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University professor Dr Peter Ridd has been granted special leave to appeal to the High Court about his sacking from James Cook University over his comments disagreeing with colleagues’ work regarding the Great Barrier Reef.
As FamilyVoice reported last year:
For 27 years Dr Peter Ridd was a professor of physics at the James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville, Queensland. His research focused on the Great Barrier Reef.
He has had over 100 papers on his research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals across the world. His students liked and respected him.
But in May 2018, the university sacked him.
The university said a key reason was his lack of “collegiality”. He had publicly disagreed with some of his university colleagues, who claimed their research showed the Great Barrier Reef is dying.
Dr Ridd recently explained: “In the final analysis, I was fired for saying that, because of systemic problems with quality assurance, work from the JCU coral reef centre, which also publishes extensively on climate change, was untrustworthy. I believe what I said was true and have given plenty of published evidence to support the statement.
“After I was fired, it was proven beyond doubt that I was correct when a group of seven international scientists who audited eight of the major studies from the JCU coral reef centre found them ALL to be 100% wrong. You can’t get much more scientifically untrustworthy than that.”
Dr Ridd sued the JCU for unfair dismissal in the Federal Court last year. The judge found in his favour and awarded him $1.2 million in damages.
But the university appealed that decision. Last month two judges fully upheld the appeal, and a third wanted a retrial. The majority said that the university’s code of conduct takes priority over the academic freedom (or freedom of speech) guaranteed in Ridd’s employment contract.
In effect they said that academic freedom no longer means what it once did, and universities have the right to tell their employees what they can and can’t say, whether or not it is true.
Dr Ridd will have his appeal heard by the High Court later this year.