#academic corruption

Abstract

Black womxn's endurance of the American Gothic is distinct—one filled with corporeal violence, blood-thirsty systems, and haunting histories—thus, their healing requires the development of an equally attuned Gothic approach. Gothic Black feminism is an emerging theory that considers Black American womxn's madness to be the intended consequence of presumably permanent systems of power—henceforth referred to as the American Gothic. This piece, the third within a three-part Gothic Black feminist series, carries the thread of its conceptual and clinical innovation. The present work presents five novel interventions organized between two overarching sections: (1) Gothic Psychotherapy: Roots of an emerging praxis and (2) Gothic Black feminist intervention: Applying its lens to existing approaches. Section one, Gothic Psychotherapy, introduces two interventions foundational to the emerging praxis: (1) Co-witnessing and (2) Gothic Black feminist psychoeducation. Section two, Gothic Black feminist intervention, introduces three novel interventions that demonstrate the application of its lens to existing clinical approaches: (1) Gothic card sorting/clinical cartomancy/Gothic Black feminist tarot, (2) Macabre metaphors and Gothic storytelling, and (3) Gothic narrative work. Two composite case vignettes, demonstrating the applied use of these interventions in the treatment of Black womxn clients, are included.

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A sad reminder that crack is the scourge of the black community.

By: Sky News

Published: Aug 15, 2026

A former University of Cambridge professor who resigned following claims of plagiarism and doubts about his life history has been found dead.

Jason Arday was found "unresponsive" at an address in Battersea in London on Friday afternoon.

The 41-year-old, who became Cambridge's youngest black professor in 2023, resigned as a professor of sociology of education last week.

His family told of their "shock" following his death and said he had faced a "campaign of misinformation".

It followed reports alleging he plagiarised his PhD thesis while at Liverpool John Moores University.

Other claims also came under scrutiny, including that he ran 600 miles in six days, and raised millions for charity.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: "Sadly, a 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His next-of-kin have been informed and are being supported by officers.

"At this time his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious."

[ Continued... ]

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You will hear idiots insisting that it's all the fault of the noticers: the people who noticed he was a plagiarist, the people who noticed he lied about his background, the people who noticed he lied about his education, the people who noticed he lied about basically everything.

You will be told that it's wrong to notice.

This is actually the fault of DEI for putting unqualified, incapable, unsuited people into positions they don't deserve. If they hadn't put him in this position in the first place, none of this would have happened.

And if they hadn't called everyone a racist for noticing, nor made stupid excuses on the basis of autism, if they had done the right thing, stood him down and did a proper investigation into his academic history and his appointment in the first place instead of lying and covering it up, the whole thing would have passed by quietly.

Do you remember any of these people?

All of them were exposed as frauds and plagiarists without it hitting the international news for two weeks.

Jason Arday is dead because they made him into their George Floyd.

By: Richard Dawkins

Published: Aug 8, 2026

Amid much attention to Jason Arday’s plagiarism and advanced Walter Mittyfication, the gobbledygook of his writing style has been largely overlooked, not least by the professorial electors at Cambridge and the PhD examiners at Liverpool John Moores University.

Dawkins’ Law of the Conservation of Difficulty states that obscurantism in an academic discipline expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity. Modern physics is genuinely difficult. Natural selection of Pleistocene man did not prepare our poor brains for Einstein or Heisenberg. Common sense, forged in a world of middle-sized objects travelling at medium speeds, must be sent away on compassionate leave when we open a book on quantum mechanics or relativity. Physicists have no need to language-up their writing. Their subject is intrinsically difficult. Naming no names, practitioners of a subject that any fool can understand may suffer from what has been called “physics-envy”. Longing to sound more profound than they are, what recourse have they but obscurantist language? Look, for example, at the following passage from Arday’s thesis:

“An important consideration which also formed part of the theoretical paradigm for the research recognised that the mentoring process is socially constructed, and therefore the relationship between the participants and the researcher needed to be tailored towards supporting the professional development of the student teachers, and making them autonomous social actors in this process, hence the researcher adopting the secondary position of facilitator within the research.”

I must ask: did the examiners at Liverpool John Moores University, who judged his thesis worthy of a PhD, actually read it? One trivial give-away: the thesis contains 332 instances where a plural noun’s terminal “s” is incorrectly followed by an apostrophe. There’s even one in the thesis title: “An exploration of peer-mentoring among student teachers’ to inform reflective practice within the context of action research.” Where I come from, a PhD candidate has a research supervisor, with a duty of care. It’s hard to believe even he read the thesis before letting it go forward to examination.

Never mind the apostrophes. They, at least, are not a substantial barrier to understanding, but my quotations below are, I assure you, typical of the whole thesis. I made an attempt to translate them into English — see the brackets — but after the first two gave up.

“This process allowed the researcher to immerse themself in the data collated.” (This process allowed me to immerse myself…)

“As the researcher, there was an awareness that the legitimacy of such suggestions regarding reliability are open to critique, however, this research study adopted these principles in attempting to maintain reliability through a qualitative research design.” (I realised that such claims to reliability might be criticised, but I hoped that my qualitative research design was reliable).

The infamous passive voice is much in evidence, together with the associated shunning of the first-person pronoun. “I” is demoted to “the researcher”, and even he suffers a further demotion, as in the weird “As the researcher” construction.

