law, and the liberal ethos of campus life when deciding whether to make facilities available. </p>
<p>Faced with contending values, there is no simple calculus to decide that one principle must be absolute. Equality of the sexes is a key value – and so is toleration of religious practice. Any response requires a reasoned conversation about how best to work with these competing principles. </p>
<p>If those who criticise the university believe no gender segregation is ever acceptable, even among faith communities, let them argue so explicitly – and argue why this is a defensible imposition on personal rights. In such a debate, the location on a campus is irrelevant.</p>
<p>Had university rules been communicated more effectively, the Islamic group may have taken their meeting elsewhere. Even so, they deserve the same respect and consideration our society extends to other religious practices. This controversy would be well served by more reflection before the pious media releases and cries of outrage. Intolerance can cut more than one way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glyn Davis is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.</span></em></p>
Last week The Australian reported that female attendees at a recent Islamic studies event held at the University of Melbourne had been directed to sit at the back of the lecture theatre, in breach of the…
Glyn Davis, Professor of Political Science and Vice-Chancellor, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/3350
2011-09-20T20:41:46Z
2011-09-20T20:41:46Z
Eugenics in Australia: The secret of Melbourne’s elite
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/3752/original/Flickr_Science_Museum_London.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=39%2C72%2C951%2C705&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Francis Galton pioneered the concept of eugenics in this lab in London in the late 19th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Science Museum London</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eugenics — the science of improving the race —was a powerful influence on the development of Western civilisation in the first half of the twentieth century. And Melbourne’s elite were among its chief proponents.</p>
<p>In this period all the institutions and practices of modern societies came into being and eugenics played an important role in moulding them.</p>
<p>As the home of the Australian federal government in the early decades of the twentieth century, Melbourne was the ideal place for activists wishing to pursue a national eugenic agenda. </p>
<h2>The role of the University of Melbourne</h2>
<p>An important leader of this loose alignment of like-thinking middle class academics and doctors was the Professor of Anatomy at Melbourne University from 1903 to 1929, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/berry-richard-james-arthur-5220">Richard Berry</a>. His influence extended beyond the university, which still has a building bearing his name, to some of the most important members of the city’s society.</p>
<p>Although there was a short-lived Eugenics Education Society, until the founding of the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973082/pdf/eugenrev00224-0033.pdf">Eugenics Society of Victoria</a> in 1936 eugenicists operated primarily as a pressure group within the university, the education department and various government agencies and committees.</p>
<h2>Legalising eugenics</h2>
<p>Important legislation, in the form of three Mental Deficiency Bills,<a href="http://mlsv.org.au/files/1939-1941/28th%20September%201940,%20The%20Treatment%20of%20Mental%20Deficiency%20in%20Victoria%20by%20Guy%20Springthorpe,%20M.R.C.P.%20.pdf"> was presented to the parliament</a> in 1926, 1929 and 1939 by the <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/argyle-sir-stanley-seymour-5049">Premier Stanley Argyle</a>, a friend and colleague of Berry. </p>
<p>The bill aimed to institutionalise and potentially sterilise a significant proportion of the population - those seen as inefficient. Included in the group were slum dwellers, homosexuals, prostitutes, alcoholics, as well as those with small heads and with low IQs. The Aboriginal population was also seen to fall within this group. </p>
<p>The first two attempts to enact the bills failed not due to any significant opposition but rather because of the unstable political climate and the fall of governments. </p>
<p>The third in 1939 was passed unanimously, but not enacted in the first instance because of the outbreak of war and, later, due to the embarrassment of the <a href="http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007062">Holocaust</a>. </p>
<p>Other state parliaments were inspired to also institute such legislation by Berry’s many town hall lectures across the nation.</p>
<p>Important national <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/23788117?searchTerm=&searchLimits=l-title=The+Mercury+%28Hobart%2C...%7Ctitleid%3A10%7C%7C%7Cl-decade=192%7C%7C%7Cl-year=1925">Royal Commissions in the 1920s</a> also recommended a range of eugenic reforms including measures relating to child endowment, marriage laws and pensions. </p>
<h2>National survey</h2>
<p>Perhaps the culmination of all this activity was the commissioning of a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10314610802663027#preview">national survey of mental deficiency</a> by the Federal Minister for health, Sir Neville Howse, in 1928. </p>
