Big Little Thought Crimes in Melbourne

"Simon, your reinforcement of Julie's misrepresentation of my paper's analysis, and its author's views, has been most unfortunate..." On a weekend in late June, sick in bed at home, I reflected that I'd had a good week. My new Conversation piece was on track to reach 2000 readers. And the substance had been discussed online by experts who'd…

"We all know what happens to heretics, even when they're right: they are denounced and isolated..." It was Wednesday. On Tuesday morning my Conversation piece had appeared, as planned. I'd spend time that day and the next - with one sick kid at home, then two - replying to readers as their comments trickled in.…

"You are never going to win against either The Australian or Marginson who are far too powerful, whatever the merits in this matter." This candid dose of Realpolitik had landed a week after my Dantean detour in the Mad Max car park (Chapter 16). It made sense. Not least in that it matched what others, closer to…

Last month's High Court ruling on Peter Ridd versus James Cook University concludes a third deep dive by judges into a Kafka-Down-Under policy maze about academic freedom and its lawful limits. Should sharp, dismissive criticism of other scholars' research be sanctioned as misconduct, if university managers find it uncollegial or disrespectful? In this case, complaints…

The day after my detour through the Mad Max carpark, I sent Leo a copy of my second letter to The Australian. I didn't expect him to be happy. After all, the Centre's April memo on its Communications Strategy was clear (Chapter 8): The Melbourne CSHE and LH Martin Institute maintain good relations with a…

"They're bastards." I was standing in the Vice-Chancellor's office on a Tuesday afternoon in late May. On the way up to Level 9, I'd reflected that it had been a decade since I'd worked in the Raymond Priestley Building. Back in 2005, I'd been part of a small group that the VC had enlisted to…

Newly published research on the outcomes of last year's controversial Job Ready Graduates funding reforms was reported last week in the Australian Financial Review with the headline: The big steal: why the government can't deliver on uni places. As AFR puts it: The analysis by Mark Warburton, an honorary senior fellow with the Centre for…

"Can't you see the big picture?" I'd never seen the Institute Director so visibly disturbed. That year was always going to be difficult for the Institute. Our $10 million set-up grant had been spent. Freely in the early years, then more frugally. The plan had been that in time, program revenue would stop falling short…

Now, where were we? Oh yes - winter was coming. The climate on campus was chilly. By early May, as foreshadowed back in Chapter 3, the face in my morning mirror had faded, from sheer weariness, into a kind of Dumbledorian grey. Some at the Centre, aware of the outline of what had happened, would…