Deakin academic sacked after Newscorp campaign

Within a week of La Trobe University reversing its decision to suspend Safe Schools Coordinator Roz Ward, Deakin University sacked another left wing academic. Journalism lecturer Martin Hirst was notified of his termination on 9 June.

Hirst is both a Marxist and a critic of the Murdoch media empire. His sacking is the result of a five year red-baiting campaign by Newscorp columnists with the express aim of driving him out of academia. After addressing the 2011 Finklestein enquiry into media regulation, Hirst was called by a Daily Telegraph reporter who asked “if [he is] or ever had been a communist”. He has since been the subject of attack articles by Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt and trolling from their supporters on his personal Twitter account.

Deakin has twice taken disciplinary action against Hirst on the basis that his use of invective in response to these trolls brought disrepute to the university. This is just a thin cover for the university’s acquiescence in the political campaign against him.

In 2014, Deakin suspended him without pay following Andrew Bolt’s selective publication of some of his Tweets. He was reinstated after intervention by the National Tertiary Education Union, a flood of petitions and an open letter from academics across Australia.

Since April, Hirst has again been suspended without pay following an anonymous complaint about a Twitter exchange with Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi.

If allowed to stand, the sacking of an academic on the basis of personal social media posts will set a terrible precedent for workplace rights at universities. After the right’s recent defeat over Roz Ward’s reinstatement, Martin Hirst’s sacking would re-embolden them in their campaign to purge all of our universities, schools and public broadcasters of left wing voices.