Top Three Lefty Unis

From the sandstones to the concrete monstrosities, Australia's university students are returning to lecture halls and classrooms in coming weeks.  This provides an opportune time to ask:  are our publically funded universities adequately guarding freedom of expression?  Are our universities allowing the voicing of competing perspectives in the pursuit of knowledge and truth?

My Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017 found, from analysis of over 165 policies and actions, mounting evidence of censorship.  Thirty-four of Australia's 42 universities are hostile to free speech, seven threaten free speech, and just one, the University of New England, supports free speech on campus.  From violent protests against speakers, to university policies that prevent hurt "feelings", the atmosphere on campus is often not friendly to freedom.

Some universities are standouts — and not in a good way.  As found by the Free Speech on Campus Audit, here are, in reverse order, Australia's "top" three worst campuses for free speech:

3. JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY

   James Cook University's treatment of Professor Peter Ridd is, quite frankly, embarrassing.  The hounding of a professor for discussing science belongs more to the time of Galileo than to modern Australia.  Last year, Ridd appeared on Sky News with Alan Jones to talk about the IPA's book, Climate Change:  The Facts 2017.  "The science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions and the fact is I do not think we can any more," Ridd said in relation to science about the Great Barrier Reef.

   For these comments Ridd was given a "Final Censure" and gag order that would prevent him from making these sorts of comments in future.  Ridd refused to accept them and is now fighting James Cook in the courts.  Ridd's experience sends a signal to fellow students and academics alike to not express a view outside of the university-approved groupthink.

   The treatment of Ridd is just one part of the story.  In the past, James Cook University ousted climate sceptic Bob Carter from his adjunct professorship.  In another case, students were expelled from a residential college because they made jokes about religion during a music competition.  James Cook University has also recently introduced a policy that prevents speech that "makes a person feel offended".  Hearing an idea that is the opposite of your own can often feel offensive — meaning this policy in effect curtails the ability for students and academics to explore controversial ideas.

2. CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY

   Charles Sturt University maintains more policies that threaten freedom of expression than any other university in Australia.  The university has a 1,600 word policy on when, where and how flags should be flown, however it does not have a policy dedicated to free intellectual inquiry on campus.

   The university does have a policy that prevents "offensive language", and, extraordinarily, "sarcasm".  This threatens genuine debate and discussion in class if, in the subjective view of the accuser, a comment was offensive or sarcastic.

   The university's "Anti-Racism Policy", a laudable goal, is seething with ideology.  The policy claims racism is "best understood when acknowledging the context of power, oppression and privilege".  This is an explicit identity politics definition of racism which is heavily contested, rejecting the traditional definition of racism:  the harbouring of specific racist beliefs.  The policy also requires that curriculum design be "culturally inclusive", preventing the at times necessary criticism of culture.

   Charles Sturt University is introducing a new requirement for "Indigenous Australian Content in Courses" by 2020.  This means all students, whether they are studying cybercrime, creative arts, or law will be taught topics like "The Dreaming as worldview and law".  This content, which must be centrally approved, re-purposes the university from a place about exploring ideas, to teaching narrow topics in every course in an uncritical manner.

   The university also tells students that they are "expected to value" political causes such as "social justice including ethical practice and global citizenship" and "economic, social and environmental sustainability, including the responsible stewardship of resources".  I dare not imagine the response to expressing a non-leftist view in class.

1. UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

   Between the actions of staff, students and administrators, there has been more silencing of speech at the University of Sydney than any other university in the country.  The University of Sydney was found to be the most hostile university to free speech in my Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017.

   In the past, the student union has attempted to ban student clubs including a men's mental health society, the Brotherhood Recreation and Outreach, and threatened to deregister Christian clubs, speakers have been violently protested and in other cases banned from campus, academics have been sacked, and the university almost refused to host the Dalai Lama to avoid damaging ties with China.

