A racially charged email from University of Melbourne law academic Eric Descheemaeker — describing a cultural review as an "ideological re-education camp" that celebrates the "noble savage" — has been leaked and posted across campus.
First reported by The Age on Friday, the email was originally sent in 2023 in response to the cultural safety review at the Melbourne Law School (MLS), which was ordered following the resignations of several Indigenous staff, including Larrakia, Wadjigan and Central Arrernte man Dr Eddie Cubillo.
"I joined what I thought was a world-class law faculty: I wake up in an Ideological re-education camp with incredibly parochial concerns, those of the inner north suburbs of Melbourne (sorry, 'Naarm')," Mr Descheemaeker wrote in the email.
"Celebrating the 'noble savage' is already the main, if not exclusive, thing MLS appears to exist for — with just a bit of space to spare for every possible sexual or gendered minority vying for claims to victimhood."
Mr Descheemaeker, also a visiting research fellow at Oxford University, continued: "They have made us start every meeting with ritual prayers. Their (non-existing) claims to land are now 'acknowledged' about every 10 feet in our corridors."
"They want me to teach that Australian law is only 'settler law' and that there exists a rich body of 'Indigenous law' alongside (what are Indigenous private-law remedies, I wonder. Ritual spearings?)."
Dr Cubillo, who resigned as Associate Dean and Senior Fellow at MLS in 2023, said the university was the "most culturally unsafe place" he had worked.
"They're not listening and not taking action … there's an exodus of staff because of the cultural safety issue. I'm not alone," he told Guardian Australia at the time.
He was reported to be the only Blak faculty member at the law school and still holds the role of Director of the Indigenous Law and Justice Hub.
Professor Amanda Porter said Dr Cubillo's experience did not surprise her. Speaking to NITV at the time of his resignation, she said: "There is a culture of defamation threats, complaints and racism within Australian law schools."
The Yuin woman and then Senior Fellow of Indigenous Programs at MLS added she was "exhausted by the number of legal academics who would rather send defamation notices or lodge formal complaints to HR than confront their own behaviour".
In his email, Mr Descheemaeker also wrote: "I don't know who the 'Indigenous colleagues' who have left are — I have in fact no interest in categorising my colleagues into pure-blood and impure-blood ones, which to an old European like me is reminiscent of things too ugly to speak of — nor what the alleged 'incidents' are."
"Given that we stand accused before the political commissars of the virtue (firing?) squad, it might have been a good idea, according at least to the (settler-law) principles of natural justice, to tell us what it is we stand accused of?"
In 2023, the university released Dhoombak Goobgoowana: A History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne, a book examining the university's colonial past and its ties to scientific racism and eugenics.
One of the book's authors, Professor Marcia Langton, said during her nearly 25 years at the university, she often heard "whispered asides about aspects of the history of the institution".
"For too long, those of us whose academic professions require that we understand the impacts of our scholarship on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have wanted our colleagues and students to be aware of the events, people, and intellectual forces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that shaped our modern university," Professor Langton said at the time.
The University of Melbourne was contacted for comment.
