Earnest discussions about academic freedom are often prompted by events outside the academy. The McCarthy era “loyalty oaths” imposed in some 1950s US universities provide one example. More recently, there have been some high-profile cases of alleged deplatforming accompanied by persistent populist anxieties about speech codes, cancel culture, and safe spaces.
As Robert French AC has recognised, it is important, in thinking about academic freedom, to distinguish what it permits (and in turn requires) from more general notions of freedom of speech. Academic freedom is recommended on the grounds that it is crucial to effective knowledge-making and, unlike unfettered freedom of speech, is practised subject to the norms and values of scholarly and scientific enquiry.
If academic freedom, however, protects the liberty of the scholar to choose topics, methods, and modes of presentation, it also requires the provision of material, cultural, and institutional supports. Scholars and scientists need funding, libraries, laboratories, cadres of ancillary staff, and eager next-generation successors. They also require an academic culture that strikes a fruitful balance between a solid grounding in established practice and a spirit of contrariety and innovation.
This symposium seeks to explore these enduring as well as pressing themes, questions and dilemmas.
The Academic Freedom Symposium is a free, public event held in partnership with
the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS).
Details
When
25 November 2025
8:30am – 6:30pm
Drinks reception to follow, generously sponsored by Taylor & Francis.
Where
Forum Theatre (153), Arts West – North Wing (Building 148a), The University of Melbourne
Program
Click here for the program at a glance.
Unfortunately, hybrid participation is not available for this event, due to technical limitations of venue.
Register
This event has been held – it is not possible to register.
Session details
Introduction
Wurundjeri Elder Bill Nicholson
Welcome to Country
Biography
Uncle Bill Nicholson Jr is passionate about sharing his extensive cultural knowledge with the broader community. He is deeply committed to Wurundjeri Woi wurrung traditions and cultural practise and continuously advocates for the rights of contemporary Wurundjeri Woi wurrung people to access and practise culture on traditional Country. Uncle Bill is Wurundjeri Woi wurrung Corporations Principal adult cross-cultural educator for the corporate, not-for-profit and university sectors. A former Winston Churchill Fellowship recipient (2015), Uncle Bill’s fellowship explored cultural practice and maintenance amongst First Nation communities in urban environments. Uncle Bill was also amongst the Victorian delegates nominated to attend the First People’s Assembly which resulted in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Professor Stephen Garton AM FAHA FRAHS FASSA FRSN
President, Australian Academy of the Humanities
Biography
Stephen Garton became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2000 and was elected the Academy’s 20th President in November 2023.
An eminent historian, Stephen’s research expertise is in Australian history. He has also published in the fields of American and British History. His major books provide thought provoking insights into areas including the history of medicine, particularly psychiatry, social welfare, war veterans and the aftermath of war, sexuality and the history of higher education.
Stephen has also had a long career in university administration, serving as Dean of Arts, Provost and Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and as interim Vice-Chancellor, at the University of Sydney. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to tertiary education administration and to history.
Professor Frank Bongiorno AM FAHA FASSA FRHistS
President, Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Biography
Frank Bongiorno AM FRHistS FASSA FAHA, is Professor of History at the Australian National University, and was formerly a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and the University of New England. He was Head of the School of History at the ANU from 2018 until 2021. He is the author of The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (2012), The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (2015) and Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia (2022). He is currently President of the Australian Historical Association.
Professor Emerita Raewyn Connell
Who do we speak to? Academics and the public sphere
Biography
Raewyn Connell is Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney and Life Member of the National Tertiary Education Union in Australia. Born in Australia, she was foundation professor of sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney 1976-91, professor of sociology at University of California Santa Cruz 1993-95, professor of education and University Professor at University of Sydney 1996-2013. She is a widely-cited researcher on gender relations, class structure, education, social justice, and the global economy of knowledge. Her books include The Good University; Southern Theory; Masculinities; Gender & Power; Making the Difference; and Ruling Class Ruling Culture. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages; she has received the American Sociological Association’s Jessie Bernard Award and the International Sociological Association’s quadrennial Award for Excellence in Research and Practice. She has been involved in work for gender equality, in the labour movement, and in the unending struggle for peace.