   In just the past year, the student union attempted to block the screening of the controversial Red Pill film because, it was claimed, that showing a video could "physically threaten women on campus".  The university has charged security fees to conservative students which are not charged for the activities of other student groups.  Meanwhile, a protest against No campaigners in the same-sex marriage plebiscite turned violent, requiring police attendance.  The University of Sydney has also refused to provide students with a venue to host Australian Christian Lobby head Lyle Shelton.  In another case, a student was told he could not link anti-Israel sentiment to anti-Semitism in class.  The university administrators have also succumbed to demands for censorship, apologising after complaints were made by Chinese international students about a map in a lecture which showed disputed territory inside India rather than China.

The protection of free expression speaks to the very essence of a university, whose role in society, to increase knowledge and discover truth, requires the ability to freely debate ideas.  Australia's universities are often failing in this task.  Let's hope they can do better in 2018.

Malcolm Turnbull's Sex Ban Signals All The Wrong Virtues

Before Malcolm Turnbull prohibited his ministers from having sexual relations with their staff, there's a few dozen things he should have banned first.

For example, he could have banned ministers wasting taxpayers' money.

That way we wouldn't be spending $50 billion on submarines that won't be operational for 30 years.  Or he could have banned ministers breaking their election promises by introducing retrospective laws.  That way we wouldn't have had the superannuation tax debacle.  Or he could have banned ministers from introducing any new regulation unless they also abolished two old regulations.  That way we'd be on the path to shrinking the country's largest industry — red tape.

If it's a question of who would provide a greater benefit to the Australian public — a philandering minister who slashes government spending and cuts the size of her department in half, compared to a minister who's been happily married to the same person for 30 years and who faithfully follows the advice of her left-leaning bureaucrats — the choice is not even close.

If the Prime Minister really wanted to send a message about the need for ministers to abide by some notion of "community" standards he could install breathalysers in Parliament House.

If you're not allowed to drive a car over .05 you shouldn't be allowed to vote on a law if you're over .05 either.  In 2014 the then Victorian state Labor leader Daniel Andrews made an election promise to introduce random breath testing for politicians and judges.  It's a promise Andrews has since forgotten.

The Prime Minister's ban on ministers' personal relationships should be treated as the joke it is.

The ban is neither "liberal" nor "conservative" — it's virtue signalling, pure and simple.

There's many explanations why 64 per cent of Australians say they support the ban.  One reason might be that Australians just don't like politicians.

THE DEATH OF COMMON SENSE

It's easy to poke fun at what the PM's done, but there's a serious point about the whole thing.  The ban is yet another further step towards the death of common sense in politics and in public life.

The truth is there will be many situations where a relationship between a minister and one of their staff members is clearly inappropriate, for instance where there's the potential for the exercise of favouritism.  But there will be be other occasions where such personal relationships won't cause a problem.

Out in the real world the operations of the public service, schools, and hospitals would grind to a halt if ever a ban on relationships between bosses and their subordinates was instituted and enforced.

One consequence of the PM's ban is that if ever a minister did form a relationship with a staff member, one of them, most likely the staff member would be forced leave their job.  Which is not very different to what happened in the Commonwealth public service until 1966.  Up until then if a woman employed in a permanent position got married they'd be required to leave the public service.

The Prime Minister's desire to have the government control the personal relationships of employers and employees is another manifestation of the overweening desire of politicians of both the left and the right to regulate what we can say, who we can ask out for a date, and what and when and where we can eat and drink.

It's no surprise that the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins welcomed the ban.  The commissars at the Human Rights Commission never miss an opportunity to tell people what to do and how to behave.

The application of common sense, as ill-defined as that term might be, is a better way of managing workplace relations, than through the imposition of a prime ministerial decree.

Certainly common sense is fuzzy, but so are personal relationships.  Sometimes hard and fast rules are necessary, but sometimes they're not.

When he announced his ban Turnbull said he would insert a sentence in his Ministerial Code of Conduct that said, "Ministers need to exercise their judgment and their common sense in complying with the both the principle and the spirt of the standard and their letter".

