Just to demonstrate the Left Wing Bias i have posted this article of the sacking of Prof Peter Ridd who had the effrontery to question the establishment.
Peter Ridd's sacking pushes the limit of academic freedom
Gay Alcorn
James Cook University may have damaged its reputation with a heavy-handed approach to the academic with minority views on climate change and the reef @Gay_Alcorn
Tue 5 Jun 2018 11.59 AESTLast modified on Tue 5 Jun 2018 16.48 AEST
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‘The massive coral bleaching in recent years was no cause for concern, because coral grew back, [Ridd] claimed.’ Bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef near Port Douglas, February 2017. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters
Ihate to say it, but the sacking of professor Peter Ridd by James Cook University does raise issues of academic freedom. Not simple issues, and ones that can be refuted as the university is doing, but ones that matter nonetheless.
I hate to say it because we know what this is really about. The cause of Ridd has been championed by those parts of the media and certain institutes – well, the Institute of Public Affairs – that have done all they humanly can to stop serious action in this country against climate change. University fires controversial marine scientist for alleged conduct breaches
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They have no interest in fair-minded coverage of the weight of scientific evidence, now overwhelming, that human action is causing global warming, and that urgent action is required globally to limit its dangerous impacts. Their interest is ideological, with an endearing lack of self-awareness in their charge that the “warmists” are the ideologues. They leap on the 3% or so of scientists who argue their colleagues have got it all wrong, and would risk everything on those odds.
So, it is not that these Ridd champions – Andrew Bolt, Terry McCrann, the Australian, which now reports as fact that Ridd is a “marine science whistle blower”– have any inherent concern about academic freedom.
That’s the context, and we shouldn’t forget it. Yet for those who try for some consistency, this is a messy case, and Ridd has an argument that it is his views, at least in part, that got him sacked.
And why shouldn’t academics say impolite things, if that is what they honestly believe?
James Cook University, for all its worries about its reputation, seems to have diminished its own. As the national tertiary education union’s Queensland secretary, Michael McNally put it a few days ago: “All management have done is to feed a right-wing media narrative that universities are conformist and actively suppress heterodox views on topics such as climate change.”
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Trawling through the correspondence between Ridd and the university, which dismissed its long-standing professor of physics on 2 May, is to get lost into increasingly detailed and sharp disagreements about process, typical when everyone gets lawyered up.
The nitpicking buries some real issues – what is academic freedom, a warm sounding term that everyone agrees with in principle, and what are its limits? Would the university have behaved in the same heavy-handed way – trawling through emails for evidence, insisting a staff member it has disciplined may not discuss it – if the academic had been a mainstream climate scientist calling into question the work of a sceptic in a colourful and, at times, disparaging way?
And why shouldn’t academics say impolite things, if that is what they honestly believe?
Ridd is suing James Cook for unfair dismissal in the federal court, a case due to resume this month. There have been few cases dealing with academic freedom in this country, and it promises to be a fascinating test case.
All universities uphold that academic freedom is at the heart of what they do – research and inquiry are meaningless without debate and disagreement. James Cook’s enterprise agreement with its staff specifically endorses that an academic has the right to “participate in public debate and express opinions about issues and ideas related to the staff members’ respective fields of competence”. Great Barrier Reef: 30% of coral died in 'catastrophic' 2016 heatwave
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In Ridd’s view, he was sacked because he “dared to fight the university and speak the truth about science and the Great Barrier Reef”. That may be nonsense – academic freedom doesn’t mean the academic has to be right. His statement of claim to the court says that the university has “taken disciplinary action against the applicant because he has a different scientific view to JCU (James Cook University) or its stakeholders”.
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The university says that’s rubbish, that this has nothing to do with academic freedom, but serious misconduct by Ridd, who repeatedly breached the university’s code of conduct despite warnings and directions.
So, what did he do? Ridd’s expertise is in coastal oceanography and the impact of sediments on reefs and, for years, he has criticised research suggesting the Great Barrier reef is in serious trouble due to global warming and agricultural run-off, among other things. He claims the research lacks quality assurance, isn’t replicated often enough, and that the peer review system for research is inadequate.
