[Critical-Realism] FW: Disciplinary Action at QUT against Drs Hookham and MacLennan

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Minister
 
    I am writing again, on the issue of the unethical conduct of the
Queensland University of Technology ethical committee, appending for
information the evasive and predictable reply issued in your name in
addition to my original letter.  
 
    Drs Hookham and MacLennan made a disquieting case for QUT's attitude
deriving from their uncritically imbibing truth-denying "post-modern"
philosophy.   (May I add disquietingly international similarities with the
course of events in Hitler's Germany).  This issue is not the subsequent
matter of injustice to them which might be handled by Queensland's
ombudsman.  It is about the REASON for the failure of the ethical procedures
your Government is responsible for.  How then can your department
legitimately evade its political responsibility here?   
 
    Perhaps you and your department are only unwittingly part of a
post-modern form of Machiavellian conspiracy, so let me widen the argument
to show how contempt for reason and democracy is affecting Britain.  Last
week I received an appeal from the Christian Lawyers' Association to protest
against the unethical conduct of the ethical committee of the British
Medical Association.  I quote (omitting the horrific facts about abortion
and the specific areas of concern): 
 
"3. The BMA Ethics Committee has produced recommendations to liberalise the
law on abortion even further and published these recommendations in the
media, ahead of a debate at the BMA Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) on
27th June 2007.  It has done this without either carrying out a proper
review of the evidence or consulting the front-line doctors that it is
intended to represent.
 
"4.  The ARM Conference Agenda Committee, in deciding on the agend for the
ARM, has given priority to these recommendations and and relegated all other
motions on abortion to an area of the agenda which is unlikely to be
reached."
 
    A case somewhat similar to the disciplining of Hookham/MacLennan
occurred recently at dePaul University in the US, when a leading Jewish
critic of Israeli human rights abuse, Professor Norman Finkelstein,
overwhelmingly recomended for tenure by his peers, had his application
denied after an external intervention.
 
    Despite the power-preserving post-Machiavellian convention in Britain
and its offshoots, it is NOT the case that "the referee is always right".
In medieval Britain the King's Justice rode from shire to shire arbitrating
in disputes.  That is a job democratic Government is now paid to do.  The
apparently deliberate infiltration or perversion of ethics committees by
post-modern power-mongers raises issues for which Ministers are ultimately
responsibility. 
 
    The only good reason I can see for the security label attached to your
department's evasive reply is that you or your department is ashamed of it.
My first letter was indeed sent to you personally, but this insult to my
integrity has provoked me to make this correspondence public.
 
Yours truthfully
 
D J Taylor 

  _____  

 
From: palsbox@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:palsbox@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 25 June 2007 07:40
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Your recent correspondence with the Hon Julie Bishop MP
[SEC=IN-CONFIDENCE]



Dear Mr Taylor

Attached please find response to your recent correspondence with the Hon
Julie Bishop MP, Minister for Education, Science and Training, dated 24 May
2007.

Thank you.

 Ministerial Support Team, Department of Education, Science and Training

Classification: IN-CONFIDENCE

Office of the Hon Julie Bishop MP, Minister of Education, Science and
Training. ... 25 June 2007

Dear Mr Taylor

Concerns regarding Queensland University of Technology

Thank you for your email of 24 may to the Hon Julie Bishop MP, Minister for
Education, Science and Training, regarding your concerns about matters at
Queensland University of Technology (QUT).  The Minister has asked me to
reply on her behalf.

It is critical that Australian universities maintain the highest possible
academic standrds in the delivery and content of their courses and research.
As recipients of Australian Government funding, universities must meet a
number of quality and accountability requirements.

As self-accrediting institutions, Australian universities are responsible
for the quality and content of their teaching, learning and rersearch.  QUT
has a number of regulations, policies and codes around research training and
research students are specifically required to follow ethical practices.  I
understand that the projectwhich spaqrked Drs Hookham and Mac Lennan's
criticism was lcleared by QUT's ethics committee and that a special ethics
committee has been established to monitor the work.

With regard to the suspension of Dr Gary MacLennam and Dt John Hookham, the
Australian Government has limited capacity to intervene in universities'
internal processes.  However, universities do have a legal responsibility to
have in place adequate grievnce procedures for staff and students.  Should
these academics consider they are beong unfairly treated they may wish to
pursue their concerns via the Universities' grievance resolution policy.

