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The Forum > Article Comments > Imposing their own prejudices > Comments

Imposing their own prejudices : Comments

By Chris Lewis, published 14/3/2012

Many Australian academics believe that only those who agree with them are unbiased.

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Chris Lewis,

while there's much I could criticise academia for, I think you're here displaying rank bias yourself and making unjustified innuendos based on one anonymous academic and one high-profile academic cum journalist/public intellectual. And in the latter's case, he's been between left and right throughout his career and in my opinion, apart from his humanitarian bias, sits just as centre as all the rest. There's no political air outside the popular centre in this country.
In answer to your question, "Does Manne really have to insult the Australian electorate by challenging Labor not to "scramble to win back some of the "centre ground" of politics by imitating the populist conservative attitudes and policies of the Howard era?", I'd say yes! It may be an insult but it's also bloody true!
And while you defend the coalition's record on immigration, Manne is talking about refugees and not immigrants brought in to keep the economy humming.
The fact is that the litany of sins you assign to Manne amount to progressive ideology and Labor is the only major party with a true belief in them. The only reason the conservatives are grudgingly in the same spectrum is because of the phenomena of the centre that keeps Australia in a left/right stalemate. If Abbott was really free, to exercise his and his Party's real agenda, there'd be an abrupt shift to the right in terms of economy, morality and nationalism.
You're beginning to sound like you ought to join the party!
To condemn academia in general because of one individual who dares to speak out--and who ought to be congratulated for it!--is despicable.
I've been working in academia for several years too and you know as well as I do that like any institution there's a good mix of left and right thinking people. It's absolute nonsense to say Australia's universities are left-wing; they're quite the opposite. And those who do have a left bias are not left enough! and remain in the dreary centre.
Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 8:56:48 AM
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Squeers, i never said they were "all" leftwing, just most. i refer to my experience which probably did result from myself never accepting the sanctity of their opinion, and being willing to expose my thoughts to a whole lot of knowledge frowned upon by scholars i knew well.

Sure I got 100% distinctions and high distinctions from working hard, but i never respected my need to write in a way which most would agree to, although there was the odd academic capable of challenge. When i heard wrong generalisations like the working class alone was resposible for multiculturalism, i challenged them with reason. They would back down.

As for your claim of progressive ideology with "Labor ... the only major party with a true belief in them", that is a simplistic assertion that does not recongise all of the impulses evident in a liberal democracy. It also does not recongise the many social achievments by the coaliton over the years.

To suggest that budgetary responsibility, security considerations and so on are not aso important (progressive), is another example of what I am talking about.

As with the carbon tax debate, there are two sides to every story. Some may claim it is progressive. I will argue that it is flawed and merely serves to perpetuate a myth that is is Labor that is progressive.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 9:43:53 AM
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Chris Lewis,
I also excelled academically--and generally provoked and argued against consensus views. While undergraduates are obliged to follow formulaic assessment conventions if they want to do well, they are not obliged to follow a political line. There is such a thing as political correctness that all Australians are obliged to pay lip-service to, but there's no political censorship or left-wing grooming of undergraduates underway. If anything the institution is conservative and driven by the bottom line more than anything else.
The fact is that Australian society is by and large conservative, intolerant and bigoted--provincial in a word--and it's this that makes university "look" left-wing. When students enrol at university it's often a shock to their sensibilities to be confronted with a depth of intellectualism they didn't know existed. Some prosper, finding it stimulating, and their mind's expand, others retreat into their respective provincialisms, the values they were weaned on, and refuse to think beyond their biases. I've encountered this many times, where people just shut up shop intellectually. In any event, these days probably most are just after a ticket, rather than "learning".
I don't think you'll find too many more radical thinkers than me and I was always challenging orthodoxy, including left orthodoxies, as an undergraduate. I was only once marked unfairly, imo, and that was by a Conservative Catholic history professor.
For the last few years I've been teaching and marking and I routinely read arguments I disagree with, but I can honestly say I've never marked a student down for their argument, only if they fail to substantiate it, or based on other criteria.
The "achievements" of the coalition you allude to were driven by the tension between left and right that holds all parties in the centre. Similarly Labor is prevented from its latent polical bias towards redistribution. If the Libs had their way unimpeded they would cut public spending to the bone and serve the market and its masters esclusively.
The real tension in democratic capitalism (a contradiction in terms) is between economic policy, and the libertarians are winning that battle!
Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 10:49:11 AM
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A few points

