The Nuzzo Letter

Email Reply Public Sharing (may 30 2025)

148KB ∙ PDF file

According to the Notice of Decision:

· “A document search was conducted for material falling within the scope of the Request and included making enquiries with the following area of the University: School of Medical & Health Science; People & Culture Office; Legal & Integrity.”
· “Once I reviewed the documentation received, I was satisfied that there was a reasonable basis to conclude that all relevant documents in our possession have been found.”
· “There is no separate adjunct appointment or review committee. All new applications and expiring / renewal of honorary, adjunct and visiting appointments are brought to the monthly Executive Meetings for discussion and decisioning. The meeting minutes only note the outcome of the decisions made (i.e. to appoint or not appoint). There are no minutes around the discussion or rationale for decisions. Decisions are made according to the University’s Honorary, Adjunct & Visiting Appointments Guidelines. Appointees and unsuccessful nominees are notified by the nominating staff, member of the outcome. Therefore, there are no meeting records which include the specific reasons of the decision for your renewal to Adjunct Lecturer position.”

Also, the Notice of Decision states that one of the individuals who was key in my adjunct appointment not being renewed voluntarily agreed to not have her name redacted from the emails:

“ECU and the Executive Dean of the School of Medical & Health Sciences, Professor Moira Sim, has voluntarily agreed to the release of her personal information in documents relating to the Adjunct appointment and renewal process.”

Accompanying the Notice of Decision were four pdf files. Each of these pdf files was a thread of emails. A total of 14 emails were in the four threads. Three of the four threads are from September 2023. The other thread is from January 2025.

4.3. Sep. 2023 ECU Email Communications About Cancelling Me

This first series of emails (Emails 1-10) occurred between Saturday, September 2, 2023 and Monday, September 4, 2023. Here, I describe and present screenshots of each email.

Email 1

On September 2, 2023 at 5:37pm (Perth time) – a time when I was employed on two casual Research Assistant contracts at ECU with an adjunct appointment running in the background – an individual at ECU emailed someone else at ECU with concerns about something that I published. The emailer refers to the “ECU media report for today” and an item from me that appeared in that report. The media report being referenced is probably the School’s weekly newsletter, which promotes recent publications and media appearances by School staff (NB. ECU staff typically self-report these publications and appearances to the administrator who organizes the newsletter). The specific item of concern is not listed in Email 1, but Executive Dean Moira Sim, in her email on Sunday, September 3, reveals that the main item of concern was an essay that I wrote for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal titled, “How DEI Threatens Exercise Science.”

In Email 1, the ECU employee admits that they “don’t even know” who I am and that they have “no idea” who I work with at ECU or what I do at ECU. The individual says that my essay was “trash,” “disrespectful,” “inflammatory,” and “an embarrassment to ECU and our discipline.” The individual then says that they found my essay “insulting” to the female staff and “several male staff” and then implies that I have little or no “social skills.” The individual also mentions Athena SWAN and how the university’s adoption of Athena SWAN has apparently not made an impact on me (i.e., that I have not been adequately indoctrinated by feminist theory). The emailer also refers to my position as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer, which is accurate and was listed in my author bio for the essay. However, at that time, I was also employed in the School on two casual contracts as a Research Assistant.

Email 2

Whereas the first email seemed to be addressed to a specific individual, the second email was addressed as “Hi all,” with multiple “Cc,” including the School’s Executive Dean Moira Sim. The second emailer says that they “couldn’t agree more” with the first emailer, adding that they found my essay “appalling” and “insulting to women and our industry.” This emailer then says that the thought of me being in “any way” associated with ECU is “nauseating.” This emailer then includes a link to a written interview that I gave for The Centre for Male Psychology on August 1, 2023. The title of that interview was “Exercise science is weakened by gender ideology: an interview with Dr James Nuzzo.” The emailer states that my interview was “as bad, if not worse” than my essay published at the Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

Email 3

The third email is written by the Executive Dean of the School of Medical and Health Sciences Professor Moira Sim. In this email, Sim appears to be emailing someone up the chain of command for advice on what to do regarding my essay published by the Martin Center for Academic Renewal. In this email, Sim said “we support academic freedom and debate but we don’t want to be associated with someone who makes these kind [sic] of statements.” Sim also implied that people in the School had been monitoring my Twitter account prior to September 2023 and that “we were concerned” about “some tweets” but “this goes beyond that.”

Email 4

The fourth email is also from Executive Dean Moira Sim, and it seems to confirm the stories that I had heard from other ECU staff about the School hesitating to grant my adjunct appointment in 2021 due to things that I had been writing about sex/gender. In this email Sim, says that the School supports academic freedom and debate but not “antisocial behaviour” and “words can be antisocial.”

Email 5

In the fifth email, the emailer says that they are planning to collate feedback from Exercise and Sports Science (ESS) staff before a future meeting where they will apparently be discussing me and my writing. The emailer then says “early indications” are that ESS staff would “not want to be seen in the same room” as me.

Note, this initial feedback scenario is odd considering that (a) the emailer would have had to acquire the feedback quickly over the weekend, and (b) I know some ESS staff personally – they are my friends or collaborators, who I continued to work with after this (NB. Some ESS staff shared with me information that is included in this cancellation story).

Again, my interview with the Centre for Male Psychology is cited as being problematic. The emailer refers to the entire interview as “bad,” with the emailer highlighting some of my quotes from the interview that the emailer deemed “low points,” including a quote where I mention how the university regularly emails staff with information about career events for women and progress toward “gender equality” on campus. It is interesting that this emailer was triggered by this quote considering that ECU has made female staff career advancement a top university priority via Athena SWAN (see Part 8).

Email 6

In this email, labelled high importance, the emailer states that I am “publicly opposed” to ECU’s values and that when an adjunct is not aligned with ECU’s values then the adjunct appointment should be cancelled. The emailer then requests assistance in crafting a letter that would be sent to me to “cancel” my adjunct appointment. Executive Dean Moira Sim is cc’d in the email. (NB. I was not just an adjunct at this time. I was also ECU research staff, employed through two casual contracts.)

Email 7

A few minutes later, this emailer suggests that the issue should be handed off to ECU People and Culture. Executive Dean Moira Sim is cc’d in the email.

Email 8

Executive Dean Moira Sim then comes back into the conversation asking for help in “ending” my adjunct appointment. This would have ended my three-year adjunct appointment about 1.5 years early. Sim then informs the email recipient that the ordeal started with my essay published by the Martin Center for Academic Renewal, with Sim stating that I made “anti-female anti-equity statements.” Sim then refers the recipient to my Twitter profile saying, “[t]here is more here.”

Email 9

The next email in the thread was sent to Executive Dean Moira Sim from another office on campus (probably People and Culture or a related office). The emailer informed Sim that, in addition to my adjunct appointment, I was also employed as research staff at ECU under two casual contracts. Remarkably, Sim seemed to be unaware that I was formally employed in the School that she oversees.

The emailer then explains to Sim ECU’s rules on academic freedom, stating that ECU employees “have the right to participate in public debates, express unpopular or controversial views and opinions about issues and ideas related to their discipline area, or area of expertise.”

The emailer then recommends to Sim that a decision on my position be “carefully considered as it could result in reputational issues arising from breaching our agreement and/or censoring academic freedom.” The emailer then recommends that Sim not proceed in ending my employment or adjunct appointment at that time.

Email 10

The last email in this thread was sent by Executive Dean Moira Sim on September 4, 2023 at 4:56pm. Here, Sim does not appear to be replying to the individual who provided the advice in Email 9, as “FW” now appears in the subject line. Sim tells the email recipient: “We will need to ensure that James does not have his causal contracts (Sep and Nov 2023 expiry) or his adjunct (March 2025) renewed.”

Note: Emails 1-10 were sent over three consecutive days, including the weekend.

Recap

In September 2023, some ECU staffers in the School were triggered by an essay that I published at the Martin Center, a written interview that I gave to the Centre for Male Psychology, and some unrevealed posts that I made on Twitter. In these emails, I and/or my writings were labelled as “trash,” “disrespectful,” “appalling,” “insulting,” “antisocial,” “inflammatory,” “an embarrassment,” and “anti-female.” Because of my writings, Executive Dean Moira Sim and other ECU staffers sought to terminate my affiliations with ECU. However, a staffer in People and Culture or a similar office explained academic freedom to Sim, informed Sim that I was not just an adjunct but was employed at ECU via two casual research contracts, and advised Sim against terminating my ECU appointments at that time. Sim listened to that specific advice, and my affiliations were not terminated at that time. However, Sim stated that she wanted to “ensure” that neither my casual contracts nor my adjunct appointment would be renewed in the future. I was never contacted by Executive Dean Moira Sim or any other ECU administrators about any of this.

4.4. My Essay at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

The first item referred to by my cancellers in the emails from September 2023 was an essay that I had published on September 1, 2023 at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal titled, “How DEI Threatens Exercise Science.”

NB. The deck/subhead to my article at the Martin Center, which might be seen by some as inflammatory because it includes the phrase “infiltrated by leftist radicals,” was not part of my original submission. It was added by the Martin Center. I did not have a problem with its addition, because it is true. However, it also important to note for the historical record that I did not include it as part of my original submission. And, of course, leftist academics use phrases like “far right”in-print frequently.

The Martin Center is neither an obscure nor extreme publisher. The Center is named after former professor and North Carolina governor Dr. James G. Martin. The Martin Center describes its mission as follows:

“The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal is a private nonprofit institute dedicated to higher education policy reform. Our mission is to renew and fulfill the promise of higher education in North Carolina and across the country. We advocate responsible governance, viewpoint diversity, academic quality, cost-effective education solutions, and innovative market-based reform. We do that by studying and reporting on critical issues in higher education and recommending policies that can create change—especially at the state and local level.”

In my essay, I overviewed the rise of DEI in exercise science, and I explained why I thought that this rise was problematic. In 2017, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) published a position paper on the organization’s desire to achieve “equity in physical activity.” The ACSM’s paper was published in the organization’s flagship journal,Medicine and Science in Sports Exercise. In 2018, I published a letter the journal explaining why equity in physical activity was a misguided goal. The authors of the ACSM’s paper responded to my letter. The author’s response was lacking in many respects and warranted additional scrutiny. So, a few months later, in July of 2018, I published a full-length article on equity in physical activity in the highly-ranked Q1 journal Sports Medicine. My article, which was titled, “Equity in Physical Activity: A Misguided Goal,” generated some debate, with one group of DEI advocates writing a letter in January of 2019 challenging my perspective. I responded to their letter, refuting their arguments. Thus, prior to arriving at ECU as a Visiting Delegate in March of 2019, I had already published two letters and one full-length article in peer-reviewed Q1 journals on equity in physical activity. The topic had already been openly debated in the public square.

In my essay at the Martin Center, I also cited two other peer-reviewed articles that I published related DEI and exercise science. One of the articles summarized results of a survey study that I had conducted with a colleague in the U.S. The study was approved by ECU’s Human Research Ethics Committee, and the article was published in a Q1 journal called Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. The results revealed sex differences in interest and willingness to participate in exercise science research and challenged the narrative that female “underrepresentation” in exercise science research is due primarily or exclusively to bias or discrimination against women.

In my essay at the Martin Center, I also referenced a letter that I published in Sports Medicine with Dr. John Barry (Centre for Male Psychology) and Deborah Powney (PhD candidate and domestic violence researcher). We challenged a biased article in the journal, in which the authors suggested that domestic violence occurs almost exclusively as a male perpetrator and female victim paradigm, and that exercise science students should be taught about this paradigm in their coursework. In our letter, we overviewed the relevant literature. We demonstrated that the authors’ perspective was unsupported by the available data. We showed that males and females are roughly equally likely to be victims of abuse within and outside of sports environments.

Thus, in my essay at the Martin Center, I discussed various ways in which biased, unscientific, and overtly political DEI ideology was impacting exercise and health science. In discussing this, I cited my own research, which had already been published in leading peer-reviewed journals.

I do not take back or apologize for anything that I wrote in my essay at The Martin Center.

4.5. My Interview at the Centre for Male Psychology

The second writing that was referred to in the email communications from September of 2023 was a written interview that I gave to Dr. John Barry of the Centre for Male Psychology on August 1, 2023. The title of the interview was “Exercise science is weakened by gender ideology: an interview with Dr James Nuzzo.”

In the interview, I answered questions on many topics. These topics included traditional exercise topics (e.g., how to get fit, bench press technique) to more hot-button issues related to sex/gender. Much overlap existed between the topics covered in the interview and in my essay at the Martin Center. Again, I cited many of my own peer-reviewed articles. I also shared my observations and opinions (some might even call these “lived experiences”) about difficulties in publishing research on sex differences and men’s health. I also warned readers about the excesses of feminist theory and how the gynocentric approach to men’s health should be rejected in favour of the androcentric approach to men’s health. This warning, which triggered the ECU staffers involved in the email communications, was articulated in the following statement which I made in the interview:

“The gynocentric approach is interested in helping men insofar that doing so serves the interests of women. Researchers working in this space are feminist wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing. At the surface, they appear to be interested in helping men, and to a certain degree, they are. However, fundamental to their approach is a greater in interest in helping women than men and an incomplete application of empathy toward boys and men. I am a proponent of the androcentric approach. The androcentric approach to men’s health unapologetically declares that the purpose of a men’s health initiative is to improve the lives of boys and men.”

