01 April 2007

Springtime for Sycophants

Undeterred by the facts, Murdoch's academic propaganda arm refused to publish a letter which corrected serious errors in an article late last year, and hints at its own complicity in the RMIT dismissal. See attached comments, and here. Carmen López is Salvadorean, Viviana Ramírez is Chilean. They know from experience how effectively political dismissal intensifies cultural conformism: see here.

posted by Defend Our Universities committee @ 4:55 pm

1 Comments:

At 26 January, 2015, Blogger Defend Our Universities committee said...

Ms Catherine Armitage, Editor,
The Australian - Higher Education Supplement

Dear Editor,

Despite its overall accuracy, Matthew Knott’s article on under-funded language courses in Australian universities (HES, 8/11/06) errs by omission on recent history at RMIT. One language program did increase its face-to-face hours last year, when its enrolments - uniquely - rose by 25 per cent: Spanish. On the program coordinator’s initiative, barely two months after his appointment, two hours of conversation class were added, providing five hours of classes per week for all Spanish higher education students at RMIT in 2005. Moreover, Dr Austin publicised the imbalance between TAFE and university sector hours among all university Spanish students, and encouraged them to pursue permanently-equal class hours using the superior TAFE benchmark. His advocacy, coupled with student pressure, then secured management agreement to trial four hours not only for Spanish, but all major university language programs, commencing 2006. But by the end of second semester 2005, he had been illegally removed as program coordinator and given six months notice: see http://www.defendrobert.blogspot.com/

Management never provided a reason for dismissal, recently settled under Unfair Dismissal legislation in the Industrial Commission. Ironically, his probation report acknowledges “excellent” research performance and “commendable” teaching, leading to a “considerably more attractive” Spanish program. However, the rapid and major improvements (eg first-time overseas scholarships, academic upgrading of staff, smaller classes, staff-student exchange programs with Latin American and Spanish universities, curriculum reform) unnerved vested interests in management, as did his Left political leanings. Management's counter-reform includes dropping the PhD requirement in the new job ad, and replacement with “completing a doctoral thesis within five years of appointment”. This demeans the students and is scandalous, more so given the number of semi-employed and unemployed PhDs in the field of Hispanic Studies, both locally and overseas.

As one senior student wrote to the vice chancellor in a letter representative of several hundred others, she had been "amazed by the enormous improvements that Robert has made to the program in the short time he has been here", lamenting in a separate message that "despite protests from virtually every student of the Spanish department, not to mention many more, the decision on (his) dismissal has not been reversed." Another senior student prepared a court deposition swearing that the head of school who recommended dismissal “admitted (to a student delegation) that he had not followed procedure in relation to Dr. Austin’s probation ... and admitted that in future he would pursue such matters only through the legitimate channels. This admission contradicts stories around the school to the effect that everything was above board.”

Viviana Ramírez
Voluntary tutor in Spanish, RMIT (2005)
20 November 2006

14 April, 2007

 

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