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Title: University of Sydney Professor Tim Anderson Suspended for “Criticism of War Propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine”
Source: [None]
URL Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/unive ... ria-iraq-and-palestine/5662229
Published: Dec 10, 2018
Author: staff
Post Date: 2018-12-10 13:20:46 by Horse
Keywords: None
Views: 25

Global Research is in solidarity with Professor Tim Anderson who was suspended from his position as Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, Australia.

This decision by the University’s Provost was largely motivated by Professor Anderson’s research and public statements on Syria, Iraq and Palestine including Anderson’s carefully documented book entitled The Dirty War on Syria,

“Through careful analysis, professor Anderson reveals the “unspoken truth”: the “war on terrorism” is fake, the United States is a “State sponsor of terrorism” involved in a criminal undertaking.

Scroll down for reviews of Prof. Anderson’s book on Syria (published by Global Research). (click book cover right to order Tim Anderson’s international bestseller)

It should be understood that this is not an isolated event. Academic freedom is threatened. Several prominent academics have been fired or intimidated under different circumstances.

Below is Tim Anderson’s text on his Facebook page followed by an article published by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Yesterday University of Sydney Provost Stephen Garton suspended me from my position as a senior lecturer and banned me from entering the university. I have worked as an academic at this University for more than 20 years and am appealing the decision to a Review Committee.

This move is the culmination of a series of failed attempts by management to restrict my public comments. I have always rejected such censorship. The latest complaint concerns my advisory analysis of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Examine the graphic below and decide for yourself whether or how this infographic might be ‘offensive’.

These complaints, over the last 18 months, have been petty and absurd. In my view they represent an unusually aggressive regime of political censorship, in which no decent university should be involved.

Most of the management complaints have to do with my criticisms of war propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine. I don’t accept such censorship.

Stephen Garton has ignored the ‘intellectual freedom’ rule of the university, which states that academic staff are entitled to ‘express unpopular or controversial views, provided that in doing so staff must not engage in harassment, vilification or intimidation’. I will point this out to the Review Committee.

I have told Provost Garton that I don’t abuse or engage in gratuitous criticism, but I do criticise dishonest propaganda harshly, when justified. I have rejected his attempts at political censorship as unprincipled.

Academics fight suspension of lecturer over swastika image

by Jordan Baker,

Sydney Morning Herald, December 7, 2018

Sydney University academics have criticised the suspension of an academic who showed students material featuring the Nazi swastika imposed over Israel’s flag, saying it was a body blow to academic freedom. (see above image, left hand corner)

By Friday afternoon 30 academics, including several emeritus professors, had signed the open letter arguing that academic freedom was “meaningless if it is suspended when its exercise is deemed offensive.”

The academic at the centre of the controversy, senior lecturer in political economy Tim Anderson, has also been criticised by federal ministers for visiting Syria and North Korea, where he expressed solidarity with their dictatorial regimes.

Earlier this week, Sydney University served Dr Anderson a termination notice, saying the swastika material amounted to serious misconduct that was “disrespectful and offensive, and contrary to the university’s behavioural expectations”.

Dr Anderson was given a week to show why he should not be sacked and has been barred from entering the university in the meantime. He is appealing the decision, describing the complaints as petty and absurd.

The academics, mostly from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, said employment should not be dependent on their work remaining within the bounds of “contested and intrinsically indefinable constraint”.

Some of the signatories of the letter are also vocal opponents of a proposal by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation to fund a course in western tradition at the university. They argue that the proposal also compromises academic freedom.

“The suspension of Dr Tim Anderson pending the termination of his employment is an unacceptable act of censorship and a body-blow to academic freedom at the University of Sydney,” the academics wrote in the open letter.

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