Below is the first Open Letter package:


A. A six-part open-letter package incorporating correspondence between myself and the Dean of Melbourne University's Faculty of Science Professor John [K-Where's-Wally-K-Waldo?...Faculty of Ghost-in-the-Machine]. In early 2000, as a graduate of this Faculty, I received an unexpected administrative letter from Professor [K-Waldo] which included a commercial flyer. His letter, to all alumni, outlined various strategic goals recently embraced by my Alma Mater, noting that the mail-out had been 'generously sponsored' by Nature magazine (MacMillan Publishing). It also detailed the establishment of a new, formal Industry/Faculty liaison group, and invited us all to 'continue to participate in the extended community of Science at Melbourne' about Faculty matters. Rather than simply discard what was in effect junk mail, I responded to Professor K-Waldo's invitation, voicing my opposition to the formation of the new group, and my reasons.

Professor K-Waldo's reply was brief, patronising and dismissive. I responded by writing a deliberately vitriolic letter back to him (as you'll see). I then included our exchange (with copies of the initial 'flyer' letter) in the following open letter package, which I mailed to about sixty members of Australia's 'elite'. The distribution list was included in the package.

The package read as follows (note all dates):

Part One: Covering Open Letter (the parts were mailed out collated in 'reverse' order; to follow the story scroll down to 'part six' and work up):

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

I take the opportunity to disseminate correspondence between myself and Professor John K-Where's-Wally-Waldo? FAA, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Melbourne University. I urge you to read it, and declare your stance on Corporate Funding of Public Universities. I urge you then to base all academic conduct on that stance, regardless of whatever financial difficulty this entails. I remind you that many current advocates of Corporate Funding have risen to prominence via hitherto (largely) publicly-funded Universities (see Distribution List). You are still situated at the top of the food chain, ladies and gentlemen. Do not let Mr Ronald McDonald® dislodge you easily.

The trivial circumstances which incubated my attack on the Dean are irrelevant and purely opportunistic. My disgust, aimed at Professor K-Waldo the professional academic, is expressed in very personal terms. I hope it is self-evident why I have chosen such tactics. I do not know John K-Waldo the private person. Those who do will despise my arrogance, my aggression, and my holier-than-thou presumption. Well, we all face 'interesting challenges', we all battle to 'weigh reality with perceived ideals'. Others may damn this as a cheap exploitation of a private disagreement. I draw your attention to the final paragraph of Professor K-Waldo's Open Letter to Science Alumni, the first I received since graduation in 1985. Instead of simply discarding yet another annoying piece of junk mail, I took at face value his invitation to '...continue to participate in the extended community of Science at Melbourne.' His reply made it clear that I was in fact merely a convenient piece of funding meat. Academics should not issue the public with invitations to participate in their ongoing intellectual activities, if they are insincere invitations. It is humiliating. It broadens, not narrows, the gap between you and us.

None of us can get away with quarantining what we think from the job of work we do. This is never more so than when the job of work IS to think. At the core of an academic career lies this uncomfortable fact. Your role in our society is, by definition, to NOT compromise what you think. So it is time to decide whether you are part of the 'Free Market' or not. The answer is either yes or no, not in an 'appropriate balance'. 'Appropriate', we the public - your employer - has a right to ask, 'according to whose criteria, exactly?' Our bosses tend to sack us if we moonlight to their detriment.

I urge and authorise by any means distribution of my rather feeble challenge to you all. I am unashamed to issue it, and will defend its content and method to those who object to either in writing only. I am fed up with talkers. I urge you to force Professor K-Waldo to publicly defend his stance, or change his position. I hope that no academic sides with the 'Free Market' in this debate. Good or bad, it hardly needs your support.

Jack (Stephen John) Robertson, B.Sc. (HPS; Melb; 1985)
7 March 2000

Distribution List

Current Representatives of the Principle of Independent Higher Learning

I ask you either to oppose 'Free Market' funding in your institution, or resign.

Chancellor, University of Melbourne
Senior Philosopher, University of Melbourne
Chancellor, Monash University
Senior Philosopher, Monash University
Chancellor, University of Sydney
Senior Philosopher, University of Sydney
Chancellor, Australian National University
Senior Philosopher, Australian National University
Chancellor, University of Adelaide
Senior Philosopher, University of Adelaide
Chancellor, University of Western Australia
Senior Philosopher, University of Western Australia
Chancellor, University of Queensland
Senior Philosopher, University of Queensland
Chancellor, University of Tasmania
Senior Philosopher, University of Tasmania
Chancellor, Northern Territory University
Senior Philosopher, Northern Teritory University

Mr Cecil Anthony John Coady, BA, MA, BPhil, MA, FAHA
University graduate and Director, Centre for Philosophy and Public Issues

I would be grateful if you were to disseminate this to your peers at the institutions I have not contacted directly.

Past Beneficiaries of the Principle of Independent Higher Learning

I ask you to reflect upon how your mind would think today if some practical, all-encompassing 'reality' had been permitted by your academic teachers to stifle your intellectual freedom in the formative years of your higher education. I ask you - whatever your field, politics, and beliefs today - to ask yourself this question:

If my teachers and I had sub-consciously 'accepted' this 'reality' as a fait accompli (whether it was a 'reality' of birth, race, religion, gender, politics, or anything else), then would my mind now be as supple and untethered as it is, enabling me to collect and assess my own evidence, formulate my own opinions, cement them with my own philosophy, validate them through my own experience of 'reality'...and select my issues, adopt my stances, and enjoy - as I have - the privilege of full participation in an aspirational life of infinite possibility?

If you answer 'no', I urge you to join this debate. It is not political, economic or ideological, and I ask you to refrain from turning it thus. Your generations have regularly proclaimed the next as the most important asset our community has. Let us find out now who means it.

