UNSW says anything that is acceptable to say in the general community is fine to say on campus or within the university community. This is a more liberal policy than some other universities, which are unwilling, for example, to hire out facilities to an anti-vaxxer group on the basis that its views are contrary to scientific evidence and do harm.
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UNSW chancellor David Gonski and vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs feel so strongly about it that they did a joint interview with me last year, at the height of the debate over university free speech, to make their point clear.
“We want this place to be the same as outside and be an open place for discussion,” Gonski said.
“Campus is a place for people to express all sorts of different views,” Jacobs said. “Many of them will not be scholarly. Some of them will offend quite a lot of people. Some of them will be just patently ridiculous. I don’t mind. I want people to be able to give those views and other people to be able to object.”
And just because something was said on campus did not, of course, mean that the university endorsed that view, Jacobs added.
But that was not the approach UNSW took when it published the views of one of its adjunct lecturers on its website last Friday.
In a reported story, Elaine Pearson, who is also the Australian director of Human Rights Watch, called for a UN special envoy to be appointed to monitor human rights in Hong Kong following the restrictive national security law imposed by China last month.
The university also tweeted it on its main Twitter account, @UNSW.
The furious reaction from China, through state mouthpiece Global Times, and orchestrated social media posts was predictable. At this point UNSW went back on its stated free speech principles. On Saturday it deleted the tweet and, for a time, the story was taken down. It’s now back up. But it’s restricted to the law school news page and not on the general news page where news stories are usually listed.
It’s obvious to all why UNSW is so sensitive about the story. The university is highly dependent on Chinese students for revenue and wants them to return when borders are opened. And it needs the Chinese government to allow students to return.
But free speech principles, endorsed in policy, should never be sacrificed. The university has managed, by its actions, both to offend China’s delicate sensitivities and to attract intense criticism from Australians.
The best thing the university could do now is offer a mea culpa for the events of the weekend and publicly restate its commitment to its free speech policies.
China, of course, will carry on with its ritualised rage. But the best way to counter that is with calm and assured adherence to policies and principles.
Will any Chinese students withdraw from UNSW because the university upholds free speech? Probably not many, because they all knew before enrolling that Western universities endorse free speech standards.
Will the Chinese government retaliate in some other way? It’s possible, but that’s a justified risk that not only universities but also the whole of Australia has to take with our largest trading partner.
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What is easily forgotten in the furious reaction to the University of NSW’s hasty backdown last weekend when it tweeted one of its academics’ critical views of China is that it actually has a policy on free speech that is admirable.