I do not take back or apologize for anything that I said in this quote nor do I take back or apologize for anything else that I stated in my interview with the Centre for Male Psychology.

4.6. Feb. 2025 ECU Email Communications About Cancelling Me

The second part of the FOI request contained four emails (Emails 11-14) from ECU staff that were sent between Wednesday, February 5, 2025 and Friday, February 7, 2025. Here, I describe and present screenshots of each email.

Email 11

On Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 2:41pm, someone at ECU emailed someone else at ECU about my essay/podcast at The Nuzzo Letter titled, “Gender Equity at Curtin University.” The email also included a link to an X post that I published. In my X post, I critiqued Curtin University’s job advertisement for STEM Outreach Officer – a role dedicated to recruiting more female and non-binary students into Curtin’s engineering programs – and this critique formed part of my essay/podcast at The Nuzzo Letter.

The emailer stated that my posts were “misaligned” with ECU values and that I “misgendered” someone in my essay/podcast. The emailer also placed the word “discriminatory” in quotations, signalling that the emailer does not believe that what I referred to in my essay/podcast was indeed discrimination against men. Finally, the subject line of the email included “Fw,” which suggests that this emailer was forwarded an email about my essay/podcast from someone else, perhaps someone outside of ECU. However, this original email, if it exists, was not included in the returned FOI request materials. (NB. An internal source at ECU has suggested to me that allegedly Curtin University notified ECU about my posts. However, I cannot confirm if this indeed happened.)

Email 12

A couple of minutes later, the person who received Email 11 then forwarded the email to Executive Dean Moira Sim.

Email 13

Email 13 is written by Executive Dean Moira Sim. Here, Sim is not replying to the emailer in Email 12. Instead, Sim is emailing someone else about “advice on action when adjunct expires.”

In the email, Sim referred to “anti-female” articles of mine from a couple of years earlier. Here, Sim was likely referring to my essay at The Martin Center and my written interview at the Centre for Male Psychology (see the September 2023 emails above). Sim also placed quotations around the phrase “based on science,” suggesting that she does not believe that my peer-reviewed research articles and my research-informed views are based on science.

Sim confirms that she took advice from someone at ECU in September 2023 to not terminate my affiliation at that time but that she has “no intention of renewing” my adjunct appointment on March 7, 2025.

Sim then makes an odd personal judgment about me, when she says that she expects that I will continue to use the adjunct title after the adjunct affiliation ends. Sim then says she wants to ensure that I am unable to use the adjunct title beyond March 7 and asks for advice on how to ensure this does not happen.

Note - I would never use a title or affiliation beyond the extent allowable by an arrangement. As I discussed earlier, the School was apparently so eager to end my affiliation with ECU that School staff completely disregarded years of well-established standards regarding how academic affiliations are listed for researchers when researchers switch affiliations.

Email 14

The responder to Sim’s email puts forward the consideration of ending my adjunct affiliation based on breaching a code of conduct. However, the emailer does not state what code of conduct I breached in writing my research and research-informed views on sex/gender. The emailer says to Sim that “the timeframe would work against us,” seemingly implying that the process of pursing a breach of code of conduct would take longer than simply waiting until March 7 when my adjunct appointment will be up for renewal.

This was the final email included in the FOI request.

4.7. My Essay/Podcast on “Gender Equity” at Curtin University

In the initial email from February 5, 2025, two items that I published were flagged. One was my X post on January 5, 2025 about the STEM Outreach Officer job being advertised at Curtin University.

My critique of this STEM Outreach Officer position then featured in the second item that was mentioned in the initial email from February 5, which was my essay/podcast at The Nuzzo Letter on January 21, 2025 titled, “Gender Equity at Curtin University.”

In my essay/podcast, I introduced the job advertisement for the STEM Outreach Officer at Curtin University. I explained how I believed that this advertisement was a form of sex-based discrimination because Curtin University does not appear to have equivalent programs for increasing male enrolment (broadly speaking or in specific academic programs where male students are “underrepresented”). I showed that Curtin University has significantly fewer male than female students. I presented a data table from Curtin University’s website. The data shows that between 2019 and 2023, Curtin University had 7,000-10,000 fewer male than female students each year, with female representation equalling 57% in 2023.

I also pointed out how Curtin University has a Gender Equity and Inclusion Team that is supposedly dedicated to “gender equity” but only appears interested in enhancing outcomes for women. I also pointed out the irony that the Gender Equity and Inclusion Team has a huge sex/gender imbalance. I said that the Team “appears to” consist of 10 women and one token male ally based on a photograph that was available on the university’s website. I then ended the essay/podcast by suggesting that Curtin University should be publicly shamed for its discriminatory approach to “gender equity,” just as feminists in Australia have tried to publicly shame businesses who have “gender pay gaps.”

I do not take back or apologize for anything that I said in my essay/podcast or in my X post.

PART 5: MY RESPONSE TO FOI REQUEST REVELATIONS

Through the emails obtained from the FOI request, one can see that the School cancelled me for my research and research-informed writings on sex/gender and related topics. In the emails, one can also see that ECU staffers levied accusations against me, my research, and my informed views. These ECU staffers also displayed problematic behaviours, tendencies, and beliefs. Below, my aim is to highlight key issues associated with the School’s decision to cancel me.

5.1. They Didn’t Know Who I Was

In Email 1, the emailer says that they “don’t even know” who I am and have “no idea” who I work with at ECU or what I do at ECU. These comments alone should have disqualified this emailer’s opinion from carrying any weight in my cancellation. By September 2023, I had already been affiliated with ECU as a Visiting Delegate, research staff, or adjunct for approximately four years; I had already published many articles in peer-reviewed journals with ECU’s name on them; and I had been offered the founding Postdoctoral Fellow position in ECU’s Neurophysiology Laboratory in 2017.

This emailer was probably not staff in the Exercise and Sports Exercise Department within the School, because many of those people know who I am. This emailer probably did not have close relationships with the ECU staff and students who have close relationships with me.

Related to this unawareness of me is the School’s lack of appreciation for my productivity relative to their investment in me. Between 2019 and 2025, I published over 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Most of these papers were published in Q1 journals, and most of these papers had ECU’s name on them. I wrote these papers either while working at Vitruvian (adjunct) or while employed at ECU as a Research Assistant, which is steps below my proper academic rank (i.e., not paid a wage commensurate with my productivity and experience). My productivity then helped to boost the profiles of my ECU colleagues who were co-authors on some of the papers that I published.

5.2. I Was Never Personally Contacted by ECU Administration

Remarkably, I was never personally contacted by Executive Dean Moira Sim or other ECU administrators about the things discussed in the email communications, including my research and research-informed writing. Thus, Sim never explained to me the issues that she and others had with my research and research-informed writings. In fact, I am not sure that I have ever met Sim or communicated with her about anything. I may have met Sim briefly in her office when I first arrived at ECU as a Visiting Delegate in March or April of 2019. However, I am not certain about that.

This lack of direct communication with me is problematic. The emails from September 2023 reveal that Sim was planning to terminate my affiliation with the university without ever giving me a chance to defend my research and research-informed writings. The only thing that stopped Sim from terminating my affiliation at that time was the advice that she received from an employee in People and Culture (or a similar ECU office) in Email 9. Nevertheless, in March 2025, the School decided not to renew my adjunct appointment still without Sim or any other ECU administrators talking to me about any of this!

5.3. Sex/Gender is a Topic of My Published Peer-Reviewed Research

I was cancelled for my writings on topics that are part of my professional research. Specifically, I was cancelled for my writings on sex/gender, sex differences, men’s health, and DEI. I have published peer-reviewed articles on all of these topics. Some of these articles have ECU’s name on them. Some of these articles were cited in my writings at the Martin Center and Centre for Male Psychology. It is hard to imagine what stronger academic grounding I could have had for my views than my own peer-reviewed journal articles. Moreover, my expertise in these areas does not stop at peer-reviewed journal articles. I regularly publish epidemiological data on sex differences and men’s health at The Nuzzo Letter. I also often appear on podcasts to discuss these data.

To demonstrate how inappropriate it was for the School to cancel me for my writings on sex/gender and related topics, I have listed below all the papers that I have published in peer-reviewed journals on these topics between 2018 and 2025.

Sex differences in physiology and fitness

· Sex difference in grip strength in children and adolescents
· Sex difference in muscle strength of various upper- and lower-limb muscles in children and adolescents
· Sex difference in eccentric muscle strength
· Sex difference in the repetitions-%1RM relationship
· Sex difference in flexibility children and adolescents
· Sex difference in muscle fatigability during resistance exercise
· Sex difference in muscle fiber type
· Sex difference in participation rates in muscle-strengthening activities
· Large scale review on sex differences in numerous aspects of resistance exercise including muscle strength, endurance, activation, size, fiber type, and strength training participation rates, preferences, motivations, injuries, and neuromuscular adaptations

Sex differences in psychology

· Sex differences in interest and willingness to participate in exercise research studies
· Review of factors that impact male and female representation in exercise studies

Gender bias and men’s health

· Review of men’s health epidemiology
· Gender equity in physical activity (with additional letters in 2018 and 2019)
· Gender bias at the United Nations
· “Male circumcision” and “female genital mutilation”
· Violence victimization of men and women in sports environments

Sex differences and history

· Photographic history of male participants in early exercise studies
· Photographic history of female participants in early exercise studies
· Sex difference in inventors of resistance exercise equipment
· Women as participants in exercise studies published before 1975
· Sex difference in participant representation in early resistance exercise research

Sex differences in education

· Sex difference in exercise science degrees awarded
· Sex difference in university degrees awarded in various fields
· Sex difference in authorship of letters in exercise and physical therapy journals

Another important contextual factor is that the individuals who are senior figures in the School and in the university’s DEI community have themselves published comparatively little research on sex/gender. For example, between 2019 and 2025, I published 28 papers that were on sex/gender, men health’s, or that included sex-segregated results. Google Scholar searches for individuals like Professor Moira Sim (Executive Dean of School of Medical and Health Sciences), Associate Professor Annette Koenders (Associate Dean of Medical and Exercise Science, who leads efforts to “indigenise” the curriculum in the School), and “Professor” Braden Hill (Deputy Vice Chancellor Students, Equity and Indigenous) reveal substantially fewer research outputs on these topics compared to me.

Remember, too, Executive Dean Moira Sim ridiculed me in one of her emails by placing the phrase “based on science” in quotations when referring to my writings. Yet, I clearly have published more peer-reviewed articles on sex/gender and related topics than Sim. Moreover, although Sim has apparently been active in research since 1995, whereas I have been active in research since 2007, my H-index (28) and total citations (4,193) are higher than Sim’s H-index (25) and total citations (2,539) (source: Google Scholar search on August 29, 2025). Sim and I are roughly similar in terms of total number of peer-reviewed articles that we have published on any topic.

Finally, given my research in these areas, ECU missed an opportunity. Rather than cancelling me, ECU could have held public debates between me and other staff who hold different views. I suspect many students would have been excited to watch such debates! Unfortunately for those students, debate is not highly valued at the feminized university; conformity to a political cause is (see Part 12 for more details).

5.4. I Am Not Anti-Women or Antisocial

In the emails, one or more individuals state or imply that I (or my writings) are anti-female or antisocial, with one staffer suggesting that they or others would “not want to be seen in the same room” as me. These accusations are problematic on multiple fronts.

First, Emailer 1 admitted that that they do not even know who I was. Others in the email thread from September 2023 also do not seem to know who I am. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I had little or no previous interaction with Executive Dean Moira Sim. Thus, the School acted inappropriately in weighing the opinions of these individuals so heavily.

Second, I worked or interacted with many female staff and students at ECU. I doubt that any of these women would consider me “anti-female” based on their personal interactions with me. Here are some examples that refute such unsubstantiated claims about me:

· The individual who was my PhD and Postdoctoral supervisor for 7+ years and who nominated me for the Distinguished Talent Visa was a woman. She was a professor at ECU between 2019 and 2023.
· I personally tested 17 women in the Neurophysiology Laboratory for the ME/CFS study. At least four of these women were staff or students who worked in the School. I also personally tested women in the Neurophysiology Laboratory at ECU as part of other studies, and I tested nine women as part of research conducted in the Vitruvian laboratory as an adjunct. Some of my co-workers at Vitruvian were also women. Why did the School not talk to some these women and ask them their opinions of me?
· In 2024 and 2025, a woman was employed as a researcher in ECU’s Neurophysiology Laboratory. She and I worked together on data collection and analysis. Sometimes, she asked if I could come to the laboratory to help her learn laboratory procedures. I assisted her several times. Why did the School not talk to this woman and ask her about me?

Another thing to keep in mind with these accusations is how quickly the communications from September 2023 unfolded. They occurred over a three-day period including the weekend. They appeared to have involved a small inner circle of like-minded ECU staffers. In Email 5, the emailer suggests that they received feedback from Exercise and Sports Science staff about me and my writings with “early indications” that Exercise and Sports Science staff would “not want to be seen in the same room” as me. This all seems odd. Who exactly in the Exercise and Sports Science department was surveyed? I doubt that it included the staff who I know personally. From the email communications, I did not get the impression that either my Adjunct Nominator, line manager(s), or former PhD and Postdoctoral supervisor were included in this chat. Thus, the people who were adjudicating my career future seem to have been people who have never met me or worked with me.