Ridd said in an email to Guardian Australia that he’s not a climate change denier but is “yet to be convinced” about human-caused global warming, which is perhaps splitting hairs.
His trouble started in April 2016 when he received a “formal censure” for “misconduct”. It was a curious incident: the university had got hold of an email that Ridd sent to a news.com.au journalist a few months before. In it, he urged the journalist to look into work Ridd had had done suggesting that photographs released by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority indicating a big decline in reef health over time were misleading.
Ridd couldn’t help a dig: The photographs are “a dramatic example of how scientific organisations are quite happy to spin a story for their own purposes”. The authority, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – based at James Cook University –“should check their facts before they spin their story ... my guess is that they will both wiggle and squirm because they actually know that these pictures are likely to be telling a misleading story – and they will smell a trap.”
This was enough for the university to censure Ridd on the grounds that he breached the code of conduct by “going to the media in your professional capacity in a way that was not collegial and did not respect the rights of others or uphold professional standards”. It was a warning. Ridd could make public comments but they “must be in a collegial manner that upholds the university and individuals’ respect”.
As a journalist, I find this uncomfortable. He had strong opinions, strongly put, in an area which he had professional interest and expertise. Foolishly, the journalist forwarded the entire email to an unnamed professor, who complained to the university.
Collegial? Codifying polite language is fraught and subjective. As Ridd says on his website outlining the saga,
One problem with the use of the ‘uncollegial’ accusation is that it can be very difficult to determine where the boundary is between an ‘uncollegial’ statement and a ‘vigorous debate’.
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The concept of collegiality may be easy to mock, but it still matters in workplaces. I can publicly disagree with something another Guardian journalist writes – and they can disagree with me – but if I question publicly their ethics or integrity and suggest that their journalism should be mistrusted, there’d be questions asked.
But I’m not an academic, and am unprotected by specific codes saying I have the right to publicly air controversial views, and even to criticize my employer. There are limits, and the question is about where those limit lie, but formally censuring an academic for misconduct for an email to a journalist seems heavy-handed.
In 2017, Ridd published an essay in an IPA book on climate change, in which he again challenged the science indicating the reef was in serious danger. The massive coral bleaching in recent years was no cause for concern, because coral grew back, he claimed. A rise in temperature on the reef wasn’t a big issue, either, because coral did well in hot weather.
Ridd is an outlier. Overwhelmingly, peer reviewed research suggests – and governments agree – that global warming and other stresses is damaging coral reefs across the world, including contributing to unprecedented back-to-back mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 at the Great Barrier Reef.
There is no denial that coral can grow back, but the question is whether the frequency and extremity of weather events now means it may struggle to do so in the future.
The conservative media, predictably, went crazy, lauding Ridd as a free speech hero
That’s not Ridd’s view. “There is now an industry that employs thousands of people whose job it is to ‘save the Great Barrier Reef’. As a scientist, to question the proposition that the reef is damaged is a potentially career-ending move.”
It was his interview with Sky News about that essay that got him into trouble, with the university launching an investigation into “serious misconduct”. In the interview on 1 August with Peta Credlin and Alan Jones (neither of whom challenged Ridd with a single tough question), Ridd said that “we can no longer trust the scientific organisations” such as the Australian Institute of Marine Science(Aims) and the ARC Centre.
The damage to the reef was being exaggerated, and there isn’t enough replication of scientific studies. “We also potentially have scientists with an ideological bent” who are “emotionally attached” to their work.
Given that Ridd had made similar points for a decade and did not mention James Cook University, how could this be “serious misconduct?” Provocative and controversial? Certainly. Possibly wrong? Yes, or at least worth vigorously challenging, which other scientists have done.
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In a paper published in April, Aims scientists said attacks on the integrity of their research into the reef were flawed and based on “misinterpretation” and “selective use of data”.
The university could not let this interview go and told Ridd it was investigating him for serious misconduct.
There was an insistence that Ridd keep the entire process confidential, and he was instructed that he could only discuss it with his immediate family, a support person, his union and a professional supporter, and only if they agreed to keep it secret. Ridd ignored that, his lawyer saying it was an unlawful and unreasonable direction, and he did speak to the media about the investigation and previous censure, claiming they were unfair.
