Law school courses should not stray into ideology

By the time new students start at the University of Sydney they have been immersed in a school system that imposes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, sustainability and Australia’s engagement with Asia as priorities across the curriculum. They apply even in that most universal and objective of disciplines – maths. But lest Sydney starters forget any of it, the university is hiring course designers to train academics in ways to “indigenise” and “decolonise the curriculums”. The aim is “embedding, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge, perspectives, texts and media within curricular projects”. Spot the problem. The university can – indeed, should – teach courses on Indigenous Australian history, culture and communities, and the more taught by qualified Indigenous academics the better.

But assuming that knowledge must be taught from the perspective of any specific culture rebuts the foundation of university education – that knowledge is what is true, not politically correct. Where this exercise in virtue signalling will end is clear at Macquarie and Monash universities.

There is an inquiry at Macquarie University into a law subject where students are assessed on the quality of their mandatory acknowledgment that they are on Indigenous land that is “unceded” and are aware of their “privilege”. Vice-chancellor Bruce Dowton says the inquiry will include listening to staff and students and “benchmarking relevant practices” against those at other law schools. The inquiry was established after students brought their concerns about the subject to this newspaper. Perhaps it should consider what the requirements have to do with qualifying to practise law. And maybe Monash could consider why law researchers working on PhDs must explain how the standard academic tropes of race and gender oppression relate to their thesis – even if they don’t, presumably. As reported on Monday, doctoral candidates are required to take research skills training that includes critical legal studies – an umbrella term covering Marxism, postmodernism and post-structuralism, and sundry theories of individual oppression, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory and critical disability theory.

Opinions about the issues vary. University of NSW dean of law and justice Andrew Lynch writes that the insistence law schools ensure graduates possess knowledge of “black-letter law” is uncontroversial. But, he argues, “to suggest this is where legal education ends, that law schools teach just a bunch of ‘black letters’ on a page, is to ultimately promote an impoverished conception of law and produce a profession ill-equipped to serve its society”. Constitutional lawyer and former Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven warns that law schools now teach less legal practice and more ideology. This conundrum should not exist. Is the function of university courses to indoctrinate or educate? The question is generally settled in the humanities, where the starting point for study is that Western democracies are racist, sexist and colonialist, and privileged people in them generally prosper by oppressing everybody else. And now the ideologues are invading disciplines such as law, using “critical legal theory” to erode confidence in the law and subvert scholarship that seeks to add to our understanding of how it can protect and serve all Australians.

The apparent disrespect for students that some academics demonstrate by using their own privileged positions to require them to parrot an ideological line as a class requirement is bad at all universities where it occurs. But it is worse for those studying to become lawyers. From Magna Carta to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all are equal before the law and entitled to equal protection is fundamental. And that is where things should stand.