“As the researcher, textual units concerning the narratives and biographies were identified based on the criteria that the identified themes were fit for purpose in supporting the themes associated with the study.”

“References were made with regards to the benefits that were gained from the peer-mentoring experience, with regards to developing pedagogically and working as part of a collegial environment to support each other during teacher training.”

If I might plagiarise Oscar Wilde, a single “with regards to” might be regarded as a typo. Two in one sentence looks like… well, let’s just say it’s not what we expect from a Cambridge professor.

And then there’s this:

“Throughout the process, at critical junctures the researcher was conscious that with regards to providing knowledge to the participants regarding reflection and mentoring, a contradictory position was being adopted, with regards to eliminating anything that may resemble a hierarchical structure.”

Forgive me if I plagiarise myself:

“Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.”

Of course, I wouldn’t normally use a public forum to lampoon a style that should have been corrected by a PhD candidate’s supervisor. I wouldn’t normally do it but — for heaven’s sake — it’s a Cambridge professor we are talking about, appointed to a presumably much-coveted chair at one of the world’s great universities, possessor of three honorary doctorates. Mightn’t you be forgiven for wondering whether, just possibly, normal standards were relaxed? Arday has now done the honourable thing and resigned, leaving the University of Cambridge with much explaining to do. A BBC news film shows Professor Hilary Cremin calling him “The best in the world”. She also said that the Board of Electors to his Cambridge professorship were “absolutely unanimous”. Really?

Fortunately, there are signs that other faculties at Cambridge are as aghast as the rest of us at what has been done to their university’s good name. May I arm them with a lovely quotation from one of science’s great stylists, Peter Medawar: “…no one who has something original or important to say will willingly run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief.”

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Abstract

School Resource Officers (SROs), or sworn police officers in schools with arrest powers, are increasingly common in schools. Despite concerns surrounding SROs broadly and their use of arrest, in particular, little is known about how SROs understand their role in arrest. Drawing on a case study of SROs’ perceptions of arrest across two school districts and using a niceness as Whiteness framework, we found that SROs generally expressed trying to avoid arrest. Yet, when they recounted making arrests, they used mechanisms of niceness as Whiteness to justify arresting young people. We examine implications for school safety, care, and future research, policy, and practice.

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Damn those police officers and their… checks notes… politeness.

"We know they're evil because instead of being overtly evil, they were nice, which is worse, because it means they're being covertly evil."

Remember this gem from the "peak woke" days of 2020?

…

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2028-00012-001.html

Abstract

Heterosexism is a social force that affects all people, because heterosexism infuses social institutions and sustains heteronormativity, which dictates social roles for all people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The field of criticalheterosexualities has begun to explore how straight people experience costs from heterosexism and heteronormativity. However, few psychological studies have aimed to examine how straight/heterosexual people are negatively affected by heterosexism. In the present study, we explored lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) and straight ally emerging adults’ conceptualization of the psychosocial costs of heterosexism for straight people. We conducted four matched focus groups with LGBTQ+ (n = 13) and straight (n = 10) participants. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we identified three major domains of these psychosocial costs of heterosexism: distorted relationships, heteronormative restraints to self-exploration, and sexual ignorance. Results highlight how heterosexism has harmed straight people’s relationships, hindered their identity exploration and expression, and limited straight people’s ability to seek and obtain sexual knowledge. Findings yield insight for counseling psychologists’ clinical work with straight people, including identity exploration and relationships with LGBTQ+ people. These findings point to potential avenues for advocacy with straight allies, particularly in terms of inter- and intragroup dialogue.

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The paper just pauses at one point where the authors just ramble about themselves:

Researcher’s Positionality and Reflexivity Statement

we asked both groups to reflect on the consequences of these forces on one group (straight people) while recognizing that one group (LGBTQ+ people) may be better positioned to see these effects more vividly. The interview protocol (see Appendix) used open-ended questions that aimed at not leading participants to specific responses and allowed space for participants to answer in more meaningful and personalized ways. The first and second authors engaged in continuous memo writing throughout the data collection and data analysis process to understand their positionality and maintain reflexivity (Grzanka & Moradi, 2021). Throughout the data analysis process, the first and second authors frequently met one-on-one to discuss how their positionality and biases influence their understanding of the data. The first author reflected on how his experiences as a White cisgender man shaped his interpretation of the data, particularly in relation to centering men’s experiences and masculinity. In contrast, the second coder, a South Asian, bi+ genderqueer woman, provided different perspectives—for example, on racial privilege and monosexual privilege—when exploring the experiences of White people, women, and bisexuality. The third author, a White cisgender gay man approximately 20 years older than all the participants, provided consultation throughout all stages of data collection and analyses. His contributions reflected his extensive qualitative and quantitative research experience with/on heterosexuality as a queer person. The authors’ collaboration allowed for deeper and richer interpretation and analysis of the data.

The research team was guided by critical constructivist paradigms, specifically queer theory (Grzanka, 2019). This research project was influenced and began with reading prior research on how White people experience psychosocial costs to racism (Spanierman & Heppner, 2004). Using queer theory and this prior research, the research team aimed to discover if straights experience negative consequences of heterosexism. However, the authors all identify as sexual minorities and have predominantly been harmed by heterosexism and, therefore, are attempting to understand its consequences for the dominant group. While this can limit our understanding of how straight people experience heterosexism, the authors’ experiences as queer people (i.e., their oblique relationship to/with heterosexuality) can offer valuable insight into understanding the pervasive harms of heterosexism.

