Professor threatened by a cowardly bully
Freedom of incarceration - Brendan O'Keefe for news squad - November 02, 2005
UNIVERSITY students, academics and their respective national unions, without even seeing the colour of the federal Government's anti-terror legislation, fear they have witnessed its intentions this year and can guess at the implications for academic freedom.
In July, The Australian reported that a student at Monash University had been hauled in for questioning by the Australian Federal Police after he had borrowed books on the methods of Palestinian suicide bombers.
A Monash librarian is believed to have alerted authorities. The books were for legitimate study purposes.
Then, in September, US anti-globalisation campaigner Scott Parkin was held in solitary confinement in Melbourne before being deported to the US and saddled with a bill for more than $10,000 for his stay in the cells.
Parkin was neither student nor academic but his case resonates loudly for those in higher education who fear that the new laws will stifle debate and could compromise sources of information. They fear they will be under surveillance as they borrow books from libraries, buy books over the internet, and teach and research sensitive topics.
Ben Saul, a University of NSW academic and director of the bill of rights program at the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law, says offences under new sedition laws carry a penalty of seven years in prison. The present maximum penalty is three years.
He cites an example of British academics who have defended, as legitimate resistance, the actions of Palestinian bombers.
"They defended them through moral philosophy, [but even] if you make those kind of statements in a very scholarly way, using very defensible arguments, you could well be prosecuted for promoting political violence," he says.
"It's pretty extraordinary that you can be thrown into jail for seven years even if no violence actually happens and if you didn't intend anybody to commit violence."
UNSW colleague George Williams draws another comparison.
"You could imagine a university course studying the speeches of Hitler, not because you agree with them but because you need to understand where they're coming from," he says. "There will be dangers there for academics who [may] reproduce those materials or restate some of them."
Under existing sedition laws, the prosecution has to show that the accused urged another person to commit violence and that the person who did the urging intended the other person to commit violence.
Saul says: "Under these new offences all you have to show is that a person urged another person to commit violence; you don't have to show that you intended for that other person to go off and commit violence. You also don't have to show that violence resulted."
So any academic or student who can be traced as the source of information, for example from a speech at a seminar, in a published article or in a campus newspaper, of material that encouraged another person, perhaps unbeknown to the student or academic, to commit any act of violence faces sedition charges and seven years in jail.
National Union of Students president Felix Eldridge says the Monash library books case shows the security authorities are aiming at small targets and wasting time and money in the process, as well as hindering research that may help in the war on terrorism.
"We don't like the idea and we don't support the idea of Australian intelligence services having any say on what Australian students study," Eldridge says.
"It's a fundamental issue of freedom of speech and also of academic freedom. We oppose that and offer them the advice that they should be getting out looking for real threats rather than students writing essays that are trying to help our intelligence service identify a real threat, which is what that guy was doing."
The National Tertiary Education Union's national council has condemned the legislation, noting "with alarm" that it could lead to surveillance of university staff and students' research and teaching and their use of library and internet materials and attendance at seminars and conferences. The union fears university management may be asked to monitor staff and students on behalf of police and security services and that security authorities will be able to use their powers against participants in industrial, political and community campaigns.
NTEU policy strategist Andrew Nette tells the HES that a provision to empower the AFP to seize electronic and paper documents, including those pertaining to financial matters and travel plans, could have implications for academics studying terrorist movements.
Saul says a provision that could compel academics to produce records about their research on, for example, clandestine terror groups in Indonesia or extremist groups in Australia, may cut off vital information pipelines.
"In the same way as it does for journalists, it compromises your ability to do your job because sources aren't going to keep talking to you if they know you can hand them on to the authorities."
The NTEU is planning a one-day international conference in December at which the legislation will be discussed by higher education unions from across the world and at which the Australian union hopes to formulate an action plan against the proposed laws.
Many believe that the existence of an international terror threat will require academics and students to ramp up their efforts to study outlawed groups and their connections, methods and effectiveness.
Two weeks ago, the federal Government announced that ASIO would nearly double its staff numbers from 980 to 1860.
That means more students studying international relations, politics and terrorist groups, more teachers teaching in the field and more researchers researching.
Eldridge says a greater emphasis on the study of unconventional warfare needs to be encouraged, given "the state the world now finds itself in".
"We should be critically challenging and questioning the war on terror and everything that goes along with it," he says. "It could be argued quite credibly that part of the reason we've got ourselves into this situation and part of the reason that things are not going all that well in Iraq is that there has been a lack of critical thinking and a lack of acceptance of different ideas and new ways of looking at this stuff."
The problem with the new laws, Saul says, is that the definitions of terror, terrorists and terrorism are slippery. World leaders, including former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, had once condemned Nelson Mandela as a terrorist for fighting against the minority white rule in South Africa.
"People have very different views on what is and what isn't terrorism and different moral and philosophical views on precisely when political violence is justified," he says.
Williams says that not only is terrorism ill defined in the legislation, what it may mean to incite or encourage violence is equally ill defined. "These laws will leave people guessing and worrying about how it might impact upon them," he says.
Under Williams's worst case scenario, academics and students suffer what he calls a "chilling effect", in which people stop teaching and research in certain areas because of fear that it could lead them into trouble with the authorities.
"That's of grave concern to me because discussions [about terrorist activities] are vital to a free democracy and one of the strengths of this nation is that we do have these discussions and there's room to disagree, and traditionally you haven't had to look over your shoulder when talking about contentious issues. These things seem far-fetched but, unfortunately, they're not any more."
