From ABC National - Australian radio....

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2366575.htm

Critical Terrorism Studies


Dr Mervyn Bendle of James Cook University in Townsville was one of the first people to warn of the dangers associated with Saudi Arabian funding coming into Australian universities. Last week he was the guest speaker at the annual Quadrant magazine dinner, and he focussed on the rise of a new academic field - Critical Terrorism Studies - which treats terrorism as a construcrt of the Western imagination, or else as a rational and justifiable response to Western evil.


Transcript
This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to the program.

At the annual Quadrant magazine dinner in Sydney last week, the keynote speaker was Dr Mervyn Bendle, senior lecturer in History and Communication at James Cook University in Townsville. He's one of the first people I'm aware of to warn about the danger of Saudi government funding coming into Australian universities. So there's a thematic connection here with last week's program about the Channel 4 documentary on Wahabi activity in London's Regent's Park Mosque.

In his speech on Thursday night Dr Bendle focused on what he says is the rise of a whole new academic discourse in our universities, known as Critical Terrorism Studies. As much as possible it avoids mention of the religious roots of terrorist groups like al-Qa'eda. Instead, it sees terrorism as a construct of the Western imagination, and at the same time, paradoxically, as justified by Western misdeeds.

'In fact', he says, 'such arguments are based on a Manichean view of the world that has prevailed in the West for some 50 years, according to which the West is inherently evil and only the non-West is good, a great amorphous, but intrinsically benign 'Other' condemned to suffering by Western wickedness. Consequently the West deserves to be destroyed and has no moral right to fight back or protect itself.'

Well, in a week when Abdul Nacer Benbrika and six others have been convicted on terror offences in the Victorian Supreme Court, Merv Bendle says in the war on terror, our universities have become a major new battleground, and it is in the universities that the war of ideas is being lost.

Mervyn Bendle: Yes, well it certainly seems to be the case, Stephen, teaching in the universities and reading all the material that is coming out of the universities for some time now, I've become aware of the fact that people in the universities have more or less aligned themselves with what I call the 'radical orthodoxy' about the nature of the war on terror and the nature of terrorism. I think it reflects complacency amongst academics that one really doesn't want to see.

Stephen Crittenden: What is this radical orthodoxy you're talking about?

Mervyn Bendle: Well the radical orthodox position has pretty much been that the war on terror is more or less a bogus type of activity, that the emergence of al-Qa'eda and related terrorism is little or nothing to do about religion or their jihadi beliefs, but is really just another version of previous global liberation movements, focusing on global injustice. What they've done is they've pretty much assimilated the emergence of al-Qa'eda and related terrorism groups to the old neo-Marxist view of national liberation movements around the world, so they tend to see the whole thing in terms of an old paradigm.

Stephen Crittenden: And you say that we've seen the emergence of a new field of study, called Critical Terrorism Studies, with its own units, springing up inside Australian universities to take advantage of the extra funding available since September 11; that it's got its own journals, and that it features work by post-modern theorists who have little discernable expertise in actual terrorism.

Mervyn Bendle: Yes. Most things in academia these days, whatever they are, seem to spawn almost like a vampire-ic, sort of parasitic sort of growth, a critical study version of themselves, and whereas we've had terrorism study as a legitimate area of academic enterprise for decades.

Stephen Crittenden: Now we have critical terrorism studies.

Mervyn Bendle: Now we have critical terrorism studies.

Stephen Crittenden: And what's the difference?

Mervyn Bendle: Well critical terrorism studies associates itself with post-modernism, deconstructionism, discourse theory. It tends to see reality as primarily a social construction. It's got a cultural-relativist epistemology.

Stephen Crittenden: And you say critical terrorism studies talks about terrorism as a construct of the Western imagination.

Mervyn Bendle: Exactly. It's really quite interesting reading the literature, because so often the term 'terrorism' is put in scare-quotes as if it's not a real thing. Critical terrorism studies tends to see terrorism not primarily as an act of murderous violence like we witnessed in Bali that occurs in the real world but merely is what they call a signifier in a discourse; a myth that's been generated to cause fear and to mobilise the population behind what critical terrorist theorists would say are just conservative political figures and political movements in the West.

Stephen Crittenden: Well you call it radical orthodoxy, but is it actually something much more marginal? Are these academics being taken seriously by governments and policymakers in Canberra?