These freaks and weirdos act like heterosexuality is itself an ideology. People who are consumed by ideology think everything everyone else does is ideological.

By: James L. Nuzzo

Published: Aug 3, 2026

Since 2015, universities in Australia have openly engaged in women-only hiring of faculty. News outlets have covered some cases, but, to date, no one has summarised the total number of cases or identified all the universities that have engaged in this hiring practice.

Challenges exist in quantifying the history of women-only hiring at Australian universities. Namely, the media has not covered all cases, and job advertisements have short lifespans on the internet. So, for the current analysis, I relied on multiple investigative approaches. First, I searched my own personal files, because, starting around 2019, I started to save examples of advertisements of women-only faculty positions in Australia. Second, I searched Google and Chat GPT for relevant news stories. Third, I searched universities’ applications submitted to the Athena Scientific Women’s Academic Network (Athena SWAN). Fourth, I used the Wayback Machine to search the archived versions of university job sites. Finally, I sometimes searched universities’ annual reports.

Number of advertisements versus number of hires

Sometimes, the number of women hired through women-only advertisements was explicitly reported by universities or the media. However, in other cases, the ony information that was available were the job advertisements. Basing the number of women-only hires from the number of women-only job advertisements is a limitation in the current analysis, because a single job advertisement does not necessarily mean that one person was hired from that advertisement. In some cases, multiple persons might be hired from a single advertisement. In other cases, no one might be hired from a single advertisement. Therefore, in the current data brief, when the number of women hired from a women-only advertisement was not reported by the university or media, I assumed that each women-only advertisement resulted in the hire of one woman. When a university stated in the job advertisement that they were aiming to hire a certain number of women-only from the one advertisement, then I assumed that the university hired that certain number of women.

Job type

The current analysis was restricted to women-only advertisements for the following positions: Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Fellow, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor, Professor, or Scientist (more broadly defined). I did not quantify universities’ use of related practices like women-only scholarships, women-only grants, etc.

Conservative estimates

The results presented in the current data brief are likely conservative estimates of the number of women faculty who have been hired via women-only job advertisements at universities in Australia. Given the tools readily available to me, my search was fairly extensive. However, I did not, for example, use Freedom of Information requests to obtain each university’s history of women-only job advertisements. Moreover, the search strategies that I used relied on universities being transparent about their women-only hiring practices. Australian universities likely engage in more discrete women-only hiring—either through positions that are never advertised or by advertising positions to both sexes, knowing that they will not hire a man for the position.

Organisation of the current data brief

First, I present the overall results for the total number of women faculty who were hired via women-only job advertisements across all universities in Australia between 2015 and July 2026. Then, in order of state or territory, I detail each university’s use of women-only hiring.

Each state or territory has an anti-discrimination or equal opportunity act. Each act contains exemptions or “special measures.” These exemptions are what universities and other organisations cite in justifying their use of women-only hiring. In the current data brief, I present the text of these exemptions and then summarise each university’s use of women-only hiring practices by providing screenshots of their women-only job advertisements and by quoting from university press releases, annual reports, and Athena SWAN applications.

Athena SWAN

Athena SWAN – a third-party “gender equality” accreditor – is arguably the key driver behind women-only hiring at Australian Universities. Athena SWAN has transformed Australian university policy and culture. Not enough people are talking about the impact that Athena SWAN has had on Australian universities. Please see the Bonus Commentary at the end of this data brief for more information about Athena SWAN. Decoupling the link between Athena SWAN and Australian universities is perhaps the most important action that can be taken to reduce anti-male prejudice at Australian universities.

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1. RESULTS SUMMARY

Between 2015 and July 2026, at least 12 universities in Australia engaged in hiring of women faculty via women-only job advertisements. A minimum of 103 women faculty were hired via women-only job advertisements over that time. The universities that engaged in this hiring practice most frequently included the Australian National University (26 women-only hires), the University of Melbourne (22 women-only hires), and the University of Sydney (17 women-only hires). No universities in Queensland, Tasmania, or the Northern Territory were found to have engaged in women-only hiring of faculty.

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2. AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY (ACT)

2.1. Law

Australian Capital Territory Discrimination Act 1991

27. Measures intended to achieve equality

(1) Part 3 does not make it unlawful to do an act if a purpose of the act is—(a) to ensure that members of a relevant class of people have equal opportunities with other people; or (b) to give members of a relevant class of people access to facilities, services or opportunities to meet the special needs they have as members of the relevant class. (2) However, subsection (1) does not make it lawful to do an act for a purpose mentioned in that subsection if the act discriminates against a member of the relevant class in a way that is not reasonable for the achievement of that purpose. Example for s (1) (a) An employer runs a management skills development course for female employees only. Part 3 does not make this unlawful if a purpose is to ensure that women have equal opportunities (in this case, for career development) with men. Women are ‘members of a relevant class of people’ (relevant class of people is defined is defined in the dict) because they are a class of people whose members are identified by reference to a protected attribute, in this case, sex in s 7 (1) (u). Example for s (1) (b) A health clinic provides speech therapy for autistic children only. Part 3 does not make this unlawful if a purpose is to give autistic children access to a service that meets their special needs as autistic children. Autistic children are ‘members of a relevant class of people’ because they are a class of people whose members are identified by reference to 2 attributes mentioned in s 7, in this case, disability in s 7 (1) (e) and age in s 7 (1) (b) (the Legislation Act, s 145 (b) provides that words in the singular include the plural ie ‘attribute’ in the def of relevant class of people can mean ‘attributes’).

