Onward Academic Soldiers

Those who have been involved at some level with Australian Research Council funding applications over the last few years know the blood, sweat and tears that people at all levels put into this process. Very few applications are successful, and this is fair enough to a degree, as not all the applications are any good and there isn't enough money to go around. But what isn't fair is that some applications are being denied not on their merits as judged by a panel of the peers of the applicants but by political hacks judging on the basis of their ideological biases.

In the Age this week, Professor Stuart Macintyre, Dean of Arts and Professor of History at Melbourne University, as well as (full disclosure) the host of a Labour History reading group I am a regular attendee at, wrote a wonderful piece decrying the political interference of Education Minister Brendan Nelson in the funding process. According to Macintyre

A committee appointed by the minister, meeting in secret and applying mysterious criteria, is vetting academic applications. Those with applications rejected by the committee never find out what was wrong with their application or have an opportunity to argue their case. A minister who intrudes his own political ambitions into the country's research arrangements is unfortunate, but his exercise of power without accountability is unacceptable.

Right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt, who is mentioned in passing in this piece as a sort of mouthpiece for this policy, responded today in a typical fashion. His opening sentence, "PROFESSOR Stuart Macintyre, the former communist" is sort of "When did you stop beating your wife?" line. Bolt goes on to completely disregard the argument that Macintyre put forward, claiming that suggestions that people should be able to know what happened to their grants were "a system under which he and fellow panellists spent public money with little explanation to taxpayers." some how turning the Minister's complete lack of transparency into a situation where things are actually explained.

Once again, Bolt has demonstrated that when you've got no case you should leap head first into smear tactics, not reasoned argument.