Professor Jennifer Balint
Dean, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne
Biography
Jennifer Balint is Professor in Socio-Legal Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. Professor Balint joined the University of Melbourne in 2002, establishing Australia’s first Socio-Legal Studies program in Criminology. Professor Balint has held many leadership roles at the University, including as Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences. Professor Balint holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Bachelor of Laws (Honours) from Macquarie University, and a PhD from the Law Program, Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Throughout her career, Professor Balint’s approach to academic practice and leadership has included forging strong partnerships with industry, government, and community organisations, including creating opportunities for students to engage with our external partners. Her work is focused on the development of models to address institutional harm and effect structural change. She holds a deep commitment to fostering collaboration and innovation, and academic excellence. Her work as a leader and academic is motivated by what does a just society look like, what is our responsibility to shape it, and who do we need to bring together to enable it.
Session 1
Under Pressure: What and who guards academic freedom today?
Global, institutional and regional forces restraining and shaping academic scholarship today.
- Outlook on the region – Australia and the Asia Pacific
- Collaborative research in politically sensitive environments
- First Nations research and political leadership
- Institutional obligations of care
Chair
Professor Emerita Susan Dodds FAHA
Biography
Professor Emerita Susan Dodds is a philosopher a philosopher with expertise in the areas of ethics, social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy and bioethics. From 2019-2024 she was the Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Industry Engagement) at La Trobe University.
Susan was an undergraduate in philosophy and political science at the University of Toronto (B.A., 1984) and moved to Australia for postgraduate study (Ph.D. from La Trobe University, 1993). She was a long-time member of the philosophy program at the University of Wollongong (1989-2009) where she became Head of the School of English Literature, Philosophy and Languages. In 2009 She became Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Tasmania and later Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UNSW (2013-2019).
Professor Dodds was a Chief Investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES, 2006-2021) and had held ARC Discovery Project and Linkage Grants. Her publications include articles and book chapters as wells as co-edited collections such as Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy (OUP, 2014, co-edited with Catriona Mackenzie FAHA and Wendy Rogers FAHA) and Big Picture Bioethics: Developing Democratic Policy in Contested Domains (Springer, 2016, co-edited with Rachel A. Ankeny, FASSA).
Susan is the Deputy Chair of the newly established Australian Research Council Board and has previously served on the Australian Research Council Advisory Committee. She was a member of the three-person panel – chaired by Professor Margaret Sheil, AO, FAA, FTSE Chair, with Professor Mark Hutchinson completing the panel – that undertook the Review of Australian Research Council Act (2001) (Professor Margaret Sheil, AO, FAA, FTSE Chair, Professor Susan Dodds, FAHA, Professor Mark Hutchinson). The report of the review Trusting Australia’s Ability was released in April 2023.
Panelist
Professor Peter Anderson
Academic Freedom as a decolonial organisational value: cultivating rights-based intellectual agency
Biography
Professor Peter Anderson is the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Indigenous) at the University of New England. His research spans the areas of Australian Indigenous education, educational systems, curriculum, and pedagogical interventions, as well as the intersecting relationships with Indigenous peoples both globally and domestically. A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), a Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Science and a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and a Lifelong Fellow of the Atlantic Institute at Oxford University. He also holds research advisory positions for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Diversity Council of Australia, and the Australian Education Research Association.
Panelist
Emeritus Professor Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA
Research integrity and academic freedom in international consultancy
Biography
Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA is Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne and International Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Prior to this he was Chief Executive of Language Australia Ltd: the National Languages and Literacy Institute, of which he was the founder. He is a specialist in multilingual policy and social conflict/cohesion and has been commissioned to advise on language policy and literacy planning in South Africa, Hawai’i, Italy, New Zealand, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Samoa and other Pacific Island countries, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Scotland and Slovenia. He was a member of the Australian National Commission for UNESCO for 10 years and he previously served as Academy President from 2009–2011. He researches and advises on language and literacy policy, intercultural education and peacebuilding and language rights for minority populations in conflict affected settings in SE Asia. Recent major publications include, Helal and Lo Bianco (2025) Language politics in Tunisia: A study of language ideological debates; Lo Bianco, Loh and Shum (eds) (2024) Supporting Learners of Chinese as a Second Language: Implications for language education policy; Lo Bianco, Lundberg and Spolsky (eds) (in press) Language Policy and Planning; State of Research and Future Directions; Lo Bianco (2025) What Kind of Linguistics is Language Policy and Language Planning? Contemporary Linguistics, Bradley et al and; Wijesekera and Lo Bianco (in press) Sri Lankan Lessons: Language Policy and Education in Post-conflict Sri Lanka.
