The fact that you call concerned students "impressionable undergrads" speaks volumes about your arrogance and your attitude towards the students that you teach. If you really think your students are mindless plebs, maybe you could enlighten them with a screening of your film? Or even an in-depth argument for your research? I know they've been asking for it, but all they're getting from you, seems to me, is the utmost disrespect. I agree with MelDiva about the issue of respectful discussion. That's exactly what I'm asking for: a decent, meaty, scholarly defense.

There were over two hundred students at the rally that occurred on the A Block Lawns. After over an hours worth of speakers, including QUT staff members (and a message from Noam Chomsky, who plans to write an op-ed piece about free speech for the Higher Ed section of The Australian) the smaller group made their way down to the Creative Industies faculty to have their voices heard by faculty heads, who have so far done nothing but patronise and censor the students (comments on subject forums have been deleted, and journalism students have been asked not to cover the story).

All I'm asking here is: if your work is so important and so empowering, why are you acting like you have something to hide? Why, at Gary and John's disciplinary hearings next week, is the film, which they're being accused of misrepresenting, not being shown? (How can someone charge someone with misrepresenting something they themselves haven't seen?)

Why are you hiding behind personal attacks on two intelligent and respected academics, instead of actually defending yourself?
The fact you think it's somehow funny that university academics (shock! horror!) still want to change the world is actually something I find profoundly sad. If you, as an academic and student, can't see the value of such ambitions, I'm extremely worried for the future of our universities.

If you wonder why I don't use my name, it's because, with the level of censorship at QUT at the moment, I'm concerned that my unfashionable moralism might rule me an unfashionable candidate.

Unless QUT's ethics committee has changed substantially since my experience of it, it is not just a rubberstamping committee and I can't imagine that they would have granted ethics approval without a careful consideration of the project and the welfare of the participants. I have since experienced human research ethics committees at other universities and was quite surprised at how lax they seemed in comparison to QUT’s.

There seems to be some suggestion that Noonan is not allowing his work to be scruitinised, however, unless he is lying, he stated in one of the posts here that he offered to show the complete confirmation document to M&H, but they declined. It seems quite unfair to publicly criticise this work in progress and the decision to confirm the PhD candidature without taking the time to read the entire document. At a confirmation seminar, the candidate has under an hour to present their proposed research (including an introduction to the topic, preliminary data collected, research proposal etc); the decision to confirm the candidature is mainly based on the document, not the verbal presentation. It seems rather odd that someone would be so vocal about the panel’s decision to confirm the candidature whilst refusing to read the document on which this decision would have been based. Those who want to view the completed thesis will also be able to do so through the university library once it is finished. I shall reserve my judgements on the merits of this research until I have done so. I’m sure Michael can also expect a rather large turn out to his final thesis defence ;-).... comment continued in next post....

Further, it is my understanding that people with complex disorders, such as aspergers syndrome can have a range of symptoms each with varying shades of severity. It seems to me that just labeling a person, such as one of the men participating in the research project, as being unable to understand humour based on his diagnosis is treating him as a disease rather than an individual person, who may have this capacity. Perhaps someone at the screening at which the two men were present could comment on whether the participants appeared distressed by the screening of (or by the laughter during) the film? One would hope that the participants’ capacity and/or the participant’s carers’ (if applicable) capacity to give informed consent to their involvement in the project was a consideration in the ethics approval being granted. Whilst exploitation of vulnerable populations is a definite ethical concern, so too is not allowing them the right to participate in research.

I think jumping to conclusions about this situation is a mistake.

lordmelchie, your comments align with my own investigations.

Is this a case of a pair of silly academics playing out their 'hero' fantasy at the expense of unknowing crowd of adoring students?

Ideologues gone bonkers?

Sure looks like it.

Rainer, there is a comment from Prof David Gardiner of QUT on the abc website which gives a response that sounds much more believable than M&H's version. http://www.abc.net.au/news/opinion/items/200706/s1953217.htm It sounds very much that this is a positive thesis and the two men are willing participants who are deriving benefit from it. Should they be denied this opportunity? Wouldn't that be treating them with disrespect?

My reading of the situation is that these two academics have shamelessly slandered a student and his supervisor as a means to push their own agenda. Would QUT have suspended them if they had kept their attacks to the institution rather than attacking individuals? I guess we will never know, but i suspect not.

Arriving recently to this issue, but having read and viewed all the associated material (on this site and elsewhere), the issues at stake seem clear.

1. Gary and John are quite wrong to use a PhD candidate as a punching bag to vent their spleen about the influence of postmodern theory in contemporary academe.

This particular bandwagon has been rolling for so long surely the wheels are worn to the axles by now?

Indeed, there is something increasingly rather shrill about the remonstrations of older academics re: the erosion of traditional ideas of 'quality' by younger, callow thinkers seduced by a passing theoretical fad (notwithstanding the fact that notions of the postmodern are at least several decades old, and still going strong).

Meanwhile, calls to Hold the Barricades against the barbarians are getting very tired, particularly in their wilful misrepresentation of postmodern ethical thinking. The accusation of 'moral relativism' is intellectually lazy, and a profoundly superficial caricature of the work of such scholars as Levinas, Butler or Foucault.

This particular battlefield in the culture wars certainly makes for strange bedfellows, with self-proclaimed defenders of the Enlightenment popping up right across the political spectrum. An old Marxist like Gary can find solidarity in his railing about the evils of post-modernism among the conservative writers at The Quadrant. And John and Gary's article, delivered verbally, could take pride of place at a Sydney Institute forum.

(Happily, such stagnant eddies of social thinking are rapidly becoming the few venues that take this kind of stuff very seriously anymore).

That Gary and John want to adopt such a stance is fair enough. But as academics at QUT, they have a responsibility to the students of that institution that extends to respect and care.

-- to be continued