‘Throughout history many nations have suffered a physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.’ – Ibn Khaldun The pandemic crisis has...
The health-cum-economic crisis of COVID-19 has exposed many weaknesses of contemporary governance. These weaknesses are associated with representative democracy, which simply offers citizens a right to vote every few years, a mere choice between a small number of...
The story of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed (KNAG) begins in 2012. A handful of older women joined an anti-coal seam gas (CSG) group in Lismore NSW. They wanted to take action when the Northern Rivers area of NSW was being targeted for CSG mining by...
The word crisis refers to different meanings. It can refer to a tension of two or more different “forces” or tendencies, whose clash creates a conflict (for example, in van der Poel, 2019). Another meaning of crisis is the idea of a decisive moment of change. For...
Early on the morning of 2 March 2020, a small vessel full of refugees from across the Middle East arrived at the shores of Lesvos. It was the latest of the over 70 irregular boats documented since the turn of the year. Locals gathered nearby. Videos quickly circulated...
Masculinity is in crisis. This is a readily agreed upon view amongst many scholars, pop psychologists and media figures alike. Examining declining educational achievement, high suicide rates, and a growing cohort of ‘angry men’ determined to reclaim a lost sense of...
“In every crisis a piece of the world, something common to us all, is destroyed. The failure of common sense, like a divining rod, points to the place where such a cave-in has occurred. Hannah Arendt, ‘Truth and Politics’, Between Past and Future Hannah Arendt’s...
When most people think of contemporary student activism, they think of students campaigning around federal education policy or local campus issues. Student environmentalism or student protests in support of refugees might get a mention. However, students also have a...
In 1971, when the South African Springboks toured Australia and played at Manuka Oval in Canberra, Judy Turner was on of 49 people arrested protesting against South Africa’s apartheid policy. After an elaborate, month-in-the-making scheme concocted by ANU students to...
– Judy Kuo and Tom Swann in interview with Odette Shenfield When Fossil Free ANU began in 2011, it was one of the first fossil fuel divestment campaigns in the world. At the time, the coal seam gas company Metgasco was planning on fracking in the Norther Rivers of...
Growing up, I was obsessed with science fiction. For one glorious, youthful summer I read nothing but science fiction from the 1960s. I’ve seen Starship Troopers at least 18 times by now, and hearing the opening fanfare to Star Wars will always make my skin tingle....
With the election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit and the rise of right wing populism, we have supposedly entered the post-truth era. Truth is not only under suspicion, it is irrelevant. For many who hold such a view of recent events, the culprit responsible for...
In October 2013, students and staff at the University of Hawaiʻi painted this mural on their campus in Honolulu. The mural was painted in protest of the University’s involvement in plans to build a thirty-metre wide telescope on Mauna Kea, a very sacred place for...
The concept of cultural mixing is strongly felt in today’s world where the boundaries between nation states, people and communities are more porous than ever before. On the border between the United States of America and Mexico, generations of Mexican migrants have...
‘The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts’ C.S. Lewis, 1943[1] ‘Through the My School website we have for the first time developed a national index of socio-educational advantage for every school in the country that allows us...
I am a privileged, white Australian on the precipice of a new career as a conservator. My training is in the classical western tradition of conservation, which favours the material integrity of an object above any intangible value that may be applied to it. This...
It is 2000, the year of the Sydney Olympics, when my parents decide to emigrate to Australia. Their grounds are valid — they are tired of high crime rates, class and racial tensions, insidious stories told by witch doctors. But I am eight, intrepid and anxious; their...
In the summer of 2011 I was consumed, as I suspect many fifteen year olds are, with the dual pursuits of Photoshopping images of celebrities to make them look like they were about to make out, and Googling gay youth groups. Though reasonably successful in one arena, I...
My interest in environmental conservation was inspired early on by an acquaintance with a pair of old-school activists. I was young and impressionable, and their infectious reverence for the ocean’s natural beauty awakened in me sensibilities I hadn’t appreciated...
The atmosphere is a community asset that belongs to all of us. The problem is that it is currently an open access resource—anyone can emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with no consequences to themselves—but with huge cumulative consequences to the climate and...
Friday 01/04/2016 From: Mai Nguyen Subject: Being Asian in the West Dear Dr Kim, I hope you don’t mind me emailing you out of the blue. Last year I took your course on “Contemporary Issues in International Relations” and found it very enriching. Thank you very...
Within Hannah Arendt’s classic New Yorker essay, ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ (1963) and subsequent book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), an alternative explanation for the origins of the human capacity for evil are explored. Her famous...
For the most part, scholarly literature illustrates silence as a state that is predominantly characterized by an absence.[1] The defining features most frequently attributed to silence are absence of sound[2] and speechlessness.[3] It is not only this notion of...
In my life, art and pop culture have helped me understand and navigate the confusing world around me. There are few things more intimate than reading, watching or hearing something that resonates with your interior world, but for many of my formative sexual or...
I’ve always thought that queerness was about living and thriving in the margins. It’s about fighting for rights, right? And ‘rethinking relationships’, and challenging dominate ideas about the body. Evidencing the pervasiveness of this idea, many members of the...
Czeslaw Milosz introduced the Western world to ketman, or the practice of concealing ones true motives or beliefs to give the outward appearance of conforming to authority. A Polish poet, novelist and diplomat who survived Nazi, and later Soviet occupied, Poland...
1. Respublica Scotorum I took this photograph a week or so before the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. The placard, leant on a rucksack on an autumn pavement, was part of a spontaneous political demonstration in the centre of Glasgow for a Yes vote in...
Public Funding and Why it Matters If we start with the basic idea that the arts, in their many forms, from theatre, music, and film to visual practice, enrich, challenge, and comfort us, then it seems clear why liberal democracies such as Australia support public...
For a long time, I remained convinced that the only difference between myself and others was the permanent scowl I carried with me everywhere. The turmoil of my internal state and several failed attempts to deal with it were expressed outwardly as extreme...