Panelist
Associate Professor Yujie Zhu
Navigating Constraints: Researching Memory and Heritage Across Borders
Biography
Yujie Zhu is Associate Professor at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University, and an internationally recognised scholar of heritage, memory studies, and transnational cultural politics. Trained in anthropology (PhD, Heidelberg University), his research critically examines how heritage is governed, remembered, and mobilised across borders—particularly in relation to reconciliation, cultural diplomacy, and state–society relations. Dr Zhu has led major international collaborations funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), UNESCO, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the European Union, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His work addresses the intersections of cultural governance and public engagement, with a strong emphasis on how museums and memory institutions navigate contested histories. The author and editor of nine books, including Heritage, Conflict, and Peace-Building (2024), Dr Zhu’s research has shaped international debates on heritage, tourism, and the politics of knowledge production. He has held leadership roles including Vice-President of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies and expert member of the ICOMOS Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee, contributing to global heritage policy-making and advancing ethical, reflexive scholarship in politically sensitive contexts.
Session 2
Voices at the Edge: who gets heard, who gets silenced?
Struggle over activism, viewpoint diversity and publishing rights
- Academic activism
- Viewpoint diversity
- Un/democratic norms vs academic norms – impacts of political interference
- Freedom of publishing and its attendant responsibilities
Chair
Emeritus Professor Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA
Biography
Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA is Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne and International Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Prior to this he was Chief Executive of Language Australia Ltd: the National Languages and Literacy Institute, of which he was the founder. He is a specialist in multilingual policy and social conflict/cohesion and has been commissioned to advise on language policy and literacy planning in South Africa, Hawai’i, Italy, New Zealand, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Samoa and other Pacific Island countries, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Scotland and Slovenia. He was a member of the Australian National Commission for UNESCO for 10 years and he previously served as Academy President from 2009–2011. He researches and advises on language and literacy policy, intercultural education and peacebuilding and language rights for minority populations in conflict affected settings in SE Asia. Recent major publications include, Helal and Lo Bianco (2025) Language politics in Tunisia: A study of language ideological debates; Lo Bianco, Loh and Shum (eds) (2024) Supporting Learners of Chinese as a Second Language: Implications for language education policy; Lo Bianco, Lundberg and Spolsky (eds) (in press) Language Policy and Planning; State of Research and Future Directions; Lo Bianco (2025) What Kind of Linguistics is Language Policy and Language Planning? Contemporary Linguistics, Bradley et al and; Wijesekera and Lo Bianco (in press) Sri Lankan Lessons: Language Policy and Education in Post-conflict Sri Lanka.
Panelist
Professor Michelle Arrow FASSA FRHistS
Defending academic freedom in troubling times: the role of discipline associations
Biography
Michelle Arrow FASSA, FRHistS is professor of history at Macquarie University and. The current president of the Australian Historical Association. She is the author of several books, including The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (2019), which was awarded the 2020 Ernest Scott Prize for history. Michelle is a regular media commentator on history and its place in contemporary life (including Great Australian Stuff, ABC 2022 and The Untold History of Australia, SBS 2025), and her writing has been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, and The Conversation, among others. Her most recent book is Personal Politics: Sexuality, Gender and the Remaking of Citizenship in Australia, co-authored with Leigh Boucher, Barbara Baird and Robert Reynolds (Monash University Publishing, 2024). Michelle is currently working on a biography of the Australian writer and broadcaster Anne Deveson.
Panelist
Dr Yves Rees
Conducting Ourselves: Trans Refusals à la Code
Biography
Dr Yves Rees (they/them) is a writer and historian based on unceded Wurundjeri land. They are Senior Lecturer in History at La Trobe University, the co-host of Archive Fever podcast, and co-editor of the journal History Australia. Rees is the author of Travelling to Tomorrow: the modern women who sparked Australia’s romance with America (NewSouth, 2024) and All About Yves: Notes from a Transition (Allen & Unwin, 2021), and co-editor of Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2022) and Transnationalism, Nationalism and Australian History (Palgrave, 2017). Rees has been awarded the Serle Award, the Calibre Essay Prize, a Varuna Residential Fellowship, and they are the 2025 KSP Writers’ Centre Emerging Writer-in-Residence. They have published across Australian gender, transnational and economic history, and are currently working on a history of Australian drag. Their essays and criticism have been published in the Guardian, The Age, Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, Meanjin, Griffith Review, Crikey and Overland.