I don't know much about Robert Manne's work as an academic but as a social commentators he is of no use and should have been ignored long ago. His consistant reaction to any de-regulation or turn in the market is to insist that the end is nigh and capitalism is dead, only for the markets to soldier on regardless..

As for his comments on refugees: Boat people account for 5,000 of the 180,000 (about) a year immigrant intake.. or did last year. Of that 180,000 I believe about 16,000 or so are classified as refugees.. that count includes the boat people..

So despite Mann's general cluelessness as a commentatator he's not proposing anything really radical, but then he might not have looked at the immigration figures. These remain historically very high in relation to total population...
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 10:54:38 AM
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Squeers, I may be wrong, but i dont accept your tone about comments about the Australian electorate. I think we Australians have done a pretty good job in recent decades, although i too have suggested some problematic trends in recent decades.

I will make some kind of response in a coming piece about what is progressive in this imperfect and competitive world, although it may be a while before i finish and Graham accepts it.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 11:10:17 AM
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"Many Australian academics believe that only those who agree with them are unbiased."

Basically it all boils down to us or them. Our own life experiences set us up to be biased.
Posted by JamesH, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 11:25:30 AM
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Chris Lewis:
"Squeers, I may be wrong, but i dont accept your tone about comments about the Australian electorate. I think we Australians have done a pretty good job in recent decades"

Well that's very patriotic of you, Chris, but I'm not just making innuendos, like you; you can compellingly analyse what I'm saying.
The fact is that both the major Parties have draconian asylum-seeker policies because the electorate demands it.
Ironically, the Libertarians are strictly-speaking more in favour of open borders than the socialists, because they favour a free market.
It's the true conservatives and the working classes that tend to be the most intolerant, the former for the sake of their dynasties and pieties and the latter for the sake of their jobs. The centre on this issue is dominated by both high-brow and low-brow paranoia and both parties have to try to accommodate it.
It always comes back to the electorate and not the politicians, the academics or the journalists, who are just the scapegoats.
But one shouldn't be so frank--it's "unAustralian".
Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 11:43:27 AM
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Squeers, you accuse me of innuendos

Well listen to yours, supposedly the gospel truth and not beyond challenge.

"The fact is that Australian society is by and large conservative, intolerant and bigoted--provincial in a word--and it's this that makes university "look" left-wing".
Posted by Chris Lewis, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 12:03:34 PM
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Hope you've got your underwater breathing gear Chris.

You'll probably need it, when they completely cover you with arrogance.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 1:11:12 PM
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Chris, I wouldn't get side-tracked by the term "progressive". It is essentially a marketing term, as meaningless a descriptor as Coke being "the real thing".

Most progressives are actually regressives who want to return to an alleged idyllic past where the community told individuals what they could do. In its most extreme forms it opposes all the things that make modern Australian life so great.

In one sense the "progressives" are the true conservatives in the debate.
Posted by GrahamY, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 1:27:45 PM
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Meanwhile Graham you consistently feature posts by right-wing or conservative Christians who specialize in telling people what they can and cant do. And who, if they had the political power, would do so. Todays posting on Euthanasia was an example of this.

The applied politics and intentions of which in the USA in particular, are described and criticized on the Media & Culture section of Alternet website. Remembering that most, if not all right-wing or conservative writers and publications here in Oz are all essentially champions of the GOP.