2.2. Australian National University

Of all universities in Australia, the Australian National University was the country’s leader in women-only faculty hiring. The Australian National University advertised at least 26 women-only faculty positions between 2015 and 2025. Ten of these positions were announced in a press release published by the University on August 29, 2022. The positions were in the fields of Astronomy and Space Science. The advertisement for this cluster hire is shown in part below.

However, even before that cluster hire, the University had engaged in women-only hiring. Evidence of this comes from the University’s 2019 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application and the University’s 2019 press release, titled, “Boosting women in mathematics at ANU.” In the press release, the University mentioned one position in the Mathematical Science Institute (MSI) that was advertised as being only open women. The advertisement for that position is shown in part below.

In its 2019 Athena SWAN application, the University provided additional information about its use of women-only hiring. The University stated that it had been “making female-only hires in areas that have particularly large imbalances to speed the balancing process up” and that in “extremely gendered subject areas,” they had “introduced women-only targeted recruitment drives in (Chemistry (2017), MSI (2018), and Astronomy (2019).”

Thus, the University had also apparently conducted women-only recruitment for positions in Chemistry in 2017 and Astronomy in 2019. Using the Wayback Machine, I was able to find the 2017 Chemistry job advertisement, but not the 2019 Astronomy job advertisement. The Chemistry job advertisement is shown in part below. It was a cluster hire for up to five positions. The advertisement specified that at least 50% of the new appointments (i.e., three or more positions) would be “women and non-binary candidates.” Thus, in my tally, I estimated three women-only hires associated with this advertisement.

Interestingly, concerns from staff about women-only hiring were mentioned by the University in its 2019 Athena SWAN application and in a press release. For example, in its Athena SWAN application, the University mentioned that its “aggressive program” of women-only hiring was causing “some backlash from current staff members” but that the University was “managing” it.

Finally, in searching the Wayback Machine, I identified several other women-only job advertisements posted by the Australian National University between 2022 and 2025. Most of the jobs were in the fields of Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Optical Physics. The ranks of the jobs ranged from Postdoctoral Research Fellow to Associate Professor. In my opinion, the most notable of these additional advertisements was the one for Associate Professor or Professor in the field of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. The reason why I highlight this advertisement is because it shows the University extending its use of women-only hiring to a field in which women are broadly well represented (i.e., medical science). Below, I show part of that job advertisement. I also show the University’s most recent women-only job advertisement (May-April 2025), which was for a Postdoctoral/Research Fellow in Optical Physics.

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3. NEW SOUTH WALES (NSW)

3.1. Law

Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 - Section 126

126A Exemption for special needs programs and activities

(1) Nothing in Parts 3–4C renders unlawful anything done by a person in good faith for the purposes of or in the course of any program or activity for which certification is in force under this section as a special needs program or activity. (2) The Minister may certify a program or activity to be a special needs program or activity if satisfied that its purpose or primary purpose is the promotion of access, for members of a group of persons affected by any form of unlawful discrimination to which this Act applies in an area of discrimination to which this Act applies, to facilities, services or opportunities to meet their special needs or the promotion of equal or improved access for them to facilities, services and opportunities.

3.2. University of Sydney

Of all universities in Australia, the University of Sydney was the country’s third most frequent user of women-only faculty hiring. The University of Sydney advertised at least 17 women-only faculty positions between 2015 and 2025.

In 2025, the University of Sydney embarked on a Women in Engineering recruitment campaign. This led to the University hiring 16 women in the School of Engineering. This women-only hiring campaign was reported in a press release by the University, and it was also covered by the South Sydney Herald and Times of Higher Education. The press release revealed that the University planned to continue women-only recruitment campaign in 2026, but results from this effort were unavailable at the time that my analysis was conducted. Nevertheless, one women-only position was advertised by the University of Sydney in March 2026. The position was the Professor Harry Messel Research Fellow in Physics, which I shared on X on March 4, 2026 and in the Weekly Roundup on March 8, 2026.

3.3. University of the Sunshine Coast

The University of the Sunshine Coast posted at least one women-only job advertisement between 2015 and 2026. In 2025, the University advertised for an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. The advertisement was covered by Sky News and The Nightly, and I have displayed it in part below. Note the University’s rationale: “to support gender balance within the School of Science, Technology and Engineering, closing the gender pay gap across UniSC, and ensuring Australia has an engineering workforce that more equitably represents our society.”

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4. SOUTH AUSTRALIA (SA)

4.1. Law

Equal Opportunity Act 1984 - Section 47

Measures intended to achieve equality

This Part does not render unlawful an act done for the purpose of carrying out a scheme or undertaking intended to ensure that persons of a particular sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status, have equal opportunities with, respectively, all other persons, in circumstances to which this Part applies.

4.2. Flinders University

In 2024, Flinders University posted a women-only advertisement for the position of Lecturer in Engineering (shown in part below).

Also, Flinders University’s 2019 Athena SWAN Bronze application provides evidence of the depth of influence of Athena SWAN on university policy. Flinders University stated that it would be creating a new university positioned called the Athena SWAN Project Officer. Presumably, the purpose of creating the position was to ensure that the University would receive future “awards” from Athena SWAN.

