Academic freedom, participatory democracy and open debate are again under threat in the US as zionists attack UCSB professor William Robinson for circulating course material which criticized the Israeli occupation of Gaza. The Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at the University of California, Santa Barbara is committed to defend academic freedom through a coalition of progressive students and organizations, and to organizing students on campus against nation-wide campaigns of political repression. Read Noam Chomsky's critique. Catch up on, and contribute to this important struggle! Click on the header above or go to http://sb4af.wordpress.com/
Update: Campus wars, US & Australia
In late 2006 SBS-TV's Dateline program reported that US group Campus Watch, backed by the powerful Zionist lobby, has professors of Middle East Studies under surveillance and promotes termination of their careers for non-conformist views. This followed revelations of payment to students to spy on Left professors at UCLA, vilified as the Dirty Thirty: see
http://www.swans.com. Now Norman Finkelstein, outstanding Middle East scholar, faces non-tenure after Zionist Alan Dershowitz intervened: see Chomsky at
http://www.zmag.org and
http://www.petitiononline.com. Are there Australian parallels? See
http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline
Undeterred by the facts, Murdoch's academic propaganda arm has refused to publish a letter which corrects serious errors in an article late last year, and hints at its own complicity in the RMIT dismissal. See attached comments, and
http://melbourne.indymedia.org.
Fighting Fund: with thanks
Update: Dr Austin's dismissal has been settled under Unfair Dismissal legislation in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission after RMIT management, despite claims that it awaited resolution there, blocked a hearing under the EBA (see Unfair Dismissal: settlement, below). The DOU Fighting Fund which helped defray the legal costs for the case has now been closed. A Solidarity Fiesta/Fundraiser in April raised around $800: see
http://www.unionsolidarity.org/ and
Solidarity Fiesta.pdf
Unfair Dismissal: settlement
The dispute over the Murdoch press-driven political dismissal of Dr Austin from RMIT this year has been settled under the Unfair Dismissal legislation of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. The terms are confidential. Background information and space for comments will remain here; a video-documentary is planned for release this month.
The limited but concrete gains in this dispute graphically demonstrate that decent-minded and committed supporters of public higher education, working together, can influence the political struggle to reclaim our universities as open democratic spaces, where full student participation and intellectual diversity overcome the ignorance, fear and conformism promoted by the mainstream press, multinational capital and neocon managements.
See also updated chronology at
Chronology II FIN 03 06.pdf and
http://www.unionsolidarity.org
Latin American women on conformism
Carmen López is Salvadorean; Viviana Ramírez is Chilean. They know from experience how effectively political dismissal intensifies cultural conformism. Their latest article is at
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/114608.php, and
http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/node/37363, expanding the piece at
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/667/667p7c.htm
Please edit, sign and send your letter of protest by selecting the following link:
http://www.unionsolidarity.org/RobertA_form.htm. And thank you! We have received over 200 messages.
Please also take the time to post your public message of support on this website, under
comments (below).
Tariq Ali is a popular historian, political campaigner & co-editor of New Left Review. He recently confirmed support for the campaign to Defend our Universities and stop the sacking of Dr Robert Austin: see letter from Professor Richard Harris (below).
¡A Cazar Brujas!
Un nuevo artículo por dos escritoras latinoamericanas compara ésta lucha en medio de una universidad "progresista" con otras en el contexto de sus países natalicios. Y se encuentra el eco de prácticas dictatoriales. Ver:
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/110648.php
Preston Reservoir Progress Association
Our Association is made up of residents from the City of Darebin. At our last meeting the issue of the sacking of Robert Austin was raised. There was deep concern expressed at the way in which this academic was treated, and it sees indicative of the unprincipled attacks that are taking place around this country on decent citizens who are attending to their responsibilities in the most proper way as they see it.
There was a time when we considered places of education as standard bearers in our country, where debate and difference welcomed and enjoyed. Universities and other places of academic learning produced some of the finest minds in our country. No more, what we are now seeing is almost cloning, where different opinions are no longer welcomed, but simply a nuisance to be silenced.
We felt most strongly about this and there urgently request that Dr. Austin be re instated and that he also be provided with documented evidence of whatever misdemeanor with which he is being accused.
Yours sincerely
Marion Harper, Hon.Secretary. Preston Reservoir Progress Association.
34 Gisborne Crescent, Reservoir 3073 [April 2006]
Hunger strike - University of Miami
Janitors, housekeepers and groundkeepers at the University of Miami have been demanding what is a simple, basic human right: to join a union. Their employer is threatening and intimidating them, and the university is refusing to support their struggle. They are demanding that former Clinton administration official Donna Shalala, president of the university, intervene in the dispute and tell the company (UNICCO) to recognize these workers' right to form a union. Shalala is stubbornly refusing. Both the workers and a half dozen university students have gone on a liquids-only hunger strike. Civil rights leaders, politicians and labour leaders have rallied to their cause. The workers are laying their lives on the line for dignity at work. Already, several have been hospitalized. For more, and to email support, see
http://www.labourstart.org/
Unarchived: Green Left Weekly interview
This previously-unpublished interview from late 2005 backgrounds the Unfair Dismissal case brought by the Defend Our Universities committee against RMIT: see
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/119642.php