Mervyn Bendle: That's a very interesting question because one of the complaints that's come out from within the various think-tanks that have emerged in Australia, is that this critical terrorist approach in the universities has made the universities irrelevant. The Director of the National Security Project at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Dr Karl Ungerer, recently complained that there's a radical pacifism reigning in the university departments, and that it promotes an extreme hostility to sovereign states like Australia, the UK and the US.

Stephen Crittenden: And he says it's making the universities irrelevant.

Mervyn Bendle: Exactly. Because this radical orthodoxy isn't an orthodoxy. It's spread throughout the university and it's so dissociated from the real world that it's making itself irrelevant to the formulation of policy and the conduct of useful research.

Stephen Crittenden: Yes, but on the other hand, in your speech the other night, you seemed to be arguing that we have to take this kind of approach seriously, that it's not irrelevant, when it's being taught at somewhere like the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.

Mervyn Bendle: Yes, it's really quite alarming, and quite surprising. I'm at a loss to understand it, and Karl Ungerer, who I just mentioned a moment ago, he's at a loss I gather, too, to understand how this has occurred. But one of the leading figures in critical terrorism studies is an Australia chap called Dr Anthony Burke, who's just been made an Associate Professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He's been very successful in publishing his books and he's got quite a high profile in the area, but there's no question, amongst anybody who's been following what's been going on for the last few years, that his views are well to the left, and it is really quite surprising that he's been appointed to that position; not so much because perhaps he doesn't deserve it, he may well deserve it on academic grounds, but it's just that his ecological orientation does make it surprising. Dr Ungerer described it as 'eyebrow raising', which I think is an exercise in understatement. If somebody has got a radical pacifist view of things, of national security and international relations and terrorism and so on, well what's the fit between that person and a position at the ADFA. It might be a perfectly good fit somewhere else, and good luck to Dr Burke, but these are just interesting developments that do make you wonder what's going on.

Stephen Crittenden: Merv, you're one of the first people in Australia that I'm aware of to warn of the danger of Saudi government funding coming into our universities. You see that as something that's compounding the ideological problems we've just been discussing. Do you agree with the proposition that the universities here in Australia, in the UK, in Europe, have become the new front line in the battle with Islamic extremism?

Mervyn Bendle: Absolutely. I don't think there's any question at all about that, and I think that everybody who's involved in this situation on all sides, including the security agencies, political analysts, but also the jihadists and the leaders of the terrorist groups themselves, I think everybody recognises that the universities are very much the front line now.

Stephen Crittenden: But you're not just talking about the recruitment of Muslim students, or their radicalisation by Saudi students who are coming here, you seem to be talking about, well, the complicity of academic culture.

Mervyn Bendle: Yes, well complicity is a difficult term to sort of deploy, because it does imply there's some level of agency and even betrayal involved in the activity of these academics.

Stephen Crittenden: You're not saying that.

Mervyn Bendle: But, having said that, just putting that proviso, one does have to look fairly sort of cold-bloodedly at the situation and wonder what it is that motivates these people to align themselves with what are really extremist ideologies that are quite explicitly against everything in the West that we hold valuable, including the very freedom of speech that these people in our universities enjoy.

Stephen Crittenden: Do you think there are factors that make universities uniquely vulnerable?

Mervyn Bendle: Well there are factors in the universities, especially in Australian universities, that make them uniquely vulnerable, and this can really be traced back to the 1960s when there was an enormous expansion in tertiary education, both in Australia and overseas, but certainly in Australia. That corresponded to a time when there was a real upsurge in radical ideology, and a lot of people who found their way into positions in the universities at that time, have clung to those ideologies, and consequently they want to see the world through this paradigm which is now 40 years old, and when they see al-Qa'eda attacking the US, they sort of mentally think, Oh, this is just another example of the sort of anti-colonial, anti-American imperialist movements of the 60s, when in fact it's got nothing at all to do with that; it's an entirely new thing that needs to be seen anew. But they're not seeing it anew, they're seeing it through this old paradigm. What's actually happened in the universities, especially in the social sciences and the humanities, has been a gradual decay if you like, in the quality of the work that's being done. It's almost a form of intellectual decadence. What's really noticeable is how little has been published in the scholarly journals by people about terrorism in Australia and when it is being published, what's really noticeable about that is how it reflects this so-called critical terrorism studies viewpoint.

