Not only does QUT Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake apparently think that humanities and social science are an unnecessary piece of flim-flam for a real world institution, he seemingly also completely fails to grasp the value of freedom of speech. I was critical, in an earlier post, of the actions of QUT academics John Hookham and Gary MacLennan in attacking a PhD student’s thesis (then titled Laughing at the Disabled) in the pages of The Australian. I still think their actions were wrong, both in terms of how the student was treated and in using his thesis as a pretext for a beat-up about the evils of post-structuralism. However, suspending those two academics for six months without pay seems a totally over the top reaction. QUT appears determined to trash its own reputation, and to act in any fashion other than what would be reasonably expected from a university.
Andrew Bartlett has a must read and comprehensive post including links to the extensive discussion of this affair on YouTube. Andrew’s conclusion:
I still believe that suspending people for six months without pay for being publicly critical is excessive and very dangerous. I’m sure QUT didn’t like being criticised so publicly and harshly, or the people behind the thesis, but it’s hard not to get the feeling that all academics are being sent the very strong message that academic freedom of speech and debate ceases to apply when it comes to any criticism of one’s own University, and presumably their funding sources and opportunities too. As the Courier-Mail editorial notes, it will make every academic think twice before speaking out.
Update: It’s been pointed out to me via email that Coaldrake hasn’t actually justified the decision of the disciplinary tribunal in detail. If it is the case that there are other grounds than those that are apparent from the reaction from Hookham and MacLennan, then the onus really is on him to specify what those are. A bit of transparency might help unravel this whole affair.
Further update: More comment from John Quiggin. Peter Black rounds up the links around the blogosphere.
The Australian reports today:
TWO academics suspended from Queensland University of Technology have been warned they may face possible further misconduct charges.
Another update: The comments on the Courier Mail blog’s post on this issue are well worth a read.
as someone noted over on Andrew’s site
Yeah, I know, barry, and as I said, I don’t resile from my criticism of their article and its motivation and effects. But I still think that Andrew is quite right about the message this sends in terms of chilling freedom of debate, and I also think this sort of penalty is completely over the top.
Is there anything else going on at QUT that would make management want to ensure internal critics were silenced?
That seems to be the intent of the estimated $40,000 fines.
The farce goes on. Everything I’ve read about this debacle has reinforced my initial assessment: the original project was almost completely devoid of academic merit; senior staff were justified in expressing their concerns about it, and how it might reflect on the university; and that QUT has handled the situation very badly. Continues to do so.
With Gary MacLennan and John Hookham now effectively dismissed, I dare say that for amost everyone in the higher ed sector the message is loud and clear: keep your mouth shut. If you have any concerns about how he got that grant from the VC’s discretionary fund, why her university vehicle is being driven by her son, or whether your job - your school - your faculty - will still be around in six months … keep them to yourself.
There has been a lot of support from some individuals in the CI Faculty over the years simply because Gary and John disagree. Why would anyone think that QUT would discourage the debate of ideas? It’s a strange suggestion.
What is at stake is the senior academics’ treatment of a student. The university received a formal complaint and it was processed according to their Manual of Policies and Procedures (MOPP). An independent panel found that the senior lecturers had breached the QUT Code of Conduct, hence the suspensions.
Update: It’s been pointed out to me via email that Coaldrake hasn’t actually justified the decision of the disciplinary tribunal in detail. If it is the case that there are other grounds than those that are apparent from the reaction from Hookham and MacLennan, then the onus really is on him to specify what those are. A bit of transparency might help unravel this whole affair.
“I dare say that for amost everyone in the higher ed sector the message is loud and clear: keep your mouth shut.”
I don’t think that’s the message I’m getting. Rather, as a student, I’m now feeling quite safe from public humiliation at the hands of senior academics who disapprove of my arguments.
hmmm, a better response would have been to allow the student to defend his or her own work, and for the university to help the student do this, rather than punish ’senior academics’ for being teh peanut. as a student, i would’ve enjoyed demonstrating how retarded some ’senior academics’ actually are. lol.
you know, clean out the dead wood, etc. an intellectual war would be fun to fight. Make the ’senior academics’ realise that as a young, casually-employed, zero-reputation scholar I have nothing to lose. If they have any brains at all then this should make them feel the opposite of safe.
All they have (or had) is their institutional position which from all accounts is not very safe at all, and their reputations (social and cultural capitals, etc) as scholars. Jobs come and go but from the outside looking in it seems as if a reputation is exceptionally hard to forge and maintain. QUT should now discover this as an institution for the staff have worked hard to trash their institutional reputation for a whole generation.
Well said, Adam. As a social sciences postgraduate myself, I too believe that the spirit of free inquiry can only be served if I am exempted from criticism by force of law.
I’m looking forward to seeing the conservative commentariat now tie themselves in knots as they rally to defend Marxist MacLennan, and political correctness!
The world is turn’d upside-down.
As a former PR flack, this looks like a perfect-s***storm of issues:
1) The treatment of whistleblowers and conscientious objectors. The penalty MacLennan and Hookham have received amounts to a dismissal, but then they are no callow youths, and they have played this to the hilt with their original article in The Australian and subsequent YouTube videos.
