Cancellation

There is a lot of commentary about academics being cancelled for expressing their views, especially in the US where hundreds have been fired. But Australia is lucky to be a decade behind the US in many things. My experience is that academic cancellation is not something that currently is of major concern.

Case 1.

In February 2022, the University of Melbourne announced their honorary doctorates. I personally know (Sir) Peter Donnelly (left of photo) as I had the office next to him in Imperial College in 1987. What an over-achieving bastard! I also slightly know Allen Fels since he knew my Dad back in the day. I received the notification on LinkedIn about these honorary degrees and, upon scrolling the comments, found that most of them were aggressively denouncing the lack of gender balance in the award photo. They did not know the quality of the recipients but they were “pale stale males”. Rather than noting their achievements, the mob was just looking at their sex. This led to major University donors actually withdrawing funding as reported by the Guardian.

Well, it turned out that three female and one non-white awardee could not attend the photo shoot. The University pointed this out on LinkedIn soon after the controversy. At this point, I suggested to those commenters who had made incendiary comments that perhaps they should delete them or apologise. Unfortunately, UoM have deleted the LinkedIn thread, or at least I can no longer find it, so you cannot see exactly what I said.

One of the commenters, a low ranking general staff member of the University, took exception to me confronting the loud-mouthed activists and so decided to complain to the Vice Chancellor that I had been “trolling female commenters”, that this was inconsistent with the University’s values, and asked for an investigation into me. This complaint was then sent to our Dean, Ian Harper. I was sent a Please Explain email (which was not appreciated since I had Covid at the time) and asked to attend a meeting with Ian and the then Head of Department equivalent.

The upshot of the meeting was that my comments on LinkedIn were not deemed to be “trolling”.  The HoD even did a brief statistical analysis to see if my hostile comments were directed at female commenters more than males, and found little evidence based on raw counts. Taking into account the content of the comments, I think my focus was pretty clear. Anyway, the University found no reason to elevate the matter. So free speech won and the malevolent complainant lost.

Case 2.

In early 2023, I posted on FB about Australian Universities’ exposure to the Chinese market. The post is a combination of my personal experience of Chinese culture in HK with more general concerns about diversifying risk in the education sector.

Soon after there was a change.org petition suggesting I was a racist. I even became famous enough to be denounced by the main newspaper in Hong Kong which potentially made life hard for some of my friends there. The change.org petition had several score signatories and the University complaint had around 50 signatures, possibly including students that I had even taught.

My school was very insistent that I made no further statements on the matter. PR, sigh! But despite this I did give the SCMP a quote because I would not let them have the last or only word. A formal investigation from the University found that I had done nothing wrong. So free speech won and the malevolent complainant(s) lost.

Case 3.

In September 2023, the very partisan Vice Chancellor of University of Melbourne, Duncan Maskell,  sent the following email to all faculty in the University. This was forwarded to all Professors in my school by our Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning via the All Faculty email group. It read:

In recognition of the national debate underway regarding the Referendum to enshrine a Voice in the Australian Constitution, we are most conscious of the impact this debate is having on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. In this context, we will be enabling a provision for these students to receive Special Consideration. Your support in enabling this provision for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students within your faculty is most appreciated.

I considered this message ludicrous and posted about it on FB. Was there special consideration during the gay marriage debate? How about Ukrainian students in February 2022? We can possibly allow claims based on identity, but only on specific individual claims of trauma backed by a medical letter. So I also replied to the faculty email with the following cheeky response:

If any students who support the Melbourne Demons apply for special consideration then I, for one, will treat the application favourably! 

We had just lost to the Blues.

A couple of weeks later I receive an invitation from the Head of Department to discuss a complaint from an anonymous “colleague”. “They” were not happy with my equating reconciliation with sport. I put “they” in quotes because the school was not willing to say how many complaints they received, though I suspect it was only one. The obsession with confidentiality and protecting the complainant now extends to not even saying how many there are. Anyway, my response to the complainant, which I asked the school to relay to “them”, was as follows:

Let me clarify my intention, acknowledging that it is always a bad reflection on the comedian when he has to explain his joke.

My point was that it is never appropriate to give academic special consideration to an identity group based on public events we are all exposed to. Applications for special consideration should be based on individual circumstances only, and if the claim is trauma then it should be supported with the testimony of a mental health professional.

If for some reason a person had a real mental breakdown triggered by their football team’s loss, then this would indeed be a solid basis for special consideration. But just being a Demons supporter is not enough.

So the point was not to equate aborigines to football supporters but to give an even more ridiculous example of group based special consideration. Making a point with attempted humour does not mean that the issue is not taken seriously. As an academic I consider it my duty to oppose this policy. I hope this clarifies my intention.

The only ultimate censure I received was a personal email that stated: “The voice referendum is a very politicised issue so probably best not to make too many politically charged comments publicly due to heightened sensitivity.”

Needless to say, I do not agree and will not comply and made this clear to the school. The good news is that  nothing came of this bad-faith complaint, this anonymous activist who could not argue with me openly. So free speech won and the malevolent complainant(s) lost.

So in the end, I can say anything I want within reason but troublemakers can make trouble because they are encouraged to do so and face no consequences.

The general staff member from University or Melbourne chose to complain to the Chancellery rather than argue with me on LinkedIn. I wonder if the possibility of actually apologising for her premature criticism of the pale-stale-male honorary doctorate recipients ever swept across her limited mind. The Chinese nationalists could have added comments to my FB post. I would have gladly engaged. But they would rather try to get me fired, recruit the South China Morning Post to stoke further anti-western feeling in HK and hide behind the ludicrous rules around complaints that allow them to remain anonymous. And my toxic colleague who didn’t like my gentle joke about special consideration being approved on the basis of ethnicity could easily have hit reply all to the faculty email and given a counter-argument.

So my conclusion?

So far, Australia is safe and fears of woke mobs and cancellation are exaggerated. But the forces of darkness are arranging themselves for further assaults. So we should remain vigilant and keep warning our fellows of the dangers.

Which is the point of this post.