What lies ahead for HERDSA and other 'professional' societies?

20 months after resigning my Fellowship of HERDSA, I'm left wondering whether academics like me will ever get an apology?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

I’ve just finished listening to this interview by Dr Ahmed Malik with Dr Clare Craig. This is one podcast series which isn’t usually on my Spotify newsfeed, tbh, but Dr Mike Yeadon highlighted it for it’s interesting content.

When Mike said ‘content’, he doesn’t necessarily meaning actual content, more what is NOT said, but implied. You see the subtext of this interview is the jumping-through linguistic and mental hoops by these two clinicians, in order to not be too blunt about the Elephant in the Room.

In case anyone doesn’t know what I mean by that, I suggest you listen to the interview (between clenched teeth, probably) to understand the difficulties these two people are experiencing - perhaps some cognitive dissonance? Whether one speaker knows more than they are admitting, is actually irrelevant - what we can hear/see here are the inherent tensions between what any intelligent person would call evil intent, versus incompetence. Come on, Clare, the doctors haven’t “dropped the ball” - that is just a ridiculously naïve description of what has happened.

People died. People are still dying.

In particular, it was interesting to hear Clare speak publicly for the first time (apparently) about how the GMC and her professional body have given her ‘warnings’ after ‘complaints’ (@1hr 23mins). Like many other professional academics and clinicians, this was when she spoke-out against the covid narrative with scientific facts. I’m sure her new collegial association of HART have been strongly defending her role against the corrupt powers-that-be.

But this conversation just reminded me of one of my (old) so-called ‘professional’ societies. One I was proud (back then, before my awakening) to have worked hard to be awarded Fellowship of, in 2017:

For those who don’t know, the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) is kinda (trying to be) the Southern Hemisphere’s equivalent of the old UK HEA, before it seemed to be taken-over by commercial interests and quasi-business ‘leaders’.

Apparently, HERDSA’s purpose/mission is:

“to bring together and support those people who are engaged in teaching in higher education, in the study of learning, teaching and policy in higher education, and in the continuous improvement of higher education.”

One wonders how this ‘continuous improvement’ can occur when those who want to debate important issues of discrimination of staff and students, are censored?

According to it’s website today, HERDSA’s goal is “to be a scholarly society for the diverse group of people concerned to advance higher education.” With aims to:

• advance educational policy/practice; facilitate and promote the enhancement of teaching/learning; encourage and disseminate research; recognise and reward outstanding contributions to education; encourage collaboration and professional communities; assist its members in their ongoing professional development.

But obviously none of these ‘goals’ included those research and teaching staff (like me) and students who chose NOT to participate in the global clinical trial over the past two years, because during that time, we were unable to access our institutions, or even in many cases, our local public library:

After some prodding, HERDSA agreed this overt discrimination was perfectly acceptable. In fact, any member (or Fellow) trying to raise legitimate questions about this contradiction between HERDSA’s aims and its prejudice, anti-science actions, were silenced and called ‘anti-vaxxers-conspiracy theorists’. As indeed I was, during the NZ AGM on November 23 2021 - after which I resigned in disgust.

On HERDSA’s website, they (still) claim to “embrace the values” of Connection; Inclusion; Inquiry, Quality and…. wait for it:

Integrity - which HERDSA clarifies as the ability to:

“uphold and expect honesty, openness, respect, and trust in members’ interactions with one another and the society.”

I still - three years into this nightmare - find it incredible that professional societies like HERDSA got away with what they did. How could this happen? Was the world really that crazy?

We should NOT forget what these societies did. They ignored and tried to shame their own paying members - staff and students at universities (and freelance academics like myself) - in favour of supporting the lies the corrupt, totalitarian Governments were peddling. And the irony is, that some of these so-called ‘experts’ were psychologists and many must of have known about propagandist strategies that were weaponised against us. But they stayed silent. And their silence makes them complicit in the fraud.

Some of those same HERDSA Committee members who tried to silence me on Nov 23rd 2021, would have seen these headlines in their paper this weekend over their morning lattes:

Will we ever get an apology from these kinds of societies? Will HERDSA, along with the GMC and other corrupted, captured societies eventually get completely disestablished?

Will new, emerging groups of ethical professionals, like HART and ‘down under’s’ Australians for Science and Freedom (ASF) become the dominant, recognisable professional standard?

Only time will tell.