Issue 7:
STUDENT ACTIVISM
Today’s student activists ask themselves: “how did we get here?”, “where are we going?” and “how are we going to get there?”. Issue 7 of Demos Journal concerns itself with these questions representing the history, practice and form of student activism.
From ANUSA
Inherent to the objective of student unionism is the furthering of member interests. Historically and presently, higher education and university administration policy have been seen as counter to these interests, prompting student representatives to explore various...
Students and Aboriginal Rights – From 1965 to Now
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...
Days of Rage – In Conversation with Judy Turner
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...
Celebrating the Humanities in an Era of Dehumanisation
At the 2017 December Arts and Social Science Graduation Ceremony, Geraldine Fela – a dedicated education and refugee activist – delivered the following graduation address. Containing none of the usual platitudes of graduation speeches, Geraldine instead took the...
Reading as Resistance: A History of the Read-In
Beneath the shade of large arch’s awnings there is a rectangular window through which you can see out onto rubble. ‘A Bold New Campus’ is how a placard below the window describes it. These are the remains of Union Court, a place that for many students was synonymous...
‘We Just Needed a Place to Live’: Canberra Young People’s Ongoing Fight for Affordable Housing
The history of Canberra can be cut many ways. It is, for all intents and purposes, a history of a semi-alpine valley imposed with the burden of Capitol – scoured clean and designed for 25,000 inhabitants, the abstracted ‘smooth faeries’ of Ian Warden’s[1] musings. In...
We’ve Left the University
We’ve left the university I walked out wearing my red flag around my shoulders You left wearing a beret, chanting: ‘The workers, united, will never be defeated’ We left As the campus turned into the dollar sign that it is. A dollar sign Which provides delicious...
“A World Where It’s Easier to Make Friends”: Discussing Socialism, Activism and Legal Education with Professor John Buchanan
Professor John Buchanan is the Head of the Discipline of Business Analytics at the University of Sydney Business School. From 1979-1984, he was an undergraduate student of History and Law at the ANU. During that time, he helped establish the ANU Left Group, a large...
The Deficiencies of Education Activism in the Modern University
I picked up a banner for the first time and joined the fight against fee deregulation as a second-year student in 2014. The experience of being part of a vibrant and winning campaign is crucial for any activist – personally, I came to realise we have the power and...
Higher Education Activism Without Vocation
Action on higher education policy is a core aspect of activism at universities. While this work is important and necessary, something is fundamentally missing from our demands and our narratives. Education activists demand the opportunity for everyone who wishes to...
Lonsdale Street
A few messages later and there’s Ten or twenty of us in a park near Braddon, armed with banners and badges, a megaphone, desperation and rage. We’ve tried everything else years in the making and it only gets worse. Garema Place doesn’t cut it any more. ...
Refugee Activism at the ANU: Why We Must Keep Fighting the Good Fight
The refugee campaign in Australia has been one of the most visible and tenacious movements of social activism of the last four of five years. In it, many thousands of people have fought to estabilish a basic principle – that people seeking refuge should not be locked...
Full-Time Troublemakers: A Conversation with Chris Swinbank
“Full-time troublemakers”. This is how Chris Swinbank describes student activsts he camepaigned with during his time at the ANU from 1968-1971. After reading about Chris and the anti-apartheid campaign in a chapter of The Making of the Australian National University:...
The Privilege of an Activist Upbringing
My earliest memory of parental-encouraged activism is when, at the age of ten my mum told me to go harass the Premier of Queensland. To give context, my mum was involved in the campaign to stop sand mining on Stradbroke Island (known as “Straddie”), a beautiful and...
Hope and Activism: Is it Difficult to Maintain Hope as an Activist?
Chris Swinbank: Involved in anti-apartheid activism, anti-Vietnam War activism and student support for the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, late 1960s-early 1970s Oh I would never get depressed, the battle went on always. It was like a full-time...
“Are You Fucking Serious?” – A Response to Student Union Supporters of Nuclear Energy
– by Roxley Foley, introduction by Odette Shenfield At the 2015 National Union of Students National Confernece, the Labor Right faction (Student Unity) submitted a motion supporting nuclear energy. The motion lauded South Astralian Premier Jay Weatherill’s...
“She Wouldn’t Leave Well Enough Alone”
This work is inspired by the generations of female activists in the ANU community. All the faces are based on images of activists from the ANU archives. Based on archival images (below) from the ANU Open Research Repository and the Women’s Electoral Lobby history...
Trashing the Joint: An Interview with Former ANU Radical Feminist Julia Imogen
I have often wondered what it would have been like to be an Australian feminist in the 1970s. To be frank, I have always thought it would have been wildly fun and, accordingly, have often wished I had been born in the late ‘50s. This is not just because of the tube...
Driven by Duty (Or, How to Radicalise Your Friends)
When I was a child, my parents were part of a group called of Friends of South West Rocks. They, along with a few other local greenies, were outraged when the Council approved a development that would destroy a pristine environment and cut off a wildlife path used by...
Redefining Normality with Acts of Everyday Activism
Like many students, I came to university hoping to find a way to make the world a more just and sustainable place. After a few environmental science courses that explored the causes and consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, food insecurity, and...
“My Real University Education”: An Interview with Rick Kuhn
Rick Kuhn is an Honorary Associate Professor in Sociology at the ANU. Since his first appointment at ANU in 1987, he has researched and taught in political economy, the history of the labour movement, race and racism in Australia, and Marxist economic theory. His book...
How to Make Trouble*: Three Climate Activists in Conversation
– 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...
Building Hope That Another World is Possible – SOS
SOS is Students of Sustainability, a unique, social and environmental justice gathering held every July by the Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN). It started in 1991, in Kamberra (Canberra) with a small group of ANU undergraduates. Since then it has taken...
Dissent and Disengagement: Canberra Student Protest Against the Vietnam War
Photo: Robert Hall The 1960s, student activism and the Vietnam War conjure images of protest, change and radicalism. At the time, radical Australian students were referred to by politicians as ‘political bikies who pack-rape democracy’ (Billy Snedden, 1970) and have...
From Vietnam to Now: Has the Student Activist Disappeared?
For over fifty years, the collective voices of student activists have echoed up from Australian universities to our policy makers. From the Civil Rights movement and the 1965 Freedom Ride to advocating for Aboriginal rights in rural New South Wales, championing...Past Issues