I have no doubt that they were sincere in their original criticisms, and that they were acting on a matter of conscience. However, rather than quietly resigning their positions as conscience would dictate, they chose instead to publicly state their lack of confidence in the institution that employed them.
Which is understandable. If your position has become untenable, you can either go quietly or you can go out in a blaze of publicitly, attracting a great deal of public sympathy for the issue to which you would like to draw attention. They chose the latter path - I believe knowingly.
And the News Ltd machine will now grind into action to defend politically correct attitudes towards persons with disabilities, and to defend an unreconstructed Marxist. Amazing.
2) Academic freedom. I don’t think academic freedom has been damaged by the heavy-handed penalty dished out to Hookham and MacLennan. It was already damaged when they went public with their remarks in The Australian.
They went out of their way in that article to stress that they weren’t attacking Michael Noonan, but rather the ethics committee and the PhD supervisors at QUT. Well gee. The effect is the same: they managed to bring the fear of Murdoch onto every postgrad candidate in the country.
Academic freedom is necessary to encourage new research and innovation. It is not a plaything with which established greying professors can indulge their consciences in public. But that is how Hookham and MacLennan used it.
Because it will take a very brave postgrad student now to attempt controversial research. Why would you take the risk when you know your early-draft work could be held up to public ridicule before it’s had the benefit of internal review and fine-tuning?
Hookham and MacLennan are now reaping the whirlwind they sowed. It’s a terrible outcome for them, for QUT, for Michael Noonan, for academic freedom, for whistleblowers everywhere, and most of all, for the needs and interests of persons with disabilities.
There’s nothing ‘legal’ about it, though. It’s an intra-institutional decision, and a legitimate one. When work is published or becomes available to the public, I think that just about any sort of public criticism would be acceptable. Until that time, university staff should be protecting their students.
Further update: More comment from John Quiggin.
A couple of points:
- I cant believe the student’s project passed the internal ethics process in the first place. Shows a woeful decline in academic standards (leaving aside whatever one thinks of po-mo, po-stru “play” etc)
- I tend to agree MacLennan (who I disclose I know), and Hookham (who I dont) went beyond the bounds with public critique. The issue to me hear is that a PhD student should be counselled, educated in research ethics, and encouraged - not publicly assailed. I see academic freedom as a secondary consideration at this point.
- However, being sacked for 6 months has effectively made it one of academic freedom. The lack of transparency about the reasons for the extraordinary assault on rtwo staff members is gravely worrying. Partiuclarly as Mclennan is a union activist who has been getting up Coaldrake’s nose for 10 years. SI he ebing silenced? Why no dislcousre of the full case against him? Its look very suspicious to me - and may even amount to unlawful dismissal (and no, I dont mean ‘unfair’).
- Frankly, if it goes to court, I would fully expect QUT to lose on availbale evidence. Mayb e thats why they are playing the cards close - expecting a challenge.
Even if their whistleblowing was incorrect, I think the outcome of this case is worrying, because it undermines the principle of whistleblowing, which is an important safeguard.
I hope that they complained through the normal channels first before going to the media.
Whether or not the video was ethical depends on whether the learning-disabled performers were being intentionally funny, and whether the audience was laughing at their intended humour, or at anything about them that they found funny, but wasn’t intended by the performers. As someone said above, a black person telling black jokes is OK, but a white person telling black jokes may not be. Insider humour is always better anyway.
Everyone:
Why all the fuss? Is this QUT actually a university? After all, in giving their Arts/Humanities the chop they’ve certainly put their status as a university in very serious doubt. And if they are not a university then why do we persist in referring to their employees/contractor as academics ….. and why then are we so concerned about academic freedom in such a workplace? We don’t worry about academic freedom in a factory or department store or fast-food outlet, do we?
IMHO, academic freedom of expression - and the freedom to critcize what is expressed - together form a cornerstone of our civilization.
I wonder how much underlying personality clash and corporate in-fighting preceded this particular issue? Just wondering, that’s all?
I’m wonderig why we haven’t heard from the NTEU about this.
Although I agree with LE, if the project is as objectionable as all that it should not have cleared ethics approval in the first place (and it’s not unknown for ethics approval to be granted where it obviously shouldn’t be.) But still. Six months’ suspension. That really is beyond the pale.
That’s why I’m wondering if there’s more to it than meets the eye.
There could be. It does look a bit like the university could be using this as an excuse to get rid of two people who have a history of being annoying. Even if that’s not what happened, the appearance of it is a bad thing.
I have found the original charges against Hookham and MacLennan here.
I’m not sure about the legalities of of Hookham and MacLennan releasing the charges themselves, but since they’re online, they’re open for comment.
On my initial reading of the charges, the whole furor seems to have erupted as a result of some personal dispute between Hookham Maclennan and Alan McKee.
McKee is the one of the supervisors of the PhD student, and from his previous work (eg his promoting the benefits of using legal pornography) certainly no stranger to controversy. Which makes it strange that he should take offense at something Hookham Maclennan may have said at the confirmation hearing (but, of course, I wasn’t there, though I suspect that the arguments may have become very personal).
As for academic freedom: surely one has to be an academic first? Because the PhD candidates main superviosr is someone called Associate Professor Geoffrey Portmann, who has no academic qualifications. He was the ex-head of comedy at ABC television, known for being the exec producter of “MOther and Son”, but equally well known for not seeing the potential in a comedy series now known as “Kath and Kim”. (Which only goes to show that comedy is in the eye of the beholder/ear of the listener).
