In plain english this is an official declaration of war by the far left academic elites.
They
are just letting us know officially, that having incrementally taken the
high ground over many, many decades, that they control it and they have
no intention of giving it up or ceding a centimetre of territory. They
will do whatever it takes. Pour boiling oil and stomp on the fingers and
feet of any one trying to get so much as a foothold or toehold, to
scramble over the top and subvert their authority. Ramsay Centre’s uni deal a ‘violation’
They
are also letting us know that they loathe the very civilisation, Western
civilisation, that the Ramsay Centre represents. If it is to be, they
demand to control it, despite the evidence that such control is code for
undermining and white-anting everything the Ramsay Centre is
endeavouring to achieve.
“…We are a university, not a training institute for a future political ‘cadre’,” they say, except that they are exactly that but only for the far left political ‘cadre’ of which they approve.
Further on they say that “Enquiry
in the humanities must be free and conducted independent of the
influence of third parties” and that “Decisions about how the cultural
traditions of Europe are to be studied at university are for academics
to make, not billionaires or former prime ministers.”
Except
of course and unless that “influence of third parties” are
sponsor/donors of the centres for Confucian or Arabic and Islamic
Studies in which case nothing need be said because it is understood, a
given, from the outset that those designing and running the programs
could be relied upon to deliver what was expected and required by the
donor parties.
Under their version of “academic autonomy”
we can see from the experience with the United States Studies Centre at
Sydney University how the trajectory of the course in Western
Civilisation will also be gutted, filleted, undermined and doomed by far
left, anti-Western activists.
Finally, they say that: “The
Ramsay programme represents, quite simply, European supremacism writ
large: it signals that the study of the European cultural tradition
warrants better educational circumstances than that of others.
To which most would say “and what’s wrong with that?”
It
can’t be expected that they will acknowledge any time soon, that it is
that same European supremacism they deride, that created the very idea
for them to prosper and promulgate their poison in the first place.