His Excellency the Honourable Sir William Patrick Deane, AC, KBE
University graduate and Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia

The Honourable John Winston Howard, MP, LLB
University graduate and Prime Minister

The Honourable Peter Howard Costello, MP, BA, LLB (Hons)
University graduate and Treasurer

The Honourable Dr David Alistair Kemp, MP, BA (Melb), LLB, PhD (Yale)
University Graduate and Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth

Senator the Honourable Richard Kenneth Robert Alston, BA, LLB (Melb), LLM (Monash), BComm (Melb), MBA (Monash)
University graduate and Minister for Communication, the Information Economy, the Arts

The Honourable (Charles) Wilson Tuckey, MP *
Ministry for Forestry and Conservation
* Courtesy copy only

The Honourable Kim Christian Beazley, MP, MA, MPhil
University graduate and Leader of the Federal Opposition

Senator Meg Heather Lees, DipPE (Syd), BEd (Adel)
University graduate and Federal Leader of the Australian Democrats

The Honourable Robert John Carr, MLA, BA (Hons)
University graduate, Premier of New State South Wales and Minister for Citizenship

The Honourable Chief Justice (Anthony) Murray Gleeson, AC
University graduate and Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia

The Honourable Mr Geoffrey Michael Giudice, BA, LLB (Melb)
University graduate and President of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission

Ms Jennie George, BA, Dip Ed (Syd)
University graduate and President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions

Professor Martin Green, BE, MEngSc (Qld), PhD (Canada), FAA, FIEEE, FIEAust
University graduate and co-winner of the 1999 Australia Medal for outstanding achievement in science and technology promoting human welfare.

Major General Peter John Cosgrove, AM, MC, DipMilStud (RMC)
University graduate and former Australian Task Force Commander, East Timor

Mr Mark Anthony Taylor, BSurv (UNSW), Hon DSc (UNSW)
University graduate and former Australian Cricket Team captain

Ms Germaine Greer, BA (Hons) (Melb), MA (Hons) (Syd), PhD (Cantab)
University graduate and polemicist.

Mr Padraic Pearce McGuinness, BEc (Hons), MSc
University graduate and polemicist.

Mr Peter Robert Garrett, BA (ANU), LLB (UNSW)
University graduate, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation and Rock Singer

Mr Max Gillies, AM, BA
University graduate and Performing Artist

Mr Charles Nelson Perkins, AO, BA, Hon DLitt
University graduate and Consultant on Indigenous Affairs

Mr John Robert Hewson, BEc (Hons) (Syd), MA (Sask), MA, PhD (Johns Hopkins)
University graduate, Investment Banker and Company Director

Mr Nick Farr-Jones, AM, LLB
University graduate and former captain, Australian Rugby Union team

Mr Phillip Aiken, BE (Chem), AMP (Harv)
University graduate, and President, Executive GM and CEO, BHP Petroleum Australia

Mr Ray Martin, BA (Syd)
University graduate and Television Journalist

Mr Gary Milton Pemberton, AC, BSc (Wool Tech)
University graduate and Chairman, QANTAS Airways Limited


Mr Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO, Hon DFineArts (NY), HonDLit (Melb)*
Art Critic * Courtesy copy only

Mr David Victor Murray, BBus, MBA, FCPA, FAIB
University graduate and Managing Director, Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Mr Alan Bedford Jones, AM, BA, AEd (Qld), SDES (Oxon)
University graduate and Radio Broadcaster

Mr Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, BA, LLB (Syd), BCL (Oxon)
University graduate, Investment Banker and Republican

Ms Kerry Lyn Jones, BMus (Syd), DipEd
University graduate and Executive Director, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy

Mr Philip Ronald Cleary, BA, DipEd (LaTrobe)
University graduate, Republican and Direct Election Advocate

Ms Elisabeth Murdoch, BA
University graduate and self-made man's wealthy grand-daughter

Mr Lachlan Keith Murdoch, BA (Princeton)
University graduate, philosopher and self-made man's wealthy grandson

Mr Ashok Peter Jacob, BSc, MBA
University graduate and Joint CEO (co-chair with Mr James Douglas Packer, self-made man's wealthy grandson), Consolidated Press Holdings Limited

Mr Peter Donald Fox, BBusMktg (Hons), DipEffDistMgmt (UNSW), MAIM
University graduate and self-made man's wealthy son

Ms Dorothy Hewitt, AM, BA (WA), Hon DLitt (WA)
University graduate and poet, playwright, novelist

Mr Leslie Allan Murray, AO, DLitt (UNE)
University graduate and poet

Ms Roslyn Guy, BA (Comms)
University graduate and Education Editor, The Age Newspaper

I apologise for any errors or omissions in your academic credentials. I did my best.

Future Potential Beneficiaries of the Principle of Independent Higher Learning

You are being nudged gently into your appointed positions in the 'Free Market' machine before you have even had an opportunity to try out other 'realities'. Whether you relish the 'Free Market', despise it, or - like me - struggle to keep up with it as best you can, is not important. You may not see why I am making such a fuss, and so nastily. Unless somebody does, I argue that your children, or their children, will see it too clearly. You may also think that 'the protest thing' has been done to death. My answer is: not by you, and not on this matter, it hasn't.

If you, having been brought up in the lead-in to the 'Information Age', are entirely comfortable with the type of compromise Professor K-Waldo has made on my behalf, then I am an arrogant, presumptuous and - in a profoundly appalling sense - out-dated human being. If this is the case, Professor K-Waldo is correct in his assessment of an 'appropriate' balance in his Faculty. I neither withdraw my accusation nor change my stance, but I do acknowledge his Empirical acuity.

If any of you extract some sort of 'Beavis and Butthead' infantile delight from my cheap abuse of the Dean, and then do nothing, you are beneath my contempt.

But if there is even one single student who can find some relevance in what I am trying to do, as a University-educated citizen with a memory and enormous gratitude, then for whatever it's worth I send you every ounce of my warmth and support. And in turn I urge you to back any of your teachers - regardless of their politics, their Discipline, or their dress sense - who choose to make an uncompromising stand against Corporate Funding in your institution. Back them publicly, back them loudly, back them with all your tactical ingenuity and wit. You have a right to demand that they - not politicians - be the first line of your education's defence, and it is your daily, mundane and personal support of them as individual men and women which will be most helpful to their resolve. It's easy to yell at the PM. It's fun to play cat-and-mouse with BHP security guards. Simply saying 'no' - day after day after day - takes grit.

Ms Lisa Johnstone
University Student and President, National Union of Students
I would be grateful if you were to distribute this package to your intra and interstate branches.

Mr Benjamin Cass
University student and President, Student's Union, University of Melbourne
I would be grateful if you were to make this package available to your Union members.

Mr Jason Kara
University student and General Secretary, NSW Branch, National Union of Students
I would be grateful if you were to distribute this package to your intrastate branches.

*******************

Part Two: Professor K-Waldo's original letter to all Alumni, plus photcopy of 'Nature' magazine commercial flyer.

