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Australian universities after French","","An examination of how Australian universities’ academic freedom has been challenged by neoliberal higher-education reforms since the late 1980s, and how that history is reframed by public commentators as a supposed crisis of free speech. The analysis contrasts the global discourse on academic freedom with claims promoted by institutions and media voices, and evaluates related arguments about university governance, policy requirements, and the conceptual difference between academic freedom and free speech. It further considers responses such as model codes adopted by universities and legal policy constraints.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/what-crisis-of-academic-freedom-australian-universities-after-french/595049/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/what-crisis-of-academic-freedom-australian-universities-after-french/595049.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Bulrr","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What framework is used to discuss academic freedom in Australian universities?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The discussion connects the Magna Charta Universitatum’s claim about moral and intellectual independence with Australia’s subsequent neoliberal higher-education reforms and debates over their impact on academic freedom.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Who promotes the idea that Australian universities face a crisis of free speech?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The text cites spokespeople from the Institute of Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies, associated journalists, and conservative commentators, noting that many of them are non-academics.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the document distinguish academic freedom from free speech?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It emphasizes that protagonists like Robert French refuse to conflate the two categories, treating academic freedom as conceptually distinct from free speech and arguing for protection mechanisms such as policy or model codes.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},595049,1792171170,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},5909892115043,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W  \nWhat crisis of academic freedom? Australian universities after French  \nRob Watts RMIT University  \nThey [the young] are asking for the truth. If we respond correctly, can’t we perhaps interest them in freedom? (Arendt & Jaspers, 1993, p. 451) .  \nIn 1988 hundreds of universities world-wide signed onto the Magna Charta Universitatum (1988). The Charter declared in stirring tones that ‘to meet the needs of the world around it, [a university’s] research and teaching must be morally and intellectually independent of all political authority and economic power’. In the same year this declaration ofacademic freedom was issued, the Hawke-Keating Labor Government published a White Paper called ‘Higher Education: A Policy Statement’. This paper launched the ‘Dawkins reforms’, a program of neoliberal policy changes that among many effects would render Australia’s public universities, includingthe nine Australian universities that had signed the Charter, more accountable to the Australian government than ever before (Bessant, 1995; Thornton, 2014; Connell, 2019). The line of neoliberal policies unfolding since the late 1980s has been accompanied by persistent expressions of concern about the negative impact of these policies on academic freedom, affecting everything – the identity of universities (Considine, 2006; Gare, 2006), academic identity (Parker & Jary, 1995), academic teaching (Thornton, 2014; Hil, 2015), and academic research (Sardesai et al., 2017). Finally, and three decades on, a small but noisy claque of neoliberal and conservative commentators has been busily fabricating afurore around the notion that Australian universities are now caught up in a ‘crisis of academic free speech’.  \nIf we accept, as readers of crime fiction understand, that there is no such thing as a coincidence, we have a puzzle. How are we to make sense of the coincidence of a global discourse of academic freedom and the rise of what some call the ‘neoliberal university’ triggering persistent and serious concerns about the relationship between neoliberalism and‘academic freedom’? Given that relationship, how should we respond to the proposition that we face a crisis of ‘free speech’in our universities?  \nThe idea that our universities are now caught in a crisis of freedom of speech, has been tirelessly repeated by spokespeople from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the Centre for Independent Studies, journalists associated with Murdoch’s News Ltd., such as Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen, and by the weirdly ‘conservative’ journal Quadrant (Bolt, 2016; Albrechtsen, 2020). Oddly enough most of those propagating this idea have been non-academics. That said, a small number of ‘conservative’ academics such as Kevin Donnelly, Mervyn Bendle, and Sinclair Davidson unsuccessfully tried in 2008 to persuade the Senate inquiry into allegations of academic bias that there was a hegemonic project in universities to promote a Marxist, postmodernist, and feminist worldview (Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2008). By 2018, this idea had morphed into the defence of free speech. The IPA had released no fewer  \n8 What crisis of academic freedom? Australian universities after French Rob Watts vol. 63, no. 1, 2021  \nA U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W  \nthan three audits of ‘free speech’, relying on a mixture of anecdote and a spurious quantitative audit of ‘free speech’ in Australian universities (Lesh, 2016; 2017; 2018). Displaying a talent for graphic misrepresentation that should have earned him ajob in the Trump WhiteHouse, Lesh claimed that he had given thirtyfive of Australia’s 42 universities (83 per cent) a ‘Red rating’ for their policies or actions that were hostile to ‘freedom of speech’. This claim relied on Haidt’s (2017) unwarranted assertion that universities cannot be simultaneously ‘social justice institutions’and be committed to","cbCaiaerUKfEeyBq","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiaerUKfEeyBq","pdf",213882,11,"English","# Introduction\n## Magna Charta Universitatum and neoliberal reforms\n## The rise of a “crisis of free speech” narrative\n## Policy, legal duties, and model codes","[{\"question\":\"What framework is used to discuss academic freedom in Australian universities?\",\"answer\":\"The discussion connects the Magna Charta Universitatum’s claim about moral and intellectual independence with Australia’s subsequent neoliberal higher-education reforms and debates over their impact on academic freedom.\"},{\"question\":\"Who promotes the idea that Australian universities face a crisis of free speech?\",\"answer\":\"The text cites spokespeople from the Institute of Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies, associated journalists, and conservative commentators, noting that many of them are non-academics.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the document distinguish academic freedom from free speech?\",\"answer\":\"It emphasizes that protagonists like Robert French refuse to conflate the two categories, treating academic freedom as conceptually distinct from free speech and arguing for protection mechanisms such as policy or model codes.\"}]","What crisis of academic freedom? Australian universities after French | PDF",1792080339,28]