The University of Sydney has suspended Professor Tim Anderson for showing students an info graphic, including a Nazi swastika over the Israeli flag. It is nor antisemitic. The purpose was to provide a view on the nature of the Israeli government’s ongoing physical attacks on the Palestinians. Tim Anderson is appealing the suspension.
This has come about in the context, where there is also considerable opposition, to the proposal of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, chaired by former prime minister John Howard, to fund a course in western tradition at the university.
A group of 30 fellow academics in the university has signed an open letter criticising the university’s action and calling for academic freedom.
“The suspension of Dr Tim Anderson pending the termination of his employment is an unacceptable act of censorship and a body-blow to academic freedom at the University of Sydney,” the letter states.
Put together, the suspension and the proposed new course, indicate a turn towards using the university as a propaganda unit promoting western superiority, justifying western intervention in the rest of the world and the silencing of critics.
Below is Tim Anderson’s own brief account of what happened to him.
Yesterday [7 December] University of Sydney Provost Stephen Garton suspended me from my position as a senior lecturer and banned me from entering the university. I have worked as an academic at this University for more than 20 years and am appealing the decision to a Review Committee.
This move is the culmination of a series of failed attempts by management to restrict my public comments. I have always rejected such censorship. The latest complaint concerns my advisory analysis of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Examine the graphic below and decide for yourself whether or how this infographic might be ‘offensive’.
These complaints, over the last 18 months, have been petty and absurd. In my view they represent an unusually aggressive regime of political censorship, in which no decent university should be involved.
Most of the management complaints have to do with my criticisms of war propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine. I don’t accept such censorship.
Stephen Garton has ignored the ‘intellectual freedom’ rule of the university, which states that academic staff are entitled to ‘express unpopular or controversial views, provided that in doing so staff must not engage in harassment,vilification or intimidation’. I will point this out to the Review Committee.
I have told Provost Garton that I don’t abuse or engage in gratuitous criticism, but I do criticise dishonest propaganda harshly, when justified. I have rejected his attempts at political censorship as unprincipled.
Global Research is supporting Tim Anderson and is the publisher of his latest nook The Dirty War On Syria, though its arm Global Research Publishers, Go to the link to purchase the book at a special $15 price. It provides a compelling account of the disinformation used to justify a war of aggression.