*******************

Part Three: My initial response to Professor K-Waldo:

Professor John K-Where's-Wally-Waldo (Faculty of Ghost-in-the-Machine), FAA
Dean, Faculty of Science
The University of Melbourne
Melbourne VIC 3010

23 February 2000

CC: Professor Rod Home, Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Dear Professor K-Waldo

I was intrigued to receive your recent letter to all Science Alumni regarding the achievements, priorities and goals of the Faculty of Science. I was particularly interested to note the formation of the Industry Advisory Group, became even more curious upon finding the Alumni Records Questionnaire, and got downright annoyed when I discovered the flyer for a commercial company. For these reasons, and partly because I'm a philosophical sort of chap (HPS, after all), I've taken your unsolicited letter as an invitation to reply.

To unpleasant matters first, then:

If you or anyone in your Faculty ever again uses my Melbourne University graduate information to include me on any commercial company's blatantly-transparent Direct Mailing list, then I will organise a flaming of your e-mail address the like of which you have never seen before. At NO STAGE, Professor, did I give you permission - 'generous sponsorship' or not - for Nature Magazine to have access, even indirectly, to my home address. I now require written acknowledgment from you assuring me that any other commercial company to whom your Faculty has supplied my information will be immediately prevented from using it to target me. This is not a request, it is a demand. The information is mine; the Science Faculty is NOT to use it to scrape together cash by dubious means. I here-by inform you that I an deeply, deeply, deeply shaken by this terrifying invasion of my privacy, and if your Faculty does it again, I will sue it into the Third Millennium.

Now that I have taken an obnoxious and crude - intentionally so - liberty with a man in a position of some seniority to me, I beg your indulgence, Professor, in seeing this letter through. Your missive represents everything that is going wrong with the Universities of today, perhaps especially within the Faculties of Science. At the very least I wish to register my opposition, in writing, to the direction in which Higher Learning is being rudely herded by corporate rustlers.

I oppose in the strongest possible terms the formation of the Industry Advisory Group by Melbourne's Faculty of Science. These are my reasons:

The Distortion, Hijacking or Complete Extinction of Vital Disciplines, and the Stunting of Graduate Professional Philosophies

Using your own words, 'developing relationships outside of the University' is one way your Faculty is seeking to ensure that '...a scientific education [will continue to assist the community] to understand increasingly complex issues'. In practice this will/does include such things as scholarships, sponsorships of Faculty activities and administration, and the new links inherent in the new IAG. Put bluntly, it means that 'Industry' (and this means nothing more than vagaries of the Free Market) will gain an increasing degree of explicit and implicit influence over the direction in which Faculty priorities develop. Perhaps it was ever thus - and perhaps even mostly for the good, particularly in such Departments as Engineering, Physics and Chemistry. To date, the discoveries exploited have been relatively ethically benign.

It is historically clear, however, where this Industry/University love affair leads. (I'd characterise it in far more commercial sexual terms, actually, with no doubt about who is who.) By a process of (at the very least) de-facto 'Supply-and-Demand Academics', the Sciences have drifted toward a didactic philosophy which focuses on the economically attractive - and this is, by definition, invariably dictated by Industry. Conversely, those areas of study which have either no immediate practical application (such as HPS), or, even more sinisterly, might represent a threat to an established Industry's interests (such as serious work in the field of Solar Power Application) suffer. In the longer term there is a real risk that disciplines may disappear altogether (how many Pure Mathematics scholarships are there today? Would Einstein even get a chance?). Even more dangerous, however, is the very real likelihood that the subtle, self-critical components of the Sciences will be ruinously distorted by the economic imperative.

By your own admission, scientific issues are becoming diabolically complex, the discoveries made by academics more and more removed from the layman's grasp. In fact, never before has the purely abstract, the philosophical (will you snicker, Professor, if I say moral?) element of an education in the Sciences been more important. This is an intellectual component which only means something if it is entirely free of commercial pressures; literally, purely academic (and not in the pejorative sense, either). But even here, 'Industry' - extremely sophisticated in PR these days - is seeking to gain influence. There are, for example, many major firms working today which can already point - in an 'ethics pre-emptive strike' - to such oxymoronic creations as the 'McNikeSoft® Business Ethics Scholarship', or the 'Bloggs Genetic Overhaul Inc® Memorial Chair of Bio-Engineering Social Issues'. Beyond the silliness of these 'examples' is a crucial hint about tomorrow's science graduate. 'Industry' knows precisely what sort of ethical 'education' it wants in the 'Bio-technicians' and 'In-Vitro Researchers', the 'Genetic Disorder Specialists' and 'Pharmaceutical Engineers' of the future. Surely a formative academic environment in which the Supremacy of Cash - the ubiquity and power of Market Forces - is a demonstrably-accepted inevitability will create Science Graduates who cannot even conceive that there may be intellectual parameters, when it comes to examining thorny issues, other than economic viability?

It is this subtle distortion - of Melbourne Science Graduate attitudes to the discoveries and developments they will make - that I vehemently oppose. Teach 'em that, even in the Academy, Money = God, and they'll worship it throughout their career. It doesn't matter how many 'Ethics Classes' you offer, either - the only way the Science Academy can seriously inculcate a sense of philosophical and ethical symmetry, to counter-balance the astounding technical skill it is beginning to provide its graduates, is to actively adopt one itself, even if it means some economic hard times. If, after all, a student doesn't find intellectual balance in the Ivory Tower, then he or she will only conclude that it is an obsolete quality, because they will certainly not encounter it in 'Industry'. Why should they? 'Industry', after all, is at least commendably open about its purpose - making money. I believe the Academy must fight its corner with precisely that same brash, bloody-minded simplicity. Yep - damned straight we occupy the Ivory Tower, Mr Ronald McDonald. It's OUR JOB! You wanna make something of it? How and when did we ever allow 'academic' and 'intellectual' to become terms of abuse?

Killing Einstein - the Misguided Abjuration of the Academic 'Duty of Care'

You may counter what I have said above with the pragmatic argument that your Faculty has little economic choice. To this I would say the following:

Professor, you are not the Dean of the Faculty of Science because you are a good businessman, an adventurous entrepreneur or a creative accountant. You are there because you are a professional academic, and presumably a very capable and accomplished one. The reason for this, in turn, is almost certainly in part because you have reaped the benefits of what has traditionally been a well-staffed, relatively comprehensive, reasonably-funded and, above all else, independently-minded Australian academic community.

