With friends like these

18 Responses to “With friends like these”

1. Tania
   May 11th, 2005 @ 8:31 pm

   For me the article was spot on. The rhetoric (and management) of the creative industries people at QUT has been very judgemental, very dismissive of positions that they dont agree with, very complacent not to say arrogant. They’ve been really quick to label things that don’t suit their vision and interpretation of contemporary culture as obsolete and to use their power to enforce their own position. And many of their judgements and policies have been, in many of our opinions, unnuanced and risky and often plain wrong. So it’s not surprising that they are going to get some flack. But I agree: what’s important is not just to criticise them, what’s important for QUT is to recognise that a new more subtle, more inclusive, more intelligent approach is needed and to get on with it.

2. melgregg
   May 11th, 2005 @ 9:06 pm

   Thanks for writing Tania. It sounds as though the combination of a new Dean and some overt venting might help usher in a new phase pretty quickly. It’s interesting to read responses to the article on the fibreculture email list. Christina Spurgeon has written an eloquent response. I would certainly like to hear the voices of women at QUT a lot more often - but I think they’re usually too busy actually doing research! Anyway, I think the article made me realise how rarely this sort of thing has happened while I’ve been in universities - that people would be prepared to take a risk and say something publicly that they strongly believe in. I can think of examples in relation to issues like war and asylum seekers, etc. but never in relation to a faculty. It makes me feel a little less crazy that I believe in and am loyal to a disciplinary tradition (Then again, as anyone knows who’s been to a cultural studies conference closing plenary, there’s a fine line between carrying on a legacy and getting lost in nostalgia…). While I don’t like some of the implications of the article, isn’t it refreshing to hear some dissent and passion coming from somewhere! And in defence of education - yeah!

3. Mark Bahnisch
   May 11th, 2005 @ 11:31 pm

   Both authors are strong NTEU activists. As an employee of QUT from 1997 to 2004, I’m aware that one of the continuing concerns NTEU members at QUT have had with the CIF is the very large divide between well paid research only staff and the poor working conditions and heavy courseload of junior staff who are expected to teach enormously long hours and seen as “teaching only” in all but name, particularly young Level A academics who are hired on fractional contracts which properly speaking are illegal under the award.

   It’s also worth noting the continuing bitterness that the abolition of the Arts Faculty caused, though most of the characterisation about its lack of focus is fair. But the Arts Faculty at least had a relatively consultative structure whereas I think the CIF centralisation at Faculty level probably mitigates against that.

   I don’t know John, but Gary’s a lovely fellow and a very strong activist from way back - he was also involved in the protest against the Joh State Funeral. He is a very good teacher and someone for whom I have some considerable respect.

4. danny
   May 12th, 2005 @ 12:34 am

   I’d suggest that to really understand what’s motivating this piece you need to talk to people who felt aggrieved during the restructure that forged the Creative Industries uber-faculty back - when - 2001? Andrew Macnamara’s essay in MIA from the time might be a good place to look. These were people who felt that their disciplines were widely disrespected under the new regime, and that learning pathways were being pried apart in favour of “flexible learning” and interdisciplinarity. There are arguments both ways, but as you note there have been a lot of male voices and position-taking (myself included from a different perspectives) that highlights the aggressive nature of the discourse and the organisational transformations that occurred. I agree with you that airing this dirty laundry in the Australian is not good for the field. But it’s also a good reminder that generating organisational coherence by force has side-effects, particularly in academia. What’s the joke? “The reason academic struggles are so bitter is because the stakes are so low.”

5. Mel
   May 12th, 2005 @ 11:01 am

   I don’t know anything about the politics at QUT, but I was alarmed by the authors’ emphasis on customer-oriented business models that privilege the acquisition of skills over the acquisition of knowledge. I have my reservations about the business model, but I think it’s possible to sell people ways of thinking. Don’t ask me how, though.

   Plus, I was very disappointed to hear the same old accusations of “dumbing down”, although there is no point rehearsing those spastic old arguments.

6. Josh
   May 12th, 2005 @ 11:12 am

   As Christina says in her response, a disappointing aspect of this course of action is the conflation of internal difficulties into a general critique. Beyond the personal offense I feel, I am disgusted by the dismissive delivery of the Faculty to the baying wolves.

7. Ian
   May 12th, 2005 @ 3:52 pm

   Personally, from my own experiences studying, working and teaching within the faculty, I consider John and Gary’s article to be a concise articulation of the CIF’s failings. It’s a blunt, at times unfair (especially with regard to one staff member), piece of writing but I can’t say given the forum at their disposal that they presented an inaccurate depiction of what it’s like to be at the bottom of the CIF heap.

   There are pockets of poorly renummerated, poorly treated staff within CIF, that is indisputable. This is, I’d imagine, why Gary Maclennan is raging against the CIF at present instead of ‘the legitimation of the Bjelke-Petersen reign of terror’ as suggested by a fellow college. Maybe if the faculty he works within delivered a supportive working environment he could get on with his job and express his workplace gripes elsewhere.

8. Ian
   May 12th, 2005 @ 3:54 pm

   “…as suggested by a fellow colleague.” Whoops.

9. jean
   May 12th, 2005 @ 3:56 pm

   What Josh said. And what the other Mel said.

10. Josh
    May 12th, 2005 @ 5:30 pm

    With a small insight into some of the matters bubbling under the surface that have squeezed Gary and John to consider this course of action, I am convinced they felt the graveness of writing to the Australian a necessary act. I think they were desperate to provoke a response from the Faculty. Prior to this, they had an article published in the May 2005 edition of The New Review of Film and Television Studies (Vol.3, no.1), accounting their difficulties teaching documentary film making within the Creative Industries framework. I am in no doubt that they felt publishing their piece in the Australian was a way to be heard.