Around this time James Cook University under took “further inquiries” – a search of his work email, which by law it had a right to do. That led in late October to more than 20 further allegations of serious misconduct against Ridd, and increasingly terse exchanges between lawyers.
The ARC Centre has a partnership with James Cook and AIMS@JCU is a joint venture between the university and the institute of marine science. These were “key stakeholders” of the university and Ridd’s remarks had the “potential to damage the reputation of the university”. Ridd raises the point that because the university had such close ties with the organisations, it led to the possibility of a conflict of interest in it investigating him for misconduct for criticising the bodies. It was biased, and could not afford him fairness and natural justice, claims the university rejects.
The email search descended into pettiness, with increasingly the university’s allegations against Ridd becoming more about him talking about the case and his insubordination rather than his earlier comments about reef research.
“On least six occasions” he sent emails to people revealing that a disciplinary process was underway, including urging a letter of support to be sent to the vice chancellor, Sandra Harding.
Many of these emails were to personal friends, and a few were to students, including one that said James Cook, as well as other universities, were “Orwellian in nature” and “pretends to value free debate, but in fact it crushes it whenever the ‘wrong’ ideas are spoken.” He “denigrated” a staff member by questioning his appearance at a conference when “it is not like he has any clue about the weather.” It directed Ridd not to make any comment that “directly or indirectly trivialises, satires or parodies” the disciplinary action.
By November, Ridd had begun legal action in the federal court and spoke to the Australian about it, seeking the disciplinary action dropped.
On 21 November, he received a “final censure” after a finding of “serious misconduct” for “deliberately breaching confidentiality and denigrating the university, its employees and stakeholders” contrary to the code of conduct. It did not sack him at this point.
You can sense the frustration of the university, but its insistence that its censure of a staff member should be kept in house was hardly going to work after legal action had commenced. Ridd spoke to the Australian about the case, including his objections to the search of his emails to “dig up more dirt” and he expanded his claims to include the issue of free speech.
He began a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for legal costs. The first to donate was the IPA’s executive director John Roskam, who pledged $500. It raised $260,000 in little over four months. Meanwhile, Ridd kept talking to the media.
James Cook had had enough. In April, there were yet more allegations of serious misconduct against Ridd. He had again breached the confidentiality directions and had breached the “no satire” direction by sending an email to a student with the subject line “for your amusement”. He had failed to “uphold the integrity and good reputation of JCU“ and failed to treat staff members, students and the public with “honesty, respect and courtesy”.
Last month, James Cook sacked him. The conservative media, predictably, went crazy, lauding Ridd as a free speech hero. Ridd calls it “David and Goliath” stuff. The university’s argument is less emotional: that it is his conduct, not his free speech, that they object to, as complicated to distinguish as that may be.
The union is backing its member of 25 years. In a statement on 1 June, it called for his immediate reinstatement.
It points out that most of the charges now stem from breaching confidentiality direction and alleged insubordination. The idea that a staff member subject to serious disciplinary action, particularly if he or she disagrees with it, must keep that secret is “absurd”, said McNally.
In an earlier letter to the university, the union said that if “an employer might demote you or terminate your employment, yet you are not allowed to tell anyone about it fails a simple test of fairness”. Coral reef bleaching 'the new normal' and a fatal threat to ecosystems
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In an email to Guardian Australia. Ridd said he was “impressed, and very grateful as many in the union would totally disagree with my scientific stance. It is one thing to support somebody’s freedom of speech when you agree with them, it is a far more noble thing when you vehemently disagree.”
For all the university’s sensitivity about its brand and reputation, you have to wonder if it has damaged its own standing with its strident calls for “collegiality” and its repeated insistence that Ridd stay mute.
The other way would be for academics not to complain about Ridd’s impolite turn of phrase, but to reject his arguments, loudly and with evidence. For Australia’s premier reef research institutions to keep doing good work, and keep explaining it to the public, and to treat Ridd as little more than a thorn in their side. And for the university to put up with their troublesome academic and to not be obsessed with process and its own self importance.
As this has dragged on, that was the way that was lost.
• Gay Alcorn is a Guardian Australia columnis
