Biased universities do not welcome diversity of thought, writes Rita Panahi

THERE was a time when universities were centres of investigation and debate rather than bubbles of narrow ideology, writes Rita Panahi.

The only diversity not welcome on university campuses is diversity of thought, writes Rita Panahi.

UNIVERSITIES once encouraged robust debate, critical thinking and a diversity of views.

It’s where you went not to just earn a qualification but to expand your mind and be challenged.

Now indoctrination rather than intellectual stimulation is the norm, particularly in the arts, humanities and social sciences, where groupthink dominates.

The only diversity not welcome on university campuses is diversity of thought. It’s what happens when a hopelessly biased curriculum is pushed by hopelessly biased academics.

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Rationality and mainstream views are considered bigotry while grievance culture, safe spaces, intersectionality and identity politics are celebrated. This insanity often bleeds into other faculties and contributes to the devaluation of education.

It’s by no means a local phenomenon: Australian universities are merely following the lead of British and United States institutions in allowing political activism to trump intellectual inquiry.

Last year, Professor Rochelle Gutierrez, of Illinois University, warned her colleagues that teaching mathematics perpetuates white privilege and that “curriculums emphasising terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans”. In Building Support for Scholarly Practices in Mathematics Methods, Prof Gutierrez argued “things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively” and argued the focus on maths can add to discrimination against minorities. Someone forgot to tell Asian students, who insist on excelling in this “white pursuit”.

The Australian National University in Canberra. Photo: Keegan Carroll

The Ramsay Centre wanted to counter the bias by promoting the study of Western civilisation at Australian National University, but all it succeeded in doing was proving just how illiberal modern academia has become.

In a stunning display of academic cowardice, the ANU has walked away from negotiations and a lucrative partnership after a revolt from the usual suspects: activist students and academics.

ANU has no qualms about accepting millions in donations from the governments of Turkey, Dubai and Iran, not exactly known for supporting free expression and human rights.

Promoting propaganda through ANU’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies doesn’t seem to trouble the student and academic unions, but a deal with the Ramsay Centre, chaired by former prime minister John Howard, is a bridge too far.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham slammed the university for allowing activists and unions to set the agenda.

“I hope they stare down the fear and negativity that the likes of the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union) or various student unions engage in from time to time and recognise that academic freedom and free academic inquiry should extend across all disciplines and not be constrained by union officials or branches across institutions,” Senator Birmingham said.

SEVERAL government ministers have also expressed concern about the treatment of marine scientist Professor Peter Ridd, who was sacked by James Cook University in May after questioning the merit of handing enormous sums of taxpayer funds to bodies such as the Australian Institute of Marine Science without properly vetting their claims about the health of the Great Barrier Reef. JCU’s claims that it didn’t seek to silence Ridd or sack him for his views, but for breaching the university’s code of conduct, are incongruous and will be challenged in court.

In recent years, we’ve seen the University of Western Australia and Flinders University refuse to host Professor Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre because the renowned scientist and researcher dares to be a voice dissenting from rent-seeking climate alarmists, who seem to suffer no reputational damage despite their outlandish claims coming to nothing.

Outrageous scaremongering is nothing new and has rarely resulted in adverse outcomes for the scaremonger. When the scientist who once predicted that “carbon dioxide — induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020” was elevated to be US president Barack Obama’s science tsar, it was clear that dud predictions are of little consequence.

Professor Peter Ridd. Photo: Cameron Laird.

But if you question even the greatest excesses of the movement or the best methods of countering climate change, then you will be damned as a denier. Lomborg is nothing of the sort, and his record in calling out the politics of climate change has seen him praised as a global thinker. But that didn’t stop the UWA from cancelling the Consensus Centre after a revolt from the usual suspects.

The then federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, decried the decision as a “sad day for academic freedom” and blamed the university for allowing staff to “silence a dissenting voice rather than test their ideas in debate”.

There is a problem when universities have faculties full of staff who would struggle to find meaningful employment outside academia. It’s not a matter of leaning a little to the Left on the ideological divide; many academics are fringe-dwellers who espouse views that range from the radical to the loopy. When you operate from the premise that all cultures are equal, then intellectual honesty clearly isn’t a priority.

The prevailing anti-West sentiment at Australian universities and their determination to see the world through the prism of oppressor and oppressed is precisely why the Ramsay Centre wants to establish a degree in Western civilisation — one that is centred on indisputable facts and logic rather than post-truth far-Left propaganda.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

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