Bolting to the Right : Melbourne Indymedia

BOLTING TO THE RIGHT

Melbourne Herald Sun right-wing polemicist Andrew Bolt has recently targeted RMIT University (Melbourne) and what he terms its “right-on reputation among the lip-curl Left”.

On August 10 Bolt derided two distinguished RMIT professors, Mary Kalantzis and Tom Nairn. Kalantzis was in Bolt’s sights for drawing parallels between Australia’s racist past and Nazi Germany. He was no doubt referring to the subtle and elegant Barton lecture (Sydney, 2001) by Kalantzis about Australian ideology and racism around the time of Federation, and its similarity with German ideology during the 1930s and 1940s.

Nairn was trivialized for once describing Prime Minister John Howard in the pages of the highly respected London Review of Books as a “zombie chieftan”. Bolt did not mention in doing so that Nairn is regarded in his UK homeland as a major political philosopher and is the world’s fourth most cited authority on nationalism.

In the same article Bolt sunk his right-wing molars into post-graduate coordinator Dr Robin Goodman of the university’s Environment and Planning program. By referring to an apparently leaked internal and private university email, he ridiculed her environmental concerns and then leap-frogged into an attack on the RMIT Bachelor of Social Science (Environment) course. Bolt suggested the course attracts the academic rump of the Year 12 leavers, called them “drifters”, “salvation-seekers”, and basically argued the course has little academic merit because it regards global warming as a problem when in reality “there’s perhaps little to worry about”.

A week later Bolt took aim again, this time at the RMIT Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and its involvement in supporting the National Union of Students August 10 National Day of Action against Voluntary Student Unionism. One staff member and NTEU member, Dr. Robert Austin, was singled out. He was savagely criticised for cancelling his classes on the day, and re-scheduling them, to allow students to attend action in support of their student union. Austin had the overwhelming support of his students in taking this action.

Following publication of Bolt’s article, Dr. Austin had his employment threatened by his Head of School, apparently for rescheduling his classes on the Students National Day of Action. A written recommendation went to the RMIT Vice-Chancellor, Professor Margaret Gardner, to terminate his employment.

In spite of being a senior scholar of international repute with academic experience in Latin America, where he has had full professorial status, and with seven books to his credit, the Australia-based Dr. Austin’s RMIT appointment as a lecturer in Spanish and International Studies, is probationary.

The threat to Austin came in spite of a written probation report that indicated Austin’s research was "excellent and goes beyond reasonable expectation", and an earlier report from the Head of School commending his teaching, and his engagement with students and other universities.

The Bolt article attacking Austin was tabled during a probation meeting on September 28 as evidence of the lack of collegiality on Austin’s part. Perhaps the real problem with Dr. Austin, so far as Bolt and others are concerned, is that he is a scholarly critic of the US Central Intelligence Agency, and the US Army’s School of the Americas (Fort Benning, Georgia), training facility for many of the murderers and political gangsters who have wrought havoc against democratically-elected governments, progressive political parties, and trade unionists in Latin America.

The Austin case has not gone unnoticed, and is of particular concern to academic workers in Australia on the verge of John Howard’s IR meltdown and the associated conservative ascendancy. Nationally and internationally, colleagues have indicated their solidarity and support for Austin, and there is significant student support and concern on the RMIT campus. The NTEU has lodged a notice of dispute on behalf of the threatened academic.

Then on Monday October 24, the RMIT Vice-Chancellor formally advised Dr. Austin of his dismissal, to take effect in six months time.

The matter has a way to go…..