“An Athena SWAN Project Officer position will be developed and recruited, with responsibilities including executive support of the SAT and liaison with College Deans (People and Resources) and Director (People and Culture) in the implementation of the Action Plan.”

4.3. University of Adelaide

The University of Adelaide advertised eight women-only positions in the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences in 2018. News articles published by the ABC and Daily Mail confirm this (screenshots of the job advertisements are shown in the Daily Mail article).

Nevertheless, the number of hires made from the advertisement is unclear. In its 2019 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application, the University stated: “Last year we commenced women-only recruitment campaigns, which so far have resulted in five women academics being appointed in ECMS and one in Sciences. Much more can and must be done.”

Thus, in 2019, five of the eight positions had been filled by women. For the current data brief, I have assumed that all eight positions were filled.

4.4. University of South Australia

In 2017, the University of South Australia published a job advertisement (shown in part below) that stated “a number of Research Fellowships” in the field of Engineering would be made available only women. The University’s 2019 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application revealed that three women had been hired via this advertisement. The University stated: “We received 70 applications and made three (rather than two) appointments due to the outstanding quality of the candidates. This program is a case study in Universities Australia’s Best Practice Gender Equity Guide and our experience informs UniSA’s commitment to using women-only appointments where we can secure EEO Act exemption. In future, we will better communicate to the public the reasons for women-only recruitment.”

Thus, the University of South Australia hired at least three women faculty between 2015 and 2026 via women-only job advertisements.

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5. VICTORIA (VIC)

5.1. Law

Equal Opportunity Act 2010 - Section 12

12 Special measures

(1) A person may take a special measure for the purpose of promoting or realising substantive equality for members of a group with a particular attribute. Examples 1. A company operates in an industry in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are under-represented. The company develops a training program to increase employment opportunities in the company for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. 2. A swimming pool that is located in an area with a significant Muslim population holds women-only swimming sessions to enable Muslim women who cannot swim in mixed company to use the pool. 3. A person establishes a counselling service to provide counselling for gay men and lesbians who are victims of family violence, and whose needs are not met by general family violence counselling services. (2) A person does not discriminate against another person by taking a special measure. (3) A special measure must—(a) be undertaken in good faith for achieving the purpose set out in subsection (1); and (b) be reasonably likely to achieve the purpose set out in subsection (1); and (c) be a proportionate means of achieving the purpose set out in subsection (1); and (d) be justified because the members of the group have a particular need for advancement or assistance. (4) A measure is taken for the purpose set out in subsection (1) if it is taken—(a) solely for that purpose; or (b) for that purpose as well as other purposes. (5) A person who undertakes a special measure may impose reasonable restrictions on eligibility for the measure. Example It may be reasonable to restrict eligibility for a special measure to people with the attribute who are of a particular age. (6) A person who undertakes a special measure has the burden of proving that the measure is a special measure. (7) On achieving the purpose set out in subsection

5.2. Monash University

Monash University hired at least six women faculty via women-only job advertisements between 2015 and 2026. According to an article published in the Daily Mail in 2018, Monash University advertised three women-only roles in 2015 and two more in 2018. In 2026, Monash University advertised a women-only Lecturer to Senior Lecturer position in Geoscience. The advertisement is shown in part below.

5.3. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)

RMIT has engaged in women-only hiring, namely or exclusively through its Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowshipsprogram.

In RMIT’s 2018 Athena SWAN Bronze application, the University stated: “The 2018 RMIT campaign, advertising STEMM [Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowships] female-only opportunities was highly successful, and will continue where appropriate (Action 2.1a).” However, the University did not state how many women were offered or accepted these women-only Research Fellowships.

In its Athena SWAN annual reports in 2020, 2021, and 2022, RMIT mentioned the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship as a “special measure” was used each year for increasing the number of women faculty in certain subject areas.

In its 2020 Athena SWAN Annual Report, RMIT stated that it applied the “special measure” in recruiting women for “externally advertised academic roles in the STEM College for disciplines and levels where female representation is currently less than 40%.” However, the University did not state how many women were hired in 2020 using the measure.

In its 2021 Athena SWAN Annual Report, RMIT stated the following about the Chancellor’s Research Fellowships: “Special Measures are supported where female-only appointments can be made, and Research and Senior Research Fellowships applications accepted only from female applicants, for recruitment to Schools where there is less than 40% female representation.” However, the University did not state how many of the Research Fellowships were designated for only women. Of the 410 Research Fellowship applications received in 2021, the University said: “67% of Fellowship offers made to females across the entire scheme” and “88% of the offers to female candidates were in the Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow categories.”

In its 2022 Athena SWAN Annual Report, RMIT said that it received 815 applications for its Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowships and made “female-only appointments” in the School of Engineering and School of Computing Technologies. A total of 14 Fellowship offers were made across the scheme, with 10 of those offers made to women. It is unclear how many of the 10 offers that were made to women were due to “female-only appointments.” The report states that six of the 10 women were offered Level B and Level C appointments, and that “special measures” were applied to Level B and C appointments. Thus, all six of those offers to women might have been due to “female-only appointments.”

In 2026, RMIT again advertised the women-only Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowships. The University stated on its website that the fellowships would be offered in the School of Engineering and the School of Design (part of the advertisement is presented below). The University did not specify how many women-only fellowships would be offered.

