Western universities have often prided themselves on being places of open debate, where all viewpoints could be heard, criticised, and analysed. If that was ever so, it is not so now. Peer review has become adherence to a fashionable way of thinking, and one dare not go against the zeitgeist.
On October 21, 2024, the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne held a graduation ceremony at which the speaker was Joe de Bruyn, a man who has spent his life in trade union and Labor Party circles. In his address, de Bruyn ventured to raise the issues of abortion, same-sex marriage, and aspects of the practice of in vitro fertilisation. It seemed a reasonable thing to do at the time.
The outcome was sadly predictable. Thomas Carlyle, who was no evangelical, put it succinctly regarding 18th Century Scotland: ‘Soul extinct: stomach well alive.’ Human nature, in itself, does not change. History only treats us to different illustrations of its weakness and self-centredness. As soon as de Bruyn touched on the subject of abortion, that was the signal for a mass walkout, by both staff and students.
De Bruyn pointed out that there are about 80,000 children killed each year in Australia through abortion, and the worldwide figure is something like 42 million a year. That, surely, is an issue vital in the annals of humanity… De Bruyn labelled the loss of life ‘a tragedy that must be ended’.
Most of the ACU staff and students did not think so; they considered it beneath their dignity that it was even raised. Dr Johnson loved a good debate, so too did G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. Not so the pampered students of the ACU. Debate was a step way too far; even hearing was too much. When Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement speech at Harvard University in 1978, students booed him. De Bruyn was not even paid that courtesy – which might have signified that some of them at least had heard something.
Student tantrums are one thing, but the response of those in authority was cringe-worthy indeed. The Vice-chancellor, Professor Zlatko Skrbis, expressed deep disappointment that the speech was not more befitting of a graduation ceremony. Where were the usual platitudes about daring to dream, and the world being their oyster, and that they were part of the most educated generation in Western history? Apparently, there was not a word about their ongoing vision to express their self-esteem.
Worse followed. Skrbis promised to refund the graduation fee of $165. Here was an opportunity to be uncivil and cash in on your rudeness. Then even worse followed: students and staff who could not cope with de Bruyn’s speech were offered counselling.
What next? Free tickets to a Taylor Swift concert?
No doubt, the staff and students thought they were challenging the white male patriarchy or something along those lines. In fact, they were challenging nothing, but conforming to an unthinking status quo.
Bearded men in bikinis are reading stories to young children in libraries, but adult students and teachers cannot cope with a polite and reasoned defence of Catholic teaching. I can only imagine how a satirist like Jonathan Swift would have dealt with this. It would have been one of the easiest tasks he ever undertook.
