Another Passing Academic Fad

Sir: Peter Baldwin’s exhaustive article (“The Inherent Racism of Identity Politics”, January-February 2019) curiously makes no mention of the influence of Marxism on the current tsunami of identity politics sweeping Western academia. Only a few years ago the Arts departments of Western universities were steeped in the Marxist “historical truths” of the class struggle and the class war involving the aristocracy (in past times), the middle classes and the working classes. A true Marxist would never countenance identity politics, pointing out that the working peoples of the world may be black, white or brindle. In some countries there may be a preponderance of whites in the working-class struggle, such as in USA, and in others, such as South Africa, a preponderance of blacks in the working class. But their struggle to overthrow capitalism is universal.

So what on earth has happened to the Marxists on our Western campuses? Have they infiltrated the “identitarian ideologists” and the race theorists to further their struggle? Or have they simply given up? Perhaps they have simply grown up.

One redeeming conclusion to be drawn from Peter Baldwin’s article is that identity politics with its inherently racist overtones is more or less confined to our university campuses and to the latte lovelies. “Identitarian ideology” is likely to atrophy and ultimately be discarded into the academic dustbin of impotence and irrelevance. Real power in our democracies still remains in the hands of the common men and women, the “deplorables” of all races, voting for Trump in their millions in USA and for Brexit in the UK and marching in their “yellow vests” in France.

Ian Bernadt
via e-mail

Fairness in Research Funding

Sir: Keith Windschuttle’s column “Grotesque Generosity” (January-February 2019) deals with the recent revelation that Senator Birmingham, when Minister of Education, vetoed funding for eleven humanities projects in the 2017-18 Australian Research Council round. Mr Windschuttle’s case is that humanities projects don’t need funding because they can be easily carried out without it. This point is debatable, but at present, humanities projects are eligible for funding, and thus should be treated fairly.

As someone who has been an overseas assessor for humanities ARC projects (although not in the round concerned), I’m not convinced that politicians are reliable judges of academic research projects. If they are, why draw on academic experts at all? My guess is that the senator read the titles and summaries, rather than the (long) applications, and thought that the eleven projects he targeted sounded esoteric. Projects in science, engineering and medicine are equally esoteric, but a lay person usually has insufficient grasp of the relevant terminology to feel confident about condemning them.

In any case, the investigators in those eleven projects, and their evaluators, were not treated honestly, in that the minister’s action was disclosed belatedly and not at all voluntarily. While it is of course possible to overstate the global impact of ARC-related doings, behaviour like that of the former minister does the country’s academic reputation no good.

Joanne Wilkes
School of Humanities
University of Auckland
New Zealand

In Defence of Architects

Sir: It is hard to know where to begin in responding to “The Terror of Urban Architecture” (January-February 2019). Neither Anthony Daniels nor Nikos A. Salingaros trouble to define clearly what they understand modern architecture to be, much less what they discern is its toxic geometry, although they single out Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier, 1887–1965) as the villain entirely responsible for all bad post-war high-rise council housing in England. Jeanneret made many mistakes, he was not perfect and he certainly was not modest, but he was a very great architect and not unsuccessful in designing civilised, humane and eminently satisfactory housing for a mass society in response to the housing crisis posed in France following the war.

Their attack on modernism is not based on any scientific data or evidence. Nowhere do they engage Jeanneret’s Five Points Towards a New Architecture: the supports, the roof gardens, the free-designing of the ground-plan, free design of the façade, and constructional considerations, much less do they examine and dispassionately assess the success of Jeanneret’s built housing projects, a number of which are still inhabited and greatly treasured.

What I find most disturbing in their diatribe on modernism is the accusation levelled squarely at today’s generation of architecture students: “Architectural students pay no attention; these young persons are attracted to raw power, and the licence to shape the world for thousands of users of their future buildings. This intoxicating promise of power has few equivalents in modern democratic society. We cannot fight those base innate instincts by offering them in return compassion, empathy, humanity and love of life.” Such an unwarranted generalised condemnation of architectureal students without exception as a homogenous mass of evil is not backed by evidence, social survey, or, I suspect, any direct acquaintance with actual students.

My experience as a studio master in design and lecturer in architectural theory and history in the US and Australia, over many years, leads me to the very opposite conclusion: a high degree of youthful idealism, intense commitment to improving the quality and beauty of the built environment, actuated by the wider desire to repair and correct the damaging policies and actions of self-serving developers, local government and corrupt politicians. At the University of New South Wales, higher-degree research in the faculty of the built environment is directed almost exclusively at improving and leading the way in the scientific analysis of how building performance can better serve society and avoid adversely affecting users; what measures would assist in keeping people healthy, safe and happy, not to mention such current challenges as climate change and the heating up of the urban environment.

No profession is above criticism. I cannot think of one less deserving of intemperate criticism than architecture, much less, that architects conspire and deliberately seek to attack and undermine the well-being of society in general that is made by Messrs Salingaros and Daniels. Where is their concrete evidence?

Philip Drew
Annandale, NSW

Les Murray, Literary Editor

Sir: I was greatly saddened to learn of Les Murray’s retirement, not only for selfish reasons.

We wrote very different kinds of poetry, but he was always supportive and generous to me, and a wonderful companion. I once consulted him on some personal troubles, and he washed them away with about twenty words. He was, very obviously, almost the only editor to choose my work for the annual “Best Australian Poetry” anthologies. In the Culture Wars he was worth at least a couple of divisions to us, if not an army corps.

His comments on submissions were always clear and to the point, and his values were always on the side of life, unlike those of some poetry editors whose comments on submissions, I firmly believe, were quite deliberately obscure. He reduced so many others on the literary scene to pygmies, not least that horrible flock of talentless poetasters who made up the so-called Gang of ’68, whose main purpose was to exclude those not of the gang from publication. He has a huge store of that rare quality, Goodness.

Hal G.P. Colebatch
Perth, WA