Stephen Crittenden: You in fact say one of the hallmarks of the kind of stuff that's being published in this post-modern vein, is that much of it tends to avoid mention of Islamic terrorism. You mention a recent history of terror whose only mention of Muslims in the index was under the headings 'Stereotyping of', and 'Violence towards'.

Mervyn Bendle: Well that's right. This is an example of the sort of political correctness that we've just got to get past. I don't think Muslims mind people talking about the threats to Australia, because they've got a stake in preserving the national security of this country, and they don't want to see their own communities infiltrated and subverted by what really are quite crazy, militant organisations. So I think we've got to get over being coy and cute about the whole thing and just call a spade a spade.

Stephen Crittenden: Is another aspect in all of this that makes universities vulnerable, the kind of neo-liberal paradigm that sort of gutted the universities of funding in recent decades and turning them into businesses?

Mervyn Bendle: Absolutely. And I think you yourself have probably done a fair bit to highlight this with some of the work you've done on the situation at Griffith. There is a species of academic that rises to leadership positions in Australian universities, that don't really appear to have much going for them, apart from the fact that they hold these positions. And this whole neo-liberal thing is really associated with a very faux entrepreneurialism that gets us all involved in sort of rinky-dink marketing efforts at the universities which is all really, really pretty pathetic. And the funny thing about it is, it just really brings cynicism amongst students, because they pretty quickly wake up to the fact that all this gloss and all this marketing hides a really ramshackle system.

Stephen Crittenden: Now Merv, I want to try and get you to pull all of this together by telling us about 'fourth generational warfare'. We've mentioned the idea that the universities are the new front line in the war on terror. What is 'fourth generational warfare'?

Mervyn Bendle: This type of warfare is dominated by ideological battles, cyber-warfare, terrorist networks and franchises and various forms of what they call 'leaderless jihads', operating on a global scale, and everybody again, on all sides of the conflict, the terrorists and the national security people, and the researchers, will all recognise that this type of struggle involves a systematic recruitment, and mobilisation of university-trained knowledge workers, and that's becoming an increasingly important factor in the whole thing.

Stephen Crittenden: Now in your speech at the Quadrant dinner the other night, you referred to a document that only came to light a couple of years ago, allegedly produced by the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood , indeed it's thought that it was written by the father of Tariq Ramadan , and its title is 'Towards a World Strategy for Political Islam'. Is that an example of a blueprint for fourth generational warfare?

Mervyn Bendle: Yes, well I mean this is a really good example of where we're playing catch-up. It was actually very interesting sort of family relationships that Tariq Ramadan is the coming generational representative of; he's the grandson of Hasan al Banna, who was the founder of the ultra-fundamentalist Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood; and he's the son of Said Ramadan who was al Banna's private secretary and the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, based in Switzerland. Said Ramadan is believed to be the principal author of the document you mentioned, which is commonly called The Project. It was prepared in 1982 by the Muslim Brotherhood as a blueprint for their global strategy for Islamists, what they saw as Islamist supremacy. And it was only discovered when a police raid was carried out on the Bank Al Takwa in Switzerland in November 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. And access to the document was limited to Western intelligence agencies for quite some time until a Swiss investigative journalist was able to gain access to it, and then he wrote a book about it called 'The Conquest of the West - Islamists' Secret Project', which at the moment is still only available in French. But the project itself is online. You can find that online .

Stephen Crittenden: Right. It strikes me that what you're asking us to think about perhaps goes back to the Cold War and the time when we used to think in terms of The Comintern and Communist fellow travellers; you seem to be describing an Islamintern and perhaps in some of these university departments, fellow travellers in a similar way?

Mervyn Bendle: There is some sort of parallel. It's interesting that various calculations have been made, and these indicate that Saudi funding at the moment is currently running at twice the rate that the Soviet Union spent on global propaganda during the Cold War. So that gives you an idea of the scale of Saudi funding. The one thing that is different is that the current fourth generational form of warfare, has moved away from the highly hierarchical system of the Comintern, where there was a sort of a dictatorial situation in Moscow which was laying down policy for the world's various national -

Stephen Crittenden: Centrally directed.