Thus, via its Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowships program, RMIT presumably engaged in women-only hiring each year between 2018 and 2026. In RMIT’s 2022 SAGE Cygnet Award Application the University stated that it would continue to use “targeted employment strategies through the Victorian Equal Employment Opportunity Act (2010) for under-represented groups.”

Nevertheless, given the available information, I was unable to approximate how many women were hired at RMIT via the women-only Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowships. Thus, I included RMIT on the graph, but only with the description “multiple – number unknown.”

5.4. Swinburne University

Swinburne University hired at least seven women faculty via women-only job advertisements between 2015 and 2026. In 2017, the University announced that it had hired four women through its Vice Chancelor’s Women in STEM Research Fellowships program—a program that it had launched a year earlier, and which the University also discussed in its 2016 annual report. In 2019, the University announced that it hired a fifth Research Fellow through this program. The University’s 2018 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application confirmed its plan to use women-only job advertisements (see Section 1.1. in the table below).

Swinburne University also engaged in women-only hiring outside of the Women in STEM Research Fellowships program. In 2018, the University advertised a women-only position in Architecture at the rank of Associate Professor or Professor. In 2023, the University advertised a women-only position in Civil and Construction Engineering at the rank of Senior Lecturer.

5.5. University of Melbourne

Of all universities in Australia, the University of Melbourne was the country’s second most frequent user of women-only faculty hiring. The University of Melbourne advertised at least 22 women-only faculty positions between 2015 and 2026.

In its 2019 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application, the University of Melbourne credited itself as being, in 2016, the “first university in Australia to advertise women-only continuing academic positions, to address low female representation in key STEMM schools.” However, self-credited “first” seems to be incorrect, because, as mentioned above, Monash University was reported to have advertised women-only positions as early as 2015.

Nevertheless, in its Athena SWAN application, the University of Melbourne stated that it had advertised 19 women-only faculty positions. At the time that their application was submitted, they had hired 15 women, with six searches still in progress. If those six searches each resulted in one new hire, the total for women-only hires would be 21. This total is two more than the 19 positions advertised, because, in some instances, the university hired multiple women from a given advertisement.

Below is a table that the University of Melbourne published in its 2019 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application. It shows the University’s number of women-only advertisements and hires in the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering between 2016 and 2019.

In 2026, the University of Melbourne advertised for a Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Physics (part of the advertisement is shown below). This advertisement was covered by Sky News, The Noticer, and other media outlets. It was ridiculed, in part, because it is open to both “cisgender” and “transgender” women.

Finally, it should be noted that the University of Melbourne’s approach to women-only hiring has been discussed at length elsewhere. In 2023, three academics at the University published a paper in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management titled, “Affirmative recruitment of women in STEM: a case study.” The University’s use of “affirmative action” hiring was also covered by Nature in 2024.

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6. WESTERN AUSTRALIA (WA)

6.1. Law

Equal Opportunity Act 1984 - Section 31

Measures intended to achieve equality

Nothing in Division 2 or 3 renders it unlawful to do an act a purpose of which is — (a) to ensure that persons of a particular sex or marital status, persons who are pregnant or persons who are breast feeding or bottle feeding have equal opportunities with other persons in circumstances in relation to which provision is made by this Act; or (b) to afford persons of a particular sex or marital status, persons who are pregnant or persons who are breast feeding or bottle feeding access to facilities, services or opportunities to meet their special needs in relation to employment, education, training or welfare.

6.2. Curtin University

Curtin University hired at least five women faculty via women-only job advertisements between 2015 and 2026.

On March 3, 2020, the University posted an Expression of Interest (shown in part below) to “fill roles across all academic levels in the Faculty of Science and Engineering,” including in the Schools of Civil and Mechanical Engineering; School of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences; School of Molecular and Life Sciences; and School of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

This Expression of Interest was covered by the Western Australian and WA Today. The University’s 2020 annual reportrevealed that five women had been hired from the Expression of Interest: “Proactive search strategies in 2020 focused on acquiring diverse talent across the University, particularly in the Faculty of Science and Engineering. In April, an Expression of Interest calling for female-only applicants resulted in the appointment of five women in this faculty.”

6.3. Edith Cowan University

Edith Cowan University (ECU) hired at least four women faculty via women-only job advertisements between 2015 and 2026.

According to ECU in its 2021 application to Athena SWAN, which was subtitled “Decreasing gender disparities in the School of Engineering,” the University advertised an Expression of Interest for two Lecturer or Senior Lecturer positions in 2020. One of the positions was in the field of Civil Engineering, and the other position was in the field of Electrical Power Engineering. When these positions were originally posted in 2020, I took a screenshot of the advertisement (shown in part below).

Regarding this Expression of Interest, ECU stated the following in its Athena SWAN application:

“In 2020, [the School of Engineering] conducted its first ‘women only’ expression of interest (EOI) recruitment process. This was done to specifically encourage women to apply for opportunities within the School with the additional intent of less pressure placed on applying. This EOI remained open to ensure prospective women were kept informed about ongoing opportunities.”

ECU also advertised two women-only faculty positions in 2023 for Lecturers in Aviation and Civil Engineering. These two advertisements were discussed in ECU’s 2023 SAGE Athena SWAN Silver Award application. In the application, ECU explained that they first advertised the positions as open to all individuals. However, because ECU apparently wanted to hire women from the outset, and significantly more men than women submitted applications for the positions, ECU apparently then changed the advertisement to state that the positions were open only to women. The table below, which was published in ECU’s 2023 SAGE Athena SWAN Silver Award application, shows the results of the University’s experiment.