Despite these fine words, the Prime Minister's ban flies in the face of common sense.

I Dare An ABC Journo To Check Just One Fact Of Global Warming

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (our ABC) — the main source of news and information for Australia's ruling elite — often begins its broadcasts with the claim it's free of bias and agenda'.  I can't think of a more inappropriate and untrue description.  ABC journalists will justify the claim with reference to sourcing information from only the most trustworthy of institutions and experts.  The problem, of course, is that so many of our institutions have lost-their-way, and so many of our experts take a wholly partisan approach to the most controversial of issues — particularly global warming.

As Scott Hargreaves explained recently, the average Australian, like the average Brit and American, has mostly lost confidence in experts.

This potentially makes the job of the journalist all the more exciting.  Rather than just parroting an authority, they have the opportunity to find out why almost half the population has chosen to disregard expert opinion on a range of issues — including global warming.

Global warming is actually not a hard issue to dissect because fundamentally it relies on evidence of there being a general trend of temperature increase — and measuring temperatures is not rocket science.

Of course, there is nowhere on earth where the mean global temperature anomaly can be measured.  So, steer-clear when this statistic is mentioned by an expert — you can probably dismiss it as something entirely contrived, like say the virgin birth.

When I suggest journalists dig-around:  I mean for the raw temperature measurements from individual weather stations.  Most politics is local, and as you will discover along this journey, the global mean temperature as so often reported by experts is actually a contorted amalgamation of thousands of abused local temperature series — unless the expert is referring to the satellite record, which is another story.

Indeed, while the Australian Bureau of Meteorology often refers to ACORN-SAT ... SAT in this context is actually an acronym for "Surface Air Temperatures".  Not SATellite.  (The previous Minister, Greg Hunt, was often muddled on this issue.)

To be clear, the Bureau relies entirely on surface air temperatures for reporting climate variability, and it has very significantly changed the way it measures these temperatures over the last few decades ... without showing us that the new method is in any way comparable with the old method.

Meanwhile, the Bureau keeps claiming new record hot days, which are reported by our ABC without any scepticism.

The change-over from mercury thermometers to electronic probes in automatic weather stations has been occurring for more than two decades, but alarm bells only started ringing for me last year when I discovered that rather than averaging one-second readings from the electronic probes over at least one minute as is standard, the Bureau records the highest one-second reading as the maximum temperature for that day.  To be clear:  when the Bureau reports, for example, that "37.7 degrees Celsius is a new record for Mildura" as they did last September, they are not referring to the daily average, or the temperature after the probe starts beeping to signify it has steadied — they are referring to an instantaneous one-second spot reading.

Because electronic probes are much more sensitive than old-style mercury thermometers to fluctuations in temperature and because temperatures can fluctuate on a hot day by up to two degrees Celsius in less than one minute at places like Mildura, this very dubious method of calibration will likely result in new record hot day — even for the same weather.

Since I raised this issue with Minister Josh Frydenberg last year, the Bureau has not denied that they use this non-standard method for recording temperatures, but they claim it results in the same temperatures as would be recorded from a mercury thermometer because they have "custom-made probes" with a longer than normal time constant.

It would seem reasonable to assume that given the Bureau have been changing-over from mercury thermometers to custom-made probes at its over 600 weather stations for some time now, and because they are relying on a novel method for calibration there would be lots of reports — so many parallel studies — to demonstrate that the new method is above-board.  I mean, it would be ridiculous if some of the catastrophic global warming so often reported by experts via our ABC were just a consequence of a new method of recording temperatures!  This should be all very easy to check, except that the Bureau has been far from forthcoming with the relevant data, as detailed in a recent blog post.

And I'm more than happy to make all my correspondence with the Bureau available to ABC journalists should they decide to do some research into this issue — should they choose to convert from true believers to genuine truth seekers ... free of bias and agenda.