Mervyn Bendle: Centrally directed. What we've got now is what they call 'leaderless jihad' and even what they call 'franchises', these are characterised not by centralised leadership but by a high level of decentralisation, and what holds them together is adherence to this jihadist ideology. And it's this jihadist ideology that's being promoted in the universities that's mobilising alienated young people and attracting them in many cases into terrorist activities, and it's this ideology and the role it plays amongst knowledge workers in the universities and elsewhere, that's the real problem at the moment. I think predominantly it's passive and unconscious and it really reflects the complacency of our intelligentia here. They could have made the leap post-9/11 and recognised that this was a threat that transcended the dichotomy between left and right in politics; it really represented a threat to the very essence of Western liberal democratic society. So it could have made that leap, but they chose not to; in the end they just chose to assimilate the war on terror to the old paradigm.

Stephen Crittenden: That's Dr Mervyn Bendle from James Cook University in Townsville, and an article based on his speech appears in the September issue of Quadrant magazine.



Guests
Dr Mervyn Bendle
Senior lecturer in History and Communication at James Cook University in Townsville

Further Information
Quadrant magazine online

Presenter
Stephen Crittenden

Producer
Noel Debien

Dr. Anthony Burke (Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations
The University of New South Wales at The Australian Defence Force Academy) who was attacked on that programme, which has agreed to publish the following response by him:

Sir

I write to correct some serious misrepresentations and falsehoods in the article, “Hijacking terror studies”.

I would be surprised if critical terrorism studies had taken over a local fish and chip shop, let alone ‘hijacked’ universities around Australia as its author reports in such an alarmist fashion. It is a very new area of academic study, with great internal diversity and lively debate. Its published output includes a handful of books, and one journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism, which was established in 2008. Its two issues to date include articles questioning whether critical terror studies even needs to exist, among other reasons, because mainstream terrorism scholars have long been putting critical views. My own view, put in its first issue, was that the area should be open to as wide a group of critically-minded scholars as possible, from those concerned with radical transformations that would create a just world order, to those more narrowly concerned with improving counter-terrorist policies. Nor should it show disrespect for quality analysis of a more traditional kind or remain disconnected from its policy concerns.

What appears to anger neo-conservatives are views that terrorist motivations, grievances and self-justifications should be a part of the policy process, and that – because terrorism is defined as political violence directed at civilians with a coercive intent – states can conduct terrorist acts. This does not imply, however, that terrorist violence is justified or that the West ‘deserves’ it. It does not imply moral equivalence, or deny states the right to secure themselves from terrorist attacks, using force if necessary. While such views are regrettably heard on occasion on the left and in Middle-Eastern streets, I know of no reputable critical writer on terrorism who agrees with such views. I personally have always rejected them.

Which brings me to the appalling and unsubstantiated slur made in the article that I have ‘relentless sympathy for terrorists’ and am ‘pro-terrorist’. The claim is made on the basis of no evidence and in the face of much to the contrary. Had the author properly read the works of mine he attacks, and consulted numerous others listed on my staff webpage, it would be clear that I repeatedly condemn terrorism as an immoral, illegitimate and politically counter-productive form of violence. What could have motivated the author to make such a grossly untruthful, inaccurate, and potentially damaging slur is beyond me to explain. That Quadrant agreed to publish it reflects poorly upon its integrity and judgment.

Finally, regarding my view of security. In 1999, as I was finalising the first edition of Fear of Security, I argued that attempts by states to seek security by depriving others of it would be counterproductive and meaningless. In 2001 New York and Washington were struck, and in 2004 Osama Bin Laden stated that ‘we want to restore security to our Umma. Just as you violate our security, so we violate yours’. Who now is to tell me that my argument was not both prescient and policy relevant? The critical approach deserves to be a part of the broader conversation about terrorism and security, and if Quadrant readers wish to consult these works with an open mind, they will find them far more sensible and reasonable than they have been portrayed.

Associate-Professor Anthony Burke
University of New South Wales at ADFA.

This also appeared yesterday in The Australian online newspaper:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24374073-601,00.html

Culture wars bomb hits the military

Jamie Walker | September 20, 2008

SOME of Australia's top thinkers on national security have opened a new front in the culture wars - over whether a postmodernist interpretation of terrorism is brainwashing our next generation of military leaders.

At the centre of the intensely personal battle is the appointment as an associate professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy of Anthony Burke - who after claiming he was being misrepresented as "pro-terrorist", has demanded his chief critic be investigated for academic misconduct. Dr Burke, 42, complained to James Cook University over an article in Quadrant magazine by Merv Bendle, a senior lecturer in history and communications, which claimed university terrorism studies had been hijacked by a "neo-Marxist, postmodernist orthodoxy" among academics.

