Barry Spurr, professor of bigotry
Barry Spurr is Oxford educated, Australia’s first professor of poetry and poetics and specialist consultant to the federal government’s review of the national English curriculum.
An investigation by the independent media outlet New Matilda has also found that he refers to prime minister Tony Abbott as an “Abo lover”, to Nelson Mandela as a “darkie”, to women as “whores” and to Asians as “Chinky-Poos”. In fact, he appears to be a supreme bigot on almost every front, according to emails he has sent over the last couple of years, extracts of which have now been made public.
An old saying is, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. The Sydney University academic tried this on, defending his bile as “whimsical linguistic games”. Few were convinced. The university was forced to suspend the professor pending an investigation into his conduct.
At a snap protest outside his office, students ripped up Spurr’s name tag and pinned the more accurate “Barry Spurr, Professor of Bigotry” to his door. “Racism? No way! We got Barry banned today!” echoed down the halls of the John Woolley Building, where he has been crafting his hate speech.
The demonstration on 17 October was organised by the SRC’s education officers. One of them, Eleanor Morley, explained: “The comments of Barry Spurr are reprehensible and should have no place on a university campus. Organising a snap action was important in letting the university know that students reject his views and demand his dismissal.”
Kyol Blakeney, Indigenous officer and SRC president-elect, also criticised Spurr’s position on the review committee for the national curriculum, “As a person studying primary education and one day hoping to be a teacher, I don’t feel comfortable teaching this curriculum that he’s setting … I don’t feel comfortable leaving out our Indigenous languages in schools. I don’t feel comfortable leaving out the past 60,000 years of history just because in the last 226 it’s tried to be eradicated so many times. I don’t feel comfortable teaching that.”
Spurr is but one face of an establishment that is usually savvy enough to couch its prejudices in more acceptable language. So while the establishment is distancing itself from him, we should be under no illusions that its members are concerned about anything other than the fact that the professor was stupid enough to get caught.
Postgraduate Representative Association international students’ officer Maral Hosseinpour condemned the government for its ongoing fear campaigns against Muslims and others, “They are building a wall of racial hate, xenophobia and misogyny to divide us and rule; to teach us and our children to hate and suspect immigrants and asylum seekers; to hate and harass women wearing hijab in public; to hate and deny Indigenous culture; and to humiliate and discriminate against women and sexual minorities.
“[The government] is demanding that we ‘say something if we see something’. Yes, we fucking see something, and we will say something so loud and clear that everybody including professor Spurr can hear and appreciate its rhyme: say it loud, say it clear – racists are not welcome here!”
To celebrate Spurr’s suspension, students engaged in our own “whimsical linguistic games” in the form of a poetry recital. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by the academic’s favourite T.S. Eliot was adapted by student protester April Holcombe into the “The Hate Song of Barry Spurr”. It ended with the resolute:
Streams of hatred fill your odious argument
With insidious intent
To read you surely overwhelms digestion …
Oh do not ask, “What is it?”
With our answer, we come visit.
In his room the students come and go
Barry Spurr: his job no more, my, no.