Portmann was appointed to QUT (with an Associatate Professorship) by the ex-dean of the newly created Creative Industeis Faculty to jumpstart QUT’s TV degree, of which I understand ALan McKee is the coordinator of.
Even at QUT i suspect that one cannot have a non-Academic supervising a PhD student without someone like McKee (who has a PhD) on board.
Having come from a so-called ‘real university’ , QUT seems to be a place that’s reverting back to it’s old QUeensland Institute of Technology days where perhaps training was more important than such non-tangibles as ‘academic freedom” or “theoretical justifications”. (Perhaps in a place that’s reverting back to it’s QIT days a postmodernist like McKee fits into the flux better than in a place like the University of Qld, where I’ve head McKee didn’t have a great deal of support from fellow academics).
THE AUSTRALIAN: Higher Education
June 12, 2007
Academics banned ‘for their behaviour’
by Brendan O’Keefe and Andrew Fraser
TWO Queensland University of Technology academics suspended for six months were banned because of their behaviour and not for publicly criticising a PhD student’s film that makes fun of disabled people.
Creative industries lecturers Gary MacLennan and John Hookham have been suspended without pay for six months.
QUT vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake told The Australian the two were suspended because a staff member and a student had complained about their behaviour. A committee headed by former industrial relations commissioner Barry Nutter upheld the complaints.
At the centre of the dispute is a film by PhD student Michael Noonan originally called Laughing at the Disabled: Creating Comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains, but since changed to Laughing with the Disabled.
Dr MacLennan was charged with abusing Mr Noonan at the confirmation hearing for the PhD project on March 20.
The charge reads: “You directed personal abuse at Noonan by stating to him in a raised voice words to the following effect: ‘I have a handicapped child and I pray to God that my child never comes into contact with someone like you’.”
The two also wrote an article for the Higher Education supplement of The Australian, in which they are charged with having “attacked Noonan and his thesis in a way that misrepresented Noonan’s work”.
In a submission to the QUT disciplinary panel, Dr MacLennan wrote: “When the university chose to confirm and give ethical approval to a project which sought to … expose the disabled to mockery, it was the darkest hour of my career.” He was shocked by the sentence: “I don’t think the charges warrant a $40,000 fine (in lost salary).”
The Australian reports today:
Yes, sounds more and more like a general witchhunt, on a pretext to thin too justify sacking.
I predict QUT will end up paying damages to these two, and further damage their reputation as a
TAFE, I mean, NEWNIVERSITY, or whatever they are.There is such a cynicism about the procedures that QUT, and every university, has in place to deal with exactly these kinds of matters when they arise. Why is no credit given to those ethics and complaints processes, and the people who implement them?
I do think that part of the accusation of ‘cover-up’ on behalf of QUT, and Coaldrake specifically, arises from the difference in visibility between the public media campaign of Hookham and MacLennan and the less public administrative process undertaken by the complainants and the university.
Kirsty, I think that QUT have handled this pretty badly from a PR pov. It’s becoming clearer to me that there are more issues at stake than the free speech one, but that really doesn’t come across from the way QUT have characterised their actions. Even aside from the campaign being conducted on YouTube and elsewhere, they must surely have anticipated that since MacLennan has a fairly high profile in Brisbane, there’d be a fair bit of coverage of this story.
Another update: The comments on the Courier Mail blog’s post on this issue are well worth a read.
ps Alan McKee makes no bones about the fact that he didn’t fit in at UQ, but it was a case of a television scholar being in a school where literature is the dominant focus. He resigned a tenured position to relocate to QUT which is more aligned to his research interests, and yes, his outgoing, demonstrative personality. Don’t you believe that there’s no postmodern relativism at UQ. There is, thank goodness.
I get the impression, Kirsty, that there’s a lot of intra-Faculty politics mixed up in all this.
Kim, I think it’s clear there is more to this. Since it’s been said on the Courier Mail site, well there is a long history of this kind of behaviour from Hookham and MacLennan.
It’s a difficult situation because I’m fairly sure that many people advocating for Hookham and MacLennan over the case of their suspension without pay would certainly not condone the long history of abuses that may or may not also be informing the suspensions. The system has worked well for these men in the past and now it isn’t.
On the one hand I agree that only the facts of this complaint should bear upon their suspension, but purely on a theoretical level. If the accumulated context is taken into account then a much different picture emerges. It’s a question of which ethical model you are more convinced by. The trouble is that the model that takes account of only the case at hand would allow MacLennan and Hookham to cynically manipulate the system and continue their behaviour unchecked, but with a renewed sense of completely unwarranted moral certainty.
I think that’s the problem here, Kirsty.
QUT might be well advised, just as a matter of natural justice, to proceed against Hookham and MacLennan on other charges rather than letting perceptions of their (alleged) past behaviour colour the response to this affair. They appear to be doing that now. But there’s a structural contradiction shaping how this story gets reported - QUT can’t make public internal disciplinary proceedings fully for obvious reasons of confidentiality and ethics, as well as legal considerations, but Hookham and MacLennan can conduct their campaign in public.