5.5. I Have Support From ECU Colleagues and the General Public

Another piece of evidence that refutes allegations made about me in the emails is that I have had consistent support from other staff in the School. First, I was offered numerous contracts by researchers in the School. Second, the nominator of my Distinguished Talent Visa was an ECU professor. Third, the adjunct appointment was started because of my relationship with a professor in the School. Fourth, I currently have the phone numbers of approximately 10 current or former ECU staff or postgraduate students in my phone. All of these individuals are friends or close colleagues. If my writings on any topic were as threatening or problematic as the School’s cancellers suggest, these friends and colleagues would not associate with me. In fact, these individuals agree with many of the things I write on sex/gender and related topics!

The emailers seem to think that their views on sex/gender are correct and above critique. They called my views “inflammatory.” However, scepticism of DEI and outright rejection of feminism and “gender equity” initiatives are widespread among the general public. In 2024, an Ipsos survey of 1,000 Australian men and women found that 53% of respondents agreed that “when it comes to giving equal rights with men, things have gone far enough in my country.” Moreover, 46% or respondents agreed that “we have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men.” A survey from the U.S. in 2023 also found public scepticism toward feminism with about 45% of men saying that they have faced gender-based discrimination. Another U.S. survey found that 50% of men reported a belief that society punishes men for being men. Thus, many people hold sceptical views of feminism and so-called “gender equality” or “gender equity” programs.

5.6. I Have Received the Australian Government’s Stamp of Approval Many Times

Since 2013, I have been vetted by the Australian federal government four times. This vetting occurred with respect to the following: (1) international student visa and the International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (2013-2017); (2) Temporary Graduate visa (2017-2021); (3) Distinguished Talent visa (2022-2023); and (4) Australian citizenship (2024).

Clearly, the Australian federal government has not had a problem with me, my values, or my research. Moreover, I passed the Australian citizenship test. As one can see from the study materials for the citizenship test, which I have uploaded below (Life in Australia: Australian Values and Principles), focus is placed on ideas like equality under the law, equality of opportunity, and “[w]hat someone achieves in life should be a product of their talents, work and effort rather than their birth or favouritism” (this quote is from the 2016 version; the 2020 version is worded slightly differently) Concepts like critical theory, intersectionality, and equity are nowhere to be found in Australian values and principles. Why is ECU, a public institution, so out of step with the federal government?

Life In Australia, 2016

304KB ∙ PDF file

Life In Australia, 2020

148KB ∙ PDF file

· International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersex Discrimination and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT)

5.7. Double Standards

Another issue with my cancellation is the double standard that it reflects regarding writings about sex/gender and related topics by ECU staff. In Parts 9 and 10, I give examples of feminist and DEI-related academics at ECU who publish things that are untruthful or that can be considered “inflammatory,” “disrespectful,” or otherwise questionable. Yet, unlike me, those individuals have not been punished for their problematic writings. In fact, their writings and careers are actively promoted by ECU.

PART 6: IMPACT OF CANCELLATION

The School’s decision to cancel me because of my research and research-informed views on sex/gender means that certain things or opportunities are no longer available to me as a direct consequence of the cancellation. These things or opportunities would have been available to me in the counterfactual scenario, where the I do not express my research and research-informed views on sex/gender, and the adjunct appointment likely gets renewed.

I recognize that nearly all affiliations eventually come to an end and thus affiliated-related privileges and opportunities are typically not permanent. Here, my point is that cancelling someone problematically (or unjustly) advances the end to these affiliated-related privileges and thus has an avoidable negative impact on that person’s career. Below is a list of things and opportunities that are no longer available to me because the School cancelled me for my research and researcher-informed views on sex/gender.

6.1. ECU Email Account

My ECU email account contained saved emails and contacts. Thus, by terminating access to this email account without warning, I lost these emails and contacts. Also, on most papers that I published between 2021-2024, my ECU email was listed as my email of correspondence. Therefore, researchers, students, or journalists who discover my papers and wish to contact me about them will likely send their emails to my ECU email account. My lack of response to these emailers then reflects badly on ECU and me. Also, invitations from publishers and conference organizers will likely get sent to my ECU email address.

6.2. Software for Research

ECU staff and adjuncts have free access to certain software. The software that I used while affiliated with ECU included Microsoft Word Office Suite, SPSS statistical analysis software, and Qualtrics survey software. Now, I have to pay to use those programs – something that I would not have had to do if I was not cancelled my research and research-informed views on sex/gender.

Here, it is also important to highlight that while I was affiliated with ECU, I had designed three surveys in Qualtrics – one survey on sex differences in interest and willingness to participate in exercise studies, one survey on exercise nomenclature, and one survey on ME/CFS. For two of these surveys, data from survey respondents were saved in Qualtrics. By ceasing my ECU email account without prior notice, I was unable to check that I had download all the collected data and associated materials from Qualtrics. Workarounds for these situations exist, for example, by contacting Qualtrics directly. However, this is likely to end with me needing to buy a Qualtrics subscription to access data associated with my research at ECU. Thus, the School acted with disregard for both my completed and ongoing survey research, which involved thousands of survey responses from individuals who consented to have their data handled with care, as per policies from ECU’s Human Research Ethics Committee.

6.3. Open Access Publications

Most academic papers are published in journals owned by for-profit companies. To access a paper in one of these journals, one needs to pay around $30-50 (USD). However, if a researcher publishes a paper “open access,” this means that the paper will not be behind the publisher’s paywall. The paper will be freely accessible to everyone. This increased accessibility causes a researcher’s paper to receive more views and downloads (and probably more citations) than if the paper is not published open access and remains behind the publisher’s paywall.

For the past couple of years, ECU has signed Read & Publish agreements with major journal publishers. These agreements allow ECU employees and adjuncts to publish their papers as open access in select journals without the researcher needing to pay the article processing charge. The article processing charge typically ranges from $1,000 and $4,000 (USD). Thus, a career benefit of maintaining adjunct status at ECU is that the university pays for article processing charges that make a researcher’s work more visible. Thus, the School’s cancellation of me for my research and research-informed views on sex/gender decreases the visibility of my future research, because I cannot afford to pay publishers thousands of dollars for my papers to be published open access.

6.4. Library Archives

Another key benefit of an adjunct appointment is access to the university’s archives and databases. ECU has large digital database of journal articles. Most journal articles are available to ECU researchers through the library’s archives or the library’s interlibrary loan program. I relied heavily on the library’s archives and interlibrary loan system when conducting historical and meta-analytic research, including on the history of the journal Research Quarterly, the history of men’s and women’s participation in early exercise research, and meta-analyses on muscle fatigue, the eccentric:concentric strength ratio, sex differences in muscle fiber types, and sex differences in muscle strength in adults and children. Conducting similar research is now nearly impossible because of the financial costs associated with needing to purchase hundreds of individual papers from publishers. Thus, ECU’s decision to not renew my adjunct appointment for my research and research-informed views on sex/gender has severely handicapped me in writing future meta-analyses, large-scale reviews, and historical papers.

6.5. Human Research Ethics Committee

To be published in a scientific journal, a research study that involves human participants typically requires approval by a university or hospital ethics committee. ECU houses a Human Research Ethics Committee. This committee oversees all human and animal research conducted at ECU. Thus, if an adjunct wants to conduct a new survey study, the adjunct submits their research protocol to ECU’s Human Research Ethics Committee for approval. Because the adjunct would have a university ID and email, the submission process for ethics approval occurs fairly smoothly. However, without an adjunct appointment, and thus no university ID or email, the adjunct’s ability to obtain approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee is limited or impossible. Thus, the School’s cancellation of me for my research and researcher-informed views on sex/gender has made obtaining ethics approval for my research significantly more challenging than it would otherwise be.

6.6. Grants

One’s ability to apply for and receive extramural research grants is facilitated by having an affiliation with a university or similar organization. Also, intramural grants at a university will typically only be available to employees or affiliates of that university. Therefore, the lack of an adjunct appointment hinders my ability to receive research grants, which then impacts my ability to conduct and publish research.

6.7. Position Title

When a researcher is not employed at a university, an adjunct appointment is a way in which that researcher can maintain a title specific to academia. An academic title and affiliation can signal credibility. Thus, by cancelling me for my research and research-informed views on sex/gender, the influence of a position title on future opportunities is hindered.

6.8. Future ECU collaborations

Adjunct appointments are typically established to facilitate collaborations between researchers who work on campus and researchers or clinicians who work off campus. This relationship helps both the university and the individuals who are not employed at the university. The adjunct nominator recognizes that the adjunct applicant has the ability to work with the nominator on research projects, thus increasing research potential at the university. By not renewing my adjunct appointment, ECU disrupted my ongoing collaborations with ECU researchers. Though my personal relationships with friends and colleagues at ECU will continue, my cancellation is likely to prevent them from collaborating with me in the future or offering me contracts in the future.

PART 7: ECU BASICS

7.1. ECU’s Campuses

Edith Cowan University (ECU) is one of 37 public universities in Australia. The university is named after Edith Dircksey Cowan (1861-1932), who, in 1921 became the first female elected to a parliamentary office in Australia. Cowan served one term in Western Australia’s state legislature.

*Edith Dircksey Cowan (source: Parliament of Western Australia).*

ECU has three campuses located in Western Australia, with a new campus currently under construction in Perth’s city centre. Two campuses are located in Perth suburbs (Joondalup and Mount Lawley), while ECU’s satellite campus is located about 170 kilometres south of Perth in Bunbury. In 2023, ECU also opened a campus in Sri Lanka. It is unclear how ECU’s campus in Sri Lanka aligns with ECU’s legislatively-mandated function to directly serve the public interest of Australia.

7.2. ECU’s Legislative Mandate

As a public university, ECU ought to be politically neutral and should, as the Edith Cowan University Act 1984 states, “serve the Western Australian, Australian and international communities and the public interest by — (i) enriching cultural and community life; and (ii) raising public awareness of international, scientific and artistic developments; and (iii) promoting critical and free enquiry, informed intellectual discussion and public debate within the University and in the wider society.”

7.3. ECU’s Professed Values

According to ECU’s Pocket Stats 2024 report, the purpose of the university is to “transform lives and enrich society.” ECU’s professed values are:

· “Integrity: we are ethical, honest and fair and demonstrate trust and personal responsibility.

· Respect: we treat everyone within our diverse community with dignity and respect.

· Rational inquiry: our decision-making is driven by evidence, sound reasoning, and creative thinking.

· Personal excellence: we demonstrate the highest personal and professional standards.

· Courage: we are bold and resolute in our thinking and actions in pursuit of our goals.”

7.4. ECU’s Finances

In 2023, according to ECU’s Pocket Stats 2024 report, ECU had a total revenue of $676 million (AUD), with $240 million from the Commonwealth government, $29 from the state government of Western Australia, and the remaining revenue coming from student tuition, student fees, investment income, and other resources. In 2024, ECU had $486 million in total expenditures, leaving a net operating result of $189 million. In 2024, ECU also had $1.3 billion in net assets.

7.5. ECU’s Organizational Structure

The organizational structure at ECU can be seen in ECU’s Annual Report 2024 or in the chart below. The current Vice-Chancellor of ECU is Professor Clare Pollock. Pollock’s tenure started in September of 2024. Prior to that, ECU’s Vice-Chancellor was Professor Steve Chapman.

*Organizational structure at ECU (Source: ECU website.)*

Professor Steve Chapman served as ECU’s Vice-Chancellor from April 2015 to August 2024. The heightened focus on identity politics at ECU occurred under Chapman. It was Chapman’s first year as Vice-Chancellor in 2015 that ECU began its participation in the Athena SWAN Charter to “promote gender equity in academia.” It was also Chapman, who, in ECU’s Annual Report 2022 announced that Braden Hill would fill the new role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Students, Equity and Indigenous; that Rowena Harper would be appointed to Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Education; and that Sophia Nimphius would fill the new role of Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Sport. During his tenure, Chapman did not shy away from photographers, particularly when it meant virtue signalling about ECU’s dedication to DEI. Below, Chapman can be seen holding signs about the gender pay gap in 2021, 2022, and 2023 and posing in a Pride Superman t-shirt at one of the university’s many Pride-related events.

*Former ECU Vice-Chancellor Steve Chapman holding signs about the gender pay gap on Equal Pay Day in 2021, 2022, and 2023 (source: ECU X posts).*

*Former ECU Vice-Chancellor Steve Chapman wearing a Pride superman t-shirt stands in the middle of group celebrating a Pride event (source: ECU Facebook).*

Professor Clare Pollock is now carrying on Chapman’s university-wide focus on DEI. In the video below, Pollock, wearing a “Pride at ECU” shirt, announces Pride month at ECU and informs listeners that she will be riding on ECU’s float in Perth’s Pride Parade.

7.6. ECU’s Students by Sex

In 2024, ECU enrolled 31,217 students and employed 2,277 staff. When strolling across campus, one can directly observe that ECU is a highly female institution. This observation is supported by the university’s data. As shown in the graph below, ECU has had significantly greater female than male student enrolment for several years. Since at least 2005, approximately 60% of all students enrolled at ECU have been women. In 2024, 62.7% of students enrolled at ECU were women.