Another senior Canberra academic, Paul Pickering, of the Australian National University, fired off a separate protest to the Townsville-based university, but stopped short of calling for action against Dr Bendle.

The barrage of complaints and counter-claims brought to a head a row that began two months ago when Carl Ungerer, former national security adviser to the federal Labor leadership, questioned Dr Burke's appointment to the defence force academy as "eyebrow-raising".

Dr Burke withdrew his complaint against Dr Bendle yesterday after conceding "it may be that administrative action is not the best way to address the problem".

He told The Weekend Australian: "I remain deeply unhappy about Dr Bendle's accusations, and the violation of scholarly protocols they represent."

Dr Bendle, 57, turned up the heat on Dr Burke, who describes his political orientation as "liberal-left", by singling him out for being part of an academic clique that had compromised university terrorism studies.

"In the war on terror, a main battleground has become the universities where Islamist groups openly recruit members while an updated, post-9/11 version of the old neo-Marxist, postmodernist orthodoxy on terrorism dominates among academics," Dr Bendle wrote in the latest edition of Quadrant, a standard-bearer for Australia's conservative intelligentsia.

Dr Bendle accused Dr Burke of trying to deny the right of countries such as Australia to defend themselves against attack by terrorists. In doing so, "one wonders how students at the ADFA would feel if they are asked to place their lives on the line for Australia in Afghanistan, Iraq or other battlegrounds in the war on terror", Dr Bendle wrote.

Describing the ADFA man's published writings as "astonishing" for someone who was responsible for educating military officer cadets, Dr Bendle said Dr Burke had presented national security in "post-modernist terms, not as a concrete state of affairs or balance of political forces".

He turned Dr Burke's words back on him, saying it was clear he doubted that "terrorists are enemies of freedom or that freedom has any particular value".

Dr Bendle said Dr Burke's take on Australia's counter-terrorism polices was that they provoked "the very thing they claimed to defend us from - i.e. terrorism is Australia's own fault".

Dr Bendle quoted his fellow academic as saying that Australia's national values and way of life were merely "vast ideological abstractions". Talking up "fundamental freedoms" was actually a "narcissistic performance of self in which Australia is represented as pure and good, as falsely superior to the religion of Islam," Dr Bendle wrote of Dr Burke's work.

Dr Burke told The Weekend Australian that while Dr Bendle had quoted him accurately, he had misrepresented his broader view that terrorism was immoral and politically counter-productive.

"The quotes are accurate, but the characterisation is not," he insisted. The inference that he was pro-terrorist was an outrageous slur, Dr Burke said.

In his letter of complaint to JCU vice-chancellor Sandra Harding, dated last Monday, the Canberra academic hit out at Dr Bendle for claiming that he and Dr Pickering, among others, had "relentless sympathy for terrorists, defend the Islamist terrorists who conducted the July 2005 London bombings and are generally pro-terrorist".

Dr Burke initially complained that the Quadrant article raised "serious concerns about the integrity and honesty of Dr Bendle's research", and invited a "formal and transparent investigation by JCU as to whether or not it constitutes a case of serious academic misconduct".

Dr Burke, in withdrawing his demand yesterday, said he had decided that a university investigation was not warranted.

"I think there is still a matter of principle there," he said. "But I don't believe that asking for administrative action is the best way to respond."

Dr Bendle said he was relieved, but stood by his criticism of Dr Burke's supposedly post-modernist interpretation of terrorism.

He disputed Dr Burke's assertion that their altercation was an extension of the culture wars, "very much in the American strain where people see the university as a battleground".

Dr Bendle said the issue was actually academic freedom. Dr Burke and Dr Pickering should have approached him with their concerns before going over his head at James Cook University.

"It is a basic rule of academic etiquette for parties in an academic dispute to respect the right of free inquiry and free speech," he said.

"These gentlemen could easily have emailed or telephoned me with their concerns and I would have done everything possible to reach some compromise."

Dr Pickering did not return calls yesterday.

Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon shied away from comment, referring questions on Dr Bendle's complaints to the Australian Defence Force. In a statement, the ADF said academic staff at the defence force academy were employed on their research and teaching record, according to the rules of the University of NSW.

