Defend our universities! Defend our unions! Stop the sacking of Robert Austin : Melbourne Indymedia

[Article by Lisa Farrance and Liz Thompson - both elected to the RMIT Branch Committee of the National Tertiary Education Union in 2004]

In April this year the Federal Government announced its intention to cut public funding to universities that fail to implement a range of industrial changes, including the forced introduction of individual contracts, harsher “performance management”, and the abolition of union representation on committees. These Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) not only pre-empt industrial relations legislation; they impose anti-collegiate conditions on the ways universities operate and reduce the independence of university teaching and research.

In this climate, university staff are coming under increasing pressure to restrict their commentary, teaching, research and industrial activities to those deemed acceptable to conservative governments. Academic staff are increasingly expected to “toe the management line” without question. And it’s this new climate within universities which is threatening the very concept of academic freedom and quality education.

A case in point is management’s political attack against an academic at RMIT University, Dr Robert Austin, a long-time academic union member. Currently threatened with the sack, Dr Austin’s case highlights the real threat posed by the Howard-Nelson agenda. In what ways?

Dr Austin is a Hispanic Studies academic employed by RMIT since February to run its Spanish language programs, and Latin American Studies from 2006. He is widely published and read, having produced seven books and with another three underway in a 15-year academic career. Even under the Federal Government’s strict new teaching guidelines, he’s a model teacher. His probation report of 28 September acknowledges “excellent” research performance and “commendable” teaching, leading to a “considerably more attractive” Spanish program. Enrolments have increased by over 20 per cent since his arrival. Dr Austin has already established staff-student exchange programs with prestigious Latin American and Spanish universities. He has just won five federally-funded student scholarships to Chile for 2006. And he has accepted an offer to become an Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne.

However, an alliance appears to have formed between right-wing Sun Herald polemicist Andrew Bolt and the new head of International and Community Studies. Both are of the view that industrial action in support of students in their opposition to (the misnamed) Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) is not a legitimate academic activity. They have both castigated Dr Austin’s re-scheduling of classes to allow students to attend the National Day of Action against VSU on 10 August, even when this had the almost-unanimous support of students, National Tertiary Education Union backing, and the knowledge of immediate management. Indeed the Vice Chancellor, Professor Margaret Gardener, is a public VSU opponent.

But the Head of School has gone one step further than Andrew Bolt. Using Bolt’s article as evidence for Dr Austin’s apparent “lack of collegiality”, the Head has recommended to the Vice Chancellor no less than termination of employment.

Moreover, the Head of School (HOS) and the relevant Pro Vice-Chancellor have used their positions to intimidate sessional teaching staff. On 30 September, the two managers saw fit to accost Robert Austin and a woman union representative who were enjoying coffee with sessional staff in a public café, off campus. The following week, the HOS compelled all Spanish sessional staff to attend a meeting on Dr Austin’s “collegiality” by issuing a “lawful directive”. Both probation meetings organised by the HOS were little more than an opportunity to launch a tirade of insults and provocations, and during the first to harass the woman union delegate.

We call on all staff, students and public education advocates to show their opposition to this attack on intellectual freedom and academic unionism. Management intimidation is not acceptable in any workplace. Let’s not allow this Nelson & Howard – “shock jock” – management alliance to dictate the model for future university administration.

Your response is urgent – the Vice Chancellor has now signed off on the recommendation for termination, to take effect in exactly 6 months. Please send your messages of opposition to this recommendation, and support for Dr Robert Austin, to:

• RMIT Vice Chancellor, Margaret Gardner on vc@rmit.edu.au
• With a copy to campaign coordinators liz.thompson@rmit.edu.au and l.farrance@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

For campaign updates and commentary see: http://defendrobert.blogspot.com

If you turn the university into a platform for political activism, it becomes a legitimate target for political attack.

You have only yourselves to blame.

Oh Yes
by outer party member 455812-16 Thursday October 27, 2005 at 05:35 PM

Why can't you be content with watching the sports along with hahaha and the rest of the bovine Australia.

I don't watch the sports. I'm a primate, not a bovine.

It's people like you, with your deep ignorance and hatred of the Australian population, who are responsible for the irrelevance of the loony left today.

Given that the majority of smart asses probably went to University our children need educators as good as Dr Austin.

My daughter is starting her Year 12 exams today and a university where she would continue to learn has been the dinner conversations, often. RMIT is a real choice for my daughter and her friends. Some of them will be doing Latin. What an introduction to university where a perfectly good educator is hounded because they a treated to the pen of blot.

I'm going to write to the vc and I hope others who read the article do as well.