Panelist
Professor James Arvanitakis
You can’t ask that: Do we set boundaries in the topics students can discuss?
Biography
Professor James Arvanitakis is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation based at the University of Western Australia and brings together the five Western Australian universities to attract world class research to the state and confront the world’s grand challenges. He is an award-winning educator, cultural researcher, and media commentator with 20-years of experience in the higher education sector having also had successful careers in finance and the not-for profit sector. As an educator and researcher, James was the driving force behind several innovative programs at Western Sydney University (WSU) including The Academy which received the Australian Financial Review’s Excellence in Education Award.
James is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as the Milward L Simpson Fellow. In 2021, he was appointed the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia in recognition of his commitment to promoting a cultural sector that reflects the rich diversity of Australia. In 2022 he founded Respectful Disagreements, a brave spaces project that promotes the lost art of civility in political disagreement as well as the educational power of discomfort. He sits on several boards including the Perth Festival and the Western Australian Government’s Science and Technology Advisory Council.
Session 3
Drawing the Line: What’s off limits, who decides?
Restraint, censorship, and career risk
- Freedom from vs freedom to
- Restraint, silencing, censorship
- Prohibitions and career-killers
Chair
Professor Frank Bongiorno AM FAHA FASSA FRHistS
Biography
Frank Bongiorno AM FRHistS FASSA FAHA, is Professor of History at the Australian National University, and was formerly a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and the University of New England. He was Head of the School of History at the ANU from 2018 until 2021. He is the author of The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (2012), The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (2015) and Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia (2022). He is currently President of the Australian Historical Association.
Panelist
Dr Alison Barnes
TBC
Biography
Dr Alison Barnes is National President of the NTEU she previously served as Assistant Secretary in the NTEU NSW Division and Branch President at Macquarie University.
While at Macquarie University, Alison was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management. Her research interests include union strategy, the development of workplace resistance and industrial relations.
Alison has had a strong commitment to unions since her university days as an Australian Services Union member while working in a call centre. She first joined the NTEU as a casual tutor at UNSW, and has been actively involved in the Union throughout her academic career.
Outside of work, she runs but this is mainly so she can keep up with her family.
Panelist
Dr Sean Turnell
Appreciating Freedom
Biography
Sean Turnell has been a senior analyst at the Reserve Bank of Australia, a Professor of Economics at Macquarie University, a consultant to a range of international institutions, and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. From 2016 to 2021 he served as economic adviser to Myanmar’s democratic government. Following the military coup that took place in Myanmar in February 2021, Sean was imprisoned alongside Myanmar’s democratic leadership. After 650 days of incarceration and severe ill-treatment, he was finally released in November 2022. Sean has written extensively on macroeconomic policymaking, economic reform, and the role of financial institutions in economic development, with a special focus on Australia, Myanmar, and the Indo-Pacific. His book on Myanmar’s monetary and financial history, Fiery Dragons, was published in 2009. In 2023 Penguin published Sean’s book on his experience of being a captive in Myanmar, An Unlikely Prisoner. His new book on economic reform in Myanmar, The Best Laid Plans, has also just been published by Penguin and the Lowy Institute.
Panelist
Professor Peter Greste FQA
The corrosion of positive and negative freedoms, and why it is choking academics
Biography
Professor Peter Greste is an Australian-born journalist, author, media freedom activist and academic at Macquarie University. Before joining academia in 2018, he spent 25 years as a foreign correspondent, starting with the civil war in Yugoslavia and elections in South Africa. He joined the BBC as its Afghanistan correspondent in 1995 and went on to cover Latin America, the Middle East and Africa where he moved to Al Jazeera.
He hit the headlines himself in December 2013, when he and two colleagues were arrested in Cairo on terrorism charges. They were convicted and sentenced to seven years in a case widely condemned as an attack on press freedom. Under enormous pressure, Egypt released Peter and he went on to become a champion of press freedom around the world. His stance has earned him numerous awards, including the Australian Human Rights Commission Medal, the RSL’s 2016 ANZAC Peace Prize, and Australian Press Council’s 2018 Press Freedom award.
