The philistines are no longer at the gates...Hookham and MacLennan threatened with the sack!

I have just received a letter from members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) about closure of the Humanities and Human Services School at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

The letter states:

"The argument that Creative Industries is the ‘new’ humanities is spurious – the programmes are important to QUT but are not intended to the breadth and depth of the (Humanities degrees). Indeed, much of the argument about the ‘new’ revolves around the apparent audacity of comparing Shakespeare and Big Brother … the undergraduate degrees and the postgraduate research at Humanities and Human Services … is grappling with the complex human, social and ethical issues and uncertainties faced in science and bio-medicine, business, built environment, law and education.

Are members of this forum aware of the attacks being made against the two academics, John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, who both work in Creative Industries at QUT, and whose article is the subject of this forum discussion?

Now, apparently, they are threatened with the sack for disrespectful conduct and bringing the QUT into disrepute.

It is clear that, for some, there is a point at which we can tolerate no more.

Sadly, in these times, it seems it is difficult to coordinate this into collective action rather than individual revolt.

Surely collective action should be organised to protect the democratic right of John Hookham and Gary MacLennan to speak out?

It seems the philistines are no longer at the gates, they run the institutions and, as always, those who oppose them are to be shut outside.

BushTelegraph
http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/philistines-no-longer-at-the-gates-of-queensland-university-of-technology/
May 2007

Post-Modernists never had any interest in free speech. They disguise their bile in the form of a critique of the so-called elites. However, it is the Post-Modernists who are running the university departments. Post-Modernism has become the dominant discourse, and it brooks no opposition.

Interesting debate...and one which throws into pretty sharp relief the deficiencies of 'postmodern' epistemology when used to justify what seems to be the age-old human practice of laughing at those who aren't like me (and probably you).

The point is that such laughter is not 'empowering,' it's plain wrong. It's the smug snicker that runs through a train carriage when a funny-looking character begins to talk to himself, or propositions the woman in the opposite seat. That's not empowering, it's cruel.

The point is that this debate simply shouldn't be happening, that making documentaries about 'funny' disabled people is tasteless and uncaring in the extreme, and that serious academic rigour seems to be completely surplus to requirements down Kelvin Grove way.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not some Puritanical Ian Paisley type. I laughed like a drain at 'There's Something About Mary' and reel off jokes I've read on 'Sickipedia' like a wannabe Bill Hicks. There's a voice in my head, however, that suggests using the public purse to fund PhD 'research' (by definition something new, original, and beneficial to the sum of human knowledge) is a joke sicker than the one where the drunk Murri lady hits on the bloke with Asperger's Syndrome.

And 'Big Brother' has nothing in common with Shakespeare (I'm still waiting for the Shilpa Shetty saga to be compared with 'Othello' by some half-bright spark, BTW) beyond the fact that Shakespeare also lifts up the occasional societal rock for us in order to contemplate some form of microbial life going about its activities.

All of which assumes the ability on the part of the viewer to tell raspberry jam from cat poop if you take the seeds out...obviously not a requisite quality for work in and around our 'Creative Industries'.

I weep for the quality of critical thought in this nation's halls of academe...and can hear a whizzing noise that's surely Theodor Adorno spinning in his grave.

I apologise in advance that I cannot condense my words into one post.

I am a QUT Creative Industries student and one of the least radical people you’re likely to meet this side of Canberra. But I was incensed when I heard about this issue second-hand in a tutorial. Some nitwit of a girl said ‘I’ve had Gary as a lecturer and I loved him, but if Gary is going to bitch about Creative Industries why is he here? He should just leave.” *sigh* I believe he and John have a right to express their opinion, and furthermore, if everyone left a group every time they disagreed there’d be no groups left...except the KKK. It’s called having a point of view.

Now I don't pretend to know much, I don't pretend to be an academic. Yes I see the irony writing in an academic forum. In fact, given I'm in my final semester at QUT, I think my 'unknowingness' proves at least one of Gary & John's points: QUT Creative Industries may have failed me...or I it. But I digress.

