The Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies,

Where would we be without academics? - Pt. 74 of a seemingly endless series:

One of Australia's most prestigious universities has become the centre of a movement that believes Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has been framed by the West for last week's chemical weapons attack.

The University of Sydney is standing by a controversial senior lecturer, Tim Anderson, who has dismissed the sarin gas attack in the Idlib Province as a "hoax" and called Syria's six-year civil war a "fiction" perpetrated by the US "to destroy an independent nation".

Fairfax Media can reveal Dr Anderson is just one among a number of Australian academics who have formed a pro-Assad outfit called the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, based in Sydney, to counter "censorship" by their universities.

The centre was formed "after concern that many Western academic bodies constrain, censor and marginalise counter-hegemonic or anti-imperial research and discussion, due to their close ties with government and corporate sponsors"....

Next week the Centre will hold a two-day conference at the University of Sydney, including a discussion of the Syrian conflict "from Hezbollah's perspective". The event is endorsed by the University of Sydney Union-funded Political Economy Society.

An enthusiastic supporter of the Syrian state and lifetime radical, Dr Anderson was convicted in 1990 over the 1978 Hilton Hotel bombing in Sydney, but acquitted the following year. He has travelled to Syria several times to meet with Assad.

Comments

[Dom]

Another sentence I don't need to finish: "Dr Anderson is just one among a number of Australian academics who have formed a pro-Assad outfit ..."

[Kerrie O'Keefe]

The perspective of Hezbollah will be interesting to say the least. Why is the USA persuing this build up at this time? Israel has been left out of this discussion for too long. I look forward to reading the literature that comes out of this department and the conference. Expect to see a barrage of media attacks against Anderson, Sydney Uni, Hezbollah. Remember Hezbollah defeated Israel in southern Lebanon in the 1980s. They held the IDF off for 30 days and bloodied their nose in the 2000s. Israel are afraid of Hezbollah and are pushing the US to cut them down to size.

[JC]

I think there must be an international rule that once the death count has passed a certain threshold every murderous despot is entitled to his own team of Western academic apologists. IIRC the Khmer Rouge had "Concerned Asian Scholars".

[Epidermoid]

"Hezbollah defeated Israel in southern Lebanon in the 1980s."

No they didn't for if they had they would have been merciless in their destruction of that small country set amidst the useless of the world. Like America before it, strong moral civilised nations find it difficult to prosecute war whilst the treacherous at home denigrate their efforts or cheer for the enemy.