shorbe

If you look at http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2005/ARWU2005_Top100.htm ANU comes well ahead of Melbourne Uni. But once again only one survey that is why I said what I did.

melbuniartsstudent, I forgot to welcome you to OLO it is always good to hear from our younger citizens.

Universities would have to be the least accountable publicly-funded institutions in Australia. Who are Humanities departments in universities accountable to? I haven't been able to find out, but it remains one of the great scandals in our country that small cabals of ideologues are able to capture departments and use them to push their own ideological barrow (and to hell with their students, let alone the poor taxpayer who pays for their mortgage). Whether each cabal is left-wing or right-wing is less important than how we create genuine diversity of opinion in practice.

But to create genuine diversity in opinion, means breaking up the cabals who have captured this or that department. And how do we do that? Whose responsibility is it? What legislative and regulatory reform is needed to enable it to happen?

We need an open public debate in Australia about how universities should be structured, who they are accountable to, what the public expects for their money, and what reform agenda in needed to get us an intellectual culture (especially in the humanities) in which diversity of opinion can sometimes be discovered.

Vern Hughes
vern@peoplepower.org.au

Steve Madden: I acknowledge what you say about the case of statistics but I argue that Rohans US statistics can easily be applied to Australian universties. As someone who is still a student at university in Australia I feel I can certainly give an accurate impression of what it is to be a conservative at an Australian University.
James P puts it best when he describes how Reagan, arguably one of the most influential figures during Cold War, is dismissed as trivial by most lecturers. I can validate his claim about 1 lecture on conservatism vs. 4 on feminism as I did that subject in my first year.
As to the suggestion I tape a tutorial and forward a copy on to the VC, My VC is a proud supporter of the ALP and would probably give a payrise to any tutor belittling my support of the Liberal party.

Rainier,
At this stage I’m not suggesting anything, I’m merely gauging how you a representative of leftist academia see the world . Consider me more as one of your students gleaning pearls of wisdom.

Here‘s my first query.
If leftist academia proposes that one group(usually the majority) may act in a manner to suppress/disadvantages the minority, does it also acknowledge there are situations where a minority group by its own actions or inactions etc, disadvantages itself ?
Is disadvantage ALWAYS the result of discrimination –what do you say?

And following on from that:
If the ruling group make “scapegoats” of the minority , might it also be possible that there are cases where the minority uses the ruling group as a “scapegoat” to explain away its own failing(s) ?

I know the left is very mindful of injustice.
To seek to provide all groups in a society a minimum standard of living is one thing –perhaps even an admirable thing. But to explain away one groups failings always in terms of the majority’s suppression may itself be an injustice.

As a uni postgraduate, my best results came from an unbiased approach to my research. I very rarely knew what approach my essay was going to take until I looked at both sides of an argument. The pros and cons of liberal policy when looking at a particular issue area for example, compared with labor policy. The argument that I would put forward would be judged on the argument I considered the most legitimate and with the best information, whilst always acknowledging other approaches. Researching a topic with a biased attitude dooms anyone to failure.

Mickijo/Marilyn - right on.

It is annoying the way people want to tuck peoples' opinions (and the people themselves) away into either "left" or "right" folders.

Fair enough, you can usually pick the ones that have been reading left or right propaganda. Cliches like "bleeding heart", "lefty-loonie", "poxymoron", "snivelling grub", "lackey", "redkneck" and so on and on to dismiss others opinions drip from these pages like vomit from a drunken punk.

Mind you, Rancitas usually backs up her opinion with reasons why someone is, for instance, a redneck - but Citas is a special exception here.

Maybe the reason that the so called left hold the moral high ground is because their ideas are based more on moral ideas and ethical thinking than right wing "practical" thinking. In the case of Liberals this thinking is usually afflicted with Millsean/utilitarian thinking.

I think there are basically two kinds of thinking. The end justifies the means thinking and those that hold firm to absolute universal principles.

History records that whenever societies, people or religious organisations stray from these, then the authority of those principles (being honest, being truthful, being faithful, being kind, respecting human life, respecting others' and so on) is undermined. The Catholic Church will never live down the Inquisition.

Terrorism, such as the USA bombing Iraq's infrastructure to knowingly cause death among the civilian population and folk posing as Islamic representatives flying passenger planes into buildings, is a practice that stems from the immediate end justifies the means thinking. It is very stupid thinking leading to ultimate outcomes further along in time that never justify the means.

Any criticism of either the left or right usually can be traced back to their belief in a certain situation that the use of means counter to universal principles is justified because of the desired outcome.

Bad means will always lead to the degradation of the ultimate end (and thus societies moral boundaries) which is the preservation of the universal principles. The preservaton of universal principles will always ensure a fair and just society. There is no left or right about it.