In July, I wrote about the case of Australian public law professer Andrew Fraser, whose politically incorrect comments about race led Macquarie University to attempt to buy out his contract rather than keep him and his views on. The university equivocated about its motives, but it was clear enough that in asking Fraser to retire early, Macquarie was seeking to distance itself from his views and to prevent Fraser from expounding his opinions on the university's dime.

Now Fraser is facing blatant censorship in the form of a law review article that will not be published because of the views it expresses.

On Friday, Deakin University vice-chancellor wrote to tell Fraser that his essay on black immigration and crime would not be published in the school's law review because the article violates Australia's Racial Discrimination Act. Fraser's article, "Rethinking the White Australia Policy," argues that recent scientific findings regarding racial differences validate Australia's founders' original goal of creating a racially homogeneous, white state. When news leaked last week that the journal was about to publish Fraser's piece, a lawyer representing the Australian Sudanese community threatened to sue the university for "racial vilification," which is forbidden by the Racial Discrimination Act.

Fraser thinks the university is caving in to pressure: "There is a clear exemption for any statement made in good faith in an academic publication," he noted. "In the Racial Discrimination Act it says nothing in such a publication can be deemed to be unlawful." Fraser also noted that his article passed the peer review process that is designed to ensure the intellectual quality and integrity of academic work: "The article went through the normal process of peer review. ... Two academics not known to me looked at the article, suggested some changes which I made and then they agreed that it ought to be published."

What's happening in Australia right now is a classic example of why speech codes do far more harm than good. Fraser's views are controversial, and highly offensive to many. But they have also passed scholarly muster, and deserve to be heard.

Surely the vigorous debate that would certainly arise from the publication of Fraser's provocative article is better than this? By preventing Fraser's article from circulating, Deakin administrators are not only showing an institutional cowardice that speaks poorly for the university, but are also implying that Fraser's opinion can't be adequately debated, criticized, countered, and even vanquished in the marketplace of ideas. Surely that's not the message they want to be sending?

Fraser's article is now available here. Let the debate Deakin University fears begin.

Thanks to Fred Ray and Maurice Black for the links.

Here's a little twisted article from the "Green Left Weekly" in which they miss the whole free speech issue.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/638/638p9.htm

Fraser's views are controversial, and highly offensive to many. But they have also passed scholarly muster, and deserve to be heard.

If Fraser's characterization of the law is correct, I'd say the real problem is the special protection of academic speech within a larger restriction of free speech. Why should Bruce or Sheila Ocker be held to a different standard because their views haven't undergone peer-review?

I have read Fraser's controversial article, thanks to the link posted in this blog, and can't say I disagree with those who see it as an unrestrained white supremacist rant against immigration, globalization, non-Western cultures, and even modernity itself. I also don't find there to be anything particularly "scholarly" about the piece -- it isn't particularly elegant in style, and often reads more like an angry, resentful op-ed piece than an academic article.

I'm also aware of the irony of the article's "suppression." Now that the piece is shrouded in controversy and posted in full on the internet, thousands of people (including me) will read it who never would have bothered to look it up in some obscure Australian law review. So Fraser has managed simultaneously to spread his views to an audience many multiples larger than those enjoyed by the most prestigious law reviews and to portray himself as a censored vicitim of an intolerant university administration. Quite a feat.

Like JSinger above, I also question the implication that Fraser "deserves to be heard" because his views have "passed scholarly muster." The assumption here -- that academics are a privileged elite who should enjoy greater expressive privileges than ordinarly citizens -- is almost as distasteful to me as Fraser's own supremacist beliefs. Fraser does not "deserve to be heard"; he simply deserves, as a citizen of a democracy, not to have his opinions forcibly suppressed. And having read those opinions, I would say simply that Fraser deserves to be ignored.

i read the article. JN is correct. that's one problem of censorship--someone who deserves to be ignored gets loads of attention.

"...it isn't particularly elegant in style, and often reads more like an angry, resentful op-ed piece than an academic article."

Haven't read many law review articles, have we? ;-)

Seriously, though, so you think it's a unhinged inarticulate rant. Maybe it is. So what? So it expresses views you disagree and not in a particular eloquent way: is THAT really your standard for what's deemed free expression? Because if it is, practically anything will fall short. The solution to what one characterizes as "bad speech" is "good speech," not censorship and certainly not prior restraint like this.

So it expresses views you disagree and not in a particular eloquent way: is THAT really your standard for what's deemed free expression?

No, (again, according to Fraser's characterization of the law, which may or may not be true) meeting scholarly standards is Australia's standard for what's deemed free expression. You have J.N.'s point almost entirely backwards.

I've read the article and I don't think it had any place in a law review. It's a stupid article. It's badly written, incoherently argued, and poorly researched. I suppose Andrew Fraser has a right to say what he thinks, but I can't see why I ought to pay for him to do so.

As for the poster who says that "the solution to ... 'bad speech' is 'good speech'": an effectively-infinite quantity of speech is available. The question isn't whether Andrew Fraser's ouvre needs a solution; the question is why the editors of the Deakin Law Review thought this was worth publishing.

Perhaps the problem is the peer review system cited the wrong reason for refusing the article? If it would have cited "poorly researched, etc." that would have made more sense than that the views of the author are incendiary. Lack of peer review backbone?