Kristy,
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my cynicism towards QUT’s procedures and the involvement of the Chancellery in that comes from experience. As a soon-to-be Arts graduate, I’ve spent the last couple of months (though it feels like longer, since I’ve had to squeeze finishing my degree in there), being subjected to the ‘procedures’ set out in MOPP for ‘change management’ with regard to the disintegration of the School that houses my degree, and the degrees therein. That ‘procedure’ involves getting updates from The Courier Mail, and no direct consultation between the Chancellery and students until 6-8 weeks after we get that information from The Courier Mail, wherein that ‘consultation’ involves having the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) stand in a room with students and directly insult every single student who had anything to say, say that he’s closed 3 schools in the last 18 months without challenge as though that’s some kind of justification (sounded more like a bullying tactic, to me), and repeat talking points rather than answer questions. All the while repeating ad naeseum that he’s “listening”. That he’s “consulting” with us.
Why exactly should I trust any other part of MOPP to be fairer, or trust that the Chancellery is any fairer in its implementation elsewhere?
The DVC(A) was ’sad’ about students’ cynicism in that meeting. I’m sad that I have cause to be cynical, because I can’t be so optimistic and trusting, especially when QUT and Peter Coaldrake are involved.
I see this as a student welfare issue, and ill-advised handling of the PR aside, there is an enormous power differential between the academics in question and the student whose work has been attacked - in public or otherwise. These kinds of processes exist to deal with those power differences, ensuring they aren’t abused. Abuse of power in relation to a student should be a sackable offense, but this has produced only a suspension. The exaggerating elements here are that this has all happened in the context of a controversial media intervention, and at a university that itself has been no stranger to controversy recently.
Has anyone considered the possibility that the academics in question initially broke out of the institutional frame in anticipation of the complaints process or its outcome? After all, the confrontation that is cited happened before the newspaper piece appeared.
Kim:
Yes, it does seem to have an old familiar ring to it.
Kirsty:
I agree with you …. but it may be that people see it as similar to anti-plagiarism measures - they look terrific on paper; perhaps less terrific out in the real world.
I’m aware this is not relevant to the QUT incident, but ethics committees are not infallible as anyone who remembers the scandal over the La Trobe-led longitudinal study on health and relationships will acknowledge. Radio National did a story about it:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2006/1680645.htm
MacLennan and Hookham have been quick to exploit the new online environment of the Web 2.0 — for them, blogs and youtube and the online murdoch press must seem like godsends.
I’d bet QUT’s Creative Industries thought they had MacLennan and Hookham in the bag for an alleged vilification of a postgrad student — surely a clear-cut case of abuse of power and breach of QUT’s code of conduct.
But in their haste to go after them, QUT’s Vice-Chancellor Coaldrake seems to have played into the hands of H and M in that he failed to appreciate that in the court of public opinion, issues such as academic freedom don’t rate all that highly (if at all) with the non-academic readers and writers of the online newspaper bloggers in Brisbane, and elsewhere. Online forums and blogs have pasted Coaldrake and QUT, both at home and overseas over the alleged abused of “the disabled”.
Reading MacLennan’s defense (on an Irish webblog) against the charges brought against him, I cannot but be impressed by the emotive manipulation of the text; and can almost visualise Coaldrake seething at receiving this kind of reply. And now the rest of the world knows about it as well. What’s Coaldrake to do? He knows he can’t get on a blog somewhere and respond.
QUT and Coaldrake must be aware by now (although probably too late) that the online environment has to be conquered to win this case in the court of public opinion. QUT’s response is being watched by an international audience. It’s like watching a head-on collision between two cars, fascinating but horrific at the same time. Frankly, I think Coaldrake along with QUT and the Creative Industries Faculty are going to come of this badly injured, though they’ll survive, perhaps by handing over a scapegoat or two to the blogging mob: if I was one of the PhD’s candidates supervisors, I’d be more a little worried about this.
New precedents are being set here. That has me worried.
Spot on, Gavin.
I was saying to a colleague yesterday that this (on top of the humanities axing) is a PR disaster for QUT, and particularly, Coaldrake. It’s surprising that some of the new media PR expertise that QUT is meant to be on top of isn’t being utilised.
Having worked at QUT from 1997 to 2004, I think it’s reasonable to say as well that a lot of fracture lines that were always evident are now tearing apart and coming into public view, though in a fairly distorted way, driven by the interests of the two parties.
On the merits of the case, I wholeheartedly endorse the original post here at LP - the article was an abuse of power against a postgrad, but making the decision appear as if it is an academic freedom issue is a terrible precedent. The fact is, everyone knows that there’s much more to this than meets the eye. But that isn’t being conveyed, and possibly can’t be.
The best solution is to remove the ‘U’ from QUT. It is not, and never has been a ‘university.’ It is TAFE at best. The sooner our tertiary institutions are de-Dawkinised the better off we all will be.
That goes double for every single Queensland institution that currently abuses the word “university,” including the one at St. Lucia.
Laura
Trust me. University “ethics committees” are invariably mere trojan horses for CultuStudi feminazi types. More about suppression and persecution, and yuppie career advancement than Aristotle or Augustine!
John, we’ve heard your culture wars talking points enough. Do you have anything constructive or responsive to add?
And I strongly doubt that a committee chaired by a retired Industrial Relations Commissioner has a secret “cultural studies agenda”. Or do you automatically object when you find that the committee also contains a woman and someone with a non Anglo surname?