The sex difference in student enrolment at ECU is even greater when only domestic Australians are considered. Thirty percent of ECU students are international, but the annual number of male and female international students is roughly equal or favours males. Thus, Australian men are even further “underrepresented” as students at ECU when only numbers of domestic students are considered.

Knowledge of these data then helps in understanding why ECU administrators were trigged by my essay/podcast where I highlighted Curtin University’s gender bias in focusing on increasing female but not male enrolment. ECU’s proportional representation of female students (63% in 2024) is even greater than Curtin University’s proportional representation of female students (57% in 2023).

Finally, though ECU spends significant time and resources catering to “gender diverse” individuals, only 123 ECU students classified themselves as “gender diverse” in 2024 (i.e., 0.4% of the ECU student population).

7.7. ECU’s Staff by Sex

Faculty and administrative staff at ECU are also predominantly female. As shown in the figure below, since 2014, women have comprised over 61% of staff each year. In 2024, the proportion of staff who were women was at its highest in the university’s history (64.4%). In 2024, only four staff members at ECU identified as “gender diverse” (0.2% of all staff). When numbers of staff and students are combined, males make up only 37% all persons at ECU.

PART 8: ATHENA SWAN AND “GENDER EQUITY” AT ECU

8.1. Athena SWAN Overview

A fundamental cause of many issues at ECU, including my cancellation, is Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network). Athena SWAN is a “gender equality” or “gender equity” accreditor of universities and other organisations. Athena SWAN started in the United Kingdom in 2005. Its primary purpose has been to advance the careers of women in science, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). It gives out bronze, silver, or gold “awards” to universities who obtain certain gender-related outcomes.

In September of 2015, ECU became one of 32 organizations in Australia to enter the Science Academic Gender Equity (SAGE) Pilot of the Athena SWAN Charter. As part of this Charter, ECU established an Athena SWAN Charter Committee and a separate email address for the program (athenaswanaustralia@ecu.edu.au). The 10 initial principles of the Athena SWAN Charter are shown in the screenshot below. Vice-Chancellor Professor Steven Chapman “strongly champion[ed]” these initial principles. Principle 4, “tacking the gender pay gap,” helps to explain why Chapman was photographed each year on Equal Pay Day holding signs about ending the gender pay gap (photographs above).

*The 10 principles of the Athena SWAN Charter prior to 2021.*

In ECU’s Gender Equality Strategy 2019-2021 (screenshot below), a bronze award from Athena SWAN was designated as being a key goal and “indicator of success.” Parts of the Strategy included maintaining “at least 40% representation of women in leadership roles across ECU,” increasing the “% of female staff in School of Engineering and Science,” and increasing “the number of women in STEMM progressing through the academic pipeline.” A couple of male-related items were also mentioned: “promote primary carer’s leave to male staff” and “increase % male staff in School of Nursing & Midwifery.”

In 2018, ECU received Athena SWAN’s bronze award. In subsequent years, ECU continued to focus on women’s careers. For its efforts, ECU received Athena SWAN’s silver award in 2024. The screenshot below from ECU’s website illustrates the extent to which the university values these “prestigious” awards.

In 2021, Athena SWAN updated its 10 original principles (see the updated principles on ECU’s website or the screenshot below). Now, Athena SWAN refers to “gender equity” rather than “gender equality”; it no longer limits it focus to women in STEMM; it now explicitly adopts “an intersectional approach” and incorporates “Indigenous knowledges and perspectives”; and it has heightened its political aims and activist rhetoric (i.e., “imbed[ing] change in institutional governance and accountability structures).

*The 10 principles of the Athena SWAN Charter from 2021 onward.*

Athena SWAN’s change in focus to “equity” rather than “equality” then impacted ECU’s policies and practices in ways that contradict Australian values. In a discussion paper on gender equality, ECU’s Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Strategic Partnerships) said the following:

“The generic definition of ‘equality’ relates to everyone being treated the same however ECU recognises that for that to occur everyone would need to start from the same place, needing the same support. Rather, by having a focus on ‘equity’ which aims to provide everyone with what they need to be successful, this works as a strategy that strives to achieve equality while being aware of individual needs – in summary, equality is the goal and equity is the strategy to reach that goal.”

Thus, equity dispenses with the ideas of equal treatment and equality of opportunity, or what in Australia is termed as having a “fair go.” Equity policies amount to preferential treatment of particular demographic groups. Thus, equity policies contradict Australian values, as per the Australian citizenship test and the Department of Home Affairs report “Life in Australia: Australian Values and Principles” (screenshot below).

Thus, in contradiction to Australian values, a university’s enrolment in Athena SWAN leads to the adoption of policies or practices that amount to preferential treatment based on sex/gender or other group identity characteristic. Athena SWAN fits into ECU’s broader adoption of critical theory and intersectionality, and academics at other universities have admitted that Athena SWAN is a “site of resistance and means to foster collective solidarity to work against neoliberal practices.” In subsequent sections, I give examples of what this looks likes in terms of the specific policies and practices adopted by ECU.

In sum, Athena SWAN is a “gender equality” or “gender equity” accreditor. It is unclear how and under what jurisdiction Athena SWAN received its power to be an accreditor of public universities in Australia. Enrolment in the Athena SWAN Charter has led ECU to engage in problematic policies, practices, and behaviours, including my cancellation (NB. Athena SWAN was mention in Email 1.).

Encouragingly, a couple of voices have warned against the overreaches of Athena SWAN. Authors of one paper, who were generally still favourable of Athena SWAN, pointed out that adopters of Athena SWAN tend to be susceptible to “groupthink,” characterised by an avoidance of debate, conflict, and criticism, often leading to poor decisions, including limiting academic freedom. Finally, one scientist bluntly referred to Athena SWAN as a “mafia system.”

8.2. Athena SWAN and Female-only Jobs at ECU

The Athena SWAN Program also appears to be causally linked to, or associated with, female-only hiring practices by ECU and other universities in Australia. Below are two job advertisements from ECU in 2023. Across the two advertisements, ECU was searching for candidates to fill a total of three female-only faculty positions: one Lecturer in Aviation; one Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in Electrical Power Engineering; and one Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering. In all three cases, the justification for the female-only advertisements was to increase the representation of female faculty in STEM, as per university membership in Athena SWAN. Remarkably, the legal justification for this single-sex hiring practice was Western Australia’s Equal Opportunity Act of 1984 – an act whose purpose was to ensure that individuals were not discriminated against because of their sex or other group identity traits.

How about that for some Orwellian legal theory?

8.3. Athena SWAN and ECU’s Unconscious Bias Module

Athena SWAN is also responsible for ECU requiring staff, who want to serve on job recruitment panels, to complete training on “Managing Unconscious Bias and Recruiting.” In the section about Athena SWAN in ECU’s Annual Report 2016, the report reads: “‘Managing Unconscious Bias in the Workplace sessions have now become a requirement for staff serving on recruitment panels.” In an email sent to staff on December 10, 2021 (shown below), male staff were called out for not having yet completed this training:

“We need to have more male academic staff complete these training modules. It is important to have gender equity when creating recruitment panels and your completion of this course will help us meet this.”

Apparently, ECU wanted roughly equal numbers of men and women on its recruitment panels. This might seem like a laudable goal, but some male staff might have been refusing to complete the module on unconscious/implicit bias because of the concept’s questionable validity. Perhaps these men also preferred to focus on their teaching and research rather than another misguided Athena SWAN-related initiative. Making the email even more problematic was that it included, as an attachment, a list of names of individuals who had completed the module. Irrespective of intentions, this came across as an indirect way of shaming the individuals (i.e., the male staff) who had not yet completed the modules. Ironically, such shaming tactics conflict with the types of workplace behaviours that ECU says are appropriate via its other required training modules like Equal Opportunity Training.

8.4. Athena SWAN and ECU’s Equal Opportunity Training Modules

ECU staff are required to complete the Equal Opportunity Training Modules, which also include many questionable ideas. Below is the email that I received telling me that I was required to complete the training. I completed it in early 2025.

ECU’s Equal Opportunity Training consists of four modules. Modules 1-3 must be completed by all staff. Module 4 must be completed by managers and team leaders but is optional for other staff. Summaries of the four modules are as follows:

Module 1: Diversity and Inclusion on Campus overviews principles of equal opportunity employment including “rights and responsibilities and special measures that apply to members of [equal employment opportunity] ‘target groups’.” The target groups are then identified as: “women; Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people; racial, ethnic and ethno-religious minority groups; and people with disability.”

Module 2: Preventing Discrimination at Work overviews “shared responsibilities to eliminate both direct and indirect discrimination in the workplace.” By “indirect discrimination,” ECU means situations in which there is “an unreasonable rule or policy that on the surface is the same for everyone, but its application has an unfair effect on people who share a particular attribute.” In this module, ECU emphases “eliminating” this “unjust treatment, inequity, and unfair treatment.”

The concept of “indirect discrimination” then serves as part of ECU’s rationalization for focusing on “equity” initiatives, as described above regarding Athena SWAN.

Module 3: Workplace Relationships overviews problematic workplace behaviours, such as bullying, harassment, and inappropriate workplace relationships.

Module 4: Intentional Inclusion focuses on encouraging managers and team leaders to be “proactive in building inclusive teams” and instructing managers and team leaders on how to manage issues related to inclusivity when they arise.

In the Introduction of this module, managers and team leaders are told that they have “a direct responsibility to meet policy and legal compliance expectations and to actively support and implement the University's diversity and inclusion goals relating to women in leadership roles; employment of Indigenous Australians; employment of people with disability; and support for employees from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) background.”

Importantly, this module includes a section on “managing resistance to equality.” In this module, managers and team leaders are told that they have “a role in dealing with resistance to workplace equality policies and initiatives” because it is the right thing to do and good for business. Managers and team leaders are then provided lists of potential causes of “resistance to equality” and actions that can be taken to counteract this “resistance.” The section ends with the following advice for managers and team leaders:

“If you are struggling with entrenched opposition within your team, always reach out to the support available. This will vary according to your university but may include, for example, your HR Advisor or Equity and Diversity coordinator.”

Most of the individuals who I communicate with ECU believe that the university’s Equal Opportunity Training is a joke, if not overtly discriminatory or otherwise problematic. In early 2025, a female colleague in the School, who is familiar with my research and research-informed views on sex/gender, messaged me while she was completing the training. Her message included a screenshot of the following question from Module 1:

“A program to identify women who could potentially move into senior positions, that is conducted in an organisation that has an under representation of women in senior positions, is discriminatory if no similar program exists for men. True or false?”

To a rational and just mind, the answer to this question is “True.” A publicly-funded organization, which offers career-advancement programs to one sex that are not offset by equivalent programs for the other sex, is engaging in preferential treatment or discrimination based on sex. However, ECU does not see it this way. The university gaslights staff, requiring them to answer “False.” If a staff member answers “True,” the module provides the following feedback:

“Incorrect, try again. Women are under-represented in senior management positions in this organisation, so this is not discriminatory.”

Thankfully, not all ECU staff, including my female colleague, buy into ECU’s misguided philosophy. They reject it in their hearts, but answer “False” so that they can receive their salaries.

When my female colleague sent me the screenshot, she also included the following note with three laughing face emojis at the end:

“Doing an ECU equal opportunity module shit, (of course not reading the material), failed my first attempt. Turns out this was false.”

Finally, one of the most ironic aspects of ECU’s Equal Opportunity Training Modules, is that the School does not fully adopt the principles listed in the modules. For example, on the home page of the course, one reads the following statement:

“You belong here. Diversity and inclusion acknowledges the unique combination of attributes that make up who you are and the value that your lived experiences bring to our University. Thanks for being you!”

A similar statement appears in Module 1:

“Inclusion is essential in supporting diversity initiatives, and relates to the working environment and how individuals can be themselves, feel safe, respected and can contribute their best work.”

Clearly, as we have learned from my cancellation, the School does not value diversity. Specifically, the School does not value viewpoint diversity.

8.5. Athena SWAN and International Women’s Day

Adoption of the principles Athena SWAN has led ECU to inundate staff with a continuous stream of information and events related to sex/gender and women’s careers. One example of this is the excessive number days, weeks, and months ECU observes or celebrates related to sex/gender and other DEI areas. Below are examples:

· Trans Day of Invisibility

· Intersex Awareness Day

· Wear it Purple Day

· Pride Month

· Disability Pride Month

· International Day of People with Disability

· National Reconciliation Week

· Equal Pay Day

· 16 Days in WA - Stop Violence Against Women

· International Women’s Day

Of note, ECU observes International Women’s Day (Mar. 8) and many other sex/gender days but not International Men’s Day (Nov. 19). This is strange considering that 37% of staff and students at ECU are men. Moreover, this sex bias hardly reflects a university dedicated to “inclusivity” and the value of “respect” (i.e., “we treat everyone within our diverse community with dignity and respect”). As shown in the photograph below, Edith Cowan herself had a husband and one son. Why does ECU choose not to recognise them and the men who are currently part of the ECU community?