Anyhow my point is that although I am unable/unwilling to unravel all the 'isms' in the arguments that are zooming across cyberspace, I do NOT believe that Gary and John should be suspended for their actions. As an avid TV watcher, I believe in our quasi-American quasi-right to 'Freedom of Speech'. However, I also believe this freedom put Noonan in a bright spotlight that, as a student, he shouldn't be subjected to. Yes, he is a sessional staff member and yes he is at a PHD level, but he is still a student and therefore at a junior level to John & Gary.

I recognise that John & Gary's state it isn’t Noonan's fault and points towards McKee and the CI department. I also recognise this isn't the first time that Gary has gotten in trouble with the QUT law for voicing his opinion, so they may have it in for him, and perhaps would like to avoid handing out severance pay.
(con't)

(con't from above)
I love Gary to bits. I love his ability to create an interesting argument out of a ball of twine and an empty cereal packet. He is the Argumentical McGyvver of QUT and he is a treasure (yes misspelt on purpose).

However, he and John do raise a real issue. But it seems the debate has been hijacked by the detail (the doco), although I appreciate it doesn't feel like a small detail to Noonan and those offended by the doco’s concept. I hope people will address the real issue of the Creative Industries department, Creative Industries Theory, and post-modern deconstructionist educational theory-isms and whether it’s working.

Am I a better educated person for my three years at QUT? I suspect not. Would I have been any better with the old school methods? Well...Id probably have been so bored by the dry intellectual ‘isms’ that Id have eaten my own arm to get out of class. My own failing perhaps. But don't they raise a damn good question?

On a light-hearted note, it's ironic that after years of Gary's rants about how blasé and anti-reactionary modern students have become that some are actually radical enough to get off their behinds to write a comment, let alone attend a rally? Woo. Gary has become his own napalmed Vietnamese poster-child. (yes, if Id been better educated Id know what that famous photo was called)

One more thing, I think this has gone too far for Noonan to stop his doco. He should be given the right to finish his vision. He can’t prove anyone right or wrong just by the rushes of some initial filming. I do hope that it won’t be, as some people have suggested, a taxpayer-paid pilot for a potential mocku-docu-comedy series. That would be a waste of taxpayer’s money...cos one day soon, when I finish my degree and have become a disgruntled supervisor at Coles, Ill be paying those taxes...and I'll still be wondering what the Vietnamese napalmed girl photo was called, let alone what an 'ism' is. Gotta love QUT.

If ever confirmation was needed for the lunacy of MIUAUG (some will get that) this article and the various comments provide it.

Pericles trumpets:

"After all, we have already tolerated, nay consumed in large quantities, reality TV that only ten years ago we would have scoffed at."

Exactly Pericles, yet when I make such a point you simply go into head in the sand denial.

Mercurious bleats:
And Hookham & MacLennan, in their ivory tower, who have made their career out of drawing a line and declaring themselves to be on the "high" side, don't like having their toys taken away.

CJ Morgan wades in:

Much of the tripe that is dished up in so-called 'Cultural Studies' is a direct product of the replacement of methodological and epistemological rigour with convoluted and self-referential 'pomo-babble' designed to obscure the intellectual limitations of its practitioners.

aah..we get it now CJ. They are intellectual dwarfs, as opposed to you, a Goliath of brain power and intellectual 'straight and narrow':)

We have
-'Post Modernist construction project'
-'post-modern deconstructionist approach'
-'reactionary', nihilist'
-'Marxist Grand Narrative'

Taken together, it seems MIUAUG is going ahead on Turbo. The "High" culturalists are said to be having a tantrum over lost toys, rather than seeking to maintain a semblance of cultural order.

Seems to me its like cultural browns cows 'clutching at straws' (Rob1245... u reading ?)

Confrontation is good, but the demeaning of ill equipped people in the hands of cultural mad scientists seems a bit much for me.

Love God.
Love your neighbour.

Pretty simple really.