Our universities are walking the same path as supermarkets

The management failures at our top universities have been big examples of the rise in Australian anti-Semitism.

Curing the anti-Semitism cancerin centres of learning and intellectual debate like the Australian National University, Sydney University and Melbourne University will require major changes to their boards and management.

The corporate community has developed clear rules for changing the management of companies which fail or embrace bad practices. Similar approaches will be required in parts of the university sector.

We need to recognise the management breakdowns at our top universities started well before October 7, 2023.

Accordingly, repairing our universities will require acknowledgment that behind their current tolerance of racial hatred (in this case directed at Jews) was an earlier breakdown in freedom of speech in many campuses.

The management of our universities must first stop denying their campuses have become racial cesspools.

Then they need to begin the clean up campuses and staff ranks by restoring proper freedom of speech.

Against this background, the appointment of retiring ALP Cabinet minister and former Opposition leader Bill Shorten as chief executive of Canberra University provides an opportunity for a person outside the university structures to show how you run a university which fosters proper freedom of speech.

Canberra University is, of course, currently overshadowed in the ACT by the Australian National University, which sadly has seen some of our worst anti-Semitic behaviour at a university.

Jewish students report feeling unsafe on the ANU campus.

Students at a pro-Palestine protest at Macquarie University in Sydney. Picture: Richard Dobson

The management and board of ANU, like Sydney and Melbourne, were lucky the racial hatred they allowed to prosper on campus was not met with similar reaction from the victims.

Once racial hatred practices embrace a university campus the next victims may not be as passive.

A university dedicated to freedom of speech does not seek to stop people expressing their views, and those views can support the Palestinian cause.

But, those supporting the plight of Israel need to be equally free to express views. And persecution — whether it be directed at Jews, Muslims, Christians, the Chinese or any other segment of the university — must be the subject of a clear process of student/staff dismissal.

For some years now, a number of subjects for debate at universities have had advocates who did not tolerate opposing views.

Universities must foster free and open debate on all issues without the threat of persecution and bans directed at people who have a different point of view to the majority.

Minority groups who have different views to the majority on subjects like sexuality, women’s rights and the Australian nation, have found it difficult to express their views.

The extent of the use of speech bans, often backed by physical threat, to prevent speakers with a different point of view expressing those views on campus came to my attention at a recent business function, when I began yarning with one of our top geologists Professor Ian Plimer.

Ian Plimer’s view on the source of global warming is different to the widely-accepted views.

He was stopped from expressing his views on two smaller campuses. Plimer’s view is based on his conclusions from geological data and he says if you go back deep into history there were greater levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than currently exist, and the planet did not warm.

Accordingly, he believes current global warming comes not from the carbon in the atmosphere but rather activity on the sun.

I am not a supporter or opposer of his views — like most non-scientific Australians I don’t have the ability to reach conclusions on such matters.

But, I am a supporter of his ability to publicly express those views along with the clear majority scientific view the world is embracing.

Professor Ian Plimer. Picture: Richard Gosling

And we should remember Plimer has played a big role in some of the successful geological strategies embraced by Gina Rinehart and Hancock Prospecting.

University education of overseas students is an important Australian industry and is particularly important in Melbourne.

I have opposed the arbitrary curbs on overseas students, which don’t take into account key elements of a successful operation set up by the predecessors of today’s generation of university boards and management.

If a university can’t manage its campuses, then it will need to be reduced in size — with all the trauma which would come with such a process.

In the corporate sector, we’re having a similar debate on the Woolworths and Coles supermarkets.

I think the supermarket debate will be decided on the correction strategies (including supply chains and fair trading with farmers) being embraced by their boards and managers.

If the boards and managers of our universities can’t restore their original foundations then, just like the supermarkets, we will need to consider reducing their size to levels which can be managed.

I think the boards and managers of our top universities should be given a chance to reorganise their structures and remove from their campuses those obstacles to free speech and the promoters of racial hatred.

At this stage, the managers of both the supermarkets and universities are in denial.

Unless they come to grips with the issues, their ultimate fate may not be a pleasant one.