Dirty Laundry

Must admit I'm pretty pissed off today - there's an ugly and ill-considered attack on the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT in The Australian today, written no less by colleagues of mine who really should know better. I hesitate even to link to the article, as it's so full of half-truths and dirty laundry that it makes for very unpleasant reading.

Perhaps there's a small positive in this at least - seems to me that any unbiased reader can't help but see this as a hyperbolic gripe piece. Nonetheless, it's very frustrating that it has the potential to set back at least temporarily some of the great work that my colleagues and I have achieved these past four years, and to diminish our collective and individual professional standing by dragging the Faculty through the mud.

Le me be clear: my strong adverse reaction to this piece is not a case of shooting the messenger. The point here is that the message of the piece is insubstantiated and ultimately just plain wrong: the article contains a number of half-truths and misrepresentations which distort reality to suit its own purpose. It puts words in the mouths of students, it all but purports outright to speak on behalf of a good portion of Creative Industries staff, and it sets up mysterious straw figures such as "the radical philistines" in the Faculty who apparently have replaced Shakespeare with Big Brother as the new pinnacle of Western Culture.

In reality, at least in my impression as a member of staff since the inception of the Faculty, the authors of this article speak for very few staff other than themselves. They conveniently ignore the many successes of the Faculty, they denigrate the excellent work done by so many students and staff, and in describing the Faculty as a "cut-price, discount-store" facility they tar us all with a broad brush that is quite simply deeply offensive and uncollegial.

Personally, I'm proud to be a staff member of this Faculty (though as of today certainly no longer proud of all of its staff) - by contrast to these two writers, I know that we're doing great, innovative, exciting, and academically sound work, and I'm perplexed as to how they could possibly have formed the negative views they so obviously hold. Not as perplexed, mind you, as I am at the mode and venue they've chosen to express them - while fundamental opposition to commonly held views might make for a formidable martyr's stance, surely causing deep offence to your colleagues and students by so severely misrepresenting them isn't the most strategic of moves.

What, exactly, I keep wondering, is the point of this diatribe? Let's not forget that the authors are active staff members, after all, not disgruntled ex-employees - the article is therefore akin to burning your bridges before you've even crossed them. Do the authors so completely misread staff views in the Faculty that they feel this article will mobilise a groundswell of opposition that will lead to a reshaping of the Faculty in the direction they espouse (whatever that may be, in fact - the article is notably long on criticism and short on constructive suggestions)? Is there any other point to poisoning staff relations in this way? I just don't get it.

PS: I'm also less than impressed with the article's thinly veiled ad hominem against CI's founding dean, John Hartley. We have been extraordinary lucky to have had the leadership of a dean who is both an effective and successful academic manager and a scholar of the highest order. I can't blame John for wanting to return to full-time research again now that his term as dean has ended, but I wish we could have kept him in this position for longer.

PPS: What Chris said!