Of course it's worth studying. It should mean everything to us. It is everything to us. The people who should be studying it are those ignorant, brainwashed fools who benefit from it, but who are told by the likes of the Marxist running the ANU and other universities how 'bad' it is. The ANU has shown clearly who our enemies are: academics and the political class which has rolled over rather than fight for our entire existence as the best civilisation in the world. It's time to look seriously at the huge sums taxpayers are putting into bankrolling their enemies.

Sounds like a bit of a Mickey Mouse degree to me. Although compared to some of the crap on offer at our universities, it's not so bad. I fail to see what all the fuss is about.

Don Aiken would only receive 30 Points for this essay at the University of Sydney.

He would get marked down 10 Points for the use of any word containing "Man."

His sins;
1. Businessman.
2. Businessmen.
3. Human.
4. Humanity,
5. Humanities.
6. Humanistic.
7. Mandatory.

Probably more as he used some words twice.

How's that for Academic Freedom & the advancement (opps) of education in Australia.

Now I'll wait for Steelie & Ilk to support the Universities support of the removal of these words & the denunciation of the Western Civilization Course.

If western civilisation is so bad, perhaps someone could suggest one that is better.

This is ridiculous. What society doesn't provide for the study of itself, ideally warts and all ? Yes, we can rant until the cows come home about witchcraft, burning of heretics at the stake, slavery, imperialism, fascism (in all its forms, Left and Right), the greedy nature of capitalism, etc., etc. But as Big Nana says, in what ways are other 'civilisations' better ?

Why can't we study all of them - well, actually, we would be doing just that since it would be impossible to study Western Civilisation in isolation: it wouldn't be possible to talk about ancient greek mathematics without acknowledging there influence of India, for example; or the contribution to ancient maths of Egyptian advances in geometry. And so much of ancient philosophies and modern religions owe a great deal to Zoroastrianism, the religion of Mesopotamia and Persia. And so on.

And how could we study the Crusades without mentioning Islamic aggression and superior military strategy across the Middle East and North Africa ? How could we study early military history without noting the development of cannon by the Ottomans ? How could we study the history of, say, accounting without mentioning the activities of the Jews of Cairo ?

Actually, I would love to get involved in a course which critiqued all civilisations without mercy, the warts and all of ALL civilisations. It would probably have to be a full three- or four-year degree plus PG. But it would be incredibly valuable to know where the rights that we take for granted - e.g. the right to criticise Western civilisation - come from.

But, please, no red herrings about how such a course would only celebrate the West and denigrate the Rest. It wouldn't have to be like that at all - in fact, can you really imagine the students of today putting up with an uncritical presentation of Western civilisation ? They'd tear lecturers limb from limb.

Joe

Loudmouth:can you really imagine the students of today putting up with an uncritical presentation of Western civilisation ? They'd tear lecturers limb from limb.

Did you mean their Lecturers would tear the Students limb from limb?