Edith Cowan photographed with her husband, son, and four daughters (source: Parliament of Western Australia).

8.6. Athena SWAN and Scepticism About Preferential Treatment

The above examples of Athena SWAN and its impact on university policies and practices are directly-observable or directly-experienced. Athena SWAN also alters other aspects the broader university culture. Putting aside the multiple instances in which male staff in the School have confided in me a belief that certain ECU administrators are “anti-male,” one of the broader changes associated with adoption of Athena SWAN and other DEI initiatives is increased scepticism, particularly among male staff, about the extent to which group identity characteristics, such as sex/gender and race/ethnicity, are considered in internal evaluations.

Take, for example, internal research grants. In an email sent to ECU staff on October 25, 2023, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, who was a woman, seemed unusually keen to let everyone know that 73% of ECU researchers who were awarded the university’s internal Early-Mid Career Research Grants were women. Her emphasis on the proportion of female awardees struck myself and at least one other male colleague as odd. In the same email, she mentioned how proud she was that her office also awarded money to “two Indigenous projects in alignment with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Support Plan of the ECU Strategic Plan 2022-2026.”

Another example from 2023 was ECU’s promotion of the Athena SWAN Advancement Scheme. According to the university’s website (screenshot below), three types of subsidies were available to internal applicants. Most male staff are ineligible for Athena SWAN-related subsidies, and I do not recall the university offering an equivalent male-tailored opportunity for career progression.

Thus, scepticism about the extent to which ECU administrators consider intersectional identity characteristics in career advancements opportunities is justified.

PART 9: EQUITY, RACE, INDIGENOUS, LGBTIQA+

Athena SWAN represents a large part of ECU’s DEI agenda, but it is not the only part. ECU has many other DEI-related programs. These programs relate to race/ethnicity and other interests of intersectionality. Leading the way on these programs is “Professor” Braden Hill – a gay Aboriginal man, whose research interests include “indigenous education, identity politics, queer identities in education and transformative learning.”

9.1. Where Did Braden Hill’s “Professor” Title Come From?

In 2019, Hill was hired as Pro-Vice Chancellor (Equity and Indigenous). According to annual reports from ECU, Hill worked in this role until 2021 before then being promoted in 2022 to the newly-created role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Students, Equity and Indigenous). Hill’s hiring and subsequent tenure has correlated with the rise of all-things DEI at ECU.

Upon Hill’s hire in 2019, ECU granted him the title of “Professor.” However, according to Hill’s staff profile, he has never completed a PhD. Hill has a Bachelor of Education (Secondary), Bachelor of Arts (Australian Indigenous Studies), and a Masters by Research in Indigenous Education. Hill’s Master’s thesis at Murdoch University was apparently not even submitted until October 16, 2020, which was after his hire by ECU, and Hill’s Google Scholar page shows that he published only one or two academic articles prior to his hire by ECU.

Given this information, ECU granting Hill the title of “Professor” is scandalous. First, this titling of Hill is unfair to other academics who are required to climb the academic hierarchy from Lecturer/Post-Doctoral Fellow (~$120,000 per year salary), to Senior Lecturer, to Associate Professor, to Professor (~$220,000 per year salary) via a merit-based process (e.g., grants received, articles published). The Australian Association of University Professors has also expressed concernover the trend of universities granting “Professor” titles to managers who have never earned PhDs and who have never climbed the academic hierarchy based on merit.

Second, ECU’s titling of Hill as “Professor” also appears misaligned with the university’s own policies:

“A Professor shall have the same skill base as an Associate Professor but will be recognised as a leading authority in the relevant discipline area.”
“Associate Professors (Level D) will normally have a PhD and/or have relevant qualifications and/or professional, performance or creative works and/or experience. Level D employees are expected to be involved in the development of and have responsibility for curricula and programs of study (award courses), the supervision of honours and research students and where appropriate the leadership of research teams. They may display a high level of administrative work.”

Hill does not have a PhD. Thus, he does not meet the first part of the criteria for Associate Professor or Professor. At the time Hill was hired, he apparently had some relevant work experience at Murdoch University, but whether that experience was at a level worthy of the “Professor” title, particularly as the description for “Professor” also says that the individual must be a “leading authority in the relevant discipline area,” is highly questionable. Being a “leading authority” would mean having national or international prominence based on a track record of academic publications, conference presentations, and previous employment. Hill did not have that prominence at the time of his hire (and probably still does not have that level of prominence). Often, academics work decades before reaching national or international prominence.

9.2. Double Standards of “Inflammatory” Writing

One of the many issues with my cancellation is the application of double standards, whereby my supposedly “appalling,” “insulting,” “antisocial,” “disrespectful,” and “inflammatory,” writings are perceived as misaligned with ECU’s values, and thus grounds for cancellation, while DEI-affiliated staff, who regularly write or say things that might more legitimately be described by such words, are not held to the same level of scrutiny. The writings of Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Students, Equity and Indigenous “Professor” Braden Hill provide examples of this double standard. Additional examples of this double standard are presented below in Part 10: Feminist “Scholarship” at ECU.

In 2022, after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Hill wrote an article in The Western Australian titled, “This ‘loss’ I do not mourn” (or “Stop insisting I mourn for a Queen who led an institution which did immeasurable damage to indigenous peoples”).

In the article, Hill remarked on Australia’s colonial history and the “darker aspects of the monarchy’s rule.” Hill opined on the “ongoing structure” of colonisation, which Hill stated relies on “unknowing, erasure and ignorance.” Hill then shared his opinion that “the insistence we all must mourn the Queen is just a bit cringe-worthy.”

Many ECU students and staff have English ancestry, are from England, or are from countries within the English commonwealth, including Australia. Thus, it is unclear how Hill’s article, and its timing, live up to ECU’s professed values of “integrity” and “respect.” It is also ironic that ECU’s supposed champion of “inclusivity” would write such a divisive article. Moreover, given Hill’s loathing for Australia’s colonial history, it is unclear why he even chooses to work at ECU, given that Edith Cowan was herself the granddaughter of two early colonial settlers in Australia.

Another example of Hill’s problematic rhetoric comes from an article that he published in The Conversation in 2021 titled, “No, you can’t identify as ‘transracial’. But you can affirm your gender.” In the article, Hill and co-author Stevie Lane (ECU’s Equity’s Project Coordinator) used the racist phrase “white privilege.” Unsurprisingly, Hill’s office did not include “white privilege” in its list of racist phrases to avoid in ECU’s Inclusive Language Guide’s (discussed more below).

9.3. “The Voice” Referendum

ECU is public university. Therefore, it should be politically neutral. However, ECU is not politically neutral. It regularly, and needlessly, has taken left wing positions on various political and cultural matters over the past few years. One example is “The Voice” Referendum.

In 2023, Australian citizens voted in a referendum to determine whether to change the Australian constitution to form a distinct “body” or “voice” in the Australian government for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. ECU explicitly endorsed a “yes” vote for the referendum, and leading the way in ECU’s public endorsement was ECU’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Students, Equity and Indigenous “Professor” Braden Hill. In a LinkedIn post (screenshot below), Hill publicised ECU’s endorsement of a “yes” vote, stating that at ECU “taking a stand on matters of social and political importance is not only integral to our purpose and values but essential to who we are and the role we play in our community.” Hill’s problematic comments about the purpose of a public university were then reposted in agreement by ECU’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Education Professor Rowena Harper (more on Harper in Part 11).

The screenshot on the top left from ECU’s website includes a photograph of an event for “The Voice” held at ECU. “Professor” Braden Hill, ECU’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Students, Equity and Indigenous, is seated in the photograph next to “Vote Yes” signs. The screenshot on the bottom left is a Facebook post from ECU in which the university publicly endorses a “yes” vote. The screenshot on the right is a post on LinkedIn by Braden Hill in which Hill affirms ECU’s endorsement for a “yes” vote, with Hill stating that ECU takes stands on political matters. ECU’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Education Professor Rowena Harper reposted Hill’s comments adding “Me too Braden Hill.”

Despite public universities like ECU inappropriately taking a political a stance on “The Voice,” the broader Australian public showed university administrators how out of touch they are with the individuals who fund their salaries and who are meant to be benefit from their educational services. To become enshrined into the Australian constitution, a referendum must obtain a double majority. On October 14, 2023, the Australian public unequivocally rejected “The Voice.” Approximately 60% of the Australian public voted “no.” In Western Australia, where ECU is located, 63% of the population voted “no.” In fact, “The Voice” did not receive majority support in any state. Only the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) – home of Australian’s federal government – voted over 50% “yes.”

*National and state results for “The Voice” referendum vote in 2023. Source: Australian Electoral Commission (2023). Referendum Report 2023.*

9.4. Black Lives Matter

In 2020, ECU also commented on the Black Lives Matter (BLM). This movement surged in attention after the death of George Floyd in the U.S. in May of 2020. Why ECU found it necessary on June 11, 2020 (screenshot below) to comment on BLM, and say that the university “stands with those protesting all over the world against racial injustices and inequality and seeking to challenge the systemic nature of racism” is unclear, particularly as the movement was based mostly in the U.S. Moreover, the BLM organization and movement has been largely discredited. The BLM organization has historical roots in Marxism, it has been accused of questionable financial practices, and it has been criticized for not adequately discussing black-on-black homicide and personal responsibility for one’s behaviors. As of this writing (Aug. 2025), ECU’s website still hosts a BLM statement (screenshot below).

Further reflecting a lack of political neutrality on matters of race/ethnicity, I do not recall ECU similarly sending out a university-wide email or publishing a statement on its website about Jewish people’s lives mattering after hundreds of them were killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. If ECU were consistent on matters of international politics, it would have sent such an email or published such a pressor (or simply remained out of international politics altogether). One Jewish-Australian student at ECU wrote a letter to the Australian Parliament’s Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 about experiencing antisemitism at ECU (letter uploaded below).

Sub358 Student Letter

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9.5. ECU’s Inclusive Language Guide

Braden Hill’s office is also responsible for publishing ECU’s Inclusive Language Guide and a report on inclusive teaching practices and “queering” ECU’s curriculum. The Inclusive Language Guide starts with descriptions of what inclusive language is and why ECU believes it is important.

“At ECU we have a strong and maturing commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion and we acknowledge the benefits that diversity brings to our institution…Everyone is entitled to see themselves positively reflected and acknowledged in our community, especially in the language we speak and write.”

(Funny how such professed commitments to diversity and inclusion apply only to certain groups and beliefs!)

After a “note on intersectionality,” the Guide then includes a content warning:

“Content warning: This document contains examples of negative language sometimes used toward minority groups, followed by their appropriate and inclusive replacement. This negative language is outdated, offensive and may be distressing for some. It exists in this document only as an example of language to avoid.”

ECU’s Guide then lists 11 principles of inclusive language and then applies these principles to the following areas: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; age; disability; sex, gender, and sexuality; race, ethnicity, and culture; religion and belief; and mental health. Oddly, Principle 2: A Person-Centred Approach, which recommends focusing “on the person rather than the demographic group they belong to (unless stated otherwise),” contradicts the critical theory and intersectionality ideologies that the Guide and ECU’s DEI programs are based on.

Below are two tables from the Guide, instructing readers on language to use or avoid with regard to sex, gender, and sexuality. In the tables, readers are encouraged to avoid the phrases “pregnant women” and “she is taking maternity leave” and replace them with “pregnant people” and “they are taking maternity leave.” Readers are also encouraged to avoid the phrases “brother and sister” and “ladies and gentlemen” and replace them with “siblings” and “esteemed guests.”

In sum, ECU’s Inclusive Language Guide stems from an apparent concern about wanting all students and staff to feel welcome on campus. However, the suggested language implies certain beliefs about human biology, psychology, and ethics, and the document is probably not intended to be merely a “guide.” ECU promotes such language on social media (see ECU post from X below), and many ECU staffers likely view the “guide” akin to policy. Thus, the question becomes: what happens to ECU staff who disagree with or do not follow ECU’s Inclusive Language Guide? In Email 4, Executive Dean Moira Sim said that “words can be antisocial,” and this was used as part of the argument for cancelling me. Thus, ECU staff who do not follow the university’s Inclusive Language Guide are likely to be punished and possibly cancelled.

PART 10: FEMINIST “SCHOLARSHIP” AT ECU

10.1. Women’s Sports, Violence, and Funding

On November 1, 2022, Sophia Nimphius was promoted from Professor in ECU’s School of Medical and Health Science to a newly-created position called Pro Vice-Chancellor (Sport). This position seems to have been created specifically for Nimphius, because, to my knowledge, the position was not advertised and there was no internal competition for the position.

Most ECU staff and postgraduates students who I communicate with do not understand what the purpose of the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Sport is or why Nimphius was selected for the role. This position, which falls within the portfolio of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Students, Equity and Indigenous (i.e., Braden Hill), seems to have something to do with managing or coordinating sport partnership projects in alignment with university priorities. However, no one that I talk to knows what this means or entails. Some have wondered whether the promotion was at least partly linked to Athena SWAN, given that in 2018 Nimphius received an ECU Athena SWAN Advancement Scheme Achievement Award (see photograph below). In fact, Athena SWAN is mentioned multiple times in Nimphius’ staff profile:

“Her leadership, governance, and advocacy experience also include contributions to various committees with sport and non-sport bodies. This ranges from the Australian Institute of Sport (National Quality Assurance Technical Committee) to Science in Australia Gender Equity (Chair and Panel Member for Athena SWAN Award). Within the university sector, Sophia's experience is highlighted by prior service as Deputy Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee and ECU Pride Committee and continued service to the ECU Athena SWAN Charter Committee.”