Now, it is quite clear that such independence is under siege from Philistine governments and vocationally-driven employees [[typo: I meant 'employers' - jr]]. However, all I seem to be hearing from senior academics everywhere is the odd foot-stamping tantrum, and a sort of a sniffling, pathetic acquiescence to the Barbarians. Worse - a few Quislings have even embraced the changes heartily, claiming that in fact the Universities are now serving their students more faithfully by introducing them, at the start of their careers, to economic realities. If you will pardon the language, Professor - when did academics lose their nuts, exactly? Doesn't it embarrass you that you - a Professor, Dean of one of the greatest Science Faculties in the world - signed your name to a thinly-veiled Direct Marketing exercise on behalf of some poxy magazine whose editor has probably never HEARD of Galileo, let alone knows what he suffered in the name of academic freedom?

Snap out of it, Professor K-Waldo. You have a Duty of Care to the budding Einsteins in first year, who surely have a right to explore a whole dazzling array of new ideas, rather than being expected to study through obfuscating Corporate Blinkers, with an accountant breathing over their shoulders. Industry takes new ideas and runs with them; Industry can help make new ideas work. But Industry - much less the Free Market - has never once come up with a new idea itself. Certainly not one as elegant and sexy as Relativity, or the Double Helix.

For God's sake, fight for more public money. Send a letter a day to the Minister of Education. Make angry speeches. Go on strike. Demonstrate. Lobby. Harass. Make clever, cutting jokes about dumb politicians and greedy businessmen. (Give the Arts Faculty a ring if you need some ideas - they're in even more dire straits than Science.) Just don't cave in so laughably easily to the supposed 'inevitability' of commercial funding. Wouldn't you rather go down in history as a Dean who was sacked because his Research Budget dipped by 20 percent, than a mildly efficient bureaucrat who kept his books balanced, even as 'Fluid Dynamics 201' became 'Victoria Bitter® - How It Gets Into Your Glass 201' ?

The Reputation of my Alma Mater

I was a fairly miserable scholar, and I do not directly use my degree in my work these days. I never-the-less take considerable pride in being a B.Sc (Melb), and great exception to anyone or anything that diminishes my treasured - albeit modest - qualification. Now, it could just be that Nature is a fine magazine, and perhaps it is even the most important work in the Natural Sciences since The Origin of Species. It doesn't matter - if I'd wanted to help Macmillan Magazines Australia flog copy, then I would have kept my Primary School paper round. Your letter was tacky, transparent and deeply patronising, and I consider it blatant pimping. What next? Golden Arches on the back of Food Science degrees? IT exam papers sponsored by Microsoft?

The point is self-evident. If the Melbourne Faculty of Science continues to put itself about on Cheap Street, sooner or later Melbourne Faculty of Science degrees will be viewed correspondingly.

Strategic Perspectives - the Very Long Haul

Professor, the last decade or so of privatisation represents nothing more than the trivial opening shots of what we both know is going to be a very long fight. The struggle to retain academic independence in the face of ignorant (often contemptuous) politicians and businessmen is merely one part of a larger philosophical war, that between those who believe in the unlimited power of the human mind - its aspirations, ambition and artistry - and those who shrink from the intimidating challenge inherent in that magnificent vanity. Such people - none more so than those who have fled to 'Industry' - seek refuge in what is, rather than what could be; in what works (or worse, what sells), rather than what is true and right; in what Humanity is comfortable with now, rather than what might extend who We are. In the past, the freedom to soar to the academic heights has often been limited by practical, external factors, from the Roman Catholic Church in Renaissance Italy, to Hitler's goons in Nazi Germany.

Yet for all the rankness of such undisguised intellectual censorship, I believe that the subtle, suffocating pressure of Market Forces has the potential to become the most historically stifling of them all. The fact is that - particularly in the Sciences - 'Industry' Cash appears, at first glance, to be a Very Good Thing. No doubt as you've read this letter, you have been chuckling fondly and wondering whether I would be so bold if I were face-to-face with a few of your cash-strapped researchers, struggling with their twenty year old electron microscope in the bowels of the Physics building. One of the frustrating aspects of this debate is indeed the ease with which advocates of 'Industry' participation can label one such as myself an intellectual Luddite, or naive, or simply 'out-of-touch' with the realities of the 'changing modern world'.

To that, I would simply say: every single significant advance in the history of science (that is, every true advance driving that 'changing modern world') has in fact come from left field. From Copernicus through Newton through Einstein through Crick and Watson to Hawking - every major breakthrough has been a quantum leap beyond the dominant paradigm. Therefore, every serious researcher today must ask themselves this question: what is the dominant paradigm beyond which it is my particular responsibility, in the history of science, to try to leap? The answer is, of course, the Free Market, and my argument is that if the Melbourne Faculty of Science starts to churn out graduates for whom the laws of the 'Free Market' are immutable (First Law: a scientific avenue of study must have some ultimate economic application), then the chance of future 'quantum leaps' is greatly diminished. I would argue, in fact, that those in the Academy who are enthusiastically embracing the 'easy option' of the new 'economic realities' are themselves the Luddites, stuck in the boring groove of seeking to do no more than refine established ideas for the benefit of Industry, mere lab-locked, Pavlovan geeks cocking their intellects obediently at each 'ch-ching' of the Corporate Cash Register.

One example will suffice. It's almost fifty years since Crick and Watson sketched their pretty picture, and at what do we find the mightiest minds in Genetics toiling away today? The plodding 'coloring in' exercise that is the Human Genome Project. And why? Because that's where the Industry cash is. And why is the Industry cash there? Because there's a buck in it, once they've sorted out the Gene Patent details and 'educated the general population' into accepting that Foetal Screening, for all sorts of defective genes, is acceptable, or at least 'inevitable'. (Shortness? Ugliness? The Engineering Student Gene?)

But here-in lies the Faustian catch for the would-be ground-breaking scientist. For do you really think that 'Industry' is going to waste further cash on trying to find a cure for cancer, once they have established a socially-accepted and lucrative system of eradicating it? Why bother? Industry doesn't give a toss about 'understanding', 'unravelling', or 'expanding our knowledge'. Industry wants marketable results...and so all those wonderfully-qualified, dedicated Carcinogenic Crusaders might be out of a job, one day, stranded without sufficient 'Industry' funding to keep crusading meaningfully. Of course, by then there will be no mechanism for meaningful public funding, either. Thanks to short-sighted, opportunistic marriages of convenience - like that inherent in the creation of your Industry Advisory Group - the Universities will by then be no more than the R&D Wings of existing Corporate Operations.

