EDUCATION: Here's another university funding scandal The Oz chooses to ignore ...

What is it with The Australian? Why do they keep missing university funding scandals??

Some years ago, they went into complete histrionics over $100,000 given to Griffith University in Brisbane by Saudi Arabia. There were cries of bias and sinister plots of Saudi and Wahhabi ideology being spread by stealth.

(It didn't last long after it was pointed out that the Saudis had invested even more money in News Limited.)

With such a commitment to higher education, why would The Oz miss two scandals concerning one of our most prestigious universities?

First there was the scandal over China Studies. And now there is the scandal over allegations against the United States Studies Centre.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

CRIKEY: Your unpronounceable surname could cost you that job ...

You know, the problem with them migrants is that they just won't integrate. They come to our country and expect to have everything their way. They want to have their own religious schools in our suburbs, something they have no right to do even if we've been doing it for decades. And when they won't integrate properly, they wonder why they get murdered or bashed. And what really cheeses me off is that they just come here and go on the dole. And them Lebanese are the worst of all. Biggest dole bludgers on the planet. I mean, what's to stop them from applying for jobs?

Actually, there's not much to stop them from applying, though it may not take them very far. Why? The answer might be found in a new study published by three researchers from the Economics Program of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU).

That study was based on:

... several large-scale field experiments to measure labour market discrimination across different migrant groups in Australia.

The main experiment involved:

... sending 4,000 fictional resumes to employers in response to job advertisements.

And the result?

We found economically and statistically significant differences in callback rates, suggesting that ethnic minority candidates would need to apply for more jobs in order to receive the same number of interviews.

The findings showed a person with distinctly Chinese-sounding name had to submit 68% more applications to get the same number of interviews as a person with an Anglo-Saxon- sounding name.

In the case of a person with a Middle Eastern sounding name, the figure was 64%. The results were tabulated by gender, by city (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) and according to the nature of the job (waitstaff, data entry, customer service and sales).

The study cites the experience of one Ragda Ali from Sydney who says that she:

... applied for many positions where no experience in sales was needed -- even though I had worked for two years as a junior sales clerk. I didn't receive any calls so I decided to legally change my name to Gabriella Hannah. I applied for the same jobs and got a call 30 minutes later.

After reading all this stuff, I wondered how many times in my own working career I'd been denied an interview because of an employer making assumptions about my ethnic background. Or perhaps I should have Europeanised my name? Maybe I'll change my name to Ivan Albrechtsen- Bolt and try my luck applying for a job at, say, News Limited. Heck, at least they'll be assured I'm not one of those people with genetic defects arising from cousin-marriage.

That such structural discrimination persists across the workforce in a nation where 1 in 4 people was born outside Australia is a disgrace. In our 21st century allegedly globalised Australian economy, people with chink and rag-head sounding names still find it much harder to get a job.

First published in Crikey on 18 June 2009.

UPDATE I: Gabriel McGrath writes on Crikey:

The study Irfan Yusuf that linked to makes me ashamed to be an Australian. Yes, that's a cliché, but WOW is it true in this case. "The findings showed a person with distinctly Chinese-sounding name had to submit 68% more applications to get the same number of interviews as a person with an Anglo-Saxon-sounding name." That -- is -- disgusting. With over 4000 resumes sent out - "margin of error" doesn't come into it. Nor, it seems, was there a "margin of decency"... from many employers.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: From peacenik to IDF promoter ...?

How did an undergraduate peacenik morph into a spokesman for the Israeli army?

The Guy Spigelman I remember was a long-haired hippie-type affiliated with the Labor Students Club (controlled by the Socialist Left faction) and was elected to the Macquarie University Students’ Council on a ticket entitled "Students Against Racism", his number two being a female student of Jordanian background.

Though active in the Macquarie Uni branch of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), Spigelman was despised by Jewish members of the Liberal Club who saw him as too wishy-washy and too pro-Arab. Spigelman actively sought dialogue with students of Palestinian background.

In 1992, well before the Oslo accords and at a time when Palestinians were still regarded as a nation of terrorists, at a debate organised by AUJS on the topic of whether Israel should withdraw from the West Bank (or as some rightwing AUJS apparatchiks called it, “Judea and Samaria”) and Gaza, Spigelman supported Israeli withdrawal. Admittedly the reasons he used were more to do with Israeli security (he argued that a survey of retired Israeli generals showed most believe that holding onto the territories didn’t palpably increase Israel’s security) than with any right of Palestinians to a homeland. But he did hack into one Jewish student who made some racist remarks suggesting Arabs were inherently irrational and violent.