ECU’s Pro Vice-Chancellor of Sport Professor Sophia Nimphius standing centre receiving the ECU Athena SWAN Advancement Scheme Achievement Award in 2018. Former ECU Vice-Chancellor Steve Chapman is standing far left (source: ECU website).

Nimphius and her writings are important in the context of my cancellation, because Nimphius has been a beneficiary and advocate of the Athena SWAN program; she is a high-ranking “feminist scholar” at ECU in exercise science and in DEI spaces; and she has written things on sex/gender that are not supported by evidence and contrast with things that I have published. Here, my purpose is again to highlight the double standard in terms of the accusations levied against me and my writings in the email communications versus the standards that other ECU staff are held to with their writings.

Unscientific Statement on Domestic Violence

On August 16, 2023, ECU published on its website an “open journal entry” written by Nimphius to the university community (uploaded below). Nimphius used the Australian women’s soccer team performance in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup as an opportunity to comment on various topics related to women’s sports. In her letter, Nimphius briefly commented on domestic violence:

“Australia must recognise the need to combat our troubling record on domestic violence. If watching women in sport can change the perspective that boys (and later, men) have of girls and women, then let us invest wholeheartedly.”

An Open Journal Entry To Edith Cowan University

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Between activism and academia: zine-making as a feminist response to COVID-19

Nimphius’ implication that domestic violence consists exclusively or primarily of a male perpetrator and female victim paradigm is misaligned with decades of research on domestic violence. In the 2023 letter that I published in Sports Medicine with Dr. John Barry and Deborah Powney, we overviewed the relevant literature showing that males and females are roughly equally likely to be victims of abuse in and outside of sports environments. I referenced our letter in my essay at the Martin Center and in my written interview with the Centre for Male Psychology – two of the writings that I was cancelled for.

Thus, I was cancelled and ridiculed by Executive Dean Moira Sim for my evidence-based writings on such topics, while Nimphius published misleading information about domestic violence directly on ECU’s website, including the unsubstantiated implication that boys who do not watch women’s sports will turn into abusive men.

Intersectional Conundrum: Trans and the Female Category of Sports

Nimphius has a public reputation as an international expert on women in sport, with journalists at outlets like The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian wanting Nimphius’ opinion on ways women are physically stronger than men and women’s “underrepresentation” in exercise and medical research.

Given that Nimphius is an exercise scientist and champion of women’s sports, one might think that she would be one of the world’s leading voices in the effort to protect the female category of sport. One might expect that Nimphius would use her powerful platform at ECU to write or comment extensively on the topic. Yet, Nimphius has not done this. How can that be? How can such a nationally and internationally prominent person in the women’s sport space be so generally absent in terms of informing the Australian public about the transgender sports debate?

Nimphius’ lack of involvement in the transgender sports debate is relevant to my cancellation because I was accused by ECU staff in the obtained email communications as being “anti-female.” Yet, I have been one of only a few academic exercise scientists in the world, not to mention the only one at ECU, who has publicly advocated for protecting the female category of sport based on the biology of sex differences in physical performance. I have written about this topic in peer-reviewed journal articles, blogs, and in various social media posts. The little that Nimphius has said on the topic seems to suggest that she might be okay with men participating in women’s sports. However, because she has commented so sparsely on the topic, and because the few comments that she has made have been opaque, one cannot ascertain what her view is. My best guess is that this opaqueness and her broader lack of commentary on the topic is due to her being caught in an intersectional conundrum.

I explained the basics of this intersectional conundrum in a 2023 essay titled, “Female exercise scientists and the failure to protect women’s sports.” In my essay, I argued that many feminist exercise scientists are unsure how to pivot in the transgender sports debate because of contradictions in their own intersectional ideology. For example, if Nimphius says that men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, based on beliefs in the primacy of “inclusivity” in sport and that there are little or no sex differences in physical performance between the sexes before or after puberty, then Nimphius’ reputations as a champion for women’s sports and as a legit exercise scientist will plummet. However, if Nimphius sticks to her scientific roots, acknowledges the biological bases of sex differences in physical performance, and thus advocates for separate sports categories for men and women, then she will be viewed as non-inclusive and unsupportive of the transgender community. For Nimphius, the perception of being unsupportive of the transgender community would be challenging given her intimate involvement with ECU’s LGBTIQA+ community (see photographs below), and because her position as Pro Vice-Chancellor of Sports falls within the portfolio of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Students, Equity and Indigenous.

ECU’s Pro Vice-Chancellor of Sport Professor Sophia Nimphius is regularly photographed in university promotional materaials related to the university’s LGBTIQA+ community (sources: ECU website and X).

This then brings us to Nimphius’ unusual response to a question posed to her and seven other “feminist scholars” about “gender expansive” people in sport. The question was asked as part of roundtable discussion paper published in 2023 titled, “Advancing feminist innovation in sport studies: A transdisciplinary dialogue on gender, health and wellbeing.”

The question posed to the panel was: “what do you believe are some of the most pressing issues facing women and gender expansive people’s health in sport at the moment?”

Nimphius’ response is quoted below, and I have bolded the text of greatest interest:

“I would have to say a key issue may be that we are starting to turn to sport to fund and discover solutions about even the general health of women without questioning how the health of women has not been prioritised by society as a whole and the funding structures of governments to support the health of women. Further still is how far behind these same systems (institutional and government) are in providing and understanding the health of gender expansive people. A key issue is finding the line, which will inevitably be blurry, where a proportionate amount of responsibility lies. It is a real problem that the sporting system and bodies that should support sport for women and gender expansive people were already behind in just providing equal sporting opportunities. The pressing issue is how they also attempt to research and understand health with the already disproportionate funding to women and gender expansive people in sport. Secondly is the currently proposed battle of ‘fairness’. The newfound enthusiasm to “protect” women in sport is diverting an extraordinary amount of attention from fundamental issues in sport of respect, equity, resourcing, athlete protection and a wealth of other areas. More significant progress would be made if a similar magnitude of media attention and resourcing were positively directed to these issues vs. scapegoating some of the most marginalised people in our society. So, there are numerous issues that we need to pay attention to, and in doing so must be careful not to scapegoat people to protect a system that may be using a distraction tactic to shield from greater scrutiny and uncovering of systemic failures. It is not us vs. them; we all deserve health and safety in sport.”

First, with regard to Nimphius’ statement on women’s health funding not being prioritize, that is simply not true. I have published summaries of government data showing that women’s health research in the U.S., Australia, and Canada has received substantially more government funding than men’s health research for many years.

Second, regarding men participating in women’s sports, Nimphius placed the words “fairness” and “protect” in quotations when referring to policies that seek to ensure that women are not forced to compete against men in sports. Was placing these words in quotations a way to mock or minimize the idea of protecting the female category in sports based on fairness to women? If so, that seems like an odd thing for a champion of women’s sports to do.

Nimphius then suggested that protecting the female category of sport is a form “scapegoating” (i.e., unfairly blaming transgender individuals) and “a distraction tactic.” She then ended with an ambiguous statement about inclusivity, which seems to miss the point that people who want to exclude men from participating in women’s sports are not saying that these men should be excluded from sports altogether, but that they should simply participate in the men’s category.

Nevertheless, Nimphius’ exact position on whether men should be allowed to participate in women’s sports is unclear from the quote, and, as far as I am aware, Nimphius has otherwise not commented much on the topic, except for one recent letter, in which she similarly does not reveal her position. Instead, Nimphius blames society’s lesser interest in women’s than men’s sports on things like “sporting systems and bodies,” “disproportionate funding,” and “media attention and resourcing,” while simultaneously not acknowledging that one of the biggest factors that limits the development of women’s sports is that relatively few women watch women’s sports.

Fossil Fuel Advertisements at Sports Events

Finally, Nimphius was co-author of a Climate Council report titled, “Calling Time: How to Remove Fossil Fuel Sponsorship from Sports, Arts & Events.” Nimphius was later quoted about the report in The Guardian saying that the report included guidelines for organisations “to seek new sponsors that align with their values and our shared vision for a sustainable future, effectively severing their ties with fossil fuel company sponsorships.”

Nimphius has no expertise in climatology, geology, oceanography, or any other environmental science field. Numerous questionable scientific claims were made by Nimphius and colleagues in their report.

10.2. Queer “Academic Misfits”

I was cancelled for my research and research-informed writings on sex/gender. This cancellation is even more problematic when viewed in light of writings on sex/gender published by ECU staff like the academic team consisting of ECU Professor Mindy Blaise, ECU Vice Chancellor Research Fellow Dr. Jo Pollitt, and their colleague from Monash University Associate Professor Emily Gray (formerly at RMIT University).

Blaise is the Director of ECU’s Centre for People, Place and Planet. Blaise’s staff profile states that her scholarship is “at the forefront of feminist knowledge making, and anticolonial and activist research that creatively and generatively responds to the ever-growing injustices of sexisms, racisms, ecocide, and neoliberal capitalism.”

Blaise and Gray were co-founders of Feminist Educators Against Sexism (FEAS) – a “international feminist collective committed to developing interventions into sexism in the academy and other educational spaces.” Blaise was awarded $322,643 (AUD) from the Australian Research Council – a government agency staffed primarily by women – to undertake a project titled, “Understanding and Addressing Everyday Sexisms in Australian Universities.” The proposal for the grant reveals that the team had little to no intention in quantifying any sexism that men might experience at Australian universities. This type of biased approach to research on sex and abuse/violence is a problem that I highlighted in my essay at the Martin Center.

The screenshot below shows Blaise, Pollitt, and Gray featured in an ECU press release from May of 2021. The press release highlights a brief film that the group premiered at a conference. The film explored “thoughts on social responsibility within the higher education sector, specifically centring in on the impacts of COVID 19 for women in both professional and domestic capacities. Flagging the disproportionate and negative effects on research productivity for women during the pandemic…”

This group of academics uses an intersectionality approach in their work, which makes it problematic from the start. In one of their papers, Blaise and colleagues confesses that they consider themselves “academic misfits.” Below is a screenshot of four of their papers. I briefly describe the stated purpose of each paper. I then list statements made by the team in each of their papers. When reading these descriptions, readers are encouraged to remember the words that were used by some ECU staffers to describe me and my writings and then consider whether some of those descriptors might be more appropriately applied to this team’s writings than to me. Other descriptors for readers to consider might include: false, untrue, unscientific, incoherent, irrational, racist, and sexist.

Gender and Education, 2022 (NB. Blaise and Gray are co-chief editors of this journal)

In this paper, Blaise and colleagues discuss their observations in conducting three Zoom-based zine-making workshops designed to “queer time by slowing down and creating a pause” for academics during the COVID-19 pandemic, illustrating that “a type of feminist work exists between academia and activism that subverts institutional definitions of productivity, collaboration and output.”

Selection of problematic or questionable statements made by the authors:

· “The neoliberal university is fast-paced, demanding and hierarchical (Gannon et al.2019; Mountz et al. 2015), and it is concerned with measuring the productivity of individuals that work within it, meaning that it is designed to allow certain workers to succeed and others to fail. Within this framework, the neoliberal subject remains unnamed, and it is void of identity, meaning that it rejects the successful and is therefore white, male, middle-class, heterosexual and able-bodied.”
· “Feminist spaces such as this need to be forced open within a neoliberal academy that does not welcome them, and they allow us to slow down time (Mountz et al. 2015), amplify previously silenced voices of complaint – voices that are not white, straight, male and/or able-bodied (Ahmed 2020) – and create moments of joy and pleasure within everyday academic life (Gannon et al. 2019). Collective feminist spaces such as this allow the people within them to engage in activism and advocacy work (Mountz et al. 2015) and create a different mode of existence…”
· “Methodologically, Project P: drew upon notions of queer use, creativity and queer feminism. Theoretically, Project P: was oriented to queer theory for two key reasons. First, we identify as queer politically and personally and consider ourselves as academic misfits. The queer theory therefore offers us ways to think through our lives as activists, artists and academics and opens us up to radical possibilities of private and professional personhoods. Second, thinking with the queer theory enabled us to design a project that queered neoliberal notions of usefulness and time and allowed us to subvert the ways in which time and productivity are framed within the contemporary western university.”
· “The making and the conversations amongst feminists co-created a space that slowed down time, amplified voices that are not white, straight, male and/or able-bodied and created moments of joy and pleasure within the panic of the pandemic.”

