FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK advertisement

Author: Lyndall Ryan <Wslr@SSS.FLINDERS.EDU.AU>
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:38:34 +1000

Subject: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK advertisement

The Deaths in Custody Watch Committee in Perth is sponsoring a full page ad in support of the WIK decision, to appear in either 'the Australian' or 'The Weekend Australian' in the next couple of weeks.

The ad will read:

To the Prime Minister, Premiers and Federal, State and Territory Governments:

The people of Australia want what is just and fair for the Aboriginal peoples of this country. It is in the interests of all, to build this nation in a spirit of reconciliation and co-operation of Australians of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

We call on our Governments, State and Federal, to pursue regional agreements with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples so as to settle their claims to their land in a spirit of truth, justice and reconciliation.

The co-existence of Native Title and Pastoral Leases on Crown Land is supported by legal principles and historic fact, upheld by the High Court. The people and Governments of Australia have a moral responsibility to give this fact real and just effect.'

(The names of all those who have contributed will follow this statement)

If you would like to support this advertisement, appearing in The Australian Newspaper, please forward $10 (or more) with your name and address to the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee (WA)Inc, 27 Brewer Street, Perth WA 6000. (Cheques payable to 'Deaths in Custody Watch Committee (WA) Inc.' Only names will appear in the advertisement, but we need address for receipting purposes.

Please circulate this as widely as you can.

If you would like more details about the ad, please call the Deaths in Custody watch Committee on 09 328 5316 or 09 328 7877; fax 09 328 8132.

A full page ad in 'The Weekend Australian' costs $35,000, and a full-page ad on weekdays in 'The Australian' costs $19,500.

Lyndall Ryan
Head, Women's Studies Unit
Flinders University of South Australia

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: Alan Ward <ajward@MALTHUS.MORTON.WM.EDU>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 10:49:15 +1000

Subject: REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

At the risk of being misunderstood or thought a grinch, may I comment on the appeal for funds for the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee advertisement published in H-ANZAU on May 14.

I address here what I think should be a fundamental rule of professional associations and academic lists, which is that they should avoid political action, no matter how admirable the cause. Not to do so will sooner or later lead the editors into censoring political comment. Very few issues are totally one-sided,and if an editor of a non-partisan medium accepts a request to promote one side, he or she is obliged, it seems to me, to accept requests to promote the other. To do otherwise is to edit the politically just from the unjust, as the editor sees it. I hope that the editors of H-ANZAU would not accede to a request from Pauline Hanson for funds for an ad opposing WIK, but to refuse her they will have to exercise political judgement, which is not a list editor's job.

I was President of the American Conference for Irish Studies in the early 1980s and its by-laws sensibly state that it shall not engage in political action. The position of the ACIS is that the only way for the organization to maintain a reputation for academic objectivity, particularly in such a politically sensitive subject field as Ireland, is to abstain completely from political activism. We provide opportunities for all kinds of opinions to be expressed, but abstain ourselves, as an organization, and draw a line between a member using us to state a point of view and using us to promote a cause. The line may sometimes be unclear but allowing a publication to be used to raise funds for a cause clearly crosses the line, no matter how commendable the cause. I respectfully submit that this should be a rule of H-ANZAU.

Alan J. Ward
Department of Government
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, VA 23187

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: John Dargavel <dargavel@COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 15:49:56 +1000

I respect Alan Ward's prudent warning on the dangers inherent in political statements or actions by academics, but I disagree with his recommendation that this list should not post notices, such as that seeking finance for an advertisement by the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee.

I have two reasons. First, the conventional one that inaction is as much a political and moral act as action. As Friere put it: 'To ignore the difference between the rich and the poor is to side with the rich, not to be neutral'. The editor of our list can not escape having to choose whether to forward material or not. Second, the academic one that we act, write and speak as individuals, not as a collective. Each of us can choose whether to respond to the posting or not. The situation would be different if the list organisation itself was collecting the money, or if we were bombarded with so many posts that the list ceased to be effective.