Summary

The reasons above explain my opposition to the Faculty forging formal links with Industry. I accept that such things as individual scholarships, sponsored degrees and even some forms of liaison with specific Departments can be positive compromises. Indeed, my own degree was sponsored (although by the RAAF, not a commercial venture). But to argue vehemently against the Faculty itself establishing such links is not hypocrisy, for the Faculty surely represents the touchstone to which staff and students must feel confident to turn whenever there is a conflict of interest between the intellectual and the corporate. Thus, the Faculty must be clean, tough and free of any self-interested commercial travellers. It certainly cannot afford to turn itself into a pimp for magazine subscriptions.

Professor, this is a long and presumptuous letter, but it represents firmly-held convictions based on Empirical Observation, from an objective distance, of what is happening to our intellectual institutions. I suspect - I hope - that an idealistic part of you will agree with much of it. I urge you, with all the rigour and passion I can muster, to fight personally what is happening, tooth-and-nail. I urge your Faculty staff to do likewise, and to make every effort to instill in students a sense of territorial intellectual aggression, even ferocity. Let's all get a bit angry again, and fight our intellectual corner. Let's not get sucked into speaking the smooth, rational, Corporate language so beloved of the Suits and the Pollies. Let's not play this on their preferred home turf. Let us, in fact, get a bit bloody pissed off!

I have sent a copy of this letter to Professor Rod Home, current Departmental Head of History and Philosophy of Science. It is my belief that his Discipline will provide, over the next few decades, the battleground for some crucial philosophical and social shit-fights. If the Sciences have any hope of avoiding another retrospective 'Whoops, we didn't mean it quite like that...' (of the Hiroshima type), then your Faculty would do well to channel whatever public funding you still manage to scrape together firmly in his direction. I am presuming, of course, but I somehow doubt he will be drowning in 'Industry' lolly, just now. I also hope that you might consider it at least stimulating to disseminate parts of this more widely, and would welcome any opportunity to engage in further dialogue with you or your staff.

My final point is a disclaimer, of sorts:

Despite what I have written, I do not simply see 'Industry' as the Devil Incarnate. Most of 'Industry' is, in fact, run by University graduates. My point is that 'Industry', as such, has its own raison d'etre, its own methods, a singular trajectory along which it will run its course. I am quite sure that many individual figures in 'Industry' do not like the direction in which the Universities are headed, either. But - unlike a Faculty, which has a hierarchy, a stated philosophy, a controllable strategy, a specific leader -'Industry' cannot do much to stop itself, nor even affect its own momentum. It is a big, hungry beast, a slave to the Bottom Line, and thus in a strategic sense, helpless. Like the effluent in a Sewerage Plan simulation, it will flow along the path-of-least-resistance, and such a path, Professor K-Waldo, invariably leads to the gutter. Ask any Civil Engineering student.

I, for one, prefer my intellectuals to reach up for the stars.

Yours,

with gratitude for your time, and the deepest sincerity,

Jack Robertson

CC: Professor Rod Home,
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Melbourne

*********************************

Part Four: Faxed CC copy to Professor Home:

FAX COVER SHEET

FROM: Jack Robertson

AT: ------------------- (fax and phone)

TO: Professor Rod Home, Head of Department (information copy)


AT: 03 - 8344 7959

PAGES: This cover sheet plus seven (7)

SUBJECT: The future of the Faculty of Science.

Dear Professor Home,

I have forwarded a copy of a letter I wrote to Professor K-Where's-Wally-Waldo (Faculty of Ghost-in-the-Machine), in response to what I considered to be a poorly-disguised fund-raising attempt on the part of the Faculty. This matter, an unauthorised use of Graduate information in itself trivial enough, never-the-less provides an excellent litmus test of the precarious position in which the Sciences are placing themselves. I took the opportunity to make some fairly harsh points to Professor K-Waldo, most of which I am sure he has heard before.

The matters I raised pertain, I believe, to social issues over which your Department must begin to exert the defining, leading influence, and not merely acknowledge that the issues are there. Behind them lie ethical and philosophical debates which simply must not be left to the random mechanisms of the 'Free Market', or 'Public Opinion'. Indeed, I feel that for too long the Humanities have been occupied with abstract navel-gazing - semantics, the definition of 'truth', methodology - even as some very ugly questions relating to the New Sciences have crept closer. It's time, surely, to put aside all the distracting 'pissing in the dirt of 'poststructuralism, postmoderism, and intellectualism relativism' - the New Sciences simply will not give us the luxury of that intellectual self-indulgence. THIS is the sort of question with which a terrified public is soon going to be besieging your Department, hoping for some guidance:

Q. Now that we can identify (and, obviously, terminate/fix) every single human gene, what do we classify as a 'Disease', and what a mere Human quirk?

It's that timeless Philosophical Question - WHO ARE WE? We'd better start thinking fast again, because - by golly! - soon we'll be able to literally...define ourselves. Genetically speaking, I mean. God help us all, Professor, if we leave it to the 'Free Market' to decide who Humanity is.

And that will happen if our scientists are not equipped [[with - jr]] and willing to exercise a balanced human intellect. And that will surely come about if 'Industry' takes the Academy by the balls.

I'd be interested in your thoughts. Thanks for your time.

Jack Robertson

23 February 2000

**************************

Part Five: Professor's K-Waldo's repy to my appeal.

Professor K-Waldo wrote three short paragraphs in response; dismissive, condescending, pathetic. He thanked me for for my 'philosophical letter'. He suggested I might 'share my philosophy and passion with the relevant ministers', since 'less than half of his funding now came from Commonwealth resources'. He assured me that though he faced 'interesting challenges' in his daily struggle to 'weigh reality with perceived ideals' , he felt confident he was striking an 'appropriate balance' between commercialism and intellectual independence in his Faculty. He assured me that, having worked with industry throughout his career, his own 'pristine academic principles' remained unsullied.

He guaranteed that my address had not been supplied to Nature magazine, too...but then added to be sure to let him know if I were suddenly deluged with unsolicited junk mail, because then he, too, might 'consider adding to the wealth of lawyers'. And he started his tossed-off reply with 'Dear Jack'. So I got mad.

**************************

Part Six: My second letter to Professor K-Waldo. In this letter, I refer to an article featuring Wilson Tuckey, which I enclosed as part of the open letter package. It was a Sydney 'City Hub' review of Tony Coady's 1999 book: 'Why Universities Matter'; in it, Tuckey's well-known contempt for and intimidation of Australian academics was extensively cited.


