Setting the scene
So let's make it clear from the start. I am not writing about stuff expecting this will become popular and so on. This is most likely a therapeutic way to de-stress. Get it out in the open, as it were.
It won't take many more posts for you to realise that I am currently based in Australia, and have for some years. And if you know Australia, and you know Australian universities, you'll most likely have heard about all the problems they have. Although you might have just been hearing about them now, but the fact is, they have been warned about these problems for a very long time.
Let's name the issue: Australian universities have been run like corporations for many years now, but they lack the structures and oversight that make actual business accountable.
You can easily find many news articles on these issues, so I am not going to go further into them.
What I do want to talk about is the culture that this environment has created, fostered, protected... and how it's slowly shaping the way researchers and research community think, work, and treat each other.
I am not particularly a big fan of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it's hard not to admire how sharply it captured the distortion of language, how words that once meant something clear and good can be twisted to mean something else.
We see this in academia and research environment a lot.
"Tolerance" means turning a blind eye and allowing bad behaviour to continue, because calling it out would be "disruptive".
"Respect" means to not question those in charge.
"Professionalism", "friendship", "civil", all these words have become tools to control, mask harm, obscure responsibility, and erase guilt.
So what's left at the end of is a performance, one in which if you dare to stand up and point out the absurdity, you will be removed.