This essay too. http://tpjmagazine.us/adams29
Posted by Daffy Duck, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 2:49:25 PM
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Chris is absolutely spot on in regards to the intolerance leftist academics have for opposing views. I, too, have been in academia for some time and am still amazed at how they claim to be "tolerant" or "altruistic" or "empathetic," but then launch into a despicable tirade of abuse toward those that disagree with their views.
For example, the "buzzword" in academia at the moment is "equality." Question this at your own peril. Mention that men are not equal, that men have different talents and abilities, that there is a rank between man and man, and you've set yourself up for a ridicule and scorn.
Don't get me started on the nepotism.
Posted by Aristocrat, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 3:09:49 PM
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Daffy is a good exemplar of the mind-set Chris talks about, although I'm not sure whether or not he is an academic. The fact that I publish right-wing Christians is supposed to be some sort of sign of bias, despite the fact the I also publish left-wing atheists. Do a Google search on the site for "euthanasia" and the top result is a pro-euthanisia piece: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11628. I rest my case.
Posted by GrahamY, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 3:19:23 PM
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GrahamY makes an interesting point. With the discrediting of old-style Marxism, the fundamental socialist propositions that the present is better than the past and the future can be better than the present, and that raising the material living standards of ordinal folk is central to this process, have largely gone out of fashion.

I think there are several things at play here. Marx was totally wrong when he predicted that the condition of the working class would get progressively worse under capitalism, while socialism offered prosperity for all. In fact, the reverse proved true. For all the slogans about rich getting richer while poor get poorer, the truth is that ordinary folk in Australia and most western countries enjoy living standards their forebears could only dream of. So, the left lost ownership of the notion that they alone could deliver better living conditions for workers.

Second, and a related point, is the greening of the left. Not only does the modern left no longer own the issue of ordinary people’s living standards, the green left is actively hostile to them. So Clive Hamilton bemoans the “affluenza” of people pursuing material ends, while Naomi Klein sees the great unwashed as hapless consumerist puppets of advertisers and corporations. These are the self-described “progressives” whose agendas look, for all practical purposes, deeply regressive.

Having recently resumed studying part-time, I also wonder if postmodernism has been detrimental to vigorous debate in academia and a healthy spectrum of views. It has taught that our worldviews are products of our class, gender, culture, nationality, self-interest etc. Rather than understanding others’ positions, they are deconstructed, usually to belittle or dismiss them. The hermeneutic of suspicion cares little for the validity of an argument and more for the motives and agendas of its proponent. This makes arguing from evidence and logic more difficult, because one can dismiss an uncongenial argument by attacking its author’s motives
Posted by Rhian, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 3:30:45 PM
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Chris Lewis,
If “Australian society is [not] by and large conservative, intolerant and bigoted”, how do you explain the fact that both major parties are desperately courting the conservative, intolerant and bigoted vote on boat people? to name just one sexy issue.
Ah yes, Graham, the progressives are the poor misguided fools who think human affairs are socially administered, as opposed to economically predetermined.
“Most progressives are actually regressives who want to return to an alleged idyllic past where the community told individuals what they could do”
I must say, your language is telling, implying that “individuals” were always the blooming hothouse Orchids they are now, only oppressed back then by communitarian regimens eh? But this talk of “regressives” is interesting. Nostalgia seems a universal human delusion, but who are or were these progressives who yearned for the pastures of yore? I’m not familiar with them, unless you mean the Amish?
“In its most extreme forms it [progressivism] opposes all the things that make modern Australian life so great”
Here is the essence of neoliberal ideology (egotism) in a nutshell that bespeaks an utterly selfish, indeed hedonistic (if it were not for the Catholic overtones) celebration of gross disparities—the shadenfreude of Predestination. One appreciates the sensuous Catholic love of ritual, but surely the pagan saturnalia of modern capitalism is beyond the Catholic palate?
But what is this extreme form of progressivism “that opposes all the things that make modern Australian life so great”? Protestantism? Or something more sinister? I would say Matt Ridley, but he’s on your side.
And what is so great about modern Australian life? God-given resource wealth? Morbid obesity? Great mental healthcare facilities?
Can you be more specific, Graham? Who are these “true conservative progressives” you allude to?
Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 3:33:23 PM
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Daffy Duck

this comment "Meanwhile Graham you consistently feature posts by right-wing or conservative Christians who specialize in telling people what they can and cant do. And who, if they had the political power, would do so." reflects very badly on you.

