Academia, the West Bank and More
Academic Freedom
Sir: In the January-February issue Salvatore Babones makes the extraordinary claim that “Contrary to some public perceptions … academic freedom is alive and well in Australia”.
Seldom has a more falsifiable, even ridiculous, statement been printed in Quadrant.
How can academic freedom exist when over the past thirty or so years all of our forty or so universities have been swamped by wave after wave of ill-prepared, poorly-motivated and simply unsuitable students whose lecturers and their casual and insecure markers are under enormous pressure to pass?
How can academics be free when the universities that employ them insist that their jobs depend on the income generated from full-fee-paying foreign students, large numbers of whose English is just not up to doing any prose-based subject at the tertiary level?
How can academic freedom prevail when middle managers systematically demand that lecturers only pursue research that “brings in” money and very…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins