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Academic freedom under attack from foresters institute : Comments
By Roland Browne, published 23/4/2010Alarm bells ring for request to silence critics in relation to the governance of the Tasmanian forestry.
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The case you are putting forward bears no relation to the Tasmanian 'open letter' by 26 UTAS academics because, unlike the botanist Keane,almost all the letter's signatories were acting outside of their field of expertise. Moreover they did it 4-days prior to an election.
Without being privy to Keane's 1977 newspaper article, I suspect that the only similarity between him and the 26 UTAS academics was that in both cases there was an alarmist view being peddled which was at odds with the reality.
I can remember at the time, that environmentalists were claiming that all of East Gippsland's forests were doomed by the impending spread of the Cinnamon Fungus, whereas the Forests Commission had made a huge investment in research and were finding that the fungus was limited to forests with certain species, soil types, and drainage characteristics and were implementing management strategies to minimise spread by human means. Thirty three years on, if you care to drive to East Gippsland you will see that the forests have not been destroyed.
Effectively what you and the author of the 1981 article in "The Ecologist" are saying is that academics are always right and that no-one has a right to critiscise them, but what if they are clearly wrong? Just who is trying to stymie free speech here?