Even a glance at the site shows that it runs a wide range of opinion, right from the looney left through to the rabid right.. and part of the fun is to shoot down both ends of the spectrum.. my own impression is that there are more looney left articles than the other side.. there a natural bias towards the left in most publications. But to say that OLO favours right wing commentators is clearly absurd..
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 4:27:00 PM
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How absolutely typical. Here we have Squeers attacking people who have a totally sensible desire to protect their country, & kids future, with a sensible, organised immigration policy.

He calls these people intolerant & bigoted because they are more interested in their kids future, than what some foreign academic thinks of them, or what some fool lefty who wants to give away their birthright, thinks. Arrogance gets a look in, but rank stupidity is a better description for those of this mind set.

The worst thing about it all, is that thousands of this type pick up their pay from the work of those they would disinherit.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 4:30:36 PM
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Australian academics are centrist or right wing? Ha! A horse-laugh to that. Of course Squeers thinks so: being an unreconstructed Marxist, from his point of view everyone else seems "right wing".
Posted by Peter Hume, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 6:42:11 PM
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We should thank Squeers for helping Chris prove his case. Squeers' attitude is typical of the leftist academic: full of righteous indignation, treating Australians generally with contempt, (or anyone with an opposing view for that matter), all the while being funded by the very people he/she dislikes.

I've recently become an advocate of turning a number of university departments into user-pay systems. Not only would this save a lot of money, it would make students think very, very hard before enrolling in a course where employment outcomes are close to zero.
Posted by Aristocrat, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 7:38:30 PM
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Squeers, it is impossible to make much sense out of your post and what exactly you mean jumbling up economics, psychology and religion and even words. You ask me to say who these "true conservative progressives" are but while I did use those three words in a sentence, not having used them in that order they had a completely different meaning. I said that many "progressives" were the true conservatives.

An example of a so-called progressive who is really a conservative is Bob Brown. As a conservationist it is explicit in his view of the natural world, and when you listen to his vision for social, intellectual and material life it is implicitly present.
Posted by GrahamY, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 9:23:55 PM
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This site demonstrates the regressive back to the "glorious" past, nature of those on the right side of the culture wars divide.

http://westerncivilisation.ipa.org.au

Including the old time presumed "certainties" of Christianity. Never mind that Christianity provided the "religious" justifications for the entire Western colonial misadventure. The Papal (paypal)Bulls of 1455 and 1493 set the template for the next 500 years.

Plus the book Britain's Empire by Richard Gott gives a thorough-going description of the never-ending blood soaked gore-fest of the British Empire. All in the name of bringing "jesus", "god" and "civilization" to the "uncivilized heathen savages".

Meanwhile it seems to me that the most regressive "back to the past" Australian academic is Greg Melleuish. Everything he writes is a lament for lost presumed "certainties".

Although he is not an academic it seems to me that Keith Windschuttle is an exemplar of this back to the certainties and presumed superior values of the past regressive mind-set too.
Posted by Daffy Duck, Thursday, 15 March 2012 10:41:42 AM
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I'd say anyone who thought colonialism was a byproduct of Christianity has a severe bias problem. The papal bulls you instance were to settle territorial disputes between two powers who had gone out and colonised, not to encourage them to colonise. They postdate rather than predate.

I have no idea whether you are an academic or not, but this is the sort of analysis that is seriously misguided, but might earn you a distinction or high distinction from someone not interested in ascertaining the facts but in bolstering their world view.

Unfortunately that is what happens too frequently in the humanities in universities.
Posted by GrahamY, Friday, 16 March 2012 12:32:26 AM
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