UNIVERSITY students, academics and their respective national unions, without even seeing the colour of the federal Government's anti-terror legislation, fear they have witnessed its intentions this year and can guess at the implications for academic freedom.
In July, The Australian reported that a student at Monash University had been hauled in for questioning by the Australian Federal Police after he had borrowed books on the methods of Palestinian suicide bombers.
A Monash librarian is believed to have alerted authorities. The books were for legitimate study purposes.
Then, in September, US anti-globalisation campaigner Scott Parkin was held in solitary confinement in Melbourne before being deported to the US and saddled with a bill for more than $10,000 for his stay in the cells.
Parkin was neither student nor academic but his case resonates loudly for those in higher education who fear that the new laws will stifle debate and could compromise sources of information. They fear they will be under surveillance as they borrow books from libraries, buy books over the internet, and teach and research sensitive topics.
Ben Saul, a University of NSW academic and director of the bill of rights program at the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law, says offences under new sedition laws carry a penalty of seven years in prison. The present maximum penalty is three years.
He cites an example of British academics who have defended, as legitimate resistance, the actions of Palestinian bombers.
"They defended them through moral philosophy, [but even] if you make those kind of statements in a very scholarly way, using very defensible arguments, you could well be prosecuted for promoting political violence," he says.
"It's pretty extraordinary that you can be thrown into jail for seven years even if no violence actually happens and if you didn't intend anybody to commit violence."
UNSW colleague George Williams draws another comparison.
"You could imagine a university course studying the speeches of Hitler, not because you agree with them but because you need to understand where they're coming from," he says. "There will be dangers there for academics who [may] reproduce those materials or restate some of them."
Under existing sedition laws, the prosecution has to show that the accused urged another person to commit violence and that the person who did the urging intended the other person to commit violence.
Saul says: "Under these new offences all you have to show is that a person urged another person to commit violence; you don't have to show that you intended for that other person to go off and commit violence. You also don't have to show that violence resulted."
So any academic or student who can be traced as the source of information, for example from a speech at a seminar, in a published article or in a campus newspaper, of material that encouraged another person, perhaps unbeknown to the student or academic, to commit any act of violence faces sedition charges and seven years in jail.
National Union of Students president Felix Eldridge says the Monash library books case shows the security authorities are aiming at small targets and wasting time and money in the process, as well as hindering research that may help in the war on terrorism.
"We don't like the idea and we don't support the idea of Australian intelligence services having any say on what Australian students study," Eldridge says.
"It's a fundamental issue of freedom of speech and also of academic freedom. We oppose that and offer them the advice that they should be getting out looking for real threats rather than students writing essays that are trying to help our intelligence service identify a real threat, which is what that guy was doing."
The National Tertiary Education Union's national council has condemned the legislation, noting "with alarm" that it could lead to surveillance of university staff and students' research and teaching and their use of library and internet materials and attendance at seminars and conferences. The union fears university management may be asked to monitor staff and students on behalf of police and security services and that security authorities will be able to use their powers against participants in industrial, political and community campaigns.
NTEU policy strategist Andrew Nette tells the HES that a provision to empower the AFP to seize electronic and paper documents, including those pertaining to financial matters and travel plans, could have implications for academics studying terrorist movements.
Saul says a provision that could compel academics to produce records about their research on, for example, clandestine terror groups in Indonesia or extremist groups in Australia, may cut off vital information pipelines.
"In the same way as it does for journalists, it compromises your ability to do your job because sources aren't going to keep talking to you if they know you can hand them on to the authorities."
The NTEU is planning a one-day international conference in December at which the legislation will be discussed by higher education unions from across the world and at which the Australian union hopes to formulate an action plan against the proposed laws.
Many believe that the existence of an international terror threat will require academics and students to ramp up their efforts to study outlawed groups and their connections, methods and effectiveness.
Two weeks ago, the federal Government announced that ASIO would nearly double its staff numbers from 980 to 1860.
That means more students studying international relations, politics and terrorist groups, more teachers teaching in the field and more researchers researching.
Eldridge says a greater emphasis on the study of unconventional warfare needs to be encouraged, given "the state the world now finds itself in".
"We should be critically challenging and questioning the war on terror and everything that goes along with it," he says. "It could be argued quite credibly that part of the reason we've got ourselves into this situation and part of the reason that things are not going all that well in Iraq is that there has been a lack of critical thinking and a lack of acceptance of different ideas and new ways of looking at this stuff."
The problem with the new laws, Saul says, is that the definitions of terror, terrorists and terrorism are slippery. World leaders, including former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, had once condemned Nelson Mandela as a terrorist for fighting against the minority white rule in South Africa.
"People have very different views on what is and what isn't terrorism and different moral and philosophical views on precisely when political violence is justified," he says.
Williams says that not only is terrorism ill defined in the legislation, what it may mean to incite or encourage violence is equally ill defined. "These laws will leave people guessing and worrying about how it might impact upon them," he says.
Under Williams's worst case scenario, academics and students suffer what he calls a "chilling effect", in which people stop teaching and research in certain areas because of fear that it could lead them into trouble with the authorities.
"That's of grave concern to me because discussions [about terrorist activities] are vital to a free democracy and one of the strengths of this nation is that we do have these discussions and there's room to disagree, and traditionally you haven't had to look over your shoulder when talking about contentious issues. These things seem far-fetched but, unfortunately, they're not any more."
posted by professor rat at 3:42 AM
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