@michellearrow
Historian. Author, The Seventies (2019), co-author Personal Politics (2024). Writing a biography of Anne Deveson. President, Australian Historical Association. Whitlam Institute Fellow. FASSA. She/her. Views my own. http://newsouthbooks.com.au/books.
So far he’s continued to kick reform of JRG into the long grass. First his response to the universities accord promised ATEC would consider it. Now it looks like ATEC won’t examine it. Endless excuses and no action.
Because he doesn’t seem to care much about universities?
An important report on the terrible funding and equity impacts of Morrison-Clare’s job-Ready Graduates policy: futurecampus.com.au/2026/03/13/s...
A timely virtual special issue of Aust J of Politics and History: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...
Historian friends, anyone got any reading recommendations on the Disability Discrimination Act / related campaigns in Australia? And/or on the way that different anti-discrimination Acts related to each other esp. in the 1990s?
The NACC has been an utter waste of public money. Its sole achievement so far is to further persuade everyone that consequence-free corruption and bastardry are fixed features of government in this country.
I don’t think the ABC could even conceive of a program featuring those who have lost family members in Gaza over the last two years.
🧵: Books by historians I constantly recommend in policy meetings / professional contexts. In no order, to be added to when I remember:
1. The Seventies, by @michellearrow.bsky.social . Stuff can change, and it's possible to believe in things and plan for the future. unsw.press/books/the-se...
What a great thread, Lauren - I’m delighted to be part of it!
This is exciting - the 2025 Lilith is nearly out!
International students accuse Australia of treating them like ATMs after fees for one visa double without warning
Thanks Andre! I also wrote about mothers’ submissions to the RCHR for women’s history review (2016)
Where are law peak bodies and academic associations? Why aren’t they speaking up against the impact of this dreadful policy on their profession?
TIL, via Josh Widdecombe's new podcast, Museum of Popular Culture, that the Spice Girls' 1996 interview with The Spectator (where Geri Halliwell claimed 'Thatcher was the first Spice Girl') was conducted by popular historian of Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore.
archive.spectator.co.uk/article/14th...
Eliminating gender studies courses helps to ensure that universities and other institutions will continue to protect men who benefit from the abuse of women and girls, either directly or through their connections to those who exploit girls and women for profit.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Thanks for sharing - this is great
"wars can be lost before they are even declared if defenders surrender strategic terrain without a struggle. For universities, that terrain is the ultimate high ground: human intelligence itself. If we do not fight for it now, those who come after us will face an even more unequal struggle."
Exec make the conditions they’ll never have to work in - so they are absolutely fine!
I don't know anyone in the sector who is not horrifically burnt out and depressed. Exec are probably fine, though
Screenshot of email announcement that reads: Meanjin returns home Queensland University of Technology (QUT) will become the new custodian of Meanjin, Australia's most eminent literary journal, bringing the publication back to Brisbane 80 years after it relocated to Melbourne. QUT Vice-Chancellor Professor Margaret Sheil said: “QUT is delighted to bring Meanjin home to Meanjin / Magandjin – the lands of the Turrbal and Yugara peoples – where the journal was founded and where our Gardens Point campus now stands.
Meanjin's back!
the people who want you to believe that generative AI can paint like Picasso tend to gloss over the fact that Picasso didn’t have hundreds of Picassos to learn from. He had to make something new, which a model trained on old art is definitionally incapable of doing.
the police presence at Town Hall is unfuckingbelievable. They are deep inside the station, stopping and searching people at the top of the stairs from the platform. Absolutely off the charts I have never seen anything like it and I have protested for over 40 years.
Scene is Julia Gillard and Chris Bowen (then Min for Immigration) in a lighthouse with "Light on the Hill: written under the bulb. Gillard is turning the light off, saying 'It was attracting the boats"
I have many, many favourite Kudelka cartoons but this, from 2011, is possibly one of the best Aus pol cartoons ever drawn.
There’s some cosmic bingo tea towel out there that has a square for ‘too young, too funny, too decent’.
“We’re heading into, within the next five years, a real reduction in the capacities to sustain a creative and cultural workforce … There will be an enormous decline in the amount of creative and artistic activity in Australia.”
Why would the press gallery agree to this? Now that the cat’s out of the bag, could someone explain?
Such a lovely tribute to Graeme. As Andrew notes, we need his calm, clear advocacy for the humanities now more than ever:
