Dear Editor,

Mark Finnane’s discussion of an enthusiasm for ‘citational justice’ among some colleagues in the Humanities and Social Sciences is timely and worrying. His wording about the ‘chilling effect’ of the cultural politics he depicts is apt and, as he says, demands debate. Are we really supposed to support a filtering of authors’ identities to determine what is worthy of being published or cited?

To underscore Finnane’s point that The Conversation’s editors at times practise gatekeeping of a questionable kind, a piece submitted by myself and Indigenous colleague Michael Aird was rejected in early 2022. Although, in the case of one author, we presumably satisfied the policy ensuring the requisite personal ancestry, the rejection was because an editor did not like the questions we raised. We addressed the risk of naïve assumptions regarding ‘embedding’ Indigenous knowledge across all or part of the academic curriculum, a move now described at times as ‘Indigenising’ or ‘decolonising’ the subject matter, theoretical approaches and methods of academic disciplines. We were unwilling to modify the wording to suit the political preferences of the editor. We were tasked repeatedly with changing the questions we were asking about a debate relevant to ensuring best and enduring outcomes in teaching the history and present of intercultural relations.

One of the requirements was astounding: a repeated insistence that we cite a post from Twitter.

David Trigger

Mark Finnane replies:

My commentary on the contemporary politics of publishing seeks to bring into public debate the values being exercised when researchers or editors decide that the identity of the author is a relevant criterion in evaluating the worth of matter submitted or pitched for publication.

David Trigger reminds us that the matters being judged may be not identity, but political preference. The rejection of his submission (with Indigenous colleague Michael Aird) addressing ‘the risk of naïve assumptions regarding “embedding” Indigenous knowledge across all or part of the academic curriculum’ replicates other people’s experience. In 2020, The Conversation declined a pitch by Tim Rowse in which he would have explored the difficulty of classifying some topics as ‘Indigenous issues’. In Australia today, as the referendum debate demonstrated, Indigenous Australians are concerned with a range of matters and display a range of ‘Indigenous perspectives’. That range is expanding unpredictably. In 2024, Tim Rowse and I offered to address these questions in a pitch to The Conversation that was rejected as ‘it would look like navel-gazing and be boring to most readers’.

In this context, Misha Ketchell’s response bears more than a touch of casuistry. Deciding what are ‘matters relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities’ on which ‘it is desirable to involve Indigenous academics or knowledge holders’ is not an exercise in common sense. It is a process that demands political decisions by editors about the scope of ‘matters relevant’, decisions for which they are unaccountable. Such decisions may be masked by appeals to ‘newsworthiness and relevant author expertise’.

At a time when the values of independent research and scholarship are under severe pressure in the world’s leading democracy, it seems timely to engage in debate over what should constitute ‘best practice’ in keeping with those values.

Selling science short

Dear Editor,Thank you, Diane Stubbings, for showing us, in your review of The Best Australian Science Writing 2024, that much of the so-called ‘best’ Australian science writing has little to do with science (ABR, January-February 2025). It is difficult to make science accessible and inclusive without ceding rigour, which is why I, too, have argued, in earlier issues of ABR, that judges and curators should do better in recognising literary science writing that doesn’t sell science short.

Robyn Arianrhod

Dostoevsky and Robodebt

As I read Eve Vincent’s review of Rick Morton’s book Mean Streak (ABR, January-February 2025), which is about the mendacity of Robodebt, Dostoevsky’s notion that we save our greatest contempt for the weak came to mind.

Patrick Hockey

Hillary Clinton’s intentions

Dear Editor,

Allan Behm’s review of Hillary Clinton’s essays about her life in Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on life, love and liberty made me wonder if he had read the book (ABR, December 2024). A distinguished security analyst, Behm appears to have misunderstood the author’s intentions. Clinton was asked by her publisher to write about her political life in the context of her personal life. As she puts it: ‘It’s about the fight for democracy and also about being a friend, wife, mother and grandmother. It’s about getting older …’ Clinton admits that she found her reflective task difficult and would have preferred to write about policy and politics. My problem with Behm’s review is that he never judges her book in the light of its intentions.

Something Lost, Something Gained is a collection of essays, not a memoir or autobiography. Behm judges Clinton’s supposed ‘autobiography’ harshly. ‘When autobiography morphs into autohagiography the result is always the same – self-promotion and self-justification become coterminous. Anodyne description masquerades as deep insight, and triviality promotes the Panglossian self-satisfaction that denies the reader any insight.’

Clearly, Behm is not an admirer of Clinton. He barely mentions her achievement in winning the popular vote against Donald Trump at the 2016 presidential election. Since he views Clinton as self-promoting and self-satisfied, he accounts for her lifelong efforts on behalf of disadvantaged women and children around the world as furthering her ambition to be ‘cemented’ into the ‘feminist pantheon’ (whatever that means.) Behm dismisses Clinton’s efforts to describe her human struggles as self-justification: presumably he would regard her efforts to put people and human relationships at the forefront of policy abstractions as attention-seeking. He questions the absence of new revelations that might explain Clinton’s perseverance with her marriage to Bill Clinton, which she discusses obliquely, emphasising her rewarding and long-lasting friendship with her husband.

Behm considers that Clinton’s vision of America is simultaneously utopian and narrow, an aggregation of the virtues of small communities of past generations. He complains that she ignores past and present ugly robber barons of capitalist America and has done nothing to counter their dominance. However, Clinton provides a lengthy analysis of that contemporary robber baron Donald Trump. Nor is it clear what Clinton might have done to counter the uglier faces of US capitalism in any of her five public roles: governor’s wife, First Lady, senator, secretary of state, presidential candidate.

Dismissing Clinton’s chapter covering the source, status, and impact of her religious faith, because she belongs to a privileged US élite (Protestantism), Behm states that the Methodist tradition that still inspires her is not of interest to Australians. Presumably this is because of her gender, since senior male politicians of faith, including Protestants, are of great political interest, as noted in the mourning for former President Jimmy Carter and in extensive commentaries about the faith-life of recent Australian prime ministers Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, and Scott Morrison.

So Behm sees little value in understanding Clinton’s struggles with maintaining work and motherhood, work and lifelong friendships, work and humanity, and the need to put people ahead of policy abstractions. But these are all substantive matters for women who work and also for the many men interested in women’s equality.

Behm’s final, odd insult is to disparage Clinton’s personality: to mark down her conscientiousness, persistence, and self-discipline. For personality theorists, these traits might explain Clinton’s steadiness and reliability, but for Behm they identify her as twee, humourless, and boring. (Would a male leader be so readily discounted?) Despite the substantial difference in their views of society and their disparate political goals and methods, he twins Clinton with the arch-conservative former British Prime Minister Theresa May – since he considers both to be ‘Goody Two Shoes’. Surely Behm, in this comparison, himself elevates triviality?

Jan Carter