Australian court backs academics’ free speech in swastika dismissal case

A controversial University of Sydney lecturer who was sacked after superimposing a swastika on an Israeli flag has won a key victory in his battle to be reinstated, with the federal court declaring academics at the institution are entitled to convey even offensive views in their area of expertise.

The decision reverses a previous court ruling that had suggested academic freedom was merely an aspirational goal with no legal force and bolsters academics’ free speech rights nationally amid a focus on censorship on campuses

But it does not mean the lecturer, Tim Anderson, will ultimately win his legal campaign to get his job back because another judge now has to examine whether his conduct was within the bounds of academic freedom or went too far.

Dr Anderson, who came to national prominence when he was acquitted of planning the 1978 Hilton Hotel bombing in Sydney, taught political economy from an “anti-imperialist” perspective at the university from 1998 until 2019, when he was fired after a string of online incidents from 2017.

They included calling Republican Senator John McCain an “al Qaeda supporter”, suggested a News Corp journalist was a “traitor” to his ethnicity and posting a photo of friends at lunch, one of whom was wearing a patch in Arabic that read in part “curse the Jews”.

After several warnings, Dr Anderson published slides including an infographic, which two of the appeal judges said was “an expression of a legitimate view, open to debate, about the relative morality of the actions of Israel and Palestinian people”. The infographic argued Israel’s conduct was much worse but also included an Israeli flag with a Swastika in the middle. By January 2019 he was fired.

Initially, a federal court judge found Dr Anderson was not protected by the academic freedom clause the university had negotiated because it “does not create any enforceable obligation”. Three judges of the federal court, including chief justice James Allsop, overturned that.

“No matter what view is taken of Dr Anderson’s conduct, this case concerns his livelihood and profession,” two said. “He is no more and no less entitled than anyone else to a fair determination of his application in accordance with law.”

All three ruled that a right to academic freedom bound the University of Sydney, so long as academics conducted themselves in accordance with high ethical, professional and legal standards and did not harass, vilify or intimidate anyone.

“The right would be meaningless if it is subject to qualifications such as not involving offence to others, not being discourteous to others, or not involving insensitivity to others,” Justices Jayne Jagot and Darryl Rangiah held.

A university spokeswoman said the institution was disappointed by the decision, which it would review before deciding what to do.

Dr Anderson said in a post on his website that the court had recognised his infographic was tied to a discussion about morality in the Israel-Palestine conflict, in contrast to how it was “falsely depicted” by the university and media “simply as a ‘Swastika Image’, offensive to Jewish people”.

However, Justices Jagot and Rangiah said the swastika flag image was “deeply offensive and insensitive to Jewish people” and could suggest a “false moral equivalence comparing Israel to Nazi Germany”.

The libertarian Institute of Public Affairs’ police director Gideon Rozner said while Dr Anderson’s views were misguided, mean-spirited and borderline delusional, he should not have been censored.

“In a liberal democracy, the price of free speech is that the worst of human thought has as much a chance of being expressed as the best,” Mr Rozner said. “We cannot make intellectual freedom contingent on whether we like the speech being aired.”

Matthew McGowan, the national secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union, said it had brought the case alongside Dr Anderson not because it defended his comments but because it believed in academic freedom.

“Universities should embrace this decision and work with the union to ensure we have legally enforceable protections for academic freedom, which is fundamental to the sector and the work that we do,” he said.

Enterprise agreements, which at the University of Sydney contained the academic freedom clauses Dr Anderson relied on in this case, vary from campus to campus and Mr McGowan said the union would push to strengthen them.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/court-backs-academics-free-speech-in-swastika-dismissal-case-20210831-p58ngf.html

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Bestselling author who accuses the trans lobby of trying to 'supplant biology' says she has been cancelled by the BBC and Waterstones

A bestselling author who criticised transgender rights activists has accused 'cowards' in the broadcasting and the book industries of trying to 'cancel' her.

After the publication last month of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, Helen Joyce claims she has been snubbed by the BBC and other media organisations and suspects some branches of bookseller Waterstones of trying to suppress her sales.

Among the arguments made in her book – which was serialised across two weeks in The Mail on Sunday – are that the trans lobby is trying to 'supplant biology' and the movement is the equivalent of a 'new state religion, complete with blasphemy laws'.

While Ms Joyce expected a backlash, she said she did not anticipate being frozen out by the book industry. Every publisher she approached with the manuscript, with the exception of the small publishing house Oneworld, rejected it.

She says the reluctance to talk spreads further. Approaches by her publicist to the BBC, Sky and ITV were all unsuccessful, with GB News the only TV station to interview her.

Last night, Ms Joyce – who is a senior journalist at The Economist – said: 'I think these organisations are responding to enormous pressure from trans activists.

Anyone who gives me any kind of platform at all, even mentioning my book exists, can expect to get a torrent of people saying they are transphobic, that they are bigoted, that they are driving people to suicide, that they are racist, bizarrely.

'It's easier to ignore it. If you put your head above the parapet, you get shot at, but if everyone puts their head above the parapet, they can't fire at all of us.'

She is particularly saddened by the decision of BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour not to mention the book. 'The BBC has an internal war on this topic,' she claimed.

'Presenter Jenni Murray was forced out of the show because of this issue. She wrote a newspaper column in 2017 arguing that trans women were not real women. That led to her being barred from covering this issue on the programme.

'I think the refusal to engage with me is down to a mixture of cowardice and the fact that the new presenter Emma Barnett, I think, disagrees with me. That is fine, of course – she can disagree with me. But why doesn't she invite me on the show to challenge me?'

The BBC denied there had been a boycott or attempts to 'cancel' Ms Joyce. A spokesman said: 'We know that lots of people want to appear on the BBC and the fact they haven't doesn't mean they have been boycotted or won't appear if there is an appropriate editorial opportunity.

'Our wide-ranging book coverage often includes interviews with authors, but of course, we can't feature them all.

We include a broad range of guests with decisions based purely on editorial merit.' Ms Joyce said she had also been contacted by several people who claimed that some branches of the Waterstones book chain had tried to hide the book.

'Waterstones gives its local managers a lot of discretion because these managers know what will sell in their area,' said Ms Joyce.

'I have been contacted by people on social media who went in to their store and asked for their copy and were told it was out of print, that it was a short print run, that the stock was delayed, even that it was being kept behind the counter out of respect for a trans colleague because it was a hate book.'

But a spokesman for Waterstones said: 'It is not true that Waterstones is boycotting the book. It has been one of our bestselling non-fiction hardback books since its publication, stocked by the majority of our shops and online. Stock was low initially as sales exceeded expectations, but this is no longer the case.

'As with every book that sells, occasionally a shop will run out of copies and it seems social media comment is picking up on these instances.'

The publishing company Oneworld declined to comment.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9936523/Author-accused-trans-lobby-trying-supplant-biology-says-cancelled.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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