OVERLAND PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES 2003 Wednesday 25 June 2003, 6.30 pm MARGARET SIMONS on MYTH, EVIDENCE & CULTURE WARS Overland 171 lecture & launch, Trades Hall, Melbourne $10 / $6 entry includes copy of Overland 171
Simons talks about Australia's 'culture warriors' and their recent claims against ideological bias and calls for scholarly 'evidence'. Taking on media heavyweights including Piers Ackerman, Ron Brunton and Christopher Pearson, she talks about the media fallout from her explosive book, The Meeting of the Waters, which documents what has come to be known as the 'Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair'. This series of events, says Simons, highlighted the still-raging 'culture wars' in Australia."I came to think of it as one of those big, even archetypal stories that tell us something about who we are, the way we connect to land, and how we exist in this continent." Asked to name the highest achievements of mainstream Western culture, she says, "most of us would probably think of the rule of law, judicial process, parliamentary democracy, the ideal of independent scholarship and freedom of speech, including freedom of the media". In the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair, "all these things miscarried and were perverted, if not corrupted. As a result, lives, careers and families were wrecked, and a great injustice was done. The victors wrote the history." Ron Brunton, Piers Ackerman and Christopher Pearson, says Simons, were key players in the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair. Simons explains how their actions, along with evidence buried and withheld from the Royal Commission, led to a dramatic miscarriage of justice. more information: http://www.overlandexpress.org/events.htm -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
