universities

The news that former federal education minister Simon ­Birming­ham vetoed several hum­anities research projects submitted to the Australian Research Council last year has sparked a flurry of protests by the academic Left. The real cause of the offence and outrage is because these academics have been outed to the public. Academics employed in hum­anities departments have cried that this was

A basic legal right is that if you are accused of something as serious as sexual assault, the case against you must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Australia’s universities are stripping away this basic legal right by determining such cases at the much lower threshold of the “balance of probabilities”. In August, the University of Sydney established a policy that

Two Ideas of a University Speech by Matthew Lesh, Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, to the University Chancellors Council’s Conference on University Governance, Adelaide, Australia, 4 October 2018 Thank you very much for the invitation to address this august gathering. In particular, I pay my tribute to Peter Shergold who graciously organised this session in the spirit

In 2017, following the wishes of the late Paul Ramsay, a businessman and philanthropist who made his fortune in the healthcare industry, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation was set up in Australia.  Paul Ramsay was deeply concerned that Australians are not being taught about Western Civilisation either at school or university. So he left part of his $3.4 billion

A series of leaked emails reveal the depths of prejudice and groupthink at Australia’s universities. In late May, Macquarie University academics were invited to a presentation by an Israeli. The first to respond, to the entire Faculty of Arts, was John Hunter, holder of the ‘Fellowship for Indigenous Researchers’. Hunter declared he would not attend because of ‘the Human Rights

Australia’s university regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, is not only failing to protect free intellectual inquiry but its ideologically driven interventions are part of the problem. Australia’s universities are facing a serious reputational crisis. The more universities become aligned with a single line of political thought, the more the community will wonder, rightly, why billions of taxpayer

The study of Western civilization in Australia is in crisis. This has come to light in the last few weeks following the Australian National University’s decisionto pull out from the partnership with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. University of Sydney historian Dirk Moses raises an interesting point when he declares that the problem is declining enrolments in the Bachelor of Arts in Australian

These days, whenever a local council comes up with a lunatic idea that bewilders ordinary Australians, you can be guaranteed that there is a university behind it. Last month the Herald Sun reported that Manningham and Melbourne City Councils were going to remove from their respective kindergartens, schools and libraries all books and toys deemed to enforce gender stereotypes. The

ONE can only assume that the people from the University of Sydney Union responsible for writing and imposing the new gender and diversity quotas on the Debating Society have not met the women that this is supposed to ‘help’. Women in debating do not need a leg up or your pity. As someone who competed at a state level in high school

It’s almost budget time. That means that every rent-seeker in the country is off to Canberra with their begging bowl: Please Mr Morrison can we have some more? To be fair to Morrison there are an infinite number of worthy causes calling out for increased expenditure. Take national security, for example. We live in a dangerous world where any number