Professor K-Waldo (Fac. of GITM), FAA
Dean, Faculty of Science
The University of Melbourne
Melbourne VIC 3010

7 March 2000

(CC: See Distribution List)

Dear 'Johnno'-me-old-matey-bonzer-cobber-digger,

Now that we're chums (thanks for dispensing with all that stuffy 'formal title', 'civil address' bullshit, by-the-by) allow me to acknowledge the time you took to respond to my letter of 23 February. Your reply raises three points for discussion:

Firstly, matey, I reject outright the weasily dodging of my principal philo-bloody-sophical objection to your decision to include a commercial company's flyer in my 'Faculty' letter (first 'Faculty' letter you bothered to send me in fifteen years, incidentally). The trivial specifics are - as you bloody well know, mate - quite beside the point. I could not, in fact, give a mighty stuff if you bunged my home address on every public dunny wall in Melbourne, as long as you did it for personal kicks, not professional cash. The issue here is Corporate muscling onto University turf, sport. What we are engaged in, (Digger), is a pissing-out of territory, and I'm bound to say that Academic leaders like you have an unavoidable obligation to put the wee about on our behalf. And not on our own suedes, either. It's not a matter about which you get to choose, me-old-kangaroo. Let's just clarify this before we go any further, shall we? Mate?

You - current Dean of the Faculty of Science at Melbourne University - are but the temporary seat-warmer of an Immutable Chair, one which in turn squats within a liberal intellectual tradition stretching back more than four thousand years. That a few equally-transient, contemporary political thugs and the random dictates of a passing economic trend happen to be putting the weights on to shift that Chair into the Knock Shop matters not one jot to me. While your spotty bum is occupying that velvet cushion you are intellectually, politically, theologically, philosophically, methodologically and polemically free to dress left, right, up, down, or tucked into your bloody freckle for all I care. The ONE thing you are absolutely NOT permitted to do with that Chair is flog it off. That's the great thing about being a '(Exclusive Offer for University of Melbourne) Science Alumni'[[the Nature flyer's tag-line - jr]], old sausage! Collective Ownership of the ol' Alma Mater! (Geez, there's always a hidden catch with junk mail, eh?) The Faculty simply ain't yours to sell, John, because it belongs to all of us and none of us. No room for quibbling on this point, Dig.

So it's not your place - there's a good chap, 'John' - to have a bit of a pash with any Brylecremed Oik who comes sniffing at your door, no matter how much Grange he tips down your gullet to loosen your dacks. Don't be gypped by that hoary old cocksman's tactic of slipping one pinkie inside the hem of your Faculty Mailing List, either; might make your insides go all warm and scrummy perched on the couch, old son, but blink three times and you'll be chewing carpet with your knickers on your head. Whatever the mechanics of your 'sponsorship' arrangement, the fact remains that I received a dirty little note from your scrofulous boyfriend. Maybe you're a two-bob tart with one in the oven, but I'm just not that kind of a girl. Put the word about, you scrag, or I'll scratch your pox-rotten eyes out.

Far more vomitous than your sex life, however, is your Clintonian assault on the English language itself. (From here, Professor, it gets a tad nasty, so hold onto your nuts.) This is what you put in black-and-white:

"Let me assure you that our mailing list was not provided to Nature or anyone else."

This cowardly mincing is right up there with 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman', you cerebral minnow, Manifest Premium Bullshit whatever watery semantics you cower behind. As for your spectacularly-underwhelming threat to get the Silks in, if I '...suddenly became flooded with unsolicited material', it reveals in all its quivering ugliness the guilt-ridden, self-deluding hypocrisy at the heart of the modern Academy's flirtatious fanny flashing at the 'Free Market'. G'arn then, you Big Girl's Blouse - I'm calling your bluff. Let's see you whack the Rumpolds onto Nature magazine. Or is their 'unsolicited material' strictly of the 'solicited' kind, so long as they have your consent? (Purely 'oral' consent, I presume? Cigar, 'John'?) You chickenshit. At least Murdoch's sprogs and lackies have the guts to tell me to 'piss off' outright, whenever I have a go at them.

But since you insist on clambering onto the page in such an underdone state, try these haymakers for size. I'm just a journeyman wannabe, am I, but me big bruvver was the Heavyweight Champ:

Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bucher verbrennt; verbrennt man am ende auch Menschen.

You'll probably need to consult German, Philosophy, History, Judaic Studies and Geography scholars, among others, so I've sent an Open Letter with a copy of our exchange of 'philosophical' views to all sorts of academics on your behalf. Perhaps they'll be expecting your call. And don't think you can fancy-dance about the ring behind wussy Lit. Crit. verbs like 'discuss', 'address', or 'examine', either. I'm a meat-and-spuds, BSc, interrogative pronoun kind of guy, myself. So: What does it mean? Who wrote it? Where can you see it literally set in stone? Why there? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE DOING YOUR JOB IGNORE IT?

Don't fuck with the Written Word, 'John'. Maybe you haven't got the balls to protect what's left of your own professional ground, but I have, with (almost) every bit of firepower I can muster. (Sorry if brusqueness offends, old bean, but 'fuck' is just a four-letter-word, while a gutless lie is a gutless lie. Put one in writing and you're pissing on my turf.)

Secondly, to the icky financial aspects. How many Graduate Names does my Faculty keep on file? 30,000? If you're reaching back as far as 1985, that many at least. (The recent additions will have paid HECS for the privilege of being there, too, and might be very interested in this little exercise in precedent-setting.) Let us conduct an Empirical experiment, John, to remind the information peddlers of our Brave New World that there's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to Jack Robertson's good Name. You run along and give this bill to Nature magazine, there's a good office-boy. We've got some Grown-Up's business to attend to:

Invoice

To the Smart Prick At Nature Magazine Who Thought He'd Use My Data To Make a Quid:

Firstly, do it again, mate, and I'll poke you in the eye with my pen.

Secondly, you are NOT:

a) providing me with consumer choice;
b) offering me the opportunity to SAVE $$$ !!;
c) helping me keep up with the 'Information Age'; or
d) providing any service that I'm not perfectly capable of seeking out myself.

You are trying to get at my readies using a public University's database. And you are pissing me off. That is all.

Thirdly, I don't want a poxy free Nature sports bag, or a ticket in your chook raffle. [[the 'exclusive' Nature offer to Alumni - jr]]

Righto, let's talk filthies, lads:

My landlady advises me that such demographically laser-designated data as that provided, by the MU Faculty of Science, to target your flyer (professional/science graduate/ technologically literate/probable 'AB' category disposable income) can pull as much as a buck per Name/Address on the 'Free Market'. I'd like my pay now please, lads. See, I didn't actually authorise Professor K-Waldo to use my hard work (three year B.Sc.) to market your rag. He sold you something he didn't own, you big dopey dags! And, as I said...I'd like my pay now please. Lads. Get your bean monkeys to calculate what you owe me according to the following formula:

Market Value of 'Nature' Sponsorship of Faculty Mail-Out* /[[divided by - jr]] Number of Graduates who received 'Nature' flyer.

