Law professor fighting for his job after ‘noble savage’ comments in leaked email

An academic who said ‘Blak activists’ were turning Melbourne University into ‘an ideological re-education camp’ has been mocked for using anti-discrimination laws in a bid to save his job.

Eric Descheemaeker, left, and Eddie Cubillo

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A Melbourne University academic who faces the sack after declaring that “Blak activists” were turning the institution into “an ideological re-education camp” has been mocked by opponents for using anti-discrimination laws in a bid to save his job.

Law professor Eric Descheemaeker lodged a discrimination claim against the university under the Fair Work Act after being threatened with termination over an email he wrote was leaked and posted on noticeboards around the campus in June, sparking outrage among some staff and ­students.

In the email to Melbourne law school dean Matthew Harding, Professor Descheemaeker said the law school appeared to exist solely for the purpose of celebrating “the noble savage” and he was being asked to teach that “Australian law is only ‘settler law’ ”.

“There is absolutely no end to where ‘Blak’ activists are meaning to take us – except destruction. They have made us start every meeting with ritual prayers,” he wrote.

The email was condemned as “racist” by some staff and students, with the university offering counselling to anyone who “may have been offended or upset by its ­contents”.

Professor Descheemaeker had complained about an Indigenous cultural safety review ordered after former Northern Territory discrimination commissioner Eddie Cubillo quit his role as ­associate dean, describing the law school as “the most culturally unsafe place I’ve worked”.

Professor Cubillo is now director of The Mabo Centre, a partnership between the National Native Title Council and the University of Melbourne supporting traditional owner groups.

Eddie Cubillo at the 2025 NAIDOC Awards in Perth. Picture: Cole Baxter

In a LinkedIn post on Saturday, Professor Cubillo responded to Professor Descheemaeker’s discrimination claim by quoting an Alanis Morissette song: “Isn’t it ironic … don’t ya think!”

As director of the Indigenous Law and Justice Hub at the Melbourne law school, Professor Cubillo, had overseen a curriculum review to “embed Indigenous content” across its juris doctor (or JD) program.

This content, he said, “which exposes and explores experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in settler legal system … must by its nature challenge the premise that settler law is fair, just, objective and inclusive”.

Following the review, three of the 10 teaching days in the first-year subject Legal Methods and Reasoning – almost one-third of reading material and classroom time – are now devoted to Indigenous/settler law matters.

The French-born Professor Descheemaeker, who is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University, joined the law school as a professor in 2017.

“I joined what I thought was a world-class law faculty”, he wrote in his email. “I wake up in an ideological re-education camp with incredibly parochial concerns, those of the inner-north suburbs of Melbourne (sorry, ‘Naarm’).

Flyers appeared around the University of Melbourne campus with a picture of an email sent by professor Eric Descheemaeker to the law school dean in 2023 that raised concerns about efforts to "Indigenise" the curriculum.

“Celebrating the ‘noble savage’ is already the main, if not exclusive, thing Melbourne law school appears to exist for – with just a bit of space to spare for every possible sexual or gendered minority vying for claims to victimhood,” he wrote. “Their (non-existing) claims to land are now ‘acknowledged’ about every 10 feet in our corridors.

“They want me to teach that Australian law is only ‘settler law’ and that there exists a rich body of ‘Indigenous law’ alongside (what are Indigenous private-law remedies, I wonder. Ritual spearings?).

“What is the purpose of this review? To tell us that every time we do not concern ourselves with their egoistic preoccupations we commit genocide (the ‘silence is vio­lence’ argument?) This madness has to come to an end.”

Professor Descheemaeker said in the email he did not know who among his “Indigenous colleagues” had left the university.

“I have in fact no interest in categorising my colleagues into pure-blood and impure-blood ones, which to an old European like me is reminiscent of things too ugly to speak of – nor what the ­alleged ‘incidents’ are,” he wrote.

Melbourne University law professor Eric Descheemaeker has lodged a discrimination claim against Melbourne University under the Fair Work Act.

“Given that we stand accused before the political commissars of the virtue (firing?) squad, it might have been a good idea, according at least to the (settler-law) prin­ciples of natural justice, to tell us what it is we stand accused of?”

Professor Descheemaeker has also been a vocal opponent of independence for French-administered New Caledonia, arguing that it is only support from France that props up the archipelago, and the local Kanak population had the most to lose if Paris withdrew.

The Kanak solidarity movement branded this as “colonial propaganda” and “a racist narrative”, demanding the University of Melbourne state whether his views were compatible with “international law and Indigenous rights”.

Professor Descheemaeker is taking action under s. 351 of the Fair Work Act, which prohibits an employer from taking adverse action against an employee because of the person’s race, colour, sex, sexual orientation or political opinions.

On Friday, at a hearing before judge Val Gostencnik in the Federal Circuit and Family Court. the university agreed not to terminate Professor Descheemaeker’s employment or take any further adverse action pending a hearing of his interlocutory application on 9 September.

Professor Descheemaeker declined to comment.