Context is everything. On the one hand, an institute focused on studies of western civilisation could be no different to other university-associated institutes. These units often specialise in areas that have a place in culture and policy, facilitating research with partner agencies and contributing to the development of international relationships.
On the other hand, the Ramsay Centre was an agenda-laden venture at the outset. It has now been left hanging after the Australian National University (ANU) withdrew from negotiations for an undergraduate program, with Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt saying that a difference of vision, with no prospect of agreement, led to the decision. There were serious concerns about autonomy.
The Ramsay Centre's focus on 'Western civilisation' has never been neutral; the people involved gives that away. Former prime minister John Howard launched it last year and chairs the centre. Tony Abbott, who sits on the board, wrote earnestly in Quadrant about its purpose.
Both are staunch, veteran warriors of our perpetual culture wars. Both have a fixation with Australian identity, one they hold to be indelibly Anglo-Christian at the core. Both have always behaved as if this were under existential threat.
It is a thread that has run through their public life, particularly in responses to non-white migrants including asylum seekers and Muslims; to Indigenous assertions of history and justice; and to a generally secular, pluralistic society.
In this context an institute that, in Abbott's words, is 'not merely about Western civilisation but in favour of it' can only be taken as theatre for further contestations about identity and heritage. That does not speak to academic merit.
The reason for establishing a degree that amounts to European studies, as Abbott had put it to the late Paul Ramsay, is that 'this current generation was missing ... familiarity with the stories and the values that had made us who and what we are'.
"This is supremacist stuff, and also massively ignorant. Sophistication in art, literature and science has never been a monopoly of the west."
He claims that a Christian focus was missing even from Catholic schools, along with classical history and 'the story of England'. The clincher: 'Almost entirely absent from the contemporary educational mindset was any sense that cultures might not all be equal, and that truth might not be entirely relative.'
This is supremacist stuff, and also massively ignorant. Sophistication in art, literature and science has never been a monopoly of the west, unless a case could