A 2006 post on Spigelman’s Australian Jewish News blog speculates on the factors that might affect support for Israel in Australia:

Another scenario - and this has been identified by polling undertaken in Europe - is that the world is becoming increasingly concerned with Islamic Fundamentalism and terrorism - and while there is no great love for Israel, there is less love for the Arabs.

This should not provide us with much comfort. We should not rely on the problems the other side has in order to better our position.

The other side? Maybe Spigelman wasn’t as inclusive and ecumenical in his thinking as I may have thought. Still, Spigelman does have some good advice on how supporters of Israel can help their cause:

...I believe the best advocacy is one that is vigilant in engaging all sectors of the society – from the left to the right – combined with encouragement (and not stifling) of informed debate – including criticism when it is warranted.

It’s advice ignored by Israel’s own ambassador in The Age today.

The author is a former Macquarie University Liberal student. First published in Crikey on Friday 16 January 2008.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Professor Google and those left wing academics ...

In 1990, I enrolled in a commercial law course as part of my LLB program at Macquarie University. My lecturer was Mark Cooray, a conservative academic lawyer of Sri Lankan origin. In those days, Macquarie Law School was dominated by a group of “progressive” lawyers pushing the “Critical Legal Studies” barrel.

Cooray was scathing of the “Crits”, arguing their approach to learning and teaching law put the cart before the horse. “How can undergraduate students be expected to criticise the law before gaining a proper understanding of it?”

In their approach to exposing alleged biases of supposedly left-leaning academics, the Young Libs are behaving like a bunch of leftwing “Crits”. Which probably explains why the main (if not the only) instrument used by National Young Liberal President Noel McCoy to generate his list of academic leftists was that great scholarly authority Professor Google.

To borrow Cooray’s sensible conservative logic, how can undergraduates with little exposure to a discipline or subject be expected to criticise their lecturer or tutor before gaining an understanding of the discipline or subject itself?

Just how seriously should we take the words of academic novices when determining the degree of bias (or lack thereof) of an expert in a field?

It’s true that there is a lack of diversity in university education. Most universities don’t hire undergraduate novices to teach.

So where did this Young Liberal idea come from? It seems the Young Libs are taking a leaf out of the far-Right CampusWatch project which seeks to expose Middle East Studies academics who don’t subscribe to the types of hawkish positions on the Middle East that even many Israelis find disturbing.

One can only wonder what newly elected Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull would make of such pseudo-conservative nonsense from the Young Liberals. Then again, these were the people whose votes proved so crucial to his preselection victory.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Friday 10 October 2008.


Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

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COMMENT: Jewish students join racist group?

The following letter appeared in the Letters page of the September 7 edition off the Australian Jewish News ...

CAUTIOUS WARNING

I'm sure that all readers of this paper were angered by the recent race bashing on Carlisle Street. According to the victims, the thugs shouted racist slogans such as “Aussie Pride”.

For all to see on their website, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) is advertising a rally to be held by a group called SIOOz (Stop Islamisation of Oz). The group is holding a rally on the steps of the state library to protest the apparent threat of Islam and shari’a law to all Australians. SIOOz encourages people to bring banners with slogans such as “Help Muslims escape Islam”. The advertisement goes to great lengths to point out “(SIOOz) is not against Muslims, who are also prisoners of this racist, oppressive ideology. This is a battle against an evil ideology. We [SIOOZ] are Islamophobic, not Muslimphobic.”

Last year, a number of Jewish organisations, as well as some members of AUJS, took part in the Embracing Youth Project, a valuable cross-cultural program held with Muslim and Jewish youth.

A number of friendships were forged and it was a learning experience for all. Has AUJS changed its position since last year? Is AUJS serious in thinking that advertising this clearly racist rally is acceptable?

Hopefully, the only AUJS involvement in the SIOOz rally is its foolish support rather than an active role in the organisation.

Jesse Osowicki
Elsternwick, Vic

This is a very disturbing development. AUJS is the peak body of Jewish tertiary students. It purports to represent the interests of all Jewish tertiary students on campuses across Australia.

For such a senior body within the Jewish community to be actively promoting an organisation which describes itself as "islamophobic" is a worrying development. The leadership of AUJS needs to explain its involvement in "Aussie Pride" groups such as SIOOz.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf