On Friday,Sydney university academics said they were concerned about the same thing. Signatories to the letter ranged from emeritus professors to lecturers,and they came from departments such as linguistics,Chinese studies and economics.
"We are a university,not a training institute for a future political ‘cadre’,"the letter read."Decisions about how the cultural traditions of Europe are to be studied at university are for academics to make,not billionaires or former prime ministers.
"The Ramsay programme represents,quite simply,European supremacism writ large:it signals that the study of the European cultural tradition warrants better educational circumstances than that of others.
"The profoundly dangerous implications of this bias do not,we believe,need further comment."