Australia: Fired climate sceptic loses High Court case
The amazing thing about this verdict is that the court agreed it is wrong to criticize your colleagues. How could science progress without disagreements? Criticisms are the springboard to new knowledge
A marine physicist sacked after challenging his colleague’s views on climate change and the Great Barrier Reef, along with the university’s attempts to discipline him, has lost his High Court battle against James Cook University in a mixed decision for academic freedom.
Peter Ridd had been a long-serving professor at the university when he was fired in 2018 after forming the view that the scientific consensus on climate change overstated the risk it posed to the reef and vigorously arguing that position.
He took a parting shot at the university as he informed his supporters “with a heavy heart” on Wednesday that the High Court had dismissed his appeal over his sacking.
“So JCU actions were technically legal. But it was, in my opinion, never right, proper, decent, moral or in line with public expectations of how a university should behave,” he said in a statement posted to Facebook.
“It has cost me my job, my career, over $300K in legal fees, and more than a few grey hairs. All I can say is that I hope I would do it again – because overall it was worth the battle, and having the battle is, in this case, more important than the result.”
Dr Ridd, the libertarian Institute of Public Affairs and the left-wing National Tertiary Education Union argued that whatever the merits of Dr Ridd’s views, he was protected by a right to academic freedom in the university’s collective pay agreement with staff.
The university argued that Ridd was not sacked for his views but instead breached its code of conduct which required staff to act in a courteous and respectful way, and then further breached confidentiality requirements about the disciplinary procedure.
On Wednesday five justices of the High Court unanimously found that intellectual, or academic, freedom as contained in the university’s pay deal “is not qualified by a requirement to afford respect and courtesy in the manner of its exercise”.
The justices said that, as a result, an initial censure in 2016 against Dr Ridd was not justified and quoted the famous 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill in their reasoning.
“Whilst a prohibition upon disrespectful and discourteous conduct in intellectual expression might be a ‘convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world’,” the justices held, “the ‘price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind’.”
However, that did not result in an overall victory for Dr Ridd because the court found that his conduct extended well beyond the expression of opinion within his area of academic expertise. Had his conduct related only to his area of expertise or criticism of JCU decisions through proscribed processes it would have been protected by intellectual freedom. Because his case was run on an all or nothing basis, that meant Dr Ridd lost.
“This litigation concerned conduct by Dr Ridd far beyond that of the 2016 censure, almost none of which was protected by the intellectual freedom... That conduct culminated in the termination decision, a decision which itself was justified by 18 grounds of serious misconduct, none of which involved the exercise of intellectual freedom.”
The Institute of Public Affairs, which had helped Ridd run his case via crowdfunding and public relations support, said the decision showed Australia’s universities were mired in a crisis of censorship.
“Our institutions increasingly want to control what Australians are allowed to say and what they can read and hear,” executive director John Roskam said in a statement that also announced Dr Ridd would be joining the institute as an unpaid research fellow to work on “real science”.
Ahead of the decision on Wednesday, federal Education Minister Alan Tudge announced that all 41 Australian universities were now compliant with the French model code on free speech, proposed by former High Court chief justice Robert French.
“This has taken two years to get to this point, but each university now has policies which specifically protect free speech,” Mr Tudge said.
The federal government has also legislated a definition of academic freedom into university funding laws - a push led by former education minister Dan Tehan who said last year that he’d received legal advice that Mr Ridd would not have been sacked had the definition been in place at the time.
The definition, which was also based on wording recommended by Mr French in his government-commissioned review of free speech at Australian universities, includes “the freedom of academic staff to teach, discuss, and research and to disseminate and publish the results of their research” and “to contribute to public debate, in relation to their subjects of study and research.”
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‘Transgender’ Experts Silenced by Rainbow Mafia
The New York Times refused an op-ed from experts who don’t toe the line on gender dysphoric children.
The paper’s selective and activist journalism now includes having recently chosen to reject an op-ed written by two “transgender” experts, both doctors, who warned against the growing reckless use of puberty blockers on children. Will anyone stand against this growing fad of child abuse? Not the intrepid “journalists” at the Times.
The two doctors contend that “transgender” activism has essentially silenced any genuine examination of often-promoted claims that it is completely safe for children to go on puberty blockers in part because doing so is “fully reversible” should they decided against “transitioning.” Thou shalt not question The Narrative™.
Indeed, the Times’s decision seems only to further underscore this new leftist-created alternate reality. Abigail Shrier’s 2020 book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters was temporarily banned by Amazon due to opposition from “transgender” activists, so she knows about this sort of censorship. She interviewed the doctors and observed, “For nearly a decade, the vanguard of the transgender-rights movement — doctors, activists, celebrities and transgender influencers — has defined the boundaries of the new orthodoxy surrounding transgender medical care: What’s true, what’s false, which questions can and cannot be asked.”
Meanwhile, the Times had no qualms regarding running a recent op-ed by a “transgender” runner, nor another article fully affirming a “transgender” person and lamenting the “discrimination, delays and systemic hurdles [that] prevent young trans people from reaching the care they need.” On the other hand, the findings, data, and professional opinions espoused by longtime experts in the same field is no good if it dares question the “transgender” dogma.
Dr. Marci Bowers, one of the article’s writers, observed something that happens far too often these days: “When you have a female-assigned person and she’s feeling dysphoric … and then they see you for one visit, and then they recommend testosterone — red flag!”
These doctors come from the very heart of this movement. Bowers’s op-ed partner is, Shrier explains, “Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the University of California San Francisco’s Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic.” Bowers herself is “a world-renowned vaginoplasty specialist who operated on reality-television star Jazz Jennings,” a young boy who’s spent many years flaunting his “transition to female” before the whole world.
The story Bowers tells regarding the horrific abuse perpetrated on Jennings will turn your stomach, break your heart, and blow your mind.
Anyone should know that getting a second opinion, especially regarding a serious health-related issue, is recommended. Not all doctors see everything the same way or have all the answers. The notion that daring to question a child or teenager struggling with identity issues is to somehow do them harm is nonsense, and yet the Rainbow Mafia has so thoroughly succeeded in scaring doctors, scientists, and journalists that even to question a child’s gender dysphoric claim is to supposedly engage in hate and malfeasance. The tragic result of such thinking and fear is growing numbers of youth being subjected to medical abuse, doing permanent damage to their bodies and minds.
Anderson put it far too mildly, saying: “It is my considered opinion that due to some of the — let’s see, how to say it? what word to choose? — due to some of the, I’ll call it just ‘sloppy,’ sloppy healthcare work, that we’re going to have more young adults who will regret having gone through this process. And that is going to earn me a lot of criticism from some colleagues, but given what I see — and I’m sorry, but it’s my actual experience as a psychologist treating gender variant youth — I’m worried that decisions will be made that will later be regretted by those making them.”
https://patriotpost.us/articles/83288-transgender-experts-silenced-by-rainbow-mafia-2021-10-08
***********************************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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