Censure Of Professor Peter Ridd Over Comments Of Scientific Integrity A Troubling Development

Academic freedom is one of the core values of our ­society, which is why the case of Professor Peter Ridd is so troubling.

The attack on Professor Peter Ridd's academic freedom to discuss scientific integrity may very well mark the end of the Enlightenment at one of Australia's universities.

Ridd has been issued a "Final Censure" by James Cook University for expressing an opinion within his field of scientific expertise.  He was also ordered to keep silent about concerns related to quality assurance in Great Barrier Reef policy science.

The censure was in response to comments by Ridd on Sky News in an interview with Alan Jones to promote the Climate Change:  The Facts 2017.

In the interview, Ridd questioned the quality of science from "organisations like the Australian ­Institute of Marine Science, even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies".

"The science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions, and the fact is I do not think we can anymore," Ridd said.

Ridd has worked at James Cook University, where he completed his PhD, since 1989.

He is a lecturer and researcher in physics and marine geophysics with more than 100 peer- ­reviewed articles to his name, and has undertaken extensive research on coral reefs.

"I just don't think they're very ­objective about the science they do, I think they're emotionally attached to their subject and, you know, you can't blame them — the reef is a beautiful thing," Ridd said on Sky News.

James Cook University has claimed Ridd's remarks denigrated the university.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  There is nothing more essential to a functioning ­university than scientific debate.

This is the very purpose of the university.  James Cook University's code of conduct explicitly states staff must "value academic freedom, and ­inquire, examine, criticise and challenge in the collegial and academic spirit of the search for knowledge, understanding and truth".

James Cook's actions have a serious chilling effect on scientific debate by discouraging academics and ­students from discussing controversial topics.

In a David and Goliath battle, Ridd has chosen to not lay down in the face of threats.  Ridd has lodged Federal Court action to assert his academic freedom to discuss scientific integrity.

It is only through debate, claim and counterclaim that we can hope to find truth.

The fundamental role of the university is to encourage debate, not to stifle it with preposterous claims and disciplinary action.

This is the essence of the Socratic method, the process of argumentative dialogue between opposing perspectives, on which the Enlightenment and our universities are built.

The only way to discover the truth is to stimulate critical thinking through debate.  This freedom also is explicitly protected in Ridd's enterprise agreement, which guarantees his right "to participate in public ­debate and express opinions about ­issues" within his field of competence.

If our university professors are ­incapable of questioning and debating science we are bound to enter a new Dark Age.  The restriction of scientific debate, the claim that certain hypothesises can no longer be tested and ­retested, marks the end of progress.

The fundamental role of the university is to encourage debate, not to stifle it with preposterous claims and disciplinary action.

From the UK to North America to Australia, however, universities have become hotbeds of censorship and are lacking essential viewpoint diversity.

Last year a recording emerged of Canadian university tutor Lindsay Shepherd being aggressively reprimanded by senior academics for ­simply playing a debate in a communications class featuring psychology professor Jordan Peterson.

Meanwhile, protests against guest speakers, such as Charles Murray and Milo Yiannopoulos, on American college campuses have turned violent.  My Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017 found that eight in 10 Australian universities have policies or have taken action that limit free intellectual inquiry.

In the past, QUT students were dragged through Federal Court for questioning the existence of a separate computer lab for indigenous students.  Meanwhile, last September a protest turned violent against a "No to same-sex marriage" stall at the University of Sydney.

Australia's universities are public institutions, established under state and federal law, and receive most of their funding through government grants and state-subsidised loans.  Their role is to serve the public interest through teaching and research, which can only be undertaken by encouraging dynamic debate about issues of public concern.

James Cook University is failing in this task by preventing the expression of an expert opinion.  The university must withdraw all sanctions against Professor Peter Ridd.

