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The Free University: A people's history

Britton, Nina Dillon
http://honisoit.com/2020/10/the-free-university-a-peoples-history

Publisher:  Honi Soit
Date Written:  26/10/2020
Year Published:  2020  
Resource Type:  Article

A history of a Free University in Australia.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt

The manifesto proposed a radically new type of education, a "Free University" (or "Free U" as it came to be known). "It is free in spirit, not in cash-it will get no government grants, no scholarship scheme," it says. "It grants no degrees and offers no status. It is a small group of students and teachers who come together outside the established university system because they find that system inadequate." It promised to break down the hierachies between students and teachers, to open access to subjects like materialism, gender or race that were ignored or underfunded in universities, and to allow cross-collaboration of many working in different areas.

Some of the authors will be familiar to students. Amongst them is Raewyn Connell, perhaps Australia's most pre-eminent sociologist, whose work on masculinity has taken her to Havard. Her most recent book, The Good University, has assumed a position of particular prominence for student activists and unionists, as accessible literature about what a university built on democratic principles might look like remains sparse. In it, she canvasses a number of radical experiments, noting briefly the Free U she helped found in her early twenties.

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