Thursday, August 29, 2013

Sydney University Forum on the Green Bans



A couple of weeks ago, I had the very great pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on the Green Bans that was organised by the Sydney University Greens.

The forum had a particular emphasis on the connections that existed between the wider Green Ban movement and students and staff at the University of Sydney. I was on a panel alongside Liz Jacka, who talked about the struggle of feminist philosophers and students to get the University to allow them to teach courses on feminist philosophy. At the time, the NSW Builders Labourers Federation placed a ban on building work at the University in support of their struggle. Frank Stilwell talked about the parallel struggle of heterodox economists to establish courses in Political Economics. And finally, Jack Mundey was on the panel to talk about the green ban movement more generally and its implications for today. Jack was the high-profile Secretary of the union when the green ban movement kicked off ...  and it was a pretty big thrill to be on the same panel as Jack!

Anyways, I've got a piece on the green bans coming out in the journal Antipode in the near future, based on the archival research I've been doing over the last few years. I'm going to post some pictures on this blog some time soon to accompany the article. But in the mean time, here's a link to a video of the forum.