The Dismissal of Ted Steele from the University of Wollongong

On 26 February 2001, Ted Steele was summarily dismissed from his tenured post of Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Wollongong, following his contentious public comments about ‘soft marking,’ namely lower standards especially for full-fee-paying foreign students. The dismissal sparked a huge outcry in academic circles and beyond, where it was widely seen as an attack on academic freedom. The case soon became the most prominent of its sort in Australia since the dismissal of Professor Sydney Orr from the University of Tasmania in 1956, itself a landmark in the history of Australian higher education. Few cases are as simple as they appear on the surface. The Steele dismissal can be approached from a bewildering range of perspectives, including Steele’s personality and history, the accuracy and legitimacy of Steele’s public statements, the significance of the soft-marking issues he was raising, the legal validity of the dismissal, the frameworks of academic freedom and whistleblowing, and the academic-industrial context. My attention here is on lessons that can be drawn from this case about how to go about defending dissent. In particular, I focus on the tactics adopted by key participants Steele, University management, the Department of Biological Sciences and the Union and the power of the idea of free speech in the struggle. Although the Steele events are unique, a study of the case can nevertheless provide insights that are useful to academics in other contexts. Participants in the case pursued their respective goals holding and deploying divergent conceptions of justice and academic freedom. Simply to assert one’s claim to justice and academic freedom is inadequate: it is necessary to gain the support of others for action. This is not as easy as it might seem. Despite universal assent to the rhetoric of academic freedom, most parties to the conflict were more concerned with winning specific battles. The Steele case shows how difficult it is to operationalise global concepts of justice and freedom. I describe the Australian and Wollongong context of the dismissal, then look at Steele’s actions and their interpretations and finally assess the strategies adopted by the key players from the point of view of defending dissent.