    Without presuming to understand the breadth and depth of the difficulties they feel they face, I cannot bring myself to acknowledge much constructive that has come from this action. On your first point I can’t help but disagree with you, Ian. I find their response far from a concise, accurate or well-considered articulation of the failings of the CIF. And I am a poorly paid, overworked, casual, junior academic with less standing, fewer rights, a duller voice, smaller pay-cheque and less job security despite being a repository for a great deal of the institutional knowledge of my discipline. To my eye, Gary and John’s actions present the tensions within their own and other disciplines (which definitely exist and need to be dealt with) as the smoke rising above the burning hulk of the CIF. The real problem I have with this is that I can’t, for the life of me, find the burning hulk of the Faculty.

    I’m not trying to defend the CIF as a bastion of awesomeness. I am sure there are tensions within the Faculty as there are across the tertiary education and research sector. Staffing and work-load matters need to be resolved and grievance procedures transparent, flexible and responsive enough to allow staff to be heard. I was not aware these procedures were not in place (I believe they are but have had no cause to test them). However, to present their grievances with Faculty management as a considered critique of the project savagely misrepresents and disregards the work of their colleagues. I find their article more complaint than critique. I am disgusted they would openly criticise the positions of a number of colleagues (both named and unnamed) in such a glib manner. Mostly but, it saddens me to see such complaints played out publicly in an environment where the research output and teaching of humanities and Arts faculties are regularly attacked. I find this personally offensive, disrespectful and grossly unprofessional.

11. jean
    May 13th, 2005 @ 7:48 am

    Very well said, Josh. As you so elegantly demonstrate, it seems to me that those who are dismayed by J & G’s actions are far more capable of a compassionate reading of the situation, and of separating CI as an intellectual enterprise from CIF the workplace than the original authors or the vultures who have been sniping at us from the margins and who interpret this situation as in invitation to open ridicule of our collective efforts.

12. Kim
    May 13th, 2005 @ 1:43 pm

    Who are these vultures?

    I have a friend who worked in the CIF on a short term contract - the lack of support she got for finishing her PhD was such that she realised that she was more or less a teaching machine and nothing else.

    As for the distinction made between the “project” and the “workplace”, this is a reification of knowledge - surely knowledge production is a material and collective process and the two aren’t so easily separated. The hierarchies that exist in any Faculty surely reinforce intellectual hierarchies.

    From what I hear managerialism is alive and well at QUT, and not just in the CIF, and this may be a clue as to why these two academics published where they did. I don’t actually know that the Australian higher ed supplement is a place where humanities research is regularly attacked. No doubt there will be a defence of the CIF in response. I don’t quite understand why people think that it is personally offensive or why it will invite ridicule.

    I also believe that the V-C at QUT has come down very hard on dissident academics who’ve criticised the institution publicly. Would you support that? The issues of critique and enunciation outside the university seem intertwined to me. If people find that they can’t be heard within hierarchical and undemocratic university structures, should they be silent?

13. jean
    May 13th, 2005 @ 2:21 pm

    Hi Kim,

    More than a few colleagues had gloating emails and phone calls from “friends” - something along the lines of “thank god it was you and not us, ha ha ha”. These are not the vultures, however. The vultures are the people who have consistently dismissed and denigrated the emergent intellectual project of CI (in which I include creative practice, learning, teaching as well as ‘traditional’ research) on the basis of very thin critiques of a very small proportion of early CI rhetoric. This doesn’t always happen in public, but it has effects - effects which I feel are only now being effectively countered through the demonstration of purposeful, engaged work from within the faculty. A public spewing of personal dissatisfaction like this can do much damage to that project.

    The problem is that the “critique from within” represented by the MacLennan/Hookum argument is (apart from being muddled up with internal management problems) equally thin - in fact, especially as it comes from ‘within’, it strikes me as laughably (or deliberately) ignorant of the diverse projects, approaches and motivations of those who are collectively in the process of constructing CI as a field.

    This is a matter of academic integrity and collegial responsibility, not corporate loyalty.

14. creativity/machine » distractions
    May 13th, 2005 @ 2:25 pm

    [...]

    I’ve been quiet because we have all been derailed by this for the last two days. Thankfully, I get to leave that h [...]

15. Jo
    May 14th, 2005 @ 3:22 pm

    wow, what a feeding frenzy, and prompted by an extremely bad and inaccurate opinion piece mascarading as journalism.

    I choose to work in the CI faculty, and am very saddened that PhD students here have to endure this kind of sniping. And perhaps someone could give us the name of a faculty that has absolutely no disenchanted staff or students who feel unsupported.

    And who are these ‘well paid research only staff’ in CI… please do tell…

16. Taylor Foster
    July 21st, 2005 @ 9:30 am

    Hey, I was wondering if you had a link to the article that was posted in the Australian in response to Gary’s and John’s article. I can remember reading it, but can’t remember who wrote it/enough to find it online. thanks.

17. melgregg
    July 21st, 2005 @ 9:47 am

    From memory I think it was a letter rather than an article which would make it hard to find online… you may need to take a trip to the library and check the past issues in hard copy - but it would be pretty easy to narrow in on the date.

18. Taylor Foster
    August 2nd, 2005 @ 7:29 am

    Ok, found a copy of the full letter with the full list of the undersigned. http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/216 Interesting.

    I would like to hear the bottom of the food chain have a response! The students shall have their day in…the food court!

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