Well known historian and long-time ANU staff member, Frank Bongiorno, says he has never seen, “such a lack of vision, such a vacuum of ideas, such general disorganisation, nor such cavalier decision-making about institutions and programs built up through hard work over decades” in all his years at ANU. He outlined his concerns in this submission to ANU management.

I take this opportunity to respond to the above [Organisational change proposal for the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences] document. It does not form a satisfactory foundation for the future of the College of Arts and Social Sciences of the Australian National University. Its most alarming aspect concerns its vague claims about future earning capacities of the College, which are founded on no evidence, research or even consultation beyond last-minute ad hoc discussions with some – but not all – heads of Centre and School.

Here, I take up the question of four Centres. I do so because the destructive course set out by this document is most evident in these particular cases.

(1) Humanities Research Centre (HRC)

The only statement about the Humanities Research Centre founded in fact is that it was ‘[e]stablished in 1974’ and ‘has made a significant contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship, public engagement, and international collaboration in the humanities at ANU.’ Indeed, the HRC was established by Vice-Chancellor, Sir John Crawford, to be a world-class centre for the humanities, consistent with his high ambitions for the ANU itself. It has performed its mission with great distinction; it is hard to think of an academic unit in the University that achieved a higher global reputation. Its visitors over the years have comprised some of the most famous figures in the global humanities. Its destruction, therefore, represents a blatant disinvestment by CASS ANU from excellence in the humanities and will be rightly seen in that light by the HRC’s many supporters, here and abroad.

The document is mainly devoted to a series of tendentious, inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims about the HRC. It is false to assert that ‘the HRC’s core functions including seminars, visiting fellowships, and public event [sic] have become embedded within, and foundational across, the constituent Schools of Humanities and the Arts and the broader College’. None of the Schools have as their focus interdisciplinary humanities research. None of them maintain systematic relationships with humanities programs elsewhere in the world. None of them develop an annual theme and bring together, from around Australia and world, scholars working at the cutting edge of the humanities to explore that theme. I am unaware........

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