Peter Ridd’s case against James Cook University will be heard by the High Court at the end of this month. The case is a potential landmark judgment on academic freedom.
But, considering it’s framed against a background of climate alarmism and allegedly dodgy science, don’t expect the mainstream media to report it fairly. While The Age covers much of the employment law aspects of the case well, it fudges and peddles fake news on its climate change ramifications.
After hearing just three hours of arguments later this month, a bench of High Court judges may rule on a defining free speech question: what right do scholars and scientists have to say unpopular, even offensive, things?
It is the peak of a five-year battle for the man at its centre, Peter Ridd, who was fired from his job as a physics professor at James Cook University after attacking the scientific consensus on climate change and the Great Barrier Reef.
In fact, as everyone knows (but few will admit), Ridd’s real crime was challenging bad science and climate dogma.
He was a controversial figure at the university, having put his name to a letter arguing that “the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated” and arguing the Great Barrier Reef is in far better health and more resistant than the vast majority of his peers say. (A report from the Australian Academy of Science released earlier this year, for example, found the reef’s coral faced almost total destruction unless the world takes “transformative action” on climate change.)
The AAS can spout whatever opinions it likes, but the fact is that Ridd was right. As even former Obama climate czar Steve Koonin says, the alarmist viewpoint peddled by politicians and the mainstream media bears little resemblance to the more measured assessments in much of the scientific literature.
Ridd’s criticism of the quality of the “science” backing claims of “total destruction” of the Reef are backed by none other than Science. It has called for an investigation into potential scientific fraud in 22 papers linked to JCU. Ridd was almost certainly correct about the trustworthiness of some of his colleagues’ work on the Reef.
But the core of the High Court hearings will concern two very different sets of rules at JCU. One is its “code of conduct”, the other its enterprise agreement, which sets out its employees’ rights.
One of those rights is academic and intellectual freedom. If that doesn’t include the right to criticise bad science, then what the hell does it mean?
That argument triumphed at the first court hearing, but went down at a second in which the Federal Court preferred James Cook University’s more technical approach, without the references to ancient philosophers. Its lawyers start with the two documents: the code of conduct and the enterprise agreement. That agreement, the university says, “does not confer any general right upon academics to intellectual freedom”. Instead, it “recognises the university’s commitment to act in a manner consistent with intellectual freedom and in accordance with its code of conduct.”
That distinction seems slight, but it is not. Rather than a right to intellectual freedom overriding the code of conduct, the university’s approach sees the opposite occur.
The Age
In other words, the university wants it both ways. It wants to proclaim its virtuous defence of academic freedom, while reserving the right to punish academics who actually use that freedom in a way the university doesn’t like.
A similar contradiction has played out in another Queensland university. Although the University of Queensland’s website declares that “the University is a place where people should be free to express themselves, staff and students should enjoy the freedom to protest and disagree” and endorses “the freedom of staff and students to express their opinions in relation to the University”, it viciously punished UQ student Drew Pavlou for doing just that.
The Ridd case has exposed the hypocrisy and dogmatism of Australian academia. They squeal “academic freedom” in order to cancel a proposed Centre for Western Civilisation – while at the same time quietly tailoring their courses to please the Chinese Communist Party. They virtuously declare their support for free speech – and then try and silence academics who say things they don’t like.
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