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campusreview.com.au
Janette Howard, John Howard and NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian at the event. Photo: Ramsay Centre
Billionaire’s bequest
A million-dollar endowment will fund degrees
in Western civilisation scholarship.
By Loren Smith
T
here were gold flourishes on the carpet, on the walls and
on the banners. A pianist performed the classics while
waiters circled with trays of frigid champagne. There were
bow ties, red ties and many dark suits.
The opulent tone was expected for an event predicated on a
multimillion-dollar endowment: the launch of the Ramsay Centre
for Western Civilisation.
The late Paul Ramsay, AO, of Ramsay Health Care had
bequeathed money “to advance education by promoting studies
and discussion associated with the establishment and development
of Western civilisation, including through establishing scholarship
funds and educational courses in partnership with universities”.
This essentially means the endowment will fund degrees
in Western civilisation, including scholarships. It has yet to be
determined which universities will be involved, but an attendee
told Campus Review that the University of Queensland and the
University of Sydney were jostling for the handful of spots.
Board members John Howard and Kim Beazley spoke at the
event. Howard began by saying we had “become too apologetic
about where we have come from”. The attendees responded with
murmurs of agreement, as well as the parliamentary “hear, hear”.
The former Australian prime minister appealed for a return
to Judaeo-Christian ideas, values and institutions: the church
(including the Reformation “with its emphasis on the individual”),
parliamentary democracy, music and literature.
“Even former Chinese president Jiang Zemin loved Shakespeare,
Beethoven and Mozart,” he quipped.
“This is not an exercise in triumphalism ... but it is an exercise in the
unapologetic espousal of what Western civilisation has brought to
mankind over the centuries.”
Former Labor leader Beazley stressed that the centre will remain
apolitical. He offered his thoughts on its establishment: Australian
universities’ humanities departments have an “enormous weighted
view” towards Asian studies for regional strategic reasons. According
to Beazley, because of this the focus on Western civilisations
in our universities has been “strangled”, and if not for Ramsay’s
endowment “would largely disappear from our understanding”.
Amid teaching and research, universities have “lost … the idea of
scholarship”, he added.
He concluded his speech with a mild doomsday prophecy: he
is troubled by the future of democracy and believes the Ramsay
Centre is its “last chance cafe”.
Whether it’s a last chance or something far less dramatic, what
does a Western civilisation degree actually entail?
Simon Haines, the centre’s director, can answer that. The chair
professor of English and deputy director of the Research Centre
for Human Values at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said that
structurally it will resemble an American liberal arts degree, such as
those offered at Amherst College.
Content wise, it will span Western history – from the Greeks to
the modern day – through analyses of literature, art, architecture
and music. Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Locke and
Tolstoy will all get a look-in.
The degree will be “elite but not elitist”, in that those with a high
enough ATAR and other leadership or community contribution
credentials will be accepted. Its enrolment aim is to bring together
a group of similar-minded high achievers.
Campus Review asked Haines what sort of jobs, if any, the
degree will prepare its scholars for. He was quick to respond.
For one, they can combine it with a more vocationally minded
degree, like law, and the scholarship will cover the cost of the
combined degree.
“[Secondly] the kind of training that a student would get by three
of four years of, in small groups, reading very complex texts, and
developing ways of presenting their understanding of these texts …
is about the best preparation you can get for most working careers
involving corporate life, public service life or media life,” he said.
He added that the need for this is greater than ever “as we
become more dependent on AI in workplaces”.
“More and more we need strategic, articulate, verbal thinkers.”
Haines’s employment theories will have to wait a few years
before being tested – the centre will only accept its inaugural
scholars in 2019. ■
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