Academic Freedom

Webinar – Academic Freedom

– When: Wednesday 14 September 11am AEST, online via Zoom – Register now –

Science suppression is widely documented as occurring throughout Australia. A survey conducted by the ESA in 2018, and again in 2019, revealed evidence of extensive suppression of research results and professional advice in government, environmental consultancies and universities.

The surveys found that:

  • Around half of industry and government respondents and over a quarter of university respondents reported suppression of advice on threatened species.
  • Almost 40 per cent of industry respondents reported gagging related to mining, urban development or clearing native vegetation.
  • A quarter of government respondents reported gagging regarding logging and climate change.
  • Over one third of survey respondents reported reduced job satisfaction, bullying and harassment for communicating publicly, and increased personal suffering such as deteriorating mental health.

The results of these surveys were published in Conservation Letters in 2020.

In a step towards understanding and combatting the problem of science suppression, the University of New England is offering a PhD position (with scholarship top up from the ESA) to examine suppression of science within Australian universities. The successful candidate would be supervised by Professor Don Driscoll (Deakin University) and Professor Robyn Bartel (University of New England).

Join Don, Robyn and Professor Adrienne Stone (University of Melbourne) in our upcoming webinar as they discuss the issue of science suppression in Australia, particularly within the university sector, and the real and urgent need for more research on infringements of academic freedom.

Participants are encouraged to submit questions to before the webinar for panellists to discuss and answer during the session.

Panellists include:

Professor Don Driscoll – Don is Director of the Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University. He has over 30 years of research experience in conservation biology. Don completed his PhD at the University of Western Australia where he studied the dispersal, population genetics and biology of threatened frogs. Since then he has studied plants, birds, beetles, frogs, reptiles and mammals in fragmented agricultural landscapes in NSW, the ACT and SA, and in naturally patchy landscapes in SW Tasmania. His research interests spans the field of conservation, including work on fire ecology, ecology of frog diseases, invasive plant and animal species, habitat loss and fragmentation and more. Recent research extends to developing end to end solutions in conservation, spanning ecology, social sciences, economics and technology. Don was President of the Ecological Society of Australia from 2017-19.

 

Professor Robyn Bartel – Robyn is a Professor of Geography at the University of New England (UNE) with expertise in the intersections between environmental regulation and policy, natural resource management and place-making. Robyn has a multi-disciplinary background in law, science and higher education and has published on the importance of advancing academic freedom in the face of recent incursions and regression (Bartel, 2019). Currently serving in an academic leadership position as Chair of Academic Board at UNE, Robyn is investigating the institutional supports necessary to promote academic freedom and thereby further the public good remit of the university sector. Robyn recently served in the role of President of the Institute of Australian Geographers and is also interested in strengthening the capacity of collective academic freedom beyond institutional boundaries

 

Professor Adrienne Stone – Adrienne Stone FASSA FAAL is a Melbourne Laureate Professor and Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at Melbourne Law School.  She researches in the areas of constitutional law and constitutional theory and has particular expertise in freedom of speech and expression and academic freedom. Among her recent works are the Oxford Handbook on Freedom of Speech (co-edited with Frederick Schauer) Open Minds: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech (2021) (co-authored with Carolyn Evans). She is the current President of the International Association of Constitutional Law.

One thought on “Webinar – Academic Freedom”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *