En Passant

This dark environment at Universities is the consequence of the ongoing and deepening commodification of higher education, a process both major parties have been deeply involved in. When your Grundnorm is profit, ideas which challenge that, however expressed, are a threat to the very essence of the machine that is now the University sector. That machine is destroying the University as the seeming bastion of difference and the dissemination of often currently unconventional and unpopular ideas. To defend academic freedom we must defend Martin Hirst.

  In Independent Australia today, I discuss the suppression of free speech behind the recent suspension of academic Roz Ward. I say among other things: ‘Ward has clearly adversely affected the university but only if your criteria for judgement is a reactionary newspaper like The Australian. The Vice-Chancellor’s actions are entirely consistent with a profit model […]

The following is a statement by the Victorian branch of the National Tertiary Education Union on La Trobe University’s shocking decision to suspend Roz Ward for a Facebook post that the Australian flag is racist. Roz has been a key person in the Safe Schools anti-bullying campaign for school students. The Murdoch owned Australian newspaper has run a witch hunt against her for her Marxist views, all with the aim of destroying Safe Schools which teaches respect and understanding for LGBTIQ students. McCarthyism is alive and well in Australia and La Trobe University’s decision is yet another example.