JCU staff too scared to use their uni email – this is what “academic freedom” looks like

Academic Freedom in Australia: Academics are free to use hotmail at work

For the first time in months the ABC suddenly finds time to mention Professor Peter Ridd — not because he got sacked for an “uncollegial” email with the illegal line “for your amusement”. The extraordinary threat to academic freedom was not newsworthy on the billion dollar ABC site. Nor did the-blob’s ABC feel Australians needed to know that the international outcry over his sacking was so strong that Ridd raised $160,000 in donations in a couple of days. However now things are serious: other academics at JCU have given up using the official email network, hiding their thoughts on hotmail and gmail instead. Finally, 27 days after he was sacked, the ABC have started reporting.

Management of JCU insists Ridd’s sacking was not about academic freedom. But everyone at JCU acts otherwise. Staff at JCU now know exactly how free they are — if they say something the management doesn’t like, they too could be victims of a personalized email trawl. Anyone could lose their job at any time for falling foul of a selectively enforced and unknowable “code of conduct”.

James Cook University staff avoid using emails […]