This is an infamous, dishonest and wholly untrue charge

The Australian’s Greg Sheridan takes on University of Sydney professor Dirk Moses (inset).

A couple of times this week I suggested Australian public universities are narrow-minded and ideological. Now, apparently for having the temerity to commit this thought crime against public decency, a history professor at Sydney University, Dirk Moses, has compared me to Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right mass murderer who killed almost 80 people in July 2011.

What the …?

Obviously, some history professors have a different idea of what constitutes facts from the normal practice in journalism.

I don’t think in my long life of rhetorical combat I’ve ever compared someone I disagree with to a mass murderer. But then I work for a newspaper that takes facts seriously rather than for a university where truth is apparently relative — and a pretty distant relative at that.

Lest I be accused of misrepresenting Professor Moses, let me quote in full the relevant paragraph from his opinion piece published on the ABC’s web site.

Concerning my criticism of the ANU for rejecting the proposed centre for the study of Western civilisation, he wrote: “How to ­account for the hysterical discussion? Why would an otherwise level-headed commentator like Greg Sheridan commence his column in The Australian with the extraordinary statement that the ANU’s decision ‘is a pivotal moment in modern Australian history?’ Do members of the right-wing commentariat think Western countries are succumbing to a poisonous cocktail of multiculturalism, Muslim immigration, political correctness and cultural Marxism that dilutes the white population and brainwashes young people at school and university? It seems that, much like Anders Breivik and Steve Bannon, they do.”

Excuse me?

Does the discipline of academic history really entitle the professor to make up these defamations without regard for facts?

How can he claim I am motivated to prevent trends that ­“dilute the white population”?

Let’s be clear about this: this is an infamous, dishonest and ­wholly untrue charge.

I suppose being a professor of history gives you a special exemption from reading someone’s views before you denounce them.

As is public rec­ord, for 40 years I have been relentlessly promoting a big and a racial­ly non-­discriminatory immi­g­ration pro­gram. The first issue I got seriously involved in was saying Australia must take a big number of Indochinese refugees.

Two weeks ago on the ABC’s Q&A, I argued for a big immigration program and racially div­erse program. I have probably spilt more ink over these issues than any others in my writing life, including a couple of books that touched on the subject.

Professor Moses may not have read anything I’ve written. Why should he? But does he apply these standards of factual accuracy to his pronouncements generally? That he can just make stuff up? Similarly, he claims I share the views of former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon. I am honoured to be the subject of playground abuse from a Sydney University professor, but as a matter of fact all the way through the American primaries and presidential election I argued, in print, on TV and on radio that Trump was not fit to be President.

In journalism, we care about facts. What an offence against critical theory. The good professor seems merely to construct a caricature of someone he dis­agrees with and then engage in the most fantastic, dishonest ­efforts at guilt by false association.

And then the final flourish of this ludicrous paragraph is to associate me with the views of mass murderer Breivik.

Surely I don’t even need to answer that. Surely that is a slur so contemptible as to be beyond any canon of decency or standard of intellectual honesty. I have written a couple of critiques of the political culture at our public universities this week. Dirk Moses has amply demonstrated the truth of what I wrote.

Late yesterday, after the piece had been up for hours, someone, presumably the ABC, deleted the reference to Breivik.