ECU hired women for both positions. No media outlets appear to have picked up on any of ECU’s women-only hiring practices over the past few years.

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Bonus Commentary

Over the past 10 years, Australian universities have used exemptions in state-level anti-discrimination or equal opportunity acts to engage in women-only hiring. At least 13 universities engaged in this hiring practice between 2015 and 2026. The Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Sydney were the universities that engaged in this practice most frequently over that time. In total, I identified 103 women-only hires. However, this is a conservative estimate.

Exemptions in anti-discrimination or equal opportunity acts are contradictory. They conflict with the spirit and intent of the base legislation to not discriminate against people based on characteristic like sex and race. Over time, these exemptions become increasingly abused, because thresholds for exemption rationale are gradually lessened.

Currently, universities are abusing these exemptions. Universities have argued that the exemptions are necessary because fewer women than men make up faculty in certain departments. In a previous data brief at The Nuzzo Letter, I showed the rationales given by universities in New South Wales when they have applied for and received government approval to engage in women-only hiring. Yet, the universities’ rationales are misguided. A sex difference in faculty representation is not evidence of unequal opportunity or sex discrimination. Thus, women-only hiring at Australian universities goes against the spirit of sex discrimination, and it represents a political powerplay by intersectional feminists who seek to bypass and thus subvert objective law to gain institutional power at the expense of the fair treatment of men.

Importantly, in the current data brief, I have limited the analysis to explicit acts of women-only hiring. Thus, the extent to which men have been unfairly treated in their job applications at Australian universities over the past 10 years is not fully represented in the current data brief. In Athena SWAN applications, universities often reveal other strategies that they have used to increase the chances of hiring women. For example, the University of Newcastle was not a university who I found used women-only job advertisement, though it has received a silver “award” from Athena SWAN. However, the University’s 2018 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application and 2024 Athena SWAN Silver Award application revealed that the University engaged in targeted recruitment of women and also preferential hiring of women. The University’s 2018 Athena SWAN Bronze Award application included the following statement about shortlisting female candidates:

“Survey data revealed mixed support for pro-active recruitment of women through targeting due to the backlash they might receive from men and some women. To mitigate opportunities for potential discriminatory comments and to ensure women apply, UON will ensure targeted roles are supported by a strong communication strategy (Action 1.9). An alternative to overt targeting is to set a minimum percentage of women to be considered at shortlisting.”

In the University’s 2024 Athena SWAN Silver Award application, it stated the following about considering female candidates first:

“…the Talent Acquisition Team will look at systems and/or process improvements to ensure applications from women and men are separated to ensure women are considered first, in line with the principles of targeted selection (ASSAP 1.1c).”

Athena SWAN

The catalyst behind women-only hiring practices at Australian universities has been Athena SWAN—a third-party “gender equality” accreditor. More specifically, Athena SWAN is the accreditation scheme, and Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) is the Australian body that administers the scheme in Australia.

The timeline of Athena SWAN is available here.

The Athena SWAN Charter started in the United Kingdom in 2005. Its stated purpose is to advance the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) in higher education and research.

Right away, that is a red flag.

Why are public universities being accredited by a third-party group who has a special interest in advancing the careers of only one sex and only one set of academic fields? More fundamentally, why are Australian universities engaging with an accreditation scheme that is involved in advancing anyone’s careers? Advancing academics’ careers is not what university accreditors are meant to be doing, and this is further evidence that Athena SWAN and SAGE are political vessels used by intersectional feminists to try to institutionalize female power. I am not the first to observe this. In 2022, one scientist referred to Athena SWAN as a “mafia system.”

In 2016, a first cohort of institutions started their Athena SWAN accreditation. In 2018, those institutions submitted their applications for the Bronze Award. Fifteen of the institutions were “awarded” the “prize.” In subsequent years, the number of institutions seeking “awards” from Athena SWAN increased and so did the amount of funding that was received from sources like the Australian government. In 2024, Edith Cowan University and the University of Newcastle became the first institutions to receive the Athena SWAN Silver Award. In 2025, Monash University became the third Australian university to win that “prestigious” accolade.

Athena SWAN has systematically altered university policies in Australia. Because Athena SWAN is informed by intersectional feminism, it does not limit itself to sex/gender or to advancing women’s careers in science. The ten principles of the current Athena SWAN charter are as follows:

1. Ensure that gender equity, diversity and inclusion work is appropriately resourced, distributed, recognised, and rewarded. 2. Undertake transparent and rigorous self-assessment processes, analysing institutional structures, systems, and cultures to identify the barriers to attraction, retention and progression for staff and students, and thus to gender equity, diversity and inclusion. 3. Design initiatives based on institutional data, and national and global evidence of best practice. 4. Monitor, evaluate, and publicly report on progress made, challenges experienced, and impact achieved, to inform continuous improvement. 5. Actively incorporate Indigenous knowledges and perspectives to address the specific inequities and injustices experienced by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander staff and students. 6. Consciously consider all genders, recognising that gender is not binary, and that trans and gender diverse people face specific inequities because of their gender identities. 7. Take an intersectional approach to advancing gender equity, diversity and inclusion, recognising that people of any particular identity are not a homogeneous group. 8. Engage with those most impacted by inequitable practice to proactively redesign and reshape structures, systems and culture. 9. Increase the safety and wellbeing of staff and students by proactively and transparently preventing and responding to bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, gender-based violence and discrimination. 10. Embed change in institutional governance and accountability structures; actively and visibly champion and promote gender equity, diversity and inclusion in our Institutions, the Athena Swan community, and across the sector; and hold ourselves and other senior leaders accountable for driving sustainable transformational change.