Mark
And YOUR emphasis on the silenced ‘Other’ in my actual words is not a Culture War salvo?
No, I’ve been trying, but I can’t let it slide.
<pottymouth>
Are you out of your fucking mind, Greenfield? Have you ever actually interacted with an ethics committee? Perhaps looked at the forms, walked past the Research office at a university, I don’t know, caught the bus past the campus?
Most ethics committees barely acknowledge the existence of Humanities, let alone anything outside of statistical psych and medicine.
Come back when you’ve caught up with the universe the rest of us live in. You’re a fucking embarrassment to trolling.
</pottymouth>
Aristotle, Augustine and John Greenfield. The glorious light of Western knowledge is in safe hands!
In all seriousness, though, I do agree that there are problems with the QUT response, but they have been on the back foot on this. Hookham and MacLennan have created something of a shit-storm, and I don’t think any amount of PR knowledge can deal with such a thing effectively. Add to that issues over the changes to QUT humanities - which must also have informed the Hookham/MacLennan decision to ‘blow the whistle’ as a response to an impending complaints process - and you have a situation which, I suspect, only the arrow of time can deal with. They should be welcomed into the arms of the right-wing commentariat for their brilliant manipulation of so many different media contexts in the direction of the jerking knee. It should also be remembered that their own extra-institutional activities have turned a suspension - a reasonable outcome of student complaints process - into a de facto sacking.
Mark said to Greenfield:
Mark, I haven’t seen him offer anything constructive in the past, I’m not sure why he’d start now.
Some fine journalism from a UQ graduate. Do you think it’s a Brisbane thing?
_____________
Anger over UQ bid to cut Arts provision
Tess Livingstone and Michael Corkill
11 March 2006
The Courier-Mail
AT least 14 options will be cut from the list of topics from which University of Queensland Arts students can choose their majors.
The proposed changes have prompted the resignation of a senior professor and sparked a revolt among 70 staff concerned the Arts faculty will be reduced to “an also-ran”.
The Dean of Arts at the university, Professor Richard Fotheringham, has admitted that more than 14 majors could be cut from next year following a slump in enrolments….
Professor Fotheringham said the restructure was necessary due to low enrolment levels in Arts subjects and that no university could afford to fund subjects with poor attendance.
“All universities and in particular all humanities departments are finding it tough,” he said.
__________________
You assume that the problem is poor management, but the evidence around the country is that demand is falling quite steeply. This is confirmed by a number of people within the sector. The facts are that if demand drops steeply for a sustained period of time, any Faculty will be in serious trouble. It seems that students are not finding these kinds of degrees as attractive as they once might.
So Graham, although you might long for ye olde worlde of tweed jackets and newspapers in the staff club, those of us who work in universities these days have to deal with the now and the future. The careful monitoring of, and response to, student demand will always play a factor in ‘good management’. When demand is low, you have to stop that from being a drain on other areas. There simply isn’t enough money in the system at any level to prop up courses (indefinitely) which don’t have viable student loads. This is a reality that every academic is aware of and accepts.
Douglas:
My comment of 12:13am to which you responded seems to have disappeared. Never mind.
Your business approach is thoroughly plausible ….. and a load of cobblers. It is an approach that has corroded Australian education. What is needed is a fresh approach; not the stale old late 20th century mindset.
You said
and
These are effects. What are the causes?
It would be helpful if you look at previous comments before making assertions about student demand. The figures cited by the QUT Vice-Chancellor were wrong, and the claim that the School was making a loss was also wrong - it incorporated the overheads of the campus directorate and the School’s net financial position this year is actually positive. It’s an ideological agenda.
And I doubt the twenty staff who face redundancy are as complacent as you.
Nor, as Graham says, is it necessary to accept that the present quasi-market funding model is rational when subjects of arguably great importance to Australia’s interests - for instance Indonesian and South East Asian languages and history, or mathematics - find their offerings cut and staff sacked because of a dollars per bum on a lecture theatre seat funding model. In fact there is often a vicious cycle occurring where funding cuts make courses less attractive for students.
How many business graduates majoring in “management� (as opposed to say accountancy, finance, or economics) does this country need?
Anecdotal evidence: during my undergrad a couple of years ago I did a subject that used to be part of a three subject cluster in a social, political and historical stream. It was an anthropology subject about myth, and kind of sat there, out of place, among the other available options. I took it because I had no particular investment in making up a useful degree program, but if the other relevant subjects had not been cut already due to funding cuts I suspect it would have looked a lot more attractive to other students. I can only assume that it has disappeared now.
Kim wrote:
Glad you have such a confident assessment of the situation to pronounce it an ‘ideological agenda’! That’s a fairly big call to make, I’d have to say, and one that I would not level lightly myself.
Hearing you say that, I’m not confident you have the facts. Did you also get OP cut-offs, attrition and research performance figures to look at before you made that judgment? Obviously you are a supporter of the disciplines under threat and that is totally fine - everyone is an advocate in this system and in some ways that’s what makes universities good places to be. I think we’d all agree with that. But you might also argue that it is an ‘ideological agenda’ to continue courses which are, on standard measures, fundamentally un-viable. I don’t have a problem with that agenda, only it needs to be acknowledged as an agenda and the moral high ground isn’t so clear. After all, the biggest problem is that there is insufficient cash in the system and hard decisions need to be made or the whole lot starts to fall over (Newcastle anyone?). I do think, however, that there is a shift in demand whether you like it or not, but that’s a much bigger and more complex discussion.