* Careful here, lads. I have a pretty good idea. (Spies working undercover, and all that.)

Cheque made out to S. J. Robertson. Due date: 01-04-00. (Ask Professor K-Waldo to mail it to me on your behalf again. He has my permission this time.) If you are unable to understand the formula, please press #, then contact a Pure Mathematician (if you can find one). If you don't understand why I am being so pedantic on such a trivial matter, press #, then contact Raul Hilberg via 'The Destruction of the European Jews'. If you want your children to live in a world in which Independent Thought® is the legal property of 'Free Market Inc.', press #, then do nothing. If you have genitalia, press #, then resign. Mr Robertson greatly values your custom. Have a nice day, nice day nice day n-n-n-n-n-n....beep...

So let's hold our breaths, Professor 'Big-End-Of-Town' K-Waldo, and see just how well Macmillan Magazines Australia truly abides by 'Industry' Laws. Could it possibly be that all the enthusing upon 'Free Market' mechanisms becomes a tad muted? (At least I'm being financially scrupulous - I could have bunged a 'Shane Warne' price tag on my handle; my flipper's pretty wicked.) I wonder, John? Could it possibly be that the Freedom fighters of the 'Free Market' are about as genuine as the 'Masters' of the 'Master Race', or the 'Comrades' of the 'Comrades' Paradises'? Well, we shall see. But here's some advice that really is free: don't make Faustian Pacts with Totalitarian Big Lies. They'll gobble you right up, yum-yum-yum! (Oh, and obviously if I do receive Nature's attempted pay-off, I'll use their cheque for the only moral purpose I can think of off-hand, and wrap it tenderly around some fine Chechaouen kef.)

Lastly - and most savage of all - was the perfectly-realised note of subtle but unmistakable condescension that nestled t'wixt the faux-egalitarian 'Dear Jack', and the cheeky 'Perhaps you could share your philosophy and passion with the relevant Minister'. It's 'Mr Robertson' to you, sonny. I don't care for the matey company of Corporate arse-kissers.

The answer is 'fair enough, Professor, but on one condition'. How about YOU start giving the relevant Ministers the benefit of your '...pristine academic principals', too? How about YOU start fighting the battles my taxes and your students' fees pay YOU to fight? Sorry, mate, but 'ironic detachment' is just...soooooo Twentieth Century, hasn't anyone told you Boomers yet? If you can't handle a grown-up concept like intellectual principle, then kindly step aside and give the next generation a crack at it. (And for Christ's sakes, PLEASE take the Rolling Stones with you.) If - as it appears - you consider that pimping for magazines represents '...an appropriate balance', the last place for you is a Faculty Chair. Go and enjoy your publicly-underwritten super. It's more than your current students can look forward to.

As to the value of an academic nobody like me appealing to the '...relevant Ministers', let me draw your attention to the enclosed article, and the crude methods adopted by the likes of that Great Double Scholar of Anglo-Saxon Linguistics and Extruded Ferrous Oxides, Emeritus Professor Wilson 'Gimme-a-First-Or-I'll-Split-Your-Lip' Tuckey. This is what we are up against, Professor, don't you get it yet? This is what lies scarcely concealed beneath the Corporate Doublespeak you seem to have swallowed, hook, line and sinker. The time is past for niceties, for polite chit-chattery, for taking 'Industry' assurances at face value and granting the 'Free Market' benefit-of-doubt. For too long academics have been blubbering into their navels or disappearing up their own bumholes in search of some position of '...appropriate balance'. Philistine thugs like Tuckey will absolutely monster your Donny little world; they will positively cack all over the Chancellor's desk and wipe their bums on Leonardo's manuscripts, unless the Collective Academy - past, present, future - comes out fighting just as hard and tasty. 'Less than half the Faculty's budget from Commonwealth Education Resources?' Jesus, this is Sweet-FA, Professor. The 'Free Market' hasn't even started to wriggle 'Free' yet...

This is going to be a tough, never-ending debate, one that needs stamina, leadership and above all else, solidarity from academics. The argument is not between the 'Thinking Left' and the 'Thinking Right', if it ever truly was. It's between the 'Thinking' and the 'Unthinking', and the sooner the Academy faces up to this, the better. People have been skirmishing for some time, but what good is it when Quislings start biting pillows in the Enemy Comfort Camps, however reluctantly? I urge you to remember that, when Universities as we know them have long-disappeared and the reaped seeds are sown, politicians and businessmen will do as politicans and businessmen always do. They will dig out the track records of formerly tenured intellectuals - records like yours, Professor - and simply point out, from the dock of posterity, that the 'experts' supported them. How do you feel about a shaved head, 'John'?

Your letter scared and saddened me beyond belief. It represents another incremental backwards step in that familiar series of tactical fall-backs which only the long historical view sharpens into ugly, strategic focus. Your words are a few more demi-semi-quavers in the most poignant score of them all, the Song of Abject Intellectual Surrender. A sad tune, composed by weaklings and sung by sophisticated sheep, as they clippety-clop their way dutifully towards the abattoirs. Desperate to drown out the sound of the rotating knives but unwilling to dig in their hooves, they seek comfort in a harmonised 'baaa-ing', fraternally re-assuring each other that the place to which they are headed must be warm, safe and friendly, for otherwise someone would make a run for it, surely? If ever we needed some rabid pack wolves stampeding the Academy flock, it is now.

