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looking at the gun barrel from different ends... or the right to freely fuck your mind?...

gun barrel

Something has rattled the uni. Ross Cameron, former MP, claims that Trump is the best mouse since sliced cheese. Should we let him speak in front of our malleable young kids polishing benches with their butt while they try to learn something?



Our esteemed Sydney Uni vice-chancellor, Mike Spence, is exhausted by such culture wars. Left-right-left-right-left-right... We've already discussed in a one way appraisal, his vice-chancellorship somewhere in a corner of shadowlands on this site.


So the Sydney Morning Herald readership tells us today (11/6/19):
The vice-chancellor should tread carefully when considering the request from former Liberal MP Ross Cameron to deliver a lecture on why Trump may be the greatest US president since Abraham Lincoln (‘‘Battle for hearts and minds on campus’’, June 10). He could end up with every other local crazed stand-up comic demanding to book the prestigious Great Hall. - Max Fischer, Wollongong

———————

This is what the SMH told us yesterday (10/6/19):

The heads of Sydney's two leading universities have warned about growing "self-censorship" and attempts to shut down controversial speakers, but have maintained there is no freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses.

They have also expressed reservations about implementing a "model code" on freedom of speech urged by the Morrison government and recommended by a recent review by former High Court chief justice Robert French.



"This notion that the left has gone crazy and nobody can talk – I don't identify that. I think the left has gone crazy and the right has gone crazy.

"They're all trying to judge you in five minutes for you using three wrong words. In that context, sure, there is a certain amount of self-censorship of students, of members of the community. That's a problem.

"But that's not because people's right to speak freely is not being respected. That's because the culture – and I don't just mean university culture – the whole culture has a problem with the way we're talking to each other."

......

The recent review by Mr French, published just before the federal election campaign kicked off, found there was no free-speech crisis at universities.

But Mr French proposed a model code on free speech to embed into university policies and procedures, which vice-chancellors are currently considering.

University of NSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs said the review affirmed there was "no crisis", but warned that attempts to "de-platform" speakers - by denying them an opportunity to speak or shouting them down - must be opposed.

"If there is a trend to no-platforming, it's not acceptable. We need to take steps to prevent it, and we have. We have processes in our university to stop that happening," he said.

"Part of the role of a university is to be a platform for people to express new, controversial ideas, and for other people to come and argue against them. That is part of a dynamic, innovative, democratic society. I don't think we can let our guard down."


Professor Jacobs had to apologise for the actions of his own university's security officers last week after they tore down posters protesting against UNSW's new trimester system and told students they needed permission to hand out flyers.

"It shouldn't have occurred, it must not occur again and we've taken steps to ensure it doesn't occur," Professor Jacobs said. "It's an example of how we all need to be alert all the time to protect what is precious, the concept of free speech."

The UNSW boss is considering Mr French's model code but said universities did not need special rules on free speech. "I'm not convinced that adding another layer or code or regulation will improve upon the current situation," he said.

Professor Spence said he was engaged with the content of the code but it was complex and "you can't just take it and plop it into your own system".

The libertarian Institute of Public Affairs, which has campaigned against what it calls a "free speech crisis" at Australian campuses, said it was a "weak cop-out" for Professor Spence to blame self-censorship.

The institute's policy director Gideon Rozner called on the Morrison government to enforce the recommendations of Mr French's review, including the voluntary "model code".

"The Australian government pays billions of dollars every year to create public squares of higher learning and intellectual inquiry," he said.

"Taxpayers deserve to know that these institutions are doing their job properly, and accommodating the widest possible range of ideas and viewpoints in the search for truth."

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/university-bosses-admit-self-censorship-and-no-platforming-a-problem-on-campus-20190607-p51vk9.html




The SMH also said on the beginning of page 6:

Drinks were flowing at a Ramsay Centre function when former Liberal MP Ross Cameron bailed up at the University of Sydney ’s vice chancellor Michael Spence and accused him of “single-handedly trying to undermine Western Civilisation”.

A stunned Professor Spence replied: “I don’t usually think of myself as that powerful.”



Nothing new.  Hot coals are not comfortable to walk upon in bare feet....

Universities were spaces designed to learn something from a debate between learned humans. The point here would be to define whether "Ross Cameron is learned". Ross has done a lot of things, but has he learned something? He may have a few ideas but these could be completely crazy as well, as much as those of a "learned Mr Leonisky" (who has stayed clear from public speaking in a university environment but could teach a few things or two about the art of art).



The right to freely fuck
In August 2004, Cameron revealed in an interview in Good Weekend that he had an extramarital affair with an "exotic solicitor" while his wife was pregnant with twins.[8] Cameron "was a frequent overnight visitor to the house his mistress shared with a reporter".[9] In Truth Overboard, journalist Tom Dusevic wrote in Time Magazine that once Cameron's story was in the public domain "...reporters in Canberra immediately ran with further details of Cameron's private life, unleashing stories they'd been sitting on for years" which included accounts of numerous other affairs which he had failed to disclose in the original interview with Good Weekend.[10][11][12]
After his departure from parliament, he joined Macquarie Bank's Investment Banking Group, working primarily on partnerships between the public and private sectors. He left Macquarie in 2008.[15]

Cameron was a founder and original board member of MyATM, along with three time undischarged bankrupt [16][17] Don Fleming (owing $24million in 2010)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Cameron


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If some alarm bells don’t sound, it’s because you’re deaf. 

