An invitation: imagine a country wherein, as a matter of policy orientation, its 41 universities have abdicated one of their principal founding roles – to be dominant sites of secular critique practised by people capable of living what they teach and committed to taking aim at the unequal, imperial, antidemocrática present. Imagine, too, that this abdication included the the need to be always self-critical and self-conscious. Finally, imagine that it was transactional: that, by their own disclosures the abdication was in exchange for becoming, explicitly and without shame, industrial brothel-keepers to the nations fevered national security imaginary. This is the frightening reality of the Australian university sector under AUKUS.
Like all coups, its genesis was initially slow, or at least not as apparent as recently revealed. In the first quarter of this year, however, three announcements leave no doubt as to the situation.
The first was seemingly a media statement of 5 February 2024 – at various levels innocuous, anodyne and ambiguous – advising that The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) had launched an independent review of Commonwealth funding for national security strategic policy work.
The scope of the review would include all Commonwealth funding to non-government organisations – including, notably in the context of this post, the universities – to conduct national security-related research, education and engagement activities.
While these programs were held to deepen public discussion, strengthen partnerships, and inform policy debates on national security matters, the review’s purpose was to ensure that they remained appropriately aligned to Australia’s national interests and strategic circumstances.
A distinguished former public servant with extensive experience in foreign policy and national security, and current Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland, Mr Peter Varghese AO had been selected to lead the review.
Reducing the terms of reference to what the government ultimately requires, three “core outputs” are identified. One relates to a “stocktake of relevant activities,” and another concerns recommendations to improve the delivery of the relevant activities.
Specifically and exclusively in the context of the universities, though, the third – “performance evaluation” – arouses considerable interest. The reason is that it highlights the need to report on, inter alia, “accountability, probity and transparency.”
Question: Why (especially in relation to probity)? Is this merely a pro forma inquiry, or have suspicions been aroused in the funding agencies that demand it be undertaken?
If that is the case, then the relationship of the relevant activities to the respective universities’ codes of academic/intellectual integrity are immediately in play.
A proliferation of questions then arise in connection with the second announcement – this time via the publication of a pamphlet-size document entitled, The university sector’s value proposition for AUKUS: Times Higher Education Summit outcomes report (hereafter AUKUS-University........