Performing feminist research: creative tactics for communicating COVID-19, gender, and higher education research

Gender and Education, 2023 (NB. Blaise and Gray are co-chief editors of this journal)

In this paper, Blaise and colleagues described the process and meaning behind making a news video to communicate findings from interview and survey research on sexism in Australian higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Selection of problematic or questionable statements made by the authors:

· “Throughout the paper, we draw upon feminist and queer feminist theories to illustrate how we are enabled to persist in subverting the neoliberal, masculinist techniques that shape academic work in contemporary times.”
· “We therefore set out to queer the conceptions of time that dominate the academy…”
· “It is, therefore, important that those of us who exist on the margins force open spaces in the academy within which we can breathe. This struggle to breathe is part of queer struggles (Ahmed 2010), feminist work (Gannon et al. 2019) and part of our commitment to listen with respect to Indigenous colleagues and communities (Indigenous Action, 2014).”
· “We acknowledge that the research we conducted has serious and disturbing findings and contributes to feminist work that is being carried out during the COVID-19 era. This body of work highlights the raced, classed, and gendered impacts of COVID-19…”
· “The positioning of situated bodies makes visible the often hidden, stumbling, queer, and collective lived experiences of academics-at-work and otherwise (unseen) bodies of knowledge.”
· “The unassuming corporeal confidence of the researchers-as-performers reveals unapologetic bodies of lived experience. These are bodies that know how everyday sexisms feel, and who are situated and variously positioned as white, middle-class, working class, queer, lesbian, soft butch, femme, fat.”
· “By holding everyday sexisms up to the light, new connections between gender, COVID-19, and Higher Education workplaces are brought into being in ways that challenge what the contemporary academy counts as useful or valid. Australian universities are shaped by masculinist, neoliberal techniques that measure the worth of institutions themselves, and the individuals who work within them (Sims 2020).”
· “Just look at who makes up the exec staff at universities and the professoriate – it’s stale pale male.”

Blaise, Pollitt, and Gray pose for various photographs in their paper on performing feminist research during the COVID-19 pandemic (source: photographs were reconfigured from paper in accordance with the paper’s open access license)....

Australian university websites as colonialities of gender

Journal of Gender Studies, 2024

In this paper, Blaise and colleagues audited websites of 39 Australian public universities to describe “how university websites have the potential to reproduce or renegotiate inherited institutional everyday sexisms and broader gender inequities.”

Selection of problematic or questionable statements made by the authors:

· “Australian universities are built on stolen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands and are shaped by a British colonial model that (re)produces a hierarchy of knowledge that privileges white, Cartesian ways of knowing and subjugates alternatives, particularly Indigenous and feminist epistemologies.”
· “By addressing university websites as colonialities of gender, our analysis highlights how these (post)digital spaces can and do perpetuate sexisms in the academy, offering opportunities to reconfigure colonialities in service of more just modes of addressing sexisms in tertiary education. Moreover, acknowledging sexism’s coloniality enables this research to generate collaborative ethico-politics of feminist resistance (Vachhani & Pullen, 2019), building solidarity across entangled histories as we collectively reconfigure our relationships with the colonialities we inherit.”
· “There was notably an absence of images of cisgender white Anglo men on the websites. Unlike minoritised absences, their absence is conspicuous as it signifies their assumed presence…”
· “We also see that the masculine people in the shot are sitting with their legs spread – ‘manspreading’, if you will. The three feminine people in the shot are cross-legged, some with books or computers in place to obscure their bodies. This image reinscribes the normalized phenomenon of men taking up space and women yielding space to them… The image is an example of everyday sexisms where men are depicted as colonizing spaces within the university.”

Masculinism, institutional violence and #MeToo: understanding Australian University responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Journal of Education, Administration and History, 2025

In this paper, Blaise and colleagues aimed to “capture the gendered and intersectional experiences of academic workers” during the COVID-19 pandemic. They administered a survey to approximately 200 academics and then completed semi-structured interviews with 10 of the survey participants.

Selection of problematic or questionable statements made by the authors:

· “This article is intended to act as testament to the ways in which Australian universities function as masculinist institutions that, during this time of crisis, deployed tactics that were experienced by women and minority-identifying research participants as sexist and violent. The article illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic, and university responses to it, are evidence of the everyday sexual violence that women and gender-diverse academics experience due to inherent norms about the labour that ‘counts’ in the masculinist, neoliberal academy.”
· “By everyday sexisms, we mean the gender-based microaggressions experienced by women, non-binary and gender-diverse people as part of their daily workplace routines (Gray, Knight, and Blaise 2018). Often fleeting and seemingly banal, everyday sexisms accumulate over time and, as this article attests, create feelings of resignation, exhaustion and rage for those subject to them. The fleeting moments where experiences are shaped in gendered and also racialised, sexualised and ableist ways…” [Nuzzo note: Notice how heterosexual men are automatically excluded from the possibility of experiencing “everyday sexisms.”]
· “we argue that the gendered impacts of the pandemic in [higher education institutions] constitute a form of everyday sexist harassment…”
· “A combination of the privileging of male-dominated disciplines and the masking of this through economic rationalisation works to promote a culture of masculinism, ‘an underlying ethos or totalising worldview that implicitly universalises and privileges the qualities of masculinity, and in doing so subordinates and “others” alternative ways of understanding, knowing and being’ (Nicholas and Agius 2017, 5). Higher Education Institutions can then be a hostile and toxic environment to work in if you do not possess universal qualities associated with masculinity.”
· “Masculinism is a useful concept for our research because of the ways in which it ‘subverts and directs, as well as constitutes forms of violence, domination, and structural inequality across multiple axes of difference’ (Nicholas and Agius 2017, 5).”
· “In this work, we understand neoliberalism and masculinism as dark twins that inflict symbolic violence upon those who find themselves falling outside of the dominant constellation of privilege within the contemporary university, namely: those identifying as women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people of colour, LGBTIQ+ people and people with disabilities. Within this context, it is important to give voice to those who are not only marginalised within Higher Education, but who also experience it as abusive…”
· “A central argument of this article is that attention needs to be drawn to the ways in which masculinist ways of knowing, being and doing work with neoliberal management techniques to privilege the dominant, yet invisible normative subject within contemporary universities; the cismale, white, heterosexual and able-bodied academic. An example of how masculinism operates within higher education is through the division of labour, where women do much of the invisible and unquantifiable care work, and men are thus enabled to focus on the practicalities of their work. This is an example of how everyday sexisms operate in subtle and nuanced ways.”
· “we call upon higher education leaders to listen to the voices of women and marginalised staff, and more importantly, to hear what they say about the ways in which universities inflict institutional violence upon them.”

PART 11: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND THE ECU PODCAST THAT CAUSED A STIR

At ECU, I served as a sounding board for colleagues who were disgruntled with the university’s misguided politics and DEI crusades. My colleagues were probably comfortable talking to me, because my views were public knowledge and they knew I could provide a sympathetic ear. Sometimes, my colleagues’ grievances or frustrations were sent to me via email, text message to my mobile phone, or private message to one of my social media accounts. Other times, colleagues would pull me aside in a corridor, office, or laboratory.

One of these instances occurred in September of 2024 when an in-person chat with a colleague about research shifted into the colleague expressing concern to me about changes that ECU was making in its education philosophy. The colleague explained to me that a recent ECU newsletter had included a link to a HEDx podcast interview given by Professor Rowena Harper – Deputy Vice Chancellor of Education at ECU.

In the interview, Harper, who joined ECU in 2019 under Steve Chapman’s watch, discussed the topic of “Systemic issues with the [higher education] model in an AI world.” My colleague told me that some of Harper’s interview comments caused a stir among lecturers and professors in the School. My colleague mentioned that Harper’s comments seemed to suggest that ECU would be moving away from giving students grades. Nevertheless, my colleague mentioned that one of the issues with Harper’s interview was that staff could not make sense of what her education philosophy is, how it will be implemented, and how it will help students learn things.

I was curious to learn what the fuss was all about. So, later that day, I listened to the podcast. The interview lasts about 50 minutes, but one need only to listen to about the first 10 minutes to understand the underlying source of the panic and confusion.

In the interview, Harper first tells the hosts how much she loved her Bachelor of Arts degree and that this degree changed her as person. Then, starting at about 6 min 45 sec, Harper states the following:

“I loved my Bachelor of Arts. It really changed me as a person. My Bachelor of Arts introduced me to critical theory, to theories of class, gender, sexuality, race, culture and ability. And through those theories, I really learned about my own structural marginalization as a woman and someone from the working class. And also about my own power and privilege as someone white, English speaking, heterosexual, cisgender. And those theories absolutely electrified me and they really opened up my whole world. And because then I just wanted to stay at uni as long as possible, I enrolled in a PhD.”

As I would later explain to my colleagues, there was no need to listen to more of the interview after hearing Harper utter those words. Once one declares a critical or intersectional, the rest falls into place and no rational mind will be able to make sense of what follows.

Nevertheless, I continued to listen to the interview. Unsurprisingly, Harper, who stated in the interview that her motivation is to “fix this place” and to make higher education “more equitable,” made many comments that were cause for concern. Here, I highlight a few examples.

First, there was Harper’s unintelligible discussion about “programmatic learning,” which is the education philosophy that she plans to institute at ECU. My colleagues (understandably so) could not make sense of what she was talking about.

“So programmatic learning, it's a new system, and it is going to take university some time to get comfortable with each aspect of it. Outcomes that are really important to us at ECU, like retention and success and student satisfaction, they might be impacted in really unpredictable ways by these changes.”
“So that is how we're fundamentally thinking about a programmatic approach. One implication of that is that the relationship between teaching and assessment becomes far more critical, because the learning activities that teachers are responsible for are the foundation for assessment. They're actually the ingredients of assessment.”
“So this will give teaching teams far greater knowledge of their students' abilities. So in a programmatic approach, that's really the primary mechanism for assessment security, and a programmatic approach is knowing the students. But it also means from a quality assurance perspective or an academic governance perspective, it also means we're going to need to quality assure teaching practice in ways that we do not currently.”

Second, with regard to use of artificial intelligence (AI), Harper informs listeners that ECU held back students from engaging with AI for “equity reasons.”

“…And with my critical theory background, AI is really prompting me to step back and consider where have Western knowledge systems taken us? And how do we want those to take us forward? And many course teams at ECU have also been mapping out how this kind of really deep questioning can be embedded in the curriculum. ECU's curriculum design policy has for a long time aim to develop graduates who are globally oriented and socially just.”
“In fact, I thought it was worth calling out that at ECU, we've actually held back our engagement with AI in curriculum for equity reasons. So we didn't want to start designing in the use of AI into assessment before we could provide every ECU student with equitable access to a recommended AI tool. It hadn't been fair that some students could afford to pay for access to GPT-4, for example, which performs far better than other GPTs and a whole range of tasks.”

Third, regarding Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, Harper commented on how imbedding their “ways of being, doing and learning” into ECU’s education philosophy at ECU’s new campus in Perth’s city centre is important:

“So our building is located in Borloo, which is the Noongar name for what many people would know as Perth. And Kurungul Katogen, which is ECU Centre for Indigenous Australian Education and Research, has been considering what that means for place-based and cultural learning, particularly given that the site we're building on has been a place of learning for tens of thousands of years. And another ECU staff member, Chloe Tild Bullen, who's leading our cultural strategy, she's been mapping out how we can really embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander values and ways of being, doing and learning through the building's cultural narrative, which I see us really extending into curriculum and course design.”

Fourth, Harper explained that ECU will now focus on “inclusive employability” of students:

“They've just released this great piece of work, which is a suite of inclusive employability resources for students, which really try to recognise these systemic barriers and attitudes that some students can face when they're trying to find employment or participate in employment.”
“So this is kind of a really hot topic at the moment for universities and also employers is inclusive employability. So for students with a lived experience of disability, students who speak English as an additional language, students of colour, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, LGBTQIA plus students, this is really the next phase in our strategy and work. And we are finding increasing numbers of industry partners who are really keen to partner with us on this.”

After I finished listening to the podcast, I texted my ECU colleague the following message:

“I just listened to it. The key to all if it is just a few minutes in when she mentions “critical theory.” That then explains all her subsequent views and actions.”

My colleague then responded:

“What was [sic] your overall thoughts?”

I responded:

“She will probably wreck the university, leave, take no responsibility for what she did, and then a take a similar position elsewhere at a higher salary.”

My colleague chuckled at my response, and later in the week, we chatted about Harper’s interview. This time, a second and more senior colleague joined in. This other colleague also wanted to vent to me. As usual, I sat, listening to the frustrations pour out.

I then briefly explained to both of them what critical theory is, and how critical theory is the root problem of everything that is going wrong at ECU. My colleagues had never heard of critical theory prior to Harper’s interview.

A couple of months later, after my cancellation, one of these colleagues followed up with me, sending me a video of Harper’s presentation at the 2025 conference of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia. Harper starts her presentation at ~32:00 min with a Land Acknowledgment and then proceeds to exude indecisiveness regarding the best path forward for ECU in terms of AI, all the while assuring the audience that critical theory is key to any future educational approach. My ECU colleague, who now reads extensively on the monstrosity known as critical pedagogy, continues to be concerned about the educational experimentation that is occurring under Harper’s direction.

PART 12: WHY WAS I CANCELLED? THE FEMINIZED UNIVERSITY

The fundamental cause of my cancellation is the feminization of the university. Feminization of the university means that average sex differences in beliefs, interests, and priorities exist, and as female:male ratios at universities increase, priorities and policies of those universities change to reflect more female-oriented beliefs, interests, and priorities. That such sex differences in beliefs, interests, and priorities exist is supported by a substantial literature on sex differences in psychology. These sex differences in psychology manifest in university policies and priorities, such as Athena SWAN and other DEI programs, followed by behaviours of certain staff to protect these programs. From the email communications, one can see the causal pathway between ECU’s adoption of the Athena SWAN Charter, staff beliefs and reactions to my writings, and my cancellation.