All I can do is urge you to fight to hold onto your independence and academic integrity, Professor, because your reply merely confirms that you're throwing it away fast. I run a risk with this second and final letter of making myself seem obnoxious, ludicrous, embarrassing, whacky, irrelevant, an inconvenient pest, a complete nutter best ignored. (Not to mention profane, misanthropic, over-zealous and drunk, if you choose to extract comfort from those conveniently dismissive slings.) I am none of these things. I have enormous faith in the best traditions of liberal, intellectual courage. It is a profoundly powerful force, one to cling to in that first lonely moment when you heave yourself above the parapet - as I am doing now - to launch yet another futile attack. It could be that in the hysterical desperation of this death-or-glory charge, I have transgressed some Battlefield Conventions. Well, I'm calling you names, John, not throwing sticks and stones, and they can only hurt you if they fit. Call me a gobby loony on a personal suicide mission, but I can see that for all the apparent impregnability of the opposing trenches, there is little defence-in-depth. Break through the likes of Wilson Tuckey's brittle braggadocio, and we'll be bunging flags on the Brandenberg Gate inside two days. If my tactics are squiffy, then it hardly matters from cannon fodder like me, as long as you're not too proud to clamber over my corpse towards Treasury Place. Tactics tend to confuse me, anyway, and careful planning has only seen us advance backwards. All I know for certain is this: when I see commercial sponsorship of routine Faculty administration, things have gone too far, and it's time to unsheath the cold steel. We've got some serious moral mazes to grope through in the near future - none more so than in the Sciences - so let's knock this flirtation with economics into touch before the demon seed takes root. You can't be a 'little bit' preggers, Professor. What we need round the cloisters right now are Big Dicks and Hot Twats, not nancy boys and prick-teasers. The good Minister for Forestry and 'Conservation' (sic) is unbuckling his moleskins as we chat.

Professor K-Waldo, if my cheap, nasty shots make you angry, then good. Draw whatever consolation you like from the fool I am making of myself. Laugh at my crude craftsmanship. Perhaps I can't write for strawberry jam, but I would rather tell the truth badly than a Big Lie well. You select phrases like 'perceived ideal' (sic), 'appropriate balance' and 'interesting challenges', and they sound substantial, considered, reasonable, credible. Perhaps once upon a time they, too - like 'Man of Principle', 'Freedom of Speech' and 'Academic Integrity' - referred to something human and real. Now, they catch my ear no more than 'Mothers are Good' and 'War is Bad'. What do you mean by 'appropriate balance'? Of what? With what? Between what? Appropriate to WHAT? Blah, blah, blah, John. Blah. Blah. Blah.

The truth is, you don't know. Like most academics today, you can't even recognise words that lie dead. You are dulled and inured, you are morally anaesthetised and profoundly deaf to the vacuousness of what passes for public debate. The lies are grinding us slowly but relentlessly down, Professor. They are winning again. Perhaps inch-by-inch, more probably now yard-by-yard...very soon mile-by-hard-won-bloody-mile. I listen to the catchy lies of our 'intellectual leaders'; I struggle with the deepening opacity of each new lying fad in writing - unrecognisable words, cryptic theories, self-appointed prophets who assure me condescendingly that at last they have invented a Canon that is not elitist and excluding, only to dismiss me petulantly and call it my failure when I cannot even read it, let alone reach it. I see tonnes of paper wasted on daily lies, yet find barely a glimmer of truth on page after page after page. I try my best to accept the lie of compromise, to dodge the lies of marketing and merchandising and politicking. I suffer in silence the shrieking lies of self-obsessed opinion setters and academic celebrities. I even try to believe the rational lies of the wise and the worldly, as they carefully explain to me why it is that our age, in comparison to that of other men and women (some so passionate and naive that they died for quaint notions like intellectual principle), is blessed with a different, a more mature, a better class of thinker. Most of all, I fight to check my blossoming contempt for the braying of that Greatest of All Modern Lies, 'Public Opinion'. Who gives a shit about 'Public Opinion'? I just wanted to hear yours, 'John'.

In the end, I see that all that truly matters is for a person's actions to be in harmony with their deepest beliefs, whatever those beliefs happen to be. It is those few who are made privileged by a higher education who must accept an additional challenge - finding the words to urge us all to strive for that same harmony of existence, regardless of belief. But when the privilege of education is simply exploited to conceal the accusing gap between what a person believes and how they live their daily lives; when words are twisted to hide weakness, ambition, and greed; when they are manipulated with such conviction and skill that they are believed...

Then what is destroyed - when the deceit is inevitably exposed - is not merely our trust and faith in that individual person, or the institution they represent. What is weakened is far more even than just the power and potential of the words they used up. What they truly take down with them, with each rotten lie, what will one day be lost forever - irreplaceably, savagely, mercilessly - is our belief in belief itself. That is why a lie at the heart of the Academy is an abomination, for that is all the Academy ever was, ever could be, ever should be. The Secular Repository of the belief in belief itself. Without that, Humanity is a monkey, with a fifth the strength and none of the agility.

Hence the viciousness of this attack on you, Professor K-Where's-Wally-Waldo-the-Ghost-in-the-Machine; upon you as Dean of the Faculty of Science, but in a profoundly personal way. Take this letter just like that. It comes with not a skerrick of irony, no cool detachment, zero sympathy for your 'interesting challenges', no consoling nod to the realities of 'the System'. This is all for you, Professor, with much forethought and extreme intellectual malice. Your coma wouldn't matter if you were something as piddling as the President of the United States of America. But as a professional thinker you are more than merely part of a long tradition. You are that tradition. If you can't hack it, find another job. 'Industry', no doubt, would snap you up.

I'm simply protecting myself, Professor. Without a belief in belief itself, I am nothing. I am not handsome, I am not strong, I am not rich, I am not clever, I am not powerful, I am not well-born, I am not cunning. I have no aptitude for violence and a prissy, middle-class distaste for anarchy. The Academy is all I am. So when you fail to protect it, you are failing to protect me. That makes you my enemy's friend, and my enemy's friend is my enemy. So let us draw the battle lines clearly at last, then. Let us all make a stand on our chosen side. And how about we let history call it, in the end?

Me?

Well, here I stand:

You are an intellectual coward, Professor John KKKKKKKK, current (Mar 2000) Dean of the Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne. As a fellow beneficiary of the long tradition of independent Higher Academic Learning, you have my contempt. Cut all Faculty ties with 'Industry' and the 'Free Market', or resign your Deanship at once.

Postera Crescam Laude, mate. Postera Crescam Laude.

Yours bleakly,

Jack Robertson

7 March 2000

Distribution List attached



*******************

So that was the opening package. Over the next couple of months, I received exactly three replies from the 'Great Australian Elite':

1. - From staff in the electoral office of Wilson Tuckey MP, politely acknowledging receipt.

2. - From staff in the offfice of 'Australians for Constitutional Monarchy' (Kerry Jones), politely acknowledging receipt.

3. - From the PA to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Tasmania, politely acknowledging receipt.

A grand total of nine lines from the whole piss-poor pack of them.

Draw your own conclusions. Either I'm just a green-pen crank, or our mighty 'elites' are mediocre, wrong and utterly gutless.


posted by J at 11:18 AM