Turnbull's 18C On Steroids

Rahm Emmanuel, one-time Chief of Staff in the Obama Administration, once said:  "You never let a serious crisis go to waste ... It's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

It would seem that the Turnbull government is using the perceived crisis of "foreign influence" in our political system to tweak federal electoral regulations in its favour.  In doing so, the government has unleashed 18C on steroids.  It is not only compromising freedom of speech, but also opening up a range of unintended consequences for a swag of civic groups unrelated to the political process.

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure) Bill was rushed into Parliament late last year, ostensibly in response to the Sam Dastyari affair.  Its supposed purpose is to ban political donations from foreign sources, which it does.

But critically, there is more to the bill than that.  Not only does it tighten the existing provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, but it also vastly extends its application to a range of new entities.

Currently, electoral law applies almost entirely to political parties, their associated entities, and candidates.  In its bill, the government is seeking to apply many of the Act's requirements to "non-party political actors".  That is, groups other than political parties that actively campaign in elections.

Clearly, the government is going after political irritants.  Many within the Coalition are adamant that their electoral woes are the fault of increasingly energetic "non-party actors".

But using the power of the state to silence political opponents is something one would expect from a left-wing government, as the Gillard government attempted to do with Stephen Conroy's draconian media laws.  As was the case with Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians alike should be extremely concerned at the restrictions on freedom of speech in this bill.

A Liberal government worthy of its name should aim to increase freedom of political communication, not restrict it.  Instead, the government's bill is the latest in a series of electoral "reforms" made over the years that have chipped away at free speech in the political sphere.  Electoral regulation is necessary, but it should be limited to establishing the structures through which free and fair elections take place.  But over time, electoral law has become less concerned with regulating the conduct of elections and more preoccupied with "managing" the broader political debate.  Dressed up in motherhood buzzwords like "transparency" and "accountability", these laws presume that voters, if left to their own devices, will make impulsive or misguided decisions at the ballot box.  To encourage "informed" choices, it is argued, the state must keep debate "fair" by enforcing rules about the way in which political parties disseminate their message.  This notion is as dangerous as it is erroneous.  Freedom of communication is indispensable in a truly free electoral system.  To regulate speech is to regulate the very essence of democracy.

Worse still the bill, as currently drafted, will go far beyond its intentions.  The vast majority of the entities that will be affected have absolutely no engagement with the political process.  Under the bill, an organisation will need to register as a "politcal" and "third party campaigner" if it incurs a certain amount of "political expenditure".  Such expenditure may include "[t]he public expression, by any means, of views on an issue that is, or is likely to be, before voters in an election".

Of course, every conceivable issue may be "before voters" at an election, given that people cast their vote for all manner of reasons.  This means that any organisation expressing an opinion on any public policy matter whatsoever could end up being brought within the remit of the Electoral Act.  The bill could affect, for example, a charity expressing a view on homelessness, an indigenous organisation opining on the state of remote communities, or a sporting club lobbying council to upgrade parks and leisure facilities.

The bill will therefore impose a substantial compliance burden on civil society.  Requirements include registration with the AEC, filing annual financial returns and all manner of red tape surrounding the acceptance of donations.  Non-compliance may attract criminal penalties, and many requirements are duplicated from those that already exist under charities and non-profits law.  The result will be a substantial "chilling effect" on public debate, one that will not be limited to the Left.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, for example, claims that the bill "will adversely affect the practice of its religion in material ways".  The church warns that "accepting anonymous donations ... will be impractical, engaging in advocacy ... will be limited and curtailed and ... the freedom of priests to preach the word of God and speak to relevant issues of social significance will be undermined."

Curiously, media organisations are among the few exemptions to the new requirements.  That means that an opinion expressed by, say, the head of a religious charity would be considered "political activity", but the opinion of a presenter on the ABC would not.  A blog post on the website of an industry association like the National Farmers Federation would be caught by the Electoral Act, but not an opinion piece in the Guardian.  There is no good reason for this arbitrary double standard.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the bill is the precedent that it sets.  For the first time, civic groups will be forced to register with a government statutory authority for no other reason than mere speech.  This is fundamentally undemocratic.  Genuine democracy means more than just the ability to cast a vote every few years.  It means the freedom to express an opinion on public policy matters without interference from the state.  Upon toppling Tony Abbott in 2015, Malcolm Turnbull promised a "thoroughly liberal government, committed to freedom".  If the Prime Minister had a shred of sincerity back then, he would abandon this thoroughly illiberal law now.

