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Last week, the Australian Catholic University managed to turn every word in its name into an oxymoron. It’s Australian, but neither its staff nor its students believe in a “fair go”. It’s officially Catholic, but students walked out on an eminent speaker who opposed abortion. It’s a university, nominally, but it’s clearly not committed to free speech and reasoned argument.

Here’s what happened. ACU invited Joe de Bruyn, a veteran trade unionist and formerly one of the most powerful figures in the Australian Labor Party, to speak at a graduation ceremony at ACU’s Melbourne campus. He would also receive an honorary doctorate. He deserved it. de Bruyn knows more about Catholic social teaching than the average bishop and has fearlessly defended traditional Catholic teaching on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage for decades.

In his speech to education and arts, law and commerce graduates, he said:

“Today, over 80,000 unborn children are killed by abortion in Australia each year worldwide – the estimated number is 42 million each year. Abortion is the single biggest killer of human beings in the world, greater than the human toll of World War II. It is a tragedy that must be ended.”

He also said that marriage between a man and a woman was “instituted by God at the origin of humanity in the Garden of Eden” and that “every society on Earth at all times” was built on marriage between a man and a woman.

The students and their guests were outraged. Many of them walked out. They later told the media that de Bruyn’s speech was “hateful”, “vitriolic”, “shameful”, and “disgusting”.

Betrayal

Astonishingly, ACU agreed. The vice-chancellor, Professor Zlatko Skrbis, quickly sent out an email apologising for the distress caused by Mr de Buryn’s remarks. He offered offended students counselling services and mental health support. He also promised to refund the $165 graduation fee because “the content of this speech did not meet the standards that we strive for”.

This is a colossal failure on three levels.

A failure of civility. It’s no surprise nowadays to learn that Catholic students at nominally Catholic universities do not accept traditional Catholic teaching. It’s their loss. But they ought to be polite enough to heed opposing opinions. de Bruyn did not attack anyone personally; he stated facts which have been voiced in the public square for decades.

Consider a very different moment – Greta Thunberg’s “how dare you” speech to the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019. She was livid with rage and personally insulting. “You are failing us … The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.”

And how did her audience respond to this slap in the face? They applauded. Why? Amongst other reasons, they were grown-ups.

A failure of education. Education, arts, law and commerce students are smart people. Didn’t they know that the Australian Catholic University is a Catholic institution? Its website states clearly that “As a Catholic university, we are stewards of our Catholic tradition and our unique Australian heritage. Our mission defines who we are.”

Presumably, these students have heard of Pope Francis. He respects LGBT people but has adamantly refused to endorse same-sex marriage. He has described abortion as murder, “like hiring a hitman”. How could these students not be aware? It’s like going to McDonald’s in the belief that it’s a vegan eatery.

Catholic universities exist to teach Catholic values, as part of a respectful dialogue with the secular world. ACU has obviously failed miserably.

A failure of governance. A university requires a vice-chancellor with a backbone. What ACU has is a jellyfish. From its website, we learn that “As a Catholic University, ACU offers a dialogue between faith and reason.” There’s a dearth of both.

In their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argued that US campuses are blighted with “safetyism”. Universities swaddle their students in cotton wool so that they cannot be challenged by unfamiliar and disagreeable ideas. This intellectual and moral illness is obviously endemic at ACU. And the blame must lie squarely at the feet of its administrators.

According to its X/Twitter page, ACU also stand for “Accepting, Curious, Unstoppable”. Its students ­ – many of them at least – are neither accepting nor curious. What is unstoppable is the defensive drivel gushing from staff and students over this shameful episode.

When Alexander Solzhenitsyn – one of the most courageous men of the 20th century, a brilliant novelist, a Nobel Prize winner – gave a commencement speech at Harvard University in 1978, he declared that “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.”

How did the students react?

They booed him. Those moral pygmies booed Alexander Solzhenitsyn. For the rest of their lives, they lived with the shame of having booed a moral giant.

Joe de Bruyn is in good company.

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Republished with thanks to Mercator.