Melbourne uni lecturer demoted

Uni 'damaged' over lecturer's demotion:
"The University of Melbourne's reputation for upholding academic freedom has been damaged by the demotion of a senior lecturer after a complaint against him by the State Government, the tertiary union says.

The Age revealed today that Paul Mees, a senior lecturer in transport planning and a prominent public transport advocate, was told his pay would be slashed after he made a strongly worded attack on the Government over transport privatisation.

In the attack, made at a public forum last year, Dr Mees said the authors of a 2007 report on privatisation were "liars and frauds and should be in jail".

Documents obtained by The Age showed that one of the university's reasons for acting against Dr Mees was a concern about its relations with the Government.

.......
Without telling Dr Mees, the university also launched an investigation into whether he had damaged the university's reputation.

The inquiry, conducted by Michael King of Monash University's law faculty, found Dr Mees had "brought the university into disrepute by making derogatory and insulting comments'' about Government officers.

In the report, Professor Low is quoted saying the Government "had had enough of Dr Mees' over-the-top remarks and (wanted him) reined in''.

Professor Low has been in negotiations with the State Government over funding a research project into greenhouse gas emissions from transport.

Mr Betts has agreed to be a partner in the application for funding.

Dr Mees has since quit the university, and will give his final lecture next week. He has accepted a role with RMIT's planning department."
The Age editorial:Unis must remain places of debate and dissent.
I retired from the university 3 years ago and had some sort of association with the university by which I could use the iniversity facilties like the library under the condition that I had to use the university address on my papers. This facility expired on April 1 and I decided not to ask for an extension. The reason: having quit college for a few years in my younger days, I always had this ambition of writing a paper using my home address. My late friend C.P. Ramanujam did this once. When I mentioned this to friend in the university, he said that he too was not keen about the university any more.