Why Darkest Hour, A Film About Winston Churchill, Is An International Success

US founding father John Adams was right when he said "facts are stubborn things".  Individuals in history are stubborn things too.

Academic historians at modern-day universities might believe and inculcate in their students the idea that the past is the product only of the inexorable forces of class, race and gender.  However, the book-reading and film-going public know better.

Which is why the shelves of airport bookshops are crammed with historical biographies.  And that's why Darkest Hour, a film about how Winston Churchill became British prime minister in 1940, is an international success.  Its gross receipts of $100 million are less than the $1 billion earned by the The Last Jedi, but Darkest Hour is a dialogue-heavy political drama with no special effects (unless you count make-up) and its only action sequences involve Churchill in his bathtub.

Individuals make history, just as it is individuals who found great companies, who make scientific breakthroughs, and who write great symphonies.  The "force of history" is a phrase that appears in postmodern humanities textbooks, but it is just as meaningless as a similar term, "the right side of history".

The results of the annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey were published in this newspaper on Tuesday.  Respondents who said they trusted chief executives increased from 26 per cent in 2016 to 39 per cent last year.  Part of the reason for this is assumed to be the growing number of bosses making public pronouncements on social issues.  Regardless of whether you happen to agree or disagree with the stance that chief executives take on particular questions at least they are choosing to exercise some leadership.  Successful business leaders don't just wait for the forces of global capitalism to crash into them.

CENTRAL MESSAGE

A central message of Darkest Hour is that individuals make history by the choices they make.  In April 1940 Neville Chamberlain could have chosen for Britain to reach a peace with Hitler and cede Europe to Nazism.  In May 1940 Winston Churchill chose to fight.  As dire as Britain's position was after the fall of France, Churchill succeeded in convincing the British people that they weren't helpless and that their defeat was not inevitable.

The notion that individuals have power over history, and indeed have power over their own lives, is an optimistic and positive one.  Yet it's a notion diametrically opposed to how history is taught in Australian universities.  More broadly, the claim that the way we live is the result of the choices we make cuts across the prevailing narrative of nation states and their political systems as merely bobbing corks on the tide of the inevitability of globalisation, liberalisation, and homogenisation.

Last year I reviewed all of the 746 undergraduate history subjects taught at the 35 Australian universities offering history programs.  Forty-two subjects covered the First World War;  48 covered Nazism, Fascism, and Communism in the 20th century;  51 covered the Second World War;  and 39 subjects dealt with the Cold War.

The name "Winston Churchill" didn't appear once in the content of any of these subjects.  Which is perplexing given his responsibility for the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, his role as the world's foremost opponent of the totalitarian ideologies in the inter-war period, his prime ministership from 1940 to 1945, and then in 1946 his "Iron Curtain" speech usually taken to mark the beginning of the Cold War.  In fact Churchill doesn't appear in any of the descriptions of the 746 history subjects taught last year at Australian universities.

IDENTITY POLITICS

In tertiary institutions individuals have been replaced by ideologies.  The most common themes in those 746 subjects are, in order, Indigenous issues, race, gender, the environment and identity.

The ideology of identity politics and the categorisation of people into pigeon holes according to personal characteristics that they had little or no role in choosing for themselves is that there's no room for choices.

"Race" and "identity" might help comprehend the origins of totalitarianism, but they can't explain how Churchill became prime minister, and they certainly can't explain how fascism came to be defeated.

It's sad that someone wanting to know how the civilised world was saved in 1940 by the choices that Winston Churchill made would learn more from going to the movies than from enrolling in history at an Australian university.