His book, The Correspondent, is an updated version of The First Casualty, originally published in 2017 exploring his time in prison and the wider ‘war on journalism’. It has been re-released to coincide with a major movie about his Egypt experience, starring Richard Roxburgh.
Closing Session
Academic Capacity on Trial: Sustaining freedom in difficult times
Facilitated dialogue, weaving external pressures, contested voices and shifting boundaries
- How the pressures, debates and boundaries taken up in the previous sessions interact
- What specific issues face us today in Australia and what can be done to safeguard academic freedom and regenerate academic capacity
Chair
Professor Stephen Garton AM FAHA FRAHS FASSA FRSN
Biography
Stephen Garton became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2000 and was elected the Academy’s 20th President in November 2023.
An eminent historian, Stephen’s research expertise is in Australian history. He has also published in the fields of American and British History. His major books provide thought provoking insights into areas including the history of medicine, particularly psychiatry, social welfare, war veterans and the aftermath of war, sexuality and the history of higher education.
Stephen has also had a long career in university administration, serving as Dean of Arts, Provost and Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and as interim Vice-Chancellor, at the University of Sydney. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to tertiary education administration and to history.
Panelist
Professor Mark Edele
Biography
Mark Edele is the inaugural Hansen Professor in History at the University of Melbourne. He is a historian of the Soviet Union and its successor states, in particular Russia and one of the editors of Elements in Soviet and Post-Soviet History (Cambridge University Press). He was trained as a historian at the Universities of Erlangen, Tübingen, Moscow and Chicago. His publications include Soviet Veterans of the Second World War (2008), Stalinist Society (2011), Stalin’s Defectors (2017), The Soviet Union. A Short History (2019), Debates on Stalinism (2020); The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century. A Comparative History, with Martin Crotty and Neil Diamant (2020); Stalinism at War. The Soviet Union in World War II (2021); and Russia’s War against Ukraine. The Whole Story (2023, revised edition forthcoming 2026). A former ARC Future Fellow, he has served in a variety of leadership positions at the University of Melbourne, including Deputy Dean and Deputy Head of the School. He teaches the histories of the Soviet Union, of the Second World War, and of dictatorship and democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is currently working on a history of KGB prosecutions, 1954-1985.
Panelist
Dr Eugenia Flynn
Biography
Dr Eugenia Flynn is Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow in Writing and Publishing, at the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University. Her research has a primary focus on Indigenous literature and sits at the intersection between literary studies, creative writing, and critical Indigenous studies. Recent academic publications include ‘A (Sovereign) Body of Work: Australian Indigenous Literary Culture and the Literary Fiction Novel’ in The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel (2023), ‘Positioning Humour Within Indigenous Paradigms: An Interview with Richard Bell’ in Comedy in Crises (2023), and ‘An Indigenous Grand Narrative Voice: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria as Indigenous Epistemology’ in Commonwealth Essays and Studies (2022). Eugenia’s essays, short stories, and poems appear in publications such as Hello Keanu! A Poetry Anthology, IndigenousX and Meanjin, and her text work has been exhibited in shows such as SOULfury at Bendigo Art Gallery (2021) and Five Acts of Love at ACCA (2025). She has published essays for arts institutions and publications such as Tarnanthi (Art Gallery of South Australia), MCA, the Print Council of Australia, fine print, and Newcastle Art Gallery. Eugenia is an Executive Committee Member of The Australian SHAPE EMCR Network.
Panelist
Professor Peter Singer AC FAHA
Biography
Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946 and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. He became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. His 2009 book The Life You Can Save led him to found the organization of the same name, which has raised more than US$120 million to assist people in extreme poverty. Singer’s other books include: Practical Ethics, The Most Good You Can Do, and The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek).
Singer was appointed Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Monash University in 1977 and was the founding Director of the Centre for Human Bioethics there until 1999, when he was appointed Ira De Camp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, a position he held until 2024. He is currently the VK Rajah Visiting Professor in the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, and a founding co-editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas.
In 2012, Singer was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. He was awarded the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture in 2021, and in 2023, the BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award.
