9 May, 2024
Dear Reader,
I am delighted to bring you a special guest contributor, Bella d’Abrera, a courageous and eloquent defender of what I love to call The Great Tradition. I hope you enjoy her piece and thank her for her support of the Dawson Centre, and her friendship.
THE COLLOQUIUM 6 JULY
We have firm offers of papers from Bella d’Abrera, Richard Brown, Anna Krohn, Lucas McLennan, Karl Schmude and Steven Schwartz. Others are under consideration but we are keen to attract more submissions. The detailed Call for Papers document is the final item of this newsletter.
FREE STUDENT REGISTRATIONS
Two of our readers have each generously offered to cover the cost of a full registration for a student who would otherwise be unable to attend. We thus have two free places available and I invite nominations: do please write to me at director@dawsoncentre.orgif you have any thoughts.
FRIENDS OF CHRISTOPHER DAWSON
The following have recently joined the ‘Friends of Christopher Dawson’:
Andrew Horder
Marion Isher
Michael Rose
We welcome and thank them warmly for their generous support.
Here are some ways you too can help the Dawson Centre continue its work in the future:
- Donate, using the charitable site GiveSendGo.
- Donate by choosing one of the options on our own website.
- Become a Friend of Christopher Dawson by making a single one-off donation – write to me for more details.
- Vigorously encourage your friends and colleagues to subscribe (free of charge) to our newsletter.
- And if you are a believer, pray for an increase of wisdom and respect for truth in public life that would make much of what we do redundant!
WEBSITE ENHANCEMENT
We would like to develop ‘resource pages’ on our website for visitors interested in expanding their knowledge of Christopher Dawson himself, as well as other matters relating to the defence of the Western Tradition: such things as courses, scholarships, communities, reading lists. Please consider whether you can help with this project.
With best wishes to all,
David Daintree
SPECIAL FEATURE
BELLA D’ABRERA: THOUGHTS ON THE TRAGIC CORRUPTION OF THE YOUNG
One of the least surprising things to have happened in the last few weeks has been the appearance of ‘pro-Palestinian‘ encampments on university campuses across the Anglosphere. Universities are now beginning to reap what they sewed during the 1970s and 1980s, when the humanities departments of Western universities decided to rejected their original purpose, which was to make sense of and understand the world through the Western tradition of art, culture and philosophy.
Instead, they adopted a range of ‘new humanities’ subjects constructed entirely around postmodern critical theory, where everything has to be approached in terms of societal power struggle of class, race and gender. For years, universities have been allowing and encouraging the indoctrination of their impressionable young charges with the single worldview that all human interaction is underpinned by oppressive power structures.
It was never going to end well, especially when it comes to Critical Race Theory. This posits that Race is the defining principle of the structure of Western societies, and that ‘whiteness’ is the dominant system of power. Racial inequality is considered to be present in all conceivable situations. After years of being made to feel guilty about being white, being told that they have ‘white privilege’, and that they are the oppressors, these young people have realised that they too can finally shed the burden of guilt and join the ranks of the oppressed.
In what appears to be a giant game of cosplay, these students are dressing up as Palestinians and acting out a scenario in which they have been displaced from Gaza. It is significant that one of the student leaders at Columbia University demanded ‘humanitarian aid’ so that her peers barricaded inside wouldn’t ‘die of dehydration and starvation.’
By wearing keffiyehs, eating Middle Eastern food and greeting each other with as-salamu alaykum, they are acting out being the ‘other’. Many in the US are even getting down on their hands and knees to pray to Allah. In this way, they can finally join the ranks of the victim, which status been consistently glamorised by their own professors in the lecture theatres. They are no longer the ‘bad’ white oppressors, but the ‘good’ non-white oppressed.
The sad fact here is that while they are busy pretending to be victims, these young people are completely unaware that they are already victims. They are victims of years of indoctrination by identity-obsessed academics who have succeeded in completely unmooring them from reason, truth, beauty and from reality. They have been deprived of a knowledge of God and told that there is nothing beyond this fallen world of ours. They have been sent mad by the lunatic theories of the French postmodernists and turned into historically and culturally illiterate revolutionaries, waiting for the signal, when it comes, to rise up and tear down the values and institutions of Western Civilisation.
Dr Bella d’Abrera is the Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program, at the Institute of Public Affairs
FOR FURTHER READING
ABORTION UP TO BIRTH LEGAL IN QUEENSLAND
Queensland readers might wish to sign this petition. The organiser behind it is lawyer and heroic pro-life activist Dr Joanna Howe, whose uncompromising catchcry is make abortion unthinkable!
UNLIKELY CONVERSIONS TO CHRISTIANITY
This article by Jane Stannus is from the English edition of The Spectator. The subtitle is intriguing: The Blessed Virgin is integral to western civilisation!
NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
Do you sometimes wonder about the origins of the current non-binary illusion? Have a look at Judith Butler, ‘the godmother of queer theory’. Unfortunately this article is behind a pay wall, but have a try. Also worth reading are The Detransition Diaries, by Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell, stories of seven people who describe the short- and long-term harm that so-called gender-affirmative medicine did to their mental and physical health.
