The University of Western Australia have decided to cancel the $4m contract given to them by the Federal government to host a consensus centre run by Danish researcher Bjorn Lomborg.
UWA Vice Chancellor Paul Johnson gave a statement late last week saying that the decision was made due to the ‘passionate emotional reaction’ from staff and students concerned about the academic credibility of the think-tank, and Lomborg’s apathy towards the issue of climate change.
“The scale of the strong and passionate emotional reaction was one that the university did not predict,” he said. “The work of the Australia Consensus Centre is important to Australia’s future by engaging in important discussion and economic analysis about how we ensure future generations are better off than those that came before them. Unfortunately, that work cannot happen here.”
The majority of reactions we’ve seen on social media have been pretty good, with people seeming pretty stoked that UWA decided against the grant. But it seems not everyone is happy.
Mainly Christopher Pyne. Pretty much just Pyney. He seems a bit frowny-face about it, saying something about academic freedom yada yada censorship.
What a sad day for academic freedom when staff at a university silence a dissenting voice rather than test their ideas in debate #auspoI
— Christopher Pyne (@cpyne) May 8, 2015
Others seem to think Pyne might be confusing censorship with ‘making sure factually incorrect, or ‘made-up’ information doesn’t affect major federal decisions’:
Hey @cpyne, ‘academic freedom’ doesn’t mean the right to make up your own facts. Give the climate deniers’ $ to CSIRO http://t.co/5YrW336dZh
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) May 9, 2015
UWA Academic Staff Association vice president Professor Stuart Bunt came forward to confirm the decision had nothing to do with censorship, but instead, political agendas getting in the way of scientific evidence.
“This isn’t about censorship at all…” he said. “The difficulty is [Lomborg] is neither a scientist or an economist, he’s a political scientist… Lomborg would be using the name of the university, to put what are largely political opinions, rather than evidence-based statements, using the university’s name.”
Image: Adrian Dennis via Getty Images