"Taking any course out of context of the whole degree program does not truly reflect the overall education being provided to students at ADFA," a defence spokesperson said.

However, the battlelines were hardening among supporters of the two feuding academics.

Dr Ungerer, now director of national security for Canberra-based think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Unit, yesterday backed Dr Burke's concerns.

Many academics teaching terrorism-related courses at university were "off on a tangent", which had no relevance to real-world security issues, he said.

Dr Burke's immediate boss at ADFA, humanities and social sciences head David Lovell, said the lecturer had his full confidence.

He said the academy, which operates academically as an offshoot of the University of NSW, produced graduates for the military "with no particular ideological views ... who approach issues with an open mind, in a critical spirit".

Dr Burke said ADFA had a balanced mix of teachers.

"If everyone was like me, it wouldn't be appropriate ... you don't force your views on students. You must teach a range of perspectives," he said.

Your Comments:11 Comment(s)

Logical of Canberra 5:29pm today Post-modernism belongs in fantasy-land and thats where it should reside. Not in universities. Anyone still teaching this clap trap ought to be given a padded room, reserved for those no longer in touch with reality.

Julian Watson of Perth 4:58pm today I want a culture war over the culture wars - a jihad on culture wars even!

bazza20 of sydney 4:52pm today Rocket Scientist of Garran is wrong. He is applying the principle that the more diversity the more likely it is that we will get a robust answer. Deary me. This is nonsense. Such principles do have limits in their applicablity. Rocket Scientist's universal application of the principle shows his fundamentalism. Or is it his deliberate Leftist muddying of waters --all the more to encourage rebellion for the sake of it. The left's insistence that all people and all ideas are equally competent naturally destroys sound judgement.

bazza20 of sydney 4:46pm today Rick of Canberra is right. The Left's project is now close to completion. The Left has a childish fantasy that failed cultures are superior to successful cultures ! Perhaps we can still beat the Left. We must act on the reality that Leftists are simple rebels: they must think and act in contradiction to what actually works. George Orwell and many others have set out the language and thinking styles of such rebels. Now, the politicians will not help us here. This is because the populace has almost entirely bought into leftist fantasy, and politicians cannot get ahead of the populace, however deluded they are. Those of us who can still see straight must work hard at neighbourhood and workplace levels to help people free themselves of the destructive Leftist ideology. Academics who peddle rebellious fantasy behind the cover of academic freedom must be exposed. Will the Oz help?

Kate 4:21pm today We have to indoctrinate our soldiers properly. No ideas that might confuse them please. Just stick to the party line.

Tony of Kabul 3:20pm today As a current denizen of Kabul for most of the last four years since I left Iraq and a civilian post-graduate of ADFA, I am in some agreement with John Coulter. Reality is a bit complicated in this region. And some sort of balance in the coursework at ADFA is important as the rocket scientist notes, if the graduting cadets in particular are to serve the future Defence force well. Fighters and thinkers are needed as leaders. And Rick, I am pretty sure the Commandant can't sack academics, even if it were the least bit sensible to do so in this case.

Rocket scientist of Garran ACT 9:36am today Military and academic cultures don't mesh easily together, especially when we are not directly threatened. Basically, military discipline requires that we obey orders without question and this is in obvious contention with academic freedom. Post-modern thinking tends to the opposite: question everything, believe in nothing. Reconciling these differences is difficult, but is a true sign of good leadership.

Indi 9:29am today This sounds like a story made for the Australian, following on teh curious reports from Luke Slattery last weekend regarding Stuart MacIntyre's role in various sideways moves of Geoffrey Blainey.

Rick of Canberra 9:17am today It is ludicrous that someone has been appointed to the teaching staff of ADFA who denies the virtue of what ADFA cadets are being trained to do. Who makes these decisions? Would appointment of a Neo-Nazi professor at ADFA be equally described as part of a "balanced mix of teachers?" Burke's hostility to the freedom and tolerance of Australian society is not "academic freedom" but a betrayal of everything a centre for higher learning should cherish. The Commmandant of ADFA should demand Burke's immediate sacking.

John E Coulter of Beijing 8:57am today No comment on the content. Send then all to the field (eg North West Pakistan) and see how the theories pan out in practice.

Curmudgeon of High Dudgeon of Perth 8:53am today I am glad that Merv Bendle is now published in the Quadrant. Thats less dribble in the Oz. Merv is a one man culture war and I feel sorry for his students