Sydney Uni student says ANU decision ‘a missed opportunity’

Catherine Priest­ley was disappointed that ANU had pulled the pin on negotiations with the Ramsay Centre.

Student Catherine Priest­ley, at Sydney University, says she was disappointed with the ANU decision: ‘it’s such a missed opportunity’. Picture: James Croucher.

Sydney student Catherine Priest­ley was disappointed when news broke that the Australian National University had pulled the pin on negotiations with the Ramsay Centre for a course on Western civilisation.

While already well into a combined civil engineering and commerce degree at Sydney University, the proposed course sounded like the sort of study she would have loved to have sunk her teeth into.

Its aim was to introduce students to classic pieces of literature by Homer, Euripides and Aeschylus, the classical philosophers Plato and Aristotle, masterpieces of Western art and music, great writing on revolutions and rights, politics and the great speeches of Pericles, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King.

The 22-year-old has difficulty seeing the controversy in a university choosing to establish such a course, yet ANU came up against opposition from the academics’ union and students’ association. Vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt announced the course, which was to be accompanied by an ­extensive scholarship program, would not proceed on June 1 due to concerns around academic autonomy.

“I was disappointed when I heard that it wasn’t going to go ahead at ANU — it’s such a missed opportunity,” Ms Priestley said. “They were offering something different; adding something to the intellectual rigour of the university which is what we should be doing.”

Ms Priestley, who grew up in the central-west NSW town of Gilgandra, has long been passionate about her community and the wider world. A member of the Young Liberals, and keen writer who contributes regularly to The Spectator, as well as helping establish a student newspaper, Mon Droit, she was an inaugural recipient of the Katrina Dawson Foundation scholarship in honour of the young lawyer killed in the 2014 Lindt cafe siege in Sydney.

She first found out about the work of the Ramsay Centre, which was established through a bequest from the estate of the late billionaire Paul Ramsay, when volunteering for the Menzies Institute and recently attended one of its lectures featuring Australian historian, academic and philanthropist Geoffrey Blainey .

She welcomed news that Sydney University was in talks with the Ramsay Centre about a possible Western civilisation course.

“I think it’s really important to know where we’ve come from, how we’ve got to where we are,” Ms Priestley said.

“Sydney Uni has such a great history and to embrace the Ramsay Centre would be to continue in that tradition.”