‘THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION’
This is the title of an 1895 essay by St George Mivart, distinguished English naturalist and Fellow of the Royal Society, in which he critiques Darwinian atheistic evolution and advances a more reasonable theistic evolution as an alternative theory. Gary Furnell’srecent review is available online here, free of charge by kind courtesy of News Weekly.
THE ALIGNED COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA
This is a new organisation worth watching. ACA is a collective of over 30 Australian organisations with over a million members and growing. ACA began in February 2024 following a large cohort of groups coming together to call for full analysis and accountability of the public health response since 2020. Augusto Zimmermann and Ramesh Thakur (both distinguished former speakers at out colloquia) are among the founders.
COMING EVENTS
MELBOURNE TUESDAY 21 MAY
FREE SPEECH UNION OF AUSTRALIA
Symposium on Intellectual Freedom in the Academy
The symposium will be held in conjunction with a speech by Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Prof Salvatore Babones will chair the event.
BRISBANE SATURDAY 1 JUNE
Classical Education: Making a Comeback. Seminar and Dinner in collaboration with LOGOS AUSTRALIS and the Australian Classical Education Society. The keynote speakers will be Andrew Kern, founder and president of the US CIRCE INSTITUTE, and Katerina Hamilton. FULL DETAILS AND BOOKINGS HERE. Discounted early-bird rates are available until 6 May.
MORE CLASSICAL EDUCATION EVENTS!
Andrew and Katerina will appear at several other classical education events in Melbourne and Sydney as well as Brisbane, including training days for teachers and home educators in each city. For details and tickets to each event please visit:
- Mon 3 June – Classical Teaching Seminar in Brisbane
- Tue 4 June – The Classical Education Revolution – Evening Seminar in Melbourne
- Wed 5 June – Classical Teaching Seminar in Melbourne
- Thu 6 June – Ramsay Centre Lecture in Sydney
- Fri 7 June – Classical Teaching Seminar in Sydney
REDISCOVERING HOPE
How did we lose it? How can we get it back?
The 5th Henry Baldwin Lecture Wednesday 19 June 7:30pm.
In the midst of an epidemic of mental illness, wars and political breakdown, the climate crisis, the rising cost of living, many of us are feeling anxious about our world. Hope is not lost. But where can we find it? Clinical Psychologist Dr Leisa Aitken on how hope has endured through the storms of human history, with practical advice on how we can have hope today.
St George’s Anglican Church, Battery Point
All welcome – free admission: BOOK HERE
HOBART, LATE JUNE
Toby Young, British controversial social commentator, founder and director of the UK Free Speech Union, associate editor of The Spectator is hopefully coming to Hobart in late June. Details are being worked out – more news soon.
FOR NEXT YEAR’S DIARY: ROME, JULY 2025
With Campion College we are jointly planning a two-week residential Summer School, with two parallel streams, Latin and History, from 30 June to 15 July 2025. Campion’s last Rome school was before the Covid years, in 2018. We are thrilled to be able to work with Campion in this.
HOBART SATURDAY 6 JULY
COLLOQUIUM 2024
The Ninth Dawson Centre Colloquium, Saturday 6 July 2024
Authentic Humanism
and the Crisis of Culture
The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies is an independent, not-for-profit think tank, dedicated to promoting enhanced awareness of the riches of the Christian Intellectual and Cultural Tradition.
Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) is considered to have been the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century. He is principally known for his powerful defence of the vital role of the Christian religion as a central strand of Western culture, but he also insists –
‘It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole…’
We in the Dawson Centre believe that every civilisation is shaped by a religious impulse, something fundamental to and inseparable from human nature, and that civilisations wither when this impulse is smothered or suppressed. In the twentieth century, and perhaps even more now, we have seen that nexus between Religion and Culture, between Faith and Reason, challenged by tyrannical forces of both the Right and the Left.
Not only is the belief in God as our ultimate reality widely denied, but our confidence in objective truth, goodness and beauty has been dealt a near fatal blow by the soi-disantintellectual elites that dominate the educational high ground. Our young people must be saved from this.
On Saturday 6 July the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies will host its ninth annual colloquium in Hobart, Tasmania. The Dawson Colloquium is a conversation, rather than a multi-stream conference. There are no keynote speeches, as all are considered important to the flow of ideas, and speakers are encouraged to attend all papers.
The Colloquium will be held again at the Italian Club, 77 Federal Street, North Hobart. The after-dinner speaker this year will be Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz AM FASSA, formerly Vice-Chancellor of three universities (Brunel, Murdoch and Macquarie) and currently Senior Fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies.
CALL FOR PAPERS
We invite submissions from persons interested in addressing the topic. Speakers should not only identify and evaluate threats to the Christian culture and humanism, our common heritage, propose practical strategies for preservation and restoration.
Total time allocation for each paper will be 45 minutes, which should include time for questions and discussion (the proportion at each presenter’s discretion). Proceedings will be recorded and posted on the internet, and published late in 2024 or early 2025. A submission implies consent to online and print publication. Those intending to offer a paper should supply the following:
- The title of your paper
- A brief abstract (50 – 150 words)
- A brief bio or CV (50 – 150 words)
- A hi-res passport style photo
Proposals should be sent to Dr David Daintree, Director, Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies director@dawsoncentre.org, 0408 87 9494.
Please note if your paper is accepted that registration is complimentary for all presenters