Your children won't learn much if they're being shut out of classes so the teachers can force them to attend political rallies.

'If you turn the university into a platform for political activism, it becomes a legitimate target for political attack.'

So obvious you'd wonder why it needed to be said. This campaign bears all the hallmarks of simply that - further political activism under the very shallow guise of a call for intellectual pluralism.

Quite frankly, after spending the last four years in the arts faculty of a major university, and despite being at odds with many of the platforms of the 'conservative' government in power, I'd say an injection and ascendency of conservative thought in our universities would be a breath of fresh air and should be encouraged, whether you agree with it or not. It would be nice to have a system of higher education that exhibited something approaching policital balance and that could engage with all systems of thought critically.

That such a senseless reactionary ideologue as Andrew “bullshit” Bolt can endanger the position of such socially aware and impeccable role models as Dr Robert Austin, for doing little more than showing implicit support for his students, demonstrates that the right wing insanity gripping this country has absolutely no bounds.

And stereotype-spewing lefty twits like you are not taken seriously.

Perhaps if you didn't hate society so much, society might like yo more.

It's a sad day when students are complaining about being given the right to attend a demonstration against something as bad as VSU. I would love to have been given that chance - instead I had to attend the demonstration while being penalised for non-class attendance!

And read the statement people! The classes were rescheduled, not cancelled. Plus, student feedback is overwhelmingly supportive of the lecturer. If only we all had teachers like this.

I wonder what some of the other respondants on this page think that we should be doing against the right-wing shift in this country? If you really are opposed to things like the anti-terror laws, the IR laws and VSU, then what about taking your coffee-chat complaining and do something with it.

Being educated is one thing. Doing something with that education takes a bit more effort and gutts!

I congratulate both Robert Austin and the NTEU for providing the option for at least a few students to try to make a difference.

Why shouldn't students complain, when the lessons they are paying for have been denied to them just to serve the lecturer's political agenda?

Students shouldn't be forced to reschedule their classes just because some trot wants them to go to a demo.

Students *are* free to complain, about this, that, and the other. What's your point? Or are you just complaining that students should be able to complain? And as has been pointed out a number of times now, no lessons were denied the students in Austin's class, it was re-scheduled, *at the students' request*.

I believe it's called 'democracy'.

Some of you would make good replacements for Andrew Bolt... for example... not replying to substantive arguments, using insults as a replacement for considered responses and when all this fails, raising the bogey of being "un-Australian" or "trot".

First of all, Austin re-schedulled the class. It was not cancelled, and none of his students were"forced" to go to the rally. Many of my other lecturers encouraged us to attend to protest the government's stance. Last year Paul Battersby moved a class so students would not have to cross a picket line protesting out the front of Storey Hall.
Robert Austin has improved the Spanish program beyond belief since his arrival, including extending the amount of hours a week at students request. He has set up partnerships with Latin American univerisities in Chile, Venezuela and Argentina. Basically he has done what any good teacher should do: increased opportunitities for his students.
Calling people "loony lefties", un-Australian or "trots" reduces the seriousness of this issue. I would have thought that regardless of your political stance, losing a teacher as valuable as Robert Austin would be cause for concern.

Dr
by Teri Merlyn Friday November 04, 2005 at 05:31 AM
Teri.Merlyn@uts.edu.au (02) 99794419 44 The Avenue Newport 2106

Dear Margaret Gardner,

As another left-wing academic - who has recently given up trying to find an academic position - with only a brief collegiate acquaintance with Robert Austin, I would like to protest this further rendering of our universities as a left-hostile environment.

Just what is it about the left-wing intelligentsia that you dislike so much anyway?

Is it because we care about the dignity and freedom of humanity?

Is it that we persist in working for a critically aware citizenry, because this is the only way the unfinished project of democracy can progress?

Because we see it as our professional duty to protest at the rich and powerful's exploitation of the vulnerable?

Because we despise and criticise those who persist with the barbaric practice of aggressive warfare?

Because we believe that a true 'Liberal' education provides a rounded and critically aware education that equips that person to become a fully active member of a democratic society?

Because we believe that you can not isolate career training from critical education in universities and not produce a soul-less, self-interested professional class with a limited world-view and facist tendencies that will undermine our fledgling democracy?

Yes, Robert Austin has an obssession with the struggles of the South American people for freedom from oppression. That's because he is an academic with a profound passion for one particular subject, about which he knows a great deal. Isn't that what academics are supposed to be?

Robert Austin's students are intelligent people who have minds of their own, they will be able to decide for themselves if they agree with him or not - why not let them decide?