Dr John Dargavel,
Urban Research Program, Research School of Social Sciences
The Australian National University, Canberra

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: Caroline Daley <c.daley@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 16:25:50 +1000

Like John Dargavel, I take on board Alan Ward's warnings about political statements, but I agree with John that being notified about political actions and statements allows us all to make up our own minds.

Maybe we could run this as we now run the new book/publications notification policy: members of the list can post notices etc that they are involved with, and if things get out of hand we can reassess the situation. I don't think that over the last few months there have been so many posts of a political nature that we need to worry.

Caroline Daley
History,
University of Auckland

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: Joe Rich <joe@rmit.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 20:57:03 +1000

Yes. I think I, too, agree with John Dargavel. But I'm not sure that I could then justify the acceptance by the editor of such a request by the Deaths in Custody organisation and the rejection of one by Pauline Hanson. Is the editor qualified to act as a moral arbiter? No one, after all, would be compelled to subscribe to Hanson's cause. I also have some concern about what would happen if the floodgates opened. There's an awful lot of good and bad causes out there, looking for donations.

Joe Rich
Communication Studies
RMIT

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: John Morris <jfmorris@MAIL.CC.TOHOKU.AC.JP>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 20:57:17 +1000

While I can understand Alan Ward's concerns in suggesting that H-ANZAU should not get involved as an institution in speaking on political concerns, I would beg to disagree.

I specialise in Japanese history, and have studied and now worked in Japan for some 23 years. I belong to a wide variety of Japanese historical associations, and with very few exceptions, they are very concerned with public and historical concerns. These can vary from such specifically _professional_ concerns as identifying collections of important historical records, historical and archaeological sites etc. which were either destroyed or put in danger of being lost in the aftermath of the great Kobe earthquake and collecting money for their preservation or presssuring appropriate levels of government to act for their preservation, to such obviously political concerns as financing and organising support for a 20+ years long suit between a highschool text writer and the Ministry of Education which required him to rewrite parts of his text. Here, being in a professional historical organisation comes very close to being in a political organisation. Why? Ultimately, it comes down to the collective memory of Japanese historians of their NOT having spoken out prior to 1945, and we all know the price that the world paid for that.

We do need to avoid becoming partisan and chauvinist, or blindly politically correct. However, there are moments when we do need to speak out BECAUSE we are historians, and there are moments when issues require coment from professionals. A case in point: the U.S.A. and Russia (and several of its splinter colonies/republics) are moving to abolish nuclear weapons. This would not have happened if the international community of nuclear physicists had remained quiet about what they knew about the effects of nuclear weapons and the blatant contradictions within former nuclear policy. Gorbachov's negociations with Reagan depended on support and advice from this organisation (sorry, forget name thereof) at a crucial moment. That the abolition of nuclear weapons will continue will probably depend to a large extent on specialist advice from this group of scholars. As historians, we probably cannot operate at this level, but there is a need to subject issues and ideas which do not stand up to serious historical consideration but which can be used to promote genocide and other crimes against humanity and on which historians can speak out to suggest groundrules for reasonable debate. In this sense, Alan Ward's experience with Ireland might not be a suitable basis for comparison, given the complexity of the situation.

John Morris
2-40-31-508 Higashi Tanaka,
Tagajo, JAPAN. 985.

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: Jim Duffield <staffy@MAILHUB.OMEN.COM.AU> Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 20:57:23 +1000

I must first point out that I was born in a Nazi camp, and therefore have a very strong position on genocide, and this is what I believe has been set upon Aboriginal peoples in Australia, and elsewhere.

I have watched the propagation over the Web of my original uploading of the Watch Committee call for subscriptions with some interest. It really shows the power of the Web and email. Of some dozen lists to which I subscribe, I was cautious about some and not-so about others. I didn't upload to H-ANZAU.

Nonetheless, the half dozen to whom I did not send it, ended up sending it back to me from B.C. in Canada to Hawai'i and Finland!

I am conscious of the tempered angst that may be felt by some about such a call, and if you need to see my political position, all you have to do is to scan my Homepage:

http://www.omen.net.au/~staffy

where you will also locate a copy of the the re-issued call.

