{"id":70901,"date":"2016-03-21T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=70901"},"modified":"2016-03-21T05:05:42","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T05:05:42","slug":"please-help-us-save-the-centre-for-peace-and-conflict-studies-at-the-university-of-sydney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/03\/please-help-us-save-the-centre-for-peace-and-conflict-studies-at-the-university-of-sydney\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Help Us Save the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/jake-lynch-180x167.jpg\"  rel=\"attachment wp-att-43152\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-43152\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/jake-lynch-180x167-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"jake-lynch-180x167 tie\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><em>16 Mar 2016 &#8211; <\/em>I&#8217;m writing to you with a request for your help in saving the CPACS.\u00a0The Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has threatened to wind up CPACS and downgrade it to a \u201cmini-department\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>This would jeopardise CPACS\u2019 role in the wider peace community and risk silencing the Centre\u2019s political voice.<\/p>\n<p>CPACS has a long and distinguished record of bringing the perspectives of Peace with Justice to bear on the University\u2019s research, teaching and community outreach.<\/p>\n<p>We honour the tradition of speaking truth to power, on vital issues where the mainstream of Australian politics and media would rather look the other way, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The rights and freedoms of the Palestinians;<\/li>\n<li>The militarisation of Australia;<\/li>\n<li>The needs and aspirations of the people of West Papua;<\/li>\n<li>The urgent need to bring about global nuclear disarmament;<\/li>\n<li>Accountability for war crimes in Sri Lanka.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Our engagement with issues such as these, extended into the wider Australian and world community, arises organically from our unique structure of governance, as a Centre. How many \u201cmini-departments\u201d of the University have that kind of record?<\/p>\n<p>Please write to the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Barbara Caine, A14 Quadrangle, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, or via email (with a copy to me please: <a href=\"mailto:barbara.caine@sydney.edu.au\">barbara.caine@sydney.edu.au<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>In your message, please ask her to drop the plan to downgrade CPACS, and to allow us to continue as a Centre. News of this plan first emerged in the press, for example in the article published in the Australian, at the start of this month, which\u00a0I\u00a0have pasted below.<\/p>\n<p>**************************************<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sydney Uni Centre for Peace on War Footing over Demotion Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Christian Kerr \u2013 The Australian<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>1 Mar 2016 &#8211; <\/em>The head of Sydney University\u2019s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Jake Lynch. \u2018University\u2019s claims wrong and misleading.\u2019 Picture: James Croucher<\/p>\n<p><strong>The head of Sydney University\u2019s controversial Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies has hit out at moves to downgrade its status, contradicting claims student numbers are falling and insisting the centre outperforms its peers.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A university spokesman last week said that Sydney \u201cis currently considering the possible transition of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies from a centre into a department\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He said the move followed an extensive external review of the viability of the centre, raised because of a \u00addecline in student enrolments.<\/p>\n<p>Centre director Jake Lynch has rejected the claims as \u201cboth wrong and misleading\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Enrolments for the centre\u2019s summer school and first-semester units study were 177, an \u00adincrease of 29 per cent on the equivalent figure last year, he said. \u201cThe centre\u2019s program has in recent years outperformed all of its peer specialist programs in the School of Social and Political Science, in political economy, human rights, human rights and democratisation, development studies and international security,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is \u2026 no evidence of a declining trend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Associate Professor Lynch said changing the status of the centre would not create savings. He said the university had failed to provide it with \u00adinformation needed for planning. \u201cOne recommendation of the review of the centre was we formulate a business plan,\u201d he said. \u201cDespite repeated requests, I have still not been given detailed figures for income and expenditure, which would be necessary to such an undertaking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said the university had charged the centre for years for rooms used by the Sydney Peace Foundation, which the uni had promised to keep supporting.<\/p>\n<p>The centre has been embroiled in a string of controversies in recent years, most recently last year when allegations of anti-Semitism were levelled against Associate Professor Lynch after ugly scenes during a lecture on campus by retired British colonel Richard Kemp.<\/p>\n<p>Associate Professor Lynch was cleared of the charges, but remains a supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which equates Israel with apartheid-era South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The review of the centre noted concerns \u201cthat CPACS does not sufficiently distinguish between advocacy as practised by (non-government organisations) and non-university based advocacy organisations, and an organisation such as CPACS committed to advocacy within a university context.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It continued: \u201cThe \u00adreview also received some submissions that raised concerns about how CPACS conceived and delivered its commitment to advocacy in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Associate Professor Lynch said the centre had a \u201cdistinguished record as a world-\u00adrecognised centre of expertise on important issues of public policy through its West Papua project, human survival project and Sri Lanka human rights project\u201d, much of the work contributed on a voluntary basis.<\/p>\n<p>The university did not reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>_________________________________<\/p>\n<p><em>Jake Lynch, former BBC newsreader, political correspondent for Sky News and Sydney correspondent for the Independent, is Associate Professor of Peace Journalism and Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is a member of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" >TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a> and the advisor for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/\" >TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS<\/a>. <em>Lynch is the co-author, with Annabel McGoldrick, of <\/em><\/em>Peace Journalism<em> (Hawthorn Press, 2005), and his new book, <\/em>Debates in Peace Journalism<em>, has just been published by Sydney University Press and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tup\/\" >TUP \u2013 TRANSCEND University Press<\/a>. He also co-authored with Johan Galtung and Annabel McGoldrick \u2018<\/em>Reporting Conflict-An Introduction to Peace Journalism,&#8217;\u00a0<em>which <\/em><em>TMS editor Antonio C. S. Rosa translated to Portuguese.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CPACS has a long and distinguished record of bringing the perspectives of Peace with Justice to bear on the University\u2019s research, teaching and community outreach. We honour the tradition of speaking truth to power on vital issues where the mainstream of Australian politics and media would rather look the other way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}