As for people losing jobs, i am sympathetic… but…. having said that.. i think that the ‘job for life’ days are long gone in the university sector and this is a prospect that everyone needs to accept. I don’t have a problem with it myself. If i lost my job, I’d just look for one elsewhere and am confident that I could make myself useful in one way or another (either within or outside the university sector). Because my life doesn’t depend on a job for life, I am more relaxed about such things… We don’t want to live up to the stereotype of being people who are fundamentally unemployable in any other context. That’s a pretty disempowering image of ourselves to uphold. I am not frightened by this new world and am happy to move forward into it. I think stasis of the old world would bore me, quite frankly.
Douglas, if you’re interested in the figures, email me and I can send you the staff submission to the Academic Board. The courses are not “fundamentally un-viable”.
Adam Gall:
You said you had studied an anthropology subject on myth. At first glance, that would appear to be a thoroughly impractical subject …. but I’ll bet you got a lot more mileage out of that in the world of work than out of some of the other subjects in your degree program.
Douglas:
Nobody in their right mind would want a return to the bad old days of pampered bludgers loafing around universities wasting funds. However, going to the other extreme, as is happening at QUT and elsewhere, is just as bad.
The corporate world needs people with the skills gained in courses at faculties of Arts or Humanities or Classics as much as those gained in other faculties …. that need is not obvious to the inexperienced but it is real; it can be translated into profits and losses. One of the reasons Australian firms are so easy to screw is that although they may have brilliant MBAs and engineers on board, they rarely “waste their money” employing, for instance, Ancient History graduates to help them with Competitive Information despite the close match of skills needed in both fields …. nor will you find Classical Chinese Literature graduates on too many Australian business delegations to Korea, Malaysia, Japan or China.
As for costs: one remarkable Institute/”Faculty” I saw in a major trading country consisted of 1 x Professor, 1 x Librarian/Researcher/Factotum, 6 x postgrad Students in 2 x Rooms - that’s all! It was a solid core that just toddled along doing fine work until there was a sudden need for rapid, massive expansion ….. no panic …. just get more rooms, more material ….. and the Postgrad Students become lecturers …. easy. You can’t emulate them if you have already destroyed your supposedly inefficient faculty or department or whatever and have to start from scratch ….again And we are in the Clever?? Country?? Yeah, right.
L-O-L
“You said you had studied an anthropology subject on myth. At first glance, that would appear to be a thoroughly impractical subject …. but I’ll bet you got a lot more mileage out of that in the world of work than out of some of the other subjects in your degree program.”
My point was also about it’s isolation in the program because of funding cuts, making it less useful and of less potential interest to most students. The shtick about not being useful was more in the line of self-deprecation. You are right, though, that particular subject has served me very well indeed.
For anyone interested in an update on this topic, the following feature piece from Stuart Cunningham, which appeaed in The Courier-Mail on Friday 22 June, may be of interest. The link can be found at http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21944194-27197,00.html
Taking arts into digital era
Stuart Cunningham
June 22, 2007
QUEENSLAND University of Technology has been under the pump on more than one front in recent weeks.
Far from pure and simple
Readers of The Courier-Mail and viewers and listeners to local TV and radio could be excused for being concerned, not only over QUT’s regard for academic freedom and the humanities but also confused about how these matters are connected.
There has been much commentary on these matters – both locally and nationally – from supporters of the suspended academics, Dr John Hookham and Dr Gary MacLennan, and supporters of the continuation of School of Humanities and Human Services. Nothing less than the reputation of the institution is at stake.
Such institutions live and die on their reputations; these issues require serious consideration.
Hookham and MacLennan wrote a substantial article in The Australian newspaper recently accusing a doctoral student of a deeply offensive and unethical stance towards the disabled and argued that this was symptomatic of the cultural and ethical relativism engendered by postmodernism in the Creative Industries Faculty of which they are part.
The actual words they used to describe the student’s work were “misanthropic and amoral trash produced under the rubric of post-structuralist thought”.
About the same time, QUT proposed to close Humanities and Human Services, with Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake saying the humanities would continue at QUT in the shape of creative industries. Some of the debate has also focused on whether QUT’s creative industries is part of the humanities at all.
Is this managerial fiat riding roughshod over academic freedom while dispensing with pure humanities in favour of a postmodernist house of cards? It is time now to set the record straight.
The suspension of Hookham and MacLennan followed a unanimous finding by a properly constituted review that they had engaged in academic misconduct through abusive behaviour towards a student and his supervisors.
QUT’s code of conduct states “academic staff members have the right to express unpopular or controversial views, but this does not mean they have the right to vilify, defame or intimidate”.
This was not the first time that Hookham and MacLennan had written a thoroughgoing put-down of the Creative Industries Faculty and all its works. In 2005, they published a long article in the national press saying that its governing philosophy was rotten to the core, its educational practices were suspect, its students were turned off, and even its precinct was a wasteland.
No matter how harsh staff or the university had thought this attack, it was treated as defensible as an exercise in academic freedom of speech.