<p>It was carried out by Berry’s colleague, the Chief Inspector for the Insane in Victorian <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jones-william-ernest-6882">William Ernest Jones</a>. In it, he claimed that the statistics collected showed the incidence of mental deficiency was rising, mainly due to genetics, and was more often found in the working class. He concluded that it required urgent government action along the lines previously championed by Berry. It was tabled before parliament and created a sensation in the press. </p>
<p>Little happened, however, as the government fell and the <a href="http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/great-depression">Great Depression</a> hit the nation. The Director of the Department of Health, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cumpston-john-howard-lidgett-5846">John Cumpston</a>, claimed that the dire financial situation destroyed any chance of such a reform.</p>
<h2>Eugenics in education</h2>
<p>Another important influence of eugenic thinking was found in the development of post-primary education in Victoria. </p>
<p>The most important educationalists involved in the radical developments in the development of secondary and technical schools in Victoria were either active in eugenic circles or closely associated with Berry. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most influential, the first director of education, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tate-frank-8748">Frank Tate</a>, was associated on most important government bodies with Berry and strongly supported his research on head size and, on occasions, introduced his public lectures. </p>
<p>Others, such as the <a href="http://www.acer.edu.au/library/who-was-cunningham">first Director</a> of the Carnegie funded Australian Council for Educational Research, Kenneth Cunningham, as well as one of the most significant early psychologists, Chris McRae, published research claiming to show that working class children were unfit for academic secondary education and the university study that it led to. </p>
<p>McRae replicated in Melbourne suburbs research carried out in a variety of different socio-economic suburbs of London. He subsequently reported in the <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1596823">Victorian Education Gazette</a> (sent out to every state school primary teacher) that those in schools in poorer suburbs “will never go to university and should not follow the same curriculum … people live in slums because they are mentally deficient and not vice-versa”. </p>
<p>As a consequence, in this period the Victorian Education Department set up technical schools in the poorer suburbs of Melbourne with just a few academic high schools. </p>
<p>In comparison, in New South Wales the Director of Education, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/board-peter-5275">Peter Board</a>, vigorously opposed such thinking and championed higher education opportunity for all. Many more state school children in New South Wales were given an academic secondary education and went on to university.</p>
<h2>The spread of the movement</h2>
<p>Richard Berry returned to England in 1929 but
others took up the mantle, founding the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973082/pdf/eugenrev00224-0033.pdf">Eugenics Society of Victoria</a>. </p>
<p>Its membership read like a who’s who of Melbourne’s elite including the <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rivett-sir-albert-cherbury-david-8512">Chief Executive Officer</a> of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research — the precursor to the <a href="http://www.csiro.au/">CSIRO</a>, the <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/medley-sir-john-dudley-gibbs-jack-11101">Vice-Chancellor</a> of the University of Melbourne, the <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sewell-sir-sidney-valentine-8388">President</a> of the Royal College of Physicians and the <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/herring-sir-edmund-francis-ned-12626">Chief Justice</a> of the Supreme Court of Victoria.</p>
<p>Although the aims of the society included supporting the sterilisation of mental defectives, more and more they were involved in environmental reforms (such as slum clearance) and the birth control movement. </p>
<h2>Berry’s legacy</h2>
<p>In Britain Richard Berry continued to preach his uncompromising theory of “rotten heredity”. In 1934 he would argue that to eliminate mental deficiency would require the sterilisation of twenty-five per cent of the population. At the same time he also advocated the “kindly euthanasia” of the unfit.</p>
<p>But his legacy in Australia continued, with the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973082/pdf/eugenrev00224-0033.pdf">Eugenics Society of Victoria</a> operating until 1961. </p>
<p>Although Melbourne may wish to forget its dark past, the powerful leaders of the eugenics movement once controlled the city, and their beliefs influenced a generation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/3350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ross L Jones receives funding from ARC. </span></em></p>
Eugenics — the science of improving the race —was a powerful influence on the development of Western civilisation in the first half of the twentieth century. And Melbourne’s elite were among its chief…
Ross L Jones, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in History, University of Sydney
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