Indigenous role in shaping Ramsay degree

Wollongong uni will seek input from indigenous Australians for its Ramsay Centre-sponsored Western Civilisation degree.

Paul Wellings of Wollongong University with Simon Haines, chief executive of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.

The University of Wollongong will make a major effort to get input for its Ramsay Centre-sponsored Western civilisation degree from indigenous Australians.

The university executive in charge of the new degree — law, humanities and arts dean Theo Farrell — said that a new advisory board for the Ramsay-sponsored degree would provide a forum for the university’s local stakeholders, “particularly the indigenous communities from regions in which the University of Wollongong operates”.

The first appointee announced to the new board is the university’s pro vice-chancellor (inclusion and outreach) Paul Chandler.

Professor Chandler, an indigenous academic who was the first in his family to get a degree, is a former education dean at Wollongong.

“Although Professor Chandler has not been involved previously (in the Western civilisation degree), I look forward to him providing a vitally important indigenous perspective and connections with multiple indigenous communities as we move forward,” Professor Farrell said in a university news announcement last Friday. “The board will also be engaging other local indigenous representatives as required to assist Professor Chandler, further strengthening the school’s connections with indigenous communities.”

He said that as well as having local representation, the new advisory board would include international liberal arts academics, and scholars of high standing.

It would help the university benchmark the Western civilisation degree, and the new school of liberal studies in which it will be housed, against similar courses and schools overseas.

Wollongong vice-chancellor Paul Wellings said he hoped the relationship with the Ramsay Centre would be long term and that the five years of funding would be renewed for a second and third cycle.

Once the three-year Western civilisation degree was fully up and running, the university would receive around $7.5 million a year in funding support from the Ramsay Centre for the course, Professor Wellings said.

Speaking before Monday’s announcement that the University of Queensland was well advanced in its discussions with the Ramsay Centre, Professor Wellings said he hoped that there would be more than one university offering Ramsay-sponsored Western civilisation degrees.

“My hope is … we can do something transformative,” he said.

Professor Welling defended the secrecy in which the university’s agreement with the Ramsay Centre was negotiated, known only to a handful of people in the university throughout 2018 until it was announced the week before Christmas.

He said the university’s expression of interest, submitted in 2017, had been discussed in the faculty of law, humanities and arts.

He also defended the university’s refusal to release its memorandum of understanding with the Ramsay Centre, saying that to do so would “run across the front” of the centre’s commercial negotiation with other universities.

Professor Wellings repeated his assurances that there was no danger to academic freedom at the University of Wollongong stemming from the Ramsay agreement, and that although the Ramsay Centre will be represented on selection committees, the university will have the final say on selecting academic staff to teach the new course.