What differentiated this latest attack was that it contained virulent criticism of a student for whom the university has a duty of care. This was not a case of academic freedom denied. It is a proven case of academic bullying and intimidation.
The proposal to close Humanities and Human Services has been portrayed as a worrying part of a trend toward further “marketisation” of higher education.
The pure humanities must be part and parcel of any higher education system. The values of independence of mind, critical thought and curiosity about the world, and the disciplines that teach them, must not be eroded by managerial fiat or postmodern relativism.
But there still must be a market for such “non-market” disciplines in any given university. That is to say, there must be sufficient students of sufficiently high entry score to justify offering such courses. This has not been the case at QUT for some time.
Universities must increasingly “choose their poison”. They must concentrate on their strengths and seek to complement each other in an overall higher education system. The old days of a small number of elite institutions offering all disciplines have long gone.
QUT’s philosophy is to embed pure disciplinary inputs into professional applications. The success of this approach in the Creative Industries Faculty is seen by the surge in demand when we first opened the faculty to new students in 2002 and it has remained high since.
Not everyone likes the Creative Industries project. Clearly, this includes Hookham and MacLennan, who appear uncomfortable with our desire to renew the arts for a contemporary digital age, and those who see it as a poor substitute for the pure humanities.
But our undergraduate student demand remains high because we offer a responsible balance between critical intelligence and preparation for professional practice. Our research student numbers have skyrocketed since the faculty started. Our research in applied humanities is nationally and internationally of the first order.
We must be doing something right.
Professor Stuart Cunningham is director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at QUT
In Cunningham’s article he’s quoted as saying
However, from a couple of sources who’ve seen the QTAC (Qld Tertiary Admissions Centre) first preferences for 2007 degrees across Qld tertiary institutions, it’s reported that first preferences for the Creative Industries Faculty’s general degree (the Bachelor of Creative Industries - Interdisciplinary) dropped in 2007 by as much as 25%, although the majors and BFA degrees seem to be holding their own.
It would be interesting to hear if this is, indeed, the case, because if it is, then how much spin has Cunningham inlcuded in the rest of his article?
Cunningham, like everyone one else involved directly or indirectly in this controversy — from QUT’s Vice Chancellor, Peter Coaldrake, down to the two suspended academics — continue to put spin on their public and not-so-public statements.
The more statements, claims, counter-claims, press releases, etc I read and view about QUT, the Creative Industries, Hookham and MacLennan, and the rest of it, the more frustrated and annoyed I’ve become with the whole darn thing. Perhaps many people have already tuned out to it all, moved on to ‘the next big thing’.
Disability community update
QUT dispute –Brian Laver in response to Prof Cunningham of QUT
Source: via this link.
It was good to see Prof Cunningham emerge from the shadows of the conflict that is wracking QUT at present. However his attempt to place into context the controversy surrounding the suspension of Drs Hookham and MacLennan is deeply flawed. To begin with he perpetuates the mistake made in American films about the Vietnam War. These films generally insist that the war was something that happened to America. Just so Cunningham insists that the Laughing at the Disabled controversy is something that is happening to QUT rather than something that QUT is doing to Hookham and MacLennan and the disability community.
Thus we are told that QUT is ‘under the pump’. Cunningham doesn’t even consider why this should be so. The recent demonstration outside the Administrative block of QUT was supported by members of the disability community. What other Australian university has ever faced a protest from the disabled?
Why were the disabled community protesting the suspension of Hookham and MacLennan? Cunningham will not even consider why. For he steadfastly refuses to engage with the detail and the context of this controversy.
[…]
However Cunningham does not tell us why QUT supported a project for profit which Hookham and MacLennan believed had at its core the ridiculing and mockery of the disabled. […]
There is total silence from the good professor on these issues. Yet he hastens to tell us that Hookham and MacLennan were found guilty by a ‘duly constituted review’. The general public may not be aware that this review was set up by the Vice Chancellor. He handpicked the Chair and the staff members. The VC also decided the penalty and there is no right of appeal. […] Certainly in this instance it has led to a verdict which has been described by a distinguished academic Prof Henningham in his resignation letter from QUT as being punitive in the extreme. Now Hookham and MacLennan’s legal team has learnt that the ‘duly constituted review’ of which Cunningham boasts has lost the vital record of its proceedings.
The truth is, if one could evoke such an old fashioned concept, that Hookham and MacLennan have been victims of ‘workplace mobbing’. This is the tried and true method of getting rid of one’s staff when they ostensibly have tenure. Interested readers should go to arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/mobbing where they will find details of the latest research on the topic. It is already clear that the case of QUT versus Hookham and MacLennan is destined to become a classic in the literature of how institutions trample on the rights of their employees.
[…]
It is true that as Cunningham points out they wrote another article in 2005 also critical of the manner in which the Creative Industries was being run. Does this mean that they are repeat offenders and should thus be punished severely? Is it a case of two strikes and you’re out at QUT? Cunningham assures us that he realizes that universities live and die by their reputation. He is correct and he should be very worried about QUT. One has only to go to youtube and watch what is being said about this controversy to realize that the university is destroying its own reputation. Of especial interest are the clips entitled ‘International students speak out against QUT’.