There are speakers and spruikers of ill repute. May as well unleash the dogs of insanity at the University.

Or should we look at a gun from the end that kills or the end we load from?


Picture at top: gun barrel by Gus Leonisky.

philosophy on the farm land...

accidental

 

Picture by Gus Leonisky

 

If Ross Cameron is the best spruiker that the Ramsay Centre can use to promote its ideal, it has to be a crap ideal, hasn't it?

 

See also:

the skin and bone of philosophical downsizing...

"freedom" at the murdoch media...

murdoch media

 

Via fake "freedom of speech" articles, the Murdoch media has for a long time been attacking the universities for not being in love with the "Western superiority" mantra. The Ramsay Centre for a blow job inflation of the worth of Western civilisation curriculum is being resisted by Unis as it should be, but the Murdoch media is still stirring the possum with underhanded demands — through their own slanted and lacking-freedom of biased speech platform themselves. Nothing new.

 

Australian universities are already giving many courses on the full-worth of "Western civilisation" by their existing courses in economics and many other subjects — and they do not really restrict "freedom of expression". Universities tend to manage silly, stupid, ignorant and dangerous points of views which would take away valuable educational time in creating the accountants of the future.

 

Of course, Political Correctness has interfered with the rights of rabid right loonies, unchecked ruthless capitalists, fascists and nazis — preventing them somehow to trod upon other people — especially those with a bid more acceptance in their width of other points of views or those who are less fortunate — with insults, death threats, dirty army boots and spit... Of course, some of the other side are also pushing shit. Unis balance the crap as they should.

 

Looking at both ends of the barrel of guns (see image at top, which was specially taken at arm-length on tiptoe by Gus, to get the bore, exactly in line, of a barrel more than three metres long, successful shot after about eleven blind attempts, considering the gun was about three metres above ground and inaccessible being behind barbed wire — like much of our philosophical discourse — in the said barrel of which a little bird possibly representing peace and nature had made a hideout at the exit end) has always been a university pHd pass time, but the Murdoch media wants more unequal slant towards rabid chess-beating conservatism and less towards egalitarianism management of social issues. PHEW... 

 

"The user pays and if you can't pay, you should not be alive" is the motto of capitalism — as strongly supported by the Murdoch media, which resents people on welfare and prefer them in slavery, or dead, as the order of social status.

 

So until the Murdoch media starts to have articles designed to acknowledge the serious sciences of global warming in ernest, start exploring the concept of social equality without denigration, start to love windmills and solar panels, while understanding that the usage of fossil fuels is destroying the planet, then the Murdoch media can SOD OFF itself on the issue of "freedom of speech". 

 

Janet Albrechtsen, for example, has been a silly regular troll of many issues and has been proven wrong many times here. But she still pushes on like a two-bob wooden cuckoo clock run over by a bus.

 

Go away. Read from top.

 

Please note the quote marks around the word "fail" in the Murdoch media article... hence "freedom" in the title of this comment...

meanwhile at idiot graduate school...

A robot sex expert and former far-right candidate who was awarded a Queen’s Birthday honour for “significant service to international education” says he is setting up a graduate school with Fraser Anning which will teach classes on “Trumpism” and “Bannonism”.

Prof Adrian Cheok was also accused in an open letter by organisers of a 2017 academic conference of using “aggressive, belittling” language towards another professor. In a separate incident, he also labelled another academic as “psycho … old, fat and balding” and said he worked at a “tin pot university”, according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The body that bestows the honours has declined to respond to questions about why Cheok, who ran as a candidate for Anning’s far-right Conservative National party at the May federal election, was made a member of the Order of Australia this week, saying it did not comment on individual cases.

The Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games had Cheok as a keynote speaker at its Foundations of Digital Games conference in 2017 and in the aftermath of the event it issued a formal apology for his behaviour and social media posts.

“He singled out tweets by assistant professor Gillian Smith (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), and made multiple tweets in response, directly attacking her personally,” organisers said in a open letter.

“The use of aggressive, belittling, or otherwise intimidating language, is a serious violation of the norms and values of the FDG conference and of our community.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/15/robot-sex-expert-...

 

 

Read from top.

 

 

honour to face a challenge...

The decision to award a Queen’s birthday honour to a robot sex expert and former far right political candidate is facing a challenge, and is set to trigger broader scrutiny of the Australian honours system at a Senate estimates hearing.

Last week Prof Adrian Cheok, who advocates sex with robots, was made a member of the Order of Australia for “significant service to international education”.

Guardian Australia reported that Cheok has faced accusations of poor conduct towards his peers in the past. In 2017 he was accused in an open letter by organisers of an academic conference of using “aggressive, belittling” language towards another professor.

The Digital Games Research Association Australia chapter president, Brendan Keogh, says he intends to challenge Cheok’s award because of his conduct on social media.

“He’s not a worthy recipient due to his track record of abusive behaviour towards other academics in his field,” he said.

Keogh cited the incident in 2017 where conference organisers issued a formal apology after Cheok made personal attacks on Twitter against academics who had raised ethical concerns about his research.

Cheok also attracted controversy last year as an organiser of the international conference on advances in computer entertainment technology when he invited Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and former executive chairman of the rightwing website Breitbart, to be a keynote speaker, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/19/queens-birthday-h...

 

 

Read from top.