This article (from Honi Soit) has been making the rounds on social media; I asked one of the protagonists in these events, philosopher Michael Devitt (now at the CUNY Graduate Center) for his take on the article. He kindly gave permission to share the following:
This is a good article in Honi Soit, and quite accurate. It mentions the undergraduate history honors thesis by David Rayment. This gives the most thorough account of the saga that I know of. There is, however, a good chapter on it, “The Sydney Disturbances”, in James Franklin’s book, Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia (Macleay Press 2003). (I supplied both authors with a lot of the original documents – oddly, I was the only participant on Left or Right who kept significant records.)
The article moves fast from the 1973 Split, which was most immediately caused by the Feminism course proposed by Jean Curthoys and Liz Jacka, to the amalgamation decades later. There were some interesting happenings in between. In particular, there was “The Gang of Three” (including me) in 1976 and “The Gang of Three More” (including Jean) in 1985. These “Gangs” – all sides enjoyed this Left-wing rhetoric – moved from the Left-wing General Philosophy department to the Right-wing Traditional and Modern Philosophy Department. The “Gangs” saw themselves as driven out by illiberalism and intolerance. My parting shot in 1976 was an article in Honi Soit called “Ruling and Ruining General Philosophy”. The Right called us “boat people”, an obvious reference to those who fled Vietnam.
It is interesting, perhaps ironic, that four of the original main protagonists, Armstrong and Stove from the Right, and Curthoys and I from the Left, all ended up in the same department. Indeed, we had been working together, “across party lines”, for years by that time and were good friends. The department was very harmonious and produced some wonderful students. Peter Godfrey-Smith, who was one of them, recently gave an interview including a flattering account of the department in those days https://upja.online/a-conversation-with-peter-godfrey-smith/
Was the Split inevitable? Perhaps so. There were passionate differences between the Right and the Left in the old department, particularly over the Vietnam War, but also over the governance of the department, and of course over what should be in the curriculum. There was also David Armstrong’s deep distrust of Wal Suchting, dating back to the Knopfelmacher Affair (or “Knoffles” as the Left called him, without affection). Wal claimed to have been nothing but a “messenger boy” in that Affair but David thought that Wal had pulled some dirty tricks. (Did he? We will never know.) Still, I have often thought that both Armstrong and I should have been more flexible and less confrontational over the Marxism course. Years later, I put this to David over a glass of “bubbly” (he was very fond of that). He agreed about me, but not about him!
Comments are open for other recollections about this period in the life of the Sydney department.
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