Cunningham concludes his article with the good news about research students etc at QUT and claims to be doing something right. He makes no mention of the ongoing budget crisis in the Creative Industries Faculty. He does not tell us of the lecturers who cannot go to overseas conferences because the university can only advance $2000 towards their expenses. He makes no mention of the recent review which told the faculty that it could only survive another two years in its current state. Nor does he remind us of how QUT which was once the Number One teaching institution in Australia has now slumped to 36th out of 37 universities in Australia.
[…]
Brian Laver, Director
Institute For Social Ecology
Ahimsa House, West End
.
Brian Laver is a long time campaigner for human rights. From the 1960s onwards he has promoted the right to free speech. He has lectured at Griffith University and the University of Queensland, and has frequently given guest lectures at QUT, a practice which he will not now repeat.
One of the tragedies of this situation is that progressive people who are committed to human rights have, very correctly, supported Gary and John in the face of obvious persecution and threats to academic integrity. However these radical people have consequently tended to support a most conservative and patronising attitude towards people with disability in the process - because such an attitude was the one articulated by Gary and John.
This is my critique of Gary and John’s artiicle.
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/laughing-at-the-disabled-power-perception-and-prejudice/
I stress that allthough I strongly disagree with their article, I believe it is essential that there is a public discussion on these issues rather than sweeping them under the carpet. Gary and John have made an important contribution to this public discussion.
John, that’s a fabulous argument.
Thanks very much for posting the link.
My review of “Unlikely Travellers”,
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/unlikely-travellers-movie-review/
Michael Noonan has released the controversial footage to the Courier mail who have put it on their website.
here is my take on the footage (including link to the CM site)
“Laughing at the “disabled”, Michael Noonan exposes his naughty bits”
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/laughing-at-the-%e2%80%9cdisabled%e2%80%9d-michael-noonan-exposes-his-naughty-bits/
This just sucks. I just don’t get Adam’s implication that academic freedom requires public silence. Yeah some people have more power to speak than others, but that’s just life. The dangers of going around sacking people for speaking their views exceed the dangers of the disproportionate power. What does the guy have to lose from public criticism anyway? Besides, if you go down the road of ‘we must clamp down on freedoms because the powerful have more ability to use them’ you can pretty much kiss good bye to any civil liberty in any area of society.
So he officially got disciplined for:
Whoops, that quote should have only gone for one paragraph.
That line on the Dixie Chicks video right below this thread seems to work well here too - “Freeom of spech is fine, as long as you don’t do it in public”.
The federal court case initiated by MacLennan and Hookham is, according to the judge, going to examine what a universtiy should or should not research.
Judicial control of academic research is a very dangerous outcome of a free speech campaign.
David, why do you think the project is “at least dicey” Did you look at the footage to reach this conclusion? (if not, check out my link above)
Or do you just believe there must be some mud sticking because so much mud was thrown?
John, the continuing point that cannot be settled by your neo-liberal commentary on ‘disability’ is that H&M were nobbled in an episode that is as shameful as it is telling for QUT. They cannot be institutionally punished for differing with you on these matters - if in fact there is much substance to this. They don’t want people with disabilities locked away in shelters and kept on a drip feed, and you do recognise the concept of exploitation and that it can even happen to people with disabilities. You differ over the doco and what it’s worth, so these categorical broadsides you have bought out again and again are beside the point, as I said to you months ago.
H&M cannot also not be (officially) punished for the Oz HES article, as it was not against the rules for them to publish it. However, given the thoroughgoing triviality of the charges against them, it’s hard to believe that they weren’t punished by any means at hand for the article. And if Noonan really is so hurt by all this, it’s worth noting that his fame and the criticism it brought him was caused by the suspensions- H&M got near no sympathy for the article. Unlike their previous needling of CI, which did get some sympathetic response, Philistines set most bloggers’ teeth on edge because it singled Noonan out. Philistines didn’t put H&M on the front page of the C-M, Noonan, MacKee and Coaldrake did that, and if that put a valuable progressive project or a vulnerable youngish PhD candidate or the autonomy of two men who have a disability under threat, then N, M&C have only themselves to look to.
John, you have complained that the debate has not been well informed, and who would argue? But whose choice was this? H&M didn’t even get a second viewing of the material until it went up on the C-M website. This has been a manufactured state of affairs leading up to the BIFF screening and subsequent release of the footage, which has in turn manufactured a platform for the candidate, who considers his treatment a human rights issue, to now play victim with a halfway smile. If he is as thin skinned as he has represented himself, then he might not be the best person to undertake a production which is bound to be controversial and establishes offense as an aim. It could have been hoped that he would get sound advice from his seniors on the project, something other than ’stomp the opposition’.
You said, John, that you thought the debate about disability raised by the film project should happen, was important, and should be informed. It’s a pity you couldn’t find a better running partner than Noonan, who has done everything conceivable to prevent this. He’s shown no interest in the dispute beyond defending his reputation and punishing critics. As it was his project, it was up to him to take responsibility for it and making sure that he engaged with such critics as were bound to emerge. Instead he was deeply complicit in the odious and more than faintly spurious disciplinary proceeding. That proceeding and the suspensions then became the issue, and the film bound to it. On the face of it, that was a disservice to the film, but as we now see, PR can fix near anything.
Hardly fair. See this:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22363115-25192,00.html