The feminized university has many characteristics including increased focus on gender, student health, days of observance, and increased prevalence of rainbow lanyards (Source: X post from ECU on Wear it Purple Day).

Besides the high female:male ratio on campus, other characteristics of the feminized university include, but are not limited to:

· Disproportionate focus on gender and women’s issues

· Heightened focus on multiculturalism

· Heightened focus on campus social events

· Increased participation in days, weeks, and months of observance

· Increased safetyism, safe spaces, and use of trigger warnings

· Heightened focus on student health services

· Heightened focus on DEI, LGBTIQA+, and group identities

· Inclusive language guides

· Administrative bloat and increased bureaucracy

· Increased use of staff onboarding training modules

· Grade inflation

· Increased use of qualitative research methodologies

· Increased use of positionality and DEI statements in academic papers

· Intolerance of viewpoint diversity

· Increased prevalence of academic cancellations

· Increase prevalence of rainbow lanyards

I am not the only individual who has publicly highlighted the feminization of the universities. In 2024, Professor Leigh Revers wrote an article in the National Post titled, “Dark side of feminization of higher education.” In the article, Revers briefly argued ways in which “tertiary education is increasingly becoming a matriarchal enterprise run by women for women…”

In 2022, psychology researchers Cory Clark and Bo Winegard wrote “Sex and the Academy” in Quillette. Clark and Winegard overviewed findings of how the rising female:male ratio on university campuses is changing academic culture. Below, I overview some of the findings highlighted by Clark and Winegard, and I list other findings from experimental psychology that are relevant to the topic of the feminized university and my cancellation.

· Women’s censorship response to sex difference data. A study by Bleske-Rechek et al. in 2024 found that women were more likely than men to be less receptive to, and more inclined to censor, information that stated that women in STEM are no longer discriminated against in hiring and publishing and that sex differences in educational and vocational outcomes are better explained by evolved differences between men and women in personal attributes. The women in the study were also more likely to want to censor the information when it was written by a male rather than a female professor. Moreover, individuals who leaned to the left politically and who held strong beliefs that words cause harm were more likely to want to censor the information.

A study by Clark et al. in 2024 titled “Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology Professors” found that younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty in the field of psychology were more opposed to research findings that the faculty believed were controversial. Regarding the reactions of faculty to academics who write about taboo sex difference topics: “women were more supportive than men of ostracism, public labeling with pejorative terms, talk disinvitations, refusing to publish work regardless of its merits, not hiring or promoting even if typical standards are met, terminations, social-media shaming, and removal from leadership positions.”

The findings from these two studies help to explain my cancellation, because (a) I am a male academic who wrote about taboo sex/gender topics; (b) Executive Dean Moira Sim mentioned in one of her emails that “words can be antisocial” (i.e., cause harm); and (c) most of the individuals who are known or alleged to have been involved in my cancellation were women. (NB. A browse through the Campus Cancel Culture Database of The College Fix seems to show greater male than female representation in terms of the professors who have been cancelled by universities.)

· Protection of women. Studies published by Stewart-Williams et al. in 2020, 2022, and 2024 revealed that both sexes react less positively to male-favouring sex differences. The result is stronger when tested in women, people who lean to the political left, and people who believe in the concept of “male privilege.” The result is consistent with the idea that both sexes are more protective of women than men.

This phenomenon, where perceptions of harm to women underpin the aversion to male-favouring findings, helps to explain the negative reactions that I received from ECU staffers when I highlighted sex differences that favoured males or suggested men might be the sex that is more disadvantaged (e.g., the education outcomes referred to in my essay/podcast about “gender equity” at Curtin University).

· Bias against male employees. One of the findings in the study by Bleske-Rechek et al. was that women in the study were more likely to want to censor sex difference information when it is written by a male professor. Another type of bias against male employees was recently documented in a study of women’s interpretations of workplace communications. In the study, female participants were faced with the same condescending explanations, voice nonrecognitions, and interruptions from male and female co-workers. The female participants reacted more negatively and were more likely to see the behavior as indicating gender bias when the co-worker who communicated in those ways was a male. These types of findings suggest that, all other things being equal, had I been a woman, ECU staffers would have been less likely to be triggered by my writings and less likely to advocate cancelling me, as cancelling a female academic would be antithetical to the societal practice of protecting women.

· Women’s in-group bias and collective action. Compared to men, women exhibit a greater in-group bias, including in hiring. Most of the individuals who are known or alleged to have been involved in my cancellation were women. Back-channel email communications and office meetings without direct confrontation with the perceived out-of-group transgressor are methods of collective action to facilitate cancellation. Collective action is a key element of feminism.

· Academic values and priorities. Women are more supportive than are men of various social justice and DEI beliefs and policies (see “Sex and the Academy” for discussion on the biological and psychology causes of these sex differences). This sex difference is then seen in the different weightings that men and women give to certain academic values or priorities. One study of university faculty in the U.S. found that, compared to male faculty, female faculty were statistically more likely to report valuing social justice and student emotional well-being but were less likely to report valuing academic rigor, academic freedom, and advancing knowledge (NB. These latter three differences did not reach statistical significance.). A similar observation was made in university students, where women reported valuing academic freedom and advancing knowledge less than men, while the women valued social justice and emotional well-being more than the men. A different survey in 2021 also documented that women are more likely than men to value social justice over academic freedom. Overall, these findings on sex differences in academic values and priorities help to explain why my track record in advancing knowledge on sex/gender, and doing so using rigorous methods, was not properly valued by my cancellers due to their concerns about the impact of my writings on social harmony, etc.

PART 13: A MESSAGE TO MY ECU FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

ECU Friends and Colleagues – By publishing this story, I have made your lives easier in terms of having discussions at ECU about ideological biases and their negative consequences (e.g., cancellations, lack of viewpoint diversity). I have given you evidence of the questionable behaviours of high-ranking ECU staffers. If you cannot now find the courage to say something, then there is no hope for you, and you deserve all the consequences of your appeasement.

You need to learn to stand up for yourselves. Stop allowing yourselves to get pushed around. Stop making excuses. Stop saying that you will start speaking up once you get promotion. We both know that is untrue. Stop hiding behind your families and your careers. We all have these concerns. The people who cancelled me rely on your excuses, fear, and emasculation.

Here are some tips:

· Speak up. If you are concerned about a new DEI-related policy or practice, then say something at the first instance it is presented to you, particularly at meetings. If you have a concern about the policy or practice, then at least one other person in the meeting is likely to have the same concern. That other person is unlikely to speak up at the meeting, but they will probably swing by your office later in the week to thank you for saying something.

· Pushback against mischaracterisations. If you challenge ECU’s excess focus on all-things LGBTIQA+, DEI staffers might try to label you as uncaring or unempathetic. If you challenge ECU’s misguided crusade on “gender equity,” DEI staffers are likely to say that you are anti-woman or misogynistic. Do not tolerate this behavior. Maintain your self-worth by unapologetically pushing back against any mischaracterizations of you.

· Watch for projection. Projection occurs when someone accuses you of being something that you are not, when, in fact, the accuser is the type of person or thing that they are falsely accusing you of being. For example, a radical feminist staffer might accuse you of being anti-woman or a misogynist, when you are not those things. When this happens, consider whether the person who is unfairly accusing you of those things might themselves be anti-male or a misandrist and thus projecting their problematic sex/gender views and ideological biases onto you.

· Beware of gaslighting. Gaslighting is defined as “a form of psychological manipulation in which one person seeks to make another doubt their own perceptions, memories, or sanity. The goal is often to gain power or control over the other person.” Features of gaslighting might include a DEI staffer or ECU administrator (a) denying things that happened, (b) dismissing your legitimate feelings or thoughts as being crazy or unjustified, or (c) twisting facts to shift blame or avoid accountability.

One example of ECU’s gaslighting is the “resistance to gender equality” idea that appears in the Equal Opportunity Training Modules. This idea is an example of gaslighting because it takes your legitimate concern about reverse discrimination (i.e., bias or discrimination against men at ECU) and repackages your concern as unjustified or uninformed “resistance” to “gender equality.”

· Call out double standards. A double standard occurs in an environment in which objective principles are not honoured. A double standard occurs when an organization has one set of rules or standards for one group of people and another set of rules or standards for another group of people. Above, I have given various examples of double standards as they apply to my cancellation. Other examples of double standards also exist: for example, university staff being required to complete training modules on topics such as workplace bullying, intimidation, and discrimination, meanwhile those who advocate for these modules and other DEI-related policies on campus are known to engage in such problematic workplace behaviours (e.g., see section 2.10: My Credentials Questioned in Office Intimidation Tactic).

· Use their concepts against them. DEI staffers are typically pragmatists who use or apply a concept only so long as it serves their purpose in the moment. They do not hold many objective principles, and this cognitive weakness can be used against them. For example, DEI staffers often claim that they value diversity and inclusion. This is claim is not entirely true. As my cancellation reveals, they are not tolerant of people who hold certain social or political beliefs. Thus, press the School on whether it values viewpoint diversity.

Another example is “lived experience.” This concept is often used by DEI staffers to advocate for privileges for select demographic groups. However, everyone has “lived experiences,” and your “lived experiences” are not any less important than the “lived experiences” of other individuals or groups. Thus, university initiatives or policies that are rooted in arguments of “lived experience,” but then proceed to infringe upon your “lived experiences,” should be called out. For example, if feminist academics state their “lived experience” is that not enough is being done for “gender equity,” but your “lived experience” is that programs such as Athena SWAN have gone too far, this then nullifies the “lived experience” aspect of the argument and appropriately shifts the discussion to other lines of evidence and argumentation.

· Root out critical theory. The cause of all your problems at ECU is critical theory and its surrogates (e.g., intersectionality). You are in the middle of a battle for the foundations of human knowledge and what the purpose of a university is. Critical theory, which deplores merit-based order in the world, allows people of mediocre talent to rise to positions of substantial power. Critical theory is not concerned with enhancing student understanding of the objective world; it is anti-objectivity and anti-science. It indoctrinates rather than educates. Its purpose is to generate political activists not independent critical thinkers.

Finally, if any of you wish to express your views about my cancellation or other similar happenings at ECU anonymously at The Nuzzo Letter, contact me.

PART 14: DEDICATION TO BARISTA X AND OTHER SUPPORTERS

One day, in the latter half of 2024, I was working from ECU and decided to go for a coffee at one of the university’s cafes. The café that I visited that day was one that I had not been to in a few weeks. Barista X was inside the café and had seen me approaching. As I entered the café, Barista X came from an adjacent room and greeted me. In Barista X’s hand was an envelope. Barista X raised the envelop toward me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s for you,” Barista X responded.

“For me?” I asked, perplexed.

“Yeah, it’s for you. Take it.”

“What is it?” I asked, still confused.

“It’s for you. Just take it. Open it.”

I took the envelope from Barista X and opened it. Inside was a $50 Australian note. I looked up. Barista X was grinning. “What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s for you,” Barista X affirmed, still grinning. “I’m giving it to you. I want to support you. I’ve been holding onto it. I wanted to give it to you the next time you came in for a coffee.”1

Barista X explained to me that the $50 note was for the Go Fund Me campaign that I started for my independent research on childhood sex differences in grip strength and muscle fitness. Barista X had been following me on Twitter via an anonymous account. Through Twitter, Barista X learned of my Go Fund Me campaign and my socio-political views. Barista X learned that our views are similar, including on the topics that I was cancelled for.

Barista X’s support of me and my research shows how disconnected ECU administrators are from the people who they share campus spaces with. Barista X has served and conversed with many staff and students. Consequently, Barista X knows their personalities, values, and beliefs. Barista X knows that ECU has become too political and too focused on DEI activism. In fact, Barista X’s main motivation for donating to my Go Fund Me campaign was concern over gender ideology and the “transing of the kids” in primary and secondary schools. Barista X understood the connections between these personal concerns and the research that I was conducting on childhood sex differences in fitness and the implications of the results on the transgender sports debate.

I dedicate this cancellation story to Barista X and to all other individuals who have supported me and my work, including my supporters at The Nuzzo Letter. This story is also dedicated to all Australians who want better from their public universities – increased rigour, heightened accountability, less political activism, more heterodox viewpoints, and better student outcomes.

Remember, a university can cancel an individual, but it can never cancel the truth. The truth always prevails, and objective reality has an undefeated record. Those who seek to deny truth and evade objective reality are often dealt a heavy hand of both in the end. Cultures from various times and places have developed a range phrases to express this sentiment and to caution people from going down such untenable paths:

“You reap what you sow.”

“What goes around comes around.”

“Mess around and find out.”

“You get what you deserve.”

“The universe keeps receipts.”

“You can’t outrun your own shadow.”

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

“Karma is a bitch.”

THE END

SUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTER

If you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you!

If you prefer to donate to a specific project, please see the Go Fund Me page for my current research on sex differences in muscle strength in children.

Announcing a funding drive for research into childhood sex differences in muscle strength

June 17, 2024

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