//The starting gun for the demise was fired when academics were permitted to enter politics.//

In 1689, when Sir Isaac Newton (definitely academic) became a member of the English parliament?

That's going back quite a way, individual. And I'm not even sure if he was the first academic to enter politics, he's just the earliest I know of.

Toni lavis,
Isaac Newton was a brilliant brain, scientist & scholar, don't insult his memory by putting him to the dumbed-down level of today's academics. You can safely do that with Rudd & Abbott et al.

//Isaac Newton was a brilliant brain, scientist & scholar, don't insult his memory by putting him to the dumbed-down level of today's academics.//

I think we may be operating on differing definitions of 'academic' here. I'm using the standard definition: 'a teacher or scholar in a university or other institute of higher education'. A definition that definitely covers a former Lucasian Professor and President of the Royal Society.

I suspect that when you refer to academics, you may be referring to a narrow subset of arts academics whose political views you don't agree with. But that's a weird and arbitrary definition. By any reasonable metric, physics professors (and other scientifically inclined greybeards) are academics too.

Frankly, I think it's a bit rich for you to be insulting hard working academics for being 'dumbed-down', when I doubt that you have more than a rudimentary grasp of physics.

And I think it would be counter-productive, not to mention undemocratic, too declare parliament off limits to people with a scientific background. A few more nerds in the parliament would make a nice change from all the lawyers. Can you imagine a world where the minister for science actually has science qualifications and professional experience in the field, and isn't just some career politician? It's easy if you try.

Reading this article its understandable why the ANU wants to retain its autonomy. Going back to 400 BCE, really? Equality, liberty, fraternity,' may well be the culmination of Western civilisation. When did universal suffrage and education kick in? Was it given by the privileged and those educated in the classics, or did the workers have to revolt and/or strike for it? Did these same classes liberate the nations colonised by Western civilisation or did the people of those nations have to rise up and fight for their freedom? Practically every freedom we have today is a result of people fighting the educated and the privileged. So if the ANU decide their autonomy is more precious than being bought by a new class of educated and privileged white folk, they are behaving in the way I would expect that a mature Western civilisation institution would. If the billion dollar funded Ramsey Centre for Western Civilisation believes so much in Western civilisation, then let it donate unconditionally to the ANU and/or other Western universities. Or does it still believe in that common Western civilisation practice going back thousands of years, that the privileged have the right to use their wealth to buy influence?

Anyone with half a brain realises that the numbers of people wanting to come to nations built upon Christian Judea ethic are massive. Those wanting to go to Islamic and Marxist nations are next to zero.

Toni Lavis,
I know you understand the gist in my rambling, you just can't afford to admit it. There are engineers who build bridges & ships & planes & dams etc. Then there are engineers who can't to these things but they're still allowed to call themselves engineers. There are Doctors who find remedies to illness & there are Doctors who can't even diagnose a cold.
Just as there are the Academics I'm talking about. The ones who develop formulae of substance & then there are Academics who can't even get a simple survey right.
I prefer to call the former scholars so as not to insult them by calling them Academics.
99% of those so-called "Academics" who join the ALP simply get there by telling the party how intelligent they are because they've been to Uni.
The Conseratives fortunately, don't have that problem but manage to recruit some similar types from other circles.
Pauline Hanson doesn't have an academic background, she has a better one, at least she could make Fish & Chips, Turnbull & Shorten couldn't make you a cheese sandwich let alone run a chook raffle.