University of Melbourne and trans activists could get rid of me, Holly Lawford-Smith says
Holly Lawford-Smith now requires a security escort on one of Australia’s most prestigious uni campuses and may be forced out, as students justify vandalism attacks.
A University of Melbourne associate professor has accused her employer of introducing a pro-transgender directive to get rid of her and her course.
Gender-critical feminist Holly Lawford-Smith, who has been a target of vandalism and a student-led poster campaign, is walked to and from her office by a security guard to be able to safely teach her feminism class.
The academic fears the university’s new LGBTQIA+ Inclusion Action Plan could threaten the future of her unit and tenure.
The policy, which is still being rolled out, would give students the chance to air grievances against curriculums they don’t like.
“My question is whether they are introducing it in order to have formal processes to get rid of my course or me,” Dr Lawford-Smith told The Australian.
“(In 2021) they sort of tried to review my teaching, but there’s no procedure for what that means … it’s never come up before that you would hire someone so incompetent that you would need to check their teaching.
“Does that just mean they want students to feel more like they can complain about something they don’t like … or does it mean they want a more formal pathway for sanctions? So they’re getting their ducks in a row.”
Dr Lawford-Smith is concerned with the protection of women’s sex-based rights and argues Victoria’s statutory self-identification for change of legal sex creates conflicts of interest.
The lecturer faced an outcry from students in 2021 when she ran a website encouraging anonymous posters to document their experiences of trans women and earlier this year after she attended a protest hosted by British women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen, whose critics have labelled “anti-trans”.
She said self-identifications laws could mean biological men who transition could access spaces such as women’s toilets and domestic violence shelters and take away opportunities.
“Something like a women’s scholarship, women have been historically under-represented … if your theory is we need more role models, does a young woman look at a man who claims to be a woman and see a role model?”
The professor said she had thought about disbanding her unit at the university and putting her lectures on YouTube if there was a serious threat.
“I might decide to give up teaching it, make it a public education project and just find something else to teach that’s slightly less controversial,” she said.
“Because I don’t want to lose my job over it, I want them to be honest about what they’re doing.
“I have taught (the feminism unit) for four years and that’s kind of a rebellion of its own. Maybe it’s OK, at a certain point, to choose to keep your job especially because it’s still significant to be a gender-critical academic. It would be worse to be pushed out.”
Jiang Linli, 21, a former student of Dr Lawford-Smith, said she was happy to find a feminist class focused on women as it was not offered in her home country of China. “If they’re trying to protect their movements by cancelling Holly’s class, I must say, there’s no freedom,’’ she said.
“In China, if we claim we are feminist, we will handle some physical attack by some extreme males because we have a different voice.”
Masters student Jade Smich said the university needed to conduct a critical review of the subject.
“This lecturer has demonstrated that she is unable to provide a safe and academically rigorous environment,” she said.
An undergraduate student who spoke anonymously said the acts of vandalism, including smashing windows and spraying graffiti on university property, were justified.
“I think it’s just another way to, like, express your dissatisfaction with the university … it’s one of the few ways we can, like, make them actually listen is by disrupting,” she said.
“Victoria is a pretty progressive state and stuff, I think her position at the university should also be reconsidered.”
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