If the internal avenues of complaint are exhausted and a grievance has not
been resolved to the satisfaction of those involved, the concern may also be
raised with the Queensland State Ombudsman.  The State Ombudsman has the
authority to investigate complaints about Queensland's public universities.

In relation to the broader issues you raise including recent decisions to
change course offerings at QUT, it is the Minister's frirm view that all
universities musst seek to build on their strengths and define their own
strategic priorities.  For many, this will mean greater specialisation
and/or colaboration.  In some cases, it may necessitate substantial change.
Nontheless such diversification and specialisation are critical if our
universities are to continue to provide high quality teaching, learning and
research to meet Australia's future needs.

Yours sincerely

Darren Brown, Senior Adviser. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 




  _____  

From: Dave Taylor [mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 24 May 2007 10:46
To: 'julie.bishop@xxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: Disciplinary Action at QUT against Drs Hookham and MacLennan


Dear Minister
 
I am writing in distress not merely in support of my inspirational friend
Gary MacLennan but about what my son at UQ tells me is the context of this
QUT action: large-scale student demonstrations against QUT proposals to
close down its whole Humanities Department on the basis of its "failure in
the market".  I am appalled by the thought that this action might be used by
QUTs present management to drive another nail into the coffin of the QUT
humanities department.

To outline my own interests here, I am an elderly Catholic information
scientist with lifelong interests in the philosophies of education, science
and training, notably via my teenage introduction to Cardinal Newman's
classic "The Idea of a University", to British empirical philosophy of
science, and a Conservative devaluation to "training " status of my
non-university scientific apprenticeship (a "hands-on" graduation scheme
devised by Labour in light of successful multiplication of scientists during
the Hitler war).   As my work evolved from practical electronics (including
the original computers and digital instrumentation) via the assessement of
reliability theory to experimental information science, I was increasingly
involved in training and the psychological issues of temperament and ability
therein.  Dr MacLennan and I met at a Critical Realist philosophy of science
conference; my own interests in that arose from experiences of the
psychologically biassed injustice of Thatcherite market economics and my
realisation of its anachronistic scientific justification.   In retirement I
have been developing more scientifically justifiable interpretations of
economics in light of Catholic humanitarian traditions and Critical Realist
analyses justified by key developments in information science. 

The issue Drs Hookham and McLelland took exception to was eloquently summed
up by my daughter, whose otherwise gifted son has Asperger syndrome.   She
immediately likened the project to an old-fashioned circus freak show,
imprisoning the "freak" not in an iron cage but by reinforcing his own
perception of himself as a freak, and taking advantage of the vulnerability
of those with Asperger's Syndrome, who characteristically have difficulty in
recognising socially acceptable behaviour themselves and thus rely on
apparently friendly 'others' to define it for them.
 
The reaction of QUT authorities they criticised was equally eloquently
summed by call-girl Christine Keeler when British minister John Profumo
denied any knowledge of her:  "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"   In
the case of Profumo justice was done: it was he who had to resign.
 
On the wider issue of education at QUT (and its funding), the Newman
position was that education is not specialised but about being able to
evaluate specialisms; the point of a university is not just that one
receives specialist training but that one is mixing on equal status with
other specialists.  If that is the case then closing down the Humanities
Department would reduce QUT to its previous unacceptable status as a
Polytechnic.  Alternatives to closing QUT as a whole start with a change of
management.  Failing this, Queensland universities could conceivably be
reorganised on a collegiate basis along the lines of Oxford and Cambridge
Universities in the UK, the problem with this being that it evolved not on
the basis of market funding but by means of charitable endowments which have
become inadequate to the demands on them.   The question then is whether
Universities can viably and sustainably be funded via market economics,
whether requisite diversity requires Keynesian style government
intervention, or whether John Maynard Keynes was right in his "General
Theory" (1936, pp.356-7) when he wrote that Sylvio Gesell had "carried his
theory far enough to lead him to a practical recommendation, which may carry
with it the essence of what is needed".  (Detail at
http://www.systemfehler.de/en/).  His dated money is not merely the
traditional Catholic/Muslim prohibition of capitalist usury but a radical
inversion of it.  My own  development of this follows John Ruskin's hints of
a stipend-based system, wherein prices reflect resource [replacement] costs
and competition is no longer for destabilising monetary profit but for real
achievement worthy of honour.       
 
Yours sincerely
 
David J Taylor
 
 
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