Never has the requirement of specialisation been more prevalent than in the current Australian media landscape. Even when a story is written specifically about millennials, the resultant article will likely be written by a fifty year old. Why? Because millennials lack the requisite qualifications to write about their own lives.

After the panel was over, a senior academic put up his hand and said, ‘These papers were all excellent, but one thing struck me – why are you all so conservative?’ I agreed to the point of formulating a clap or two. None of the three early career academics who had been asked to talk about ‘the future of the humanities’ at this ‘sandstone’ university were angered. One, a French literature academic, even embraced the comment.

For the sake of elementary critical reflection, it might be worth reminding our nation’s policy chiefs of the manifest oddities of free market capitalism.

Something is rotten at the heart of Sydney University. On the surface, it has never shown so attractive a face to the world. In the evening, walking back towards City Road, the glass and steel of the newly-finished law building frame the sloping green of Victoria Park, and beyond that, the lights of the city. […]