Australian universities have been “pathetic” and their senior leaders “culpable” for eschewing the public debate around youth gender medicine, according to academics who endorsed a call for a pause on chemical and surgical transitions among children and young people.
The wider academic community’s silence on the issue was “a failure of moral courage” – albeit an understandable one, given the “inevitable blowback” and threats to “job security or personal safety”, they said.
Twenty-four academics were among the 112 doctors, politicians, lobbyists and others who signed the 29 January open letter to prime minister Anthony Albanese and other key politicians.
Academic signatories to the Australian open letter said they had harboured concerns over the issue for several years. “I would not offer an opinion on which side is right in the clinical debate over youth gender medicine, although it seems to me as a non-expert that the Cass review takes a sensible position,” said Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University.
“I have expertise in the power of ideologies to damage evidence-based policymaking, especially in the climate change arena, and that is why I was asked to put my name to the letter.”
Cordelia Fine, professor in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne, cited longstanding “uncertainty” about clinical approaches to gender dysphoria. “Even while scientists and clinicians were grappling and debating this very difficult issue, the gender-affirmative model of care was being embedded within institutions and dissent was being labelled ‘transphobic’.”
Hamilton said universities had been “pathetic in this debate, in some cases throwing their scholars to the wolves. There are plenty of savages in the ivory towers.”
Source: Australian universities ‘capitulated’ on transgender medicine, scholars say