Robert Manne

Robert Manne (born 31 October 1947) is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia and one of Australia's foremost public intellectuals.

Born in Melbourne, Manne's earliest political consciousness was formed by the fact that his parents were Jewish refugees from Europe and his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust. He was educated at the University of Melbourne and Oxford University during the 1960s and 1970s. His university teaching focuses on twentieth-century European politics (including the Holocaust), Communism, and Australian politics, and he has made extensive contribution to public debate in Australia on topics such as censorship, anti-semitism, asylum seekers and mandatory detention, Australia's involvement in the Iraq war, the Stolen Generation, and the "history wars" of the 1990s.

He is married to journalist and social philosopher Anne Manne, whose 2005 book "" was short-listed in 2006 for Australian journalism's prestigious Walkley Award. They have two adult daughters.

Professional work

Manne's allegiances within the Australian political scene have moved from left to right, then back to left again. Between 1989 and 1997 Manne edited the liberal/conservative magazine "Quadrant", resigning when his editorial policies diverged from the views of the magazine's management committee. Since Manne had been appointed to the position of editor on the strength of his previous anti-Communist publications and his reputation as a conservative, there was widespread anger among people associated with Quadrant during his editorship that he was trying to push the magazine to the left. Since leaving the magazine he has published various attacks on it and upon his predecessors,Peter Coleman and Roger Sandall, and successors, P. P. McGuinness and Keith Windshuttle as editors.In 1996 he published a widely discussed and cited book, "The Culture of Forgetting", which explored the controversy surrounding Helen Demidenko's 1994 Miles Franklin Award winning novel about the Holocaust, "The Hand that Signed the Paper".

Robert Manne edited the 2003 anthology, "Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History", as a rebuttal [http://evatt.labor.net.au/publications/papers/109.html] to Keith Windschuttle's claims disputing there was widespread genocide against Indigenous Australians and the existence of a widespread guerrilla warfare against British settlement. Contributors included well known researcher into the frontier conflict, Professor Henry A. Reynolds, and Professor Lyndall Ryan, whose book "The Aboriginal Tasmanians" is one of the main targets of Windschuttle’s work. Among Manne's other books are "The New Conservatism in Australia" (1982), "In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right" (2001), and "Do Not Disturb" (2005). Manne regularly contributes essays and columns to the "Melbourne Age" and "Sydney Morning Herald". Other current professional involvements from Manne include being the Chair of the Australian Book Review, a board member of The Brisbane Institute, and a member of the board of the Stolen Generations Taskforce in Victoria.

Current teaching and research

Manne currently teaches a number of subjects at La Trobe University at Bundoora in suburban Melbourne. Subjects taught by Manne in 2005 include "Australian Political Culture", "Politics in the Twentieth Century", and "The Holocaust as a Problem for the Social Sciences." Manne also supervises postgraduate students in the areas of Australian Political Culture and European politics in the twentieth century. His Latrobe profile lists Manne's recent research grants as including the "ARC Large Grant: Aboriginal Child Removal Policies in 1999-2000", and in 2003-2005, the "ARC Linkage Grant: Refugee Repatriation Policies." His recent academic research work investigates "The Question of Repatriation of Refugees from Australia", and "The Australian Media and the Invasion of Iraq".

Influences

Over the years, a range of political, economic, philosophical, and academic figures have been influential on Manne, from across the political spectrum. These have included Primo Levi, Václav Havel, George Orwell, Sven Lindqvist, Friedrich Hayek, Eric Hobsbawm, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Stiglitz.

Major Books

* "Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia?" (2005) (ed) ISBN 0-9750769-4-9
* "Left, Right, Left: Political Essays 1977-2005" (2005) ISBN 1-86395-142-3
* "Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History", (2003) (ed) ISBN 0-9750769-0-6
* " The Australian Century: Political Struggle in the Building of a Nation" (1999) (ed) ISBN 1-875847-21-9
* " The Culture of Forgetting: Helen Demidenko and the Holocaust" (1996) ISBN 1-875847-26-X
* " The Shadow of 1917: Cold War Conflict in Australia" (1994) ISBN 1-875847-03-0
* "Shutdown: The Failure of Economic Rationalism and How to Rescue Australia" (1992)(ed) ISBN 1-863720-08-1
* " The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage" (1987) ISBN 0-08-034425-9

External links

* [http://www.latrobe.edu.au/socsci/staff/manne/manne.html Manne's profile at Latrobe University]
* [http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/RobertManne/index.html Online opinion articles by Manne from "The Age"]
* [http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/blog/21 Articles by Manne at "The Monthly"]