Athena SWAN has led to a smorgasbord of initiatives that centre women’s careers and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at universities. Evidence of these initiatives can be found throughout Athena SWAN applications. These initiatives include things like mandatory unconscious bias training, inclusive language guides, women-only workshops and support groups, and featuring photographs of female academics on university STEMM websites.

The total influence of Athena SWAN on Australian universities can be summarised in one phrase: the feminisation of the universities. The fundamental characteristic of the feminised university is the increased female:male staff ratio on campus. The feminised university has many distinct features, and I have listed many of them elsewhere. One of these features is academic cancellations for wrongspeak. I have previously documented how Edith Cowan University’s adoption of Athena SWAN was causally linked to my academic cancellation.

Moving Forward

SAGE and Athena SWAN have no business dictating university policy. The key to ending the current anti-male prejudice at universities in Australia is to decouple the links between the universities and SAGE and Athena SWAN. I am uncertain of the potential legal paths to accomplish this, and I am not confident that Australians in the academic, legal, media, and political sectors have the courage or “fire in the belly” to tackle this issue.

My recommendation to Australian citizens, who deplore this behaviour from the universities, is to flip the script on them.

Currently, universities in Australia believe that “awards” from Athena SWAN are “prestigious.” Consequently, universities wear “awards” from Athena SWAN as badges of honour and accomplishment.

On the contrary, “awards” from Athena SWAN represent the degree to which universities have implemented prejudicial, anti-male policies that have been informed by intersectional feminism and critical theory.

Athena SWAN “awards” are not badges of honour and success. They are badges of shame.

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1681367

Abstract

Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s call to study what is near to you, we write about our sometimes-joyful, sometimes-furious, always passionate struggles as graduate students in the academy. As a site of imperialism, racism, and patriarchy, the university grinds especially hard on women, people of color, black, indigenous, queer, disabled, and otherwise oppressed scholars. Out of a desire not just to get by or get ahead in this hostile space of competition and scarcity, we write about a feminist praxis that subverts the academy. Using collaborative auto-ethnography, asynchronous online interviews, and co-theorization, we conjure a network of rebels - what we call the feminist coven. We solicited contributions from feminist graduate students in response to three prompts about forms of communication, emotional labor, and imaginaries. Our findings show a vibrant landscape of creativity, love, rage, and longing for academia to be a more hospitable place. We and our contributors, whose voices pepper this article, offer ideas for how to summon new worlds and ways of being through small actions and everyday practices, subverting the violence of the academy by being the storm that blows through it.

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the university grinds especially hard on women, people of color, black, indigenous, queer, disabled, and otherwise oppressed scholars.

This is certifiably insane gaslighting.

DEI was literally invented in the academy. Higher education is at least neutral and very often biased in favor of women – especially in technical or scientific institutions – and the Supreme Court case has categorically shown that Harvard, Yale and medical schools overall have actively racially discriminated to the benefit of racial minorities.

Right this very moment, we have people and institutions falling over themselves to avoid calling Jason Arday a fraud, a liar and a thief, simply because he's a DEI golden boy.

we conjure a network of rebels

They're not "rebels." They're the establishment. Their ideology runs the entire institution. They're pretending to be pushing against an open door.

What you have is activists openly lying under the classic "repeat a lie often enough" tenet of propaganda.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10401334.2026.2707290

Abstract

Through a Critical Whiteness lens, we examined the extent to which the measures developed, or selected, to evaluate the effectiveness of the antiracist curricula also reflected a commitment to (or understanding of the importance of) disrupting white supremacist norms with respect to what and how measures should be used. We were curious to understand if development teams critically audited the content of their measures, scoring rubrics, and/or feedback loops for embedded norms associated with whiteness, ensuring that even the measures (beyond the interventions themselves) served justice rather than reinforcing whiteness as the invisible standard. Findings revealed that while measurement is happening, it is (a) often limited in psychometric rigor (i.e., validity and reliability evidence); (b) infrequently includes any actual behavioral changes (12% of studies); (c) rarely includes the input of patients in the development process; and (d) is absent of any critical theoretical orientation. In fact, the dominant patterns in measure development and use across the antiracist medical education interventions we identified revealed a persistent centering of whiteness—visible in the prioritization of white normative standards, the marginalization of minorized voices in design and validation, the absence of explicit justice-oriented theoretical frameworks, and outcome measurement focused on institutional and professional comfort. To ensure our measurement processes have the same justice-orientation as our interventions, we propose three principles, or guidelines, for measure design/development (critical theory integration, centering rights-holders with marginalized identities, and justice-aligned validity evidence).

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The crux of this paper is that medical schools, even when they're conforming to the demands and doctrine of the "antiracist' (neoracist) cult, aren't conforming as much as they could.

With fanatical ideologues and cults, you can never conform enough and it's a mistake to even try. When you concede any amount, they will demand more. This is how you know that it's not just ideological corruption and capture, but authoritarianism.