I do understand Alan Ward's position, after all it is not to stretch the imagination to see Irish peoples as an aboriginal and under a colonial yolk, and this necessarily means that I see the positions of Caroline Daley and John Dargavel as more based in the real world of people. Should Howard's "ten commandments" squeeze through the Senate, then Magna Carta is dead in Australia. The most disenfranchised in the world have been disenfranchised further.

I am reminded of Pastor Niemoller when arrested by the Nazi Gestapo in the late 1930s, who said:

         In Germany, they came for the communists, and I didn't
         speak up because I wasn't a communist.
         Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because
         I wasn't a Jew.  Then, they came for the trade unionists,
         and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist,
         then they came for the Protestants and I didn't speak up
         because I wasn't a Protestant.  Then they came for me, and
         by that time, there was no one left to speak up.

If my original post has offended, I apologise, but not for the Watch Committee page itself. I must emphasise that it filtered to the list via another means, and I must admit that in that, I take some delight as must the inanimate but electronically animate and ethereal WWW.

Jim Duffield
BEECHBORO WA

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: Jeff Grey <j-grey@ADFA.OZ.AU>
Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 13:30:51 +1000

Like Joe Rich, I am uneasy about this one. It's worth just pointing out that chat lines and discussion lists overseas have been shut down by their members after being flooded with all sorts of loony, objectionable and plain nasty political postings. If the Deaths in Custody people want to appeal for support, financial or otherwise, maybe they should be advised to do so through NTEU and other bodies involved in the tertiary education business.

Jeffrey Grey
Australian Defence Force Academy

REPLY: FYI: Request for finance and signatures for WIK

Author: Julianne Lynch Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 13:30:56 +1000

Joe Rich asked: "Is the editor qualified to act as a moral arbiter?"

My reaction to this question is "no," the list editor is probably not qualified to act as a moral artiber. However, this is, in many ways, her function: I'm assuming that any offensive material mailed to the list would be filtered out, for example. The editor has to make decisions about what material would upset the list. One concern is that material will be censored based on the editor's particular biases rather than on her perception of the popular, accepted opinions of the list members. This danger is unavoidable and, really, it gets down to a matter of trust: in a moderated list, we don't know what information comes in, only what is sent on to the list.

With the case of the WIK ad, I don't think her job would have been a difficult one given some of the sentiments I've seen in this space. If an ad had arrived from the One Nation party, however, the decision would have been more weighty because it would be a decision about about whether to censor. The editor, however, doesn't have to carry the weight of this decision by herself. In cases where she is considering not sending a message on, if in doubt, she can always email the list and ask us what we think. I think this is an appropriate procedure for messages that raise this level of doubt for the editor.

As for the flood gates opening for fund-raising ads, I think this is unlikely. I belong to a couple of leftist information lists to which the WIK ad was posted with an appeal for it to be widely circulated. Then, last week a post was forwarded to one of these lists from H-ANZAU (now that's a hairy issue: was the original poster's permission sought) which was very sympathetic to Aboriginal peoples in regards to challenges to WIK. It was this forwarded message that first motivated me to join H-ANZAU. It doesn't surprise me, given this sympathy (may be the wrong word), that someone thought it appropriate to send the wik ad to H-ANZAU. It would surprise me if ads from One Nation were received.

One last comment: As someone who is not an historian, I think that one of John Morris' comments came close to my original reaction to the first post questioning the appropriateness of political posts: "there are moments when we do need to speak out BECAUSE we are historians, and there are moments when issues require coment from professionals".

As someone who believes that Aboriginal land ownership should not be further emaciated, I would look to historians to hear the story of this emaciation. Similarly, those concerned with the emaciation of the rights of pastoralists would look to historians to hear that story. While I would not expect a specialist in this area to see things in such clearcut ways, I would be horrified to be confronted with silence because that specialist didn't want to be seen to be taking sides in a political issue.

Julianne Lynch
Latrobe University, Victoria

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