University of Queensland academics oppose Ramsay Centre’s Western civilisation degree

University of Queensland academics have voted against the Ramsay Centre’s proposed Western civilisation degree.

University of Queensland staff have opposed a proposal from the Ramsay Centre. Picture: Supplied

Academics at the University of Queensland today voted in a union meeting to oppose the Ramsay Centre’s contentious proposal for a Western civilisation degree, while the executive dean of arts and social sciences faculty wrote in an email to all humanities staff that she had found a “remarkable convergence of concerns” regarding the proposal in a series of meetings with about 250 academics.

The dean, Dr Heather Zwicker, wrote there were a number of academic concerns about the proposal, ranging from matters of academic governance and autonomy, through to doubts raised about the speed and secrecy of the negotiations with the Ramsay Centre.

However, she wrote: “If we can get there with this gift, it will be transformational. The most difficult question of them all might be how”.

The university late last year sent the Ramsay Centre a formal Expression of Interest in the proposal, but negotiations were kept quiet until after it had been sent, leading to a great deal of staff disquiet.

Associate Professor Andrew Bonnell, branch president of the National Tertiary Education Union at the university, said today that he would send the resolutions passed at the meeting to the university’s vice-chancellor and other members of senior management involved in the negotiations.

UQ vice-chancellor Peter Hoj. Picture: AAP

“Essentially there was overwhelming opposition to UQ proceeding with a relationship with the Ramsay Centre,” he said.

Two resolutions were passed at the meeting. The first noted that “academic freedom, university autonomy, and transparency” had to be non-negotiable conditions of any relationships with external partners, and that the members rejected the idea that a Ramsay Centre representative might sit on selection committees for UQ staff.

The second noted, among other things, “the published statements of proponents of the Ramsay Centre to the effect that the Ramsay Centre is an explicitly political-ideological enterprise intended to promote a particular uncontested view of ‘Western Civilisation’,” and questioned how that could be reconciled with UQ’s commitments to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Both motions passed overwhelmingly, with one vote against.

Professor Bonnell said he was concerned about the comments of the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Peter Hoj, since the Expression of Interest was widely circulated last December.

“The vice-chancellor has been quite adamant that UQ insists that academic freedom and institutional autonomy are non-negotiable, but our reading of the Expression of Interest is that these aren’t sufficiently there in binding terms,” he said. “There’s no requirement for the Ramsay Centre to commit upfront to respecting academic freedom.”

He added that the notion of having a Ramsay Centre representative sitting on academic selection committees would compromise independence and autonomy. “If you have someone holding the purse strings sitting there when you’re talking about appointments, that’s a potential compromise of independence and autonomy,” he said.

“While the VC has been spelling these things out as ‘red lines’, I think the red lines have got blurred in the Expression of Interest.”

Professor Bonnell said the period for open consultation on the Ramsay proposal was very short — under four weeks at a time when many staff were away — and the deadline for submissions was February 14.

A Ramsay Centre proposal for a Western civilisation course has been under negotiation at the University of Sydney for many months, but most humanities staff have remained opposed, and the Australian National University eventually rejected a similar proposal last year.