By Situation Theatre 14/10/2018
As a result, the former PM has cancelled plans for a Ramsay Centre deal with Sydney University, realising the Paris commune, suffragettes, Spanish anarchists, US civil rights movement, and critical theory are also important parts of the Western inheritance.
After reading a Helen Razer article titled Ramsay Centre Spruikers Know That Marxism Is A Western Philosophy, Right?, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Ramsay Centre John Howard has abandoned negotiations with Sydney University to establish a Western civilisation degree.
Razer’s piece argued “If these toffs really can’t see that studies in decolonisation or trans-national feminism or queer theory or, for heaven’s sake, Marx are not absolutely entwined in the great exchange of ages they defend, then they have not been reading”.
When Howard realised students of such a degree would study Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone De Beauvoir, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Nancy Fraser, and Noam Chomsky, he had a minor stroke.
In the interests of his own health as well as that of future generations of Australian students, he has walked away from a potential agreement with Sydney University which would have rammed his white supremacist propaganda down their throats.
He’ll step down as Chair of the Ramsay Centre and take up a new position as head coach at the Australian Cricket Academy.