Star Chambers, Red Star

Sir: I was fascinated to read Gregory Melleuish’s piece on the History Wars (April 2017). It took me back to an experience I had as an academic, when I published an article in the IPA Review which was critical of some theoretical approaches in health sociology (which I was then teaching).

Imagine my surprise when two other staff members and the departmental head used this article to submit me to a mini Star Chamber. They handed me a three-and-a-half-page signed memorandum which defamed me so thoroughly that it practically glowed in the dark.

I walked out of the “meeting”, went straight to a lawyer, and obtained a full written and verbal apology from both staff members. I was then sent to Coventry for a year by the entire teaching team of the unit.

I was twenty-six years old.

Philippa Martyr
Palmyra, WA

Sir: Bruce Anderson underestimates the strategic challenge from China in his otherwise sensible article, “How Donald Trump Can Save the West from Itself” (April 2017).

The South China Sea is more than just a question of freedom of navigation, a term that means something quite different to China’s rulers. For them every issue hangs on the state of individual relations, not on established rights and the supremacy of the law. Countries would enjoy freedom of navigation through Chinese waters so long as they remained onside with China’s rulers. Worryingly, too, China’s definition of freedom of navigation doesn’t seem to include the right of innocent passage.

If China’s ambition to establish paramountcy goes unchallenged in the South China Sea, all our neighbours in South-East Asia will be easy to pick off. They too will end up like Cambodia—as fully paid-up subsidiaries of Beijing.

With all our neighbours looking over their shoulder to see if China approves, we ourselves will soon find it impossible to do otherwise. That constriction of our autonomy and freedom of action has been Australia’s strategic fear since before the First World War, when Germany was a formidable Pacific power operating out of China.

Peter Rowe
Paddington, NSW