Michelle Arrow
Historian. Author, The Seventies (2019), co-author Personal Politics (2024). Writing a biography of Anne Deveson. President, Australian Historical Association. Whitlam Institute Fellow. FASSA. She/her. Views my own. newsouthbooks.com.au/books.
- Such a lovely tribute to Graeme. As Andrew notes, we need his calm, clear advocacy for the humanities now more than ever:
- I wrote a belated tribute to one of my teachers, the late, legendary Graeme Turner. An enormous loss to Australian cultural studies and critical thinking. www.patreon.com/posts/149223...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThis song is 7 1/2 years old now. youtu.be/VYOjWnS4cMY?...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowPlease share. 💔
- There’s a whole Honours thesis to be written about this one:
- COLDEST 100: 2026 EDITION 19. Have a Go (1978) Mojo Singers #coldest100 #hottest100 youtu.be/ygTjsu-dd8w
- And this definitely deserves its place in the top 25
- COLDEST 100: 2026 EDITION 22. You Should Hear How She Talks About You (1985) Simon Gallaher #coldest100 #hottest100 youtu.be/bgcXYzMAntc
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowCOLDEST 100: 2026 EDITION 42. Centrelink Hold Music (2025) Brekky Boy #coldest100 #hottest100 youtu.be/TtXmkwRS9vY
- Also outstanding:
- COLDEST 100: 2026 EDITION 51. Viva Las Vegas (1995) Warwick Capper #coldest100 #hottest100 @rhrettrospective youtu.be/OTmhSSvJgp4
- This is outstanding:
- COLDEST 100: 2026 EDITION 84. Border Shopping Town (1986) Border Shopping Town Albury #coldest100 #hottest100 youtu.be/5ds2rn7ULfg
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowAnd one more thing. Students. If you have a professor who is, for some reason, outsourcing their own job to ChatGPT....drop the class. If they tell you to "ask ChatGPT" for sources, drop the class. Because they apparently don't know their own discipline well enough to teach it.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowRich private schools are gouging parents with huge fee increases while also pocketing millions a year in govt money – yet 98% of public schools don’t get their minimum funding. Should Labor be pouring billions a year into the private system while public schools are underfunded?
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowPowerful statement from Louise Adler and a huge loss to see her go from AWW.
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow📣Postdoc in creative writing 📣 careers.jcu.edu.au/jobs/postdoc...
- ‘It’s financial stupidity to enter the humanities in any of our universities, and the current federal government has done nothing to abate that.’ Great piece by Ben Quilty on our undervaluing of the arts in Australia: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowBREAKING: 3 members of the Adelaide Festival Board have resigned after it refused to reverse its decision to rescind Dr Abdel-Fattah's invitation. No statement has been issued but their names have been quietly removed from the website. Four people are now responsible for the ongoing crisis.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThe Adelaide Writers Festival now wrecked by the Adelaide Festival Board, half of which was appointed late last year: a marketing executive; a former politician; a local councillor/real estate agent; an airport manager; a lawyer; a media consultant; and a banker. Another public arts takeover fiasco.
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowWhere’s Tony Burke? It’s times like these you realise that arts ministers have no interest in defending the arts, and that govts are willing to burn millions of $ for political reasons. Adelaide’s board has just squandered millions of $ and months of work and countless opportunities for writers…
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowBendigo Writers Festival, Meanjin, now Adelaide Writers … powerful vested interests would rather destroy the cultural institutions they are supposedly responsible for than allow certain voices to be heard
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowDenis Muller on the Adelaide shitshow theconversation.com/as-authors-a...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowImagine if the board of a major arts org issued a statement saying they would respect and defend the programming decisions of their staff? Unlikely to happen, but it would be an invigorating and much needed win for artistic and curatorial freedom.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThat they’re coming after the judges reflects their belief that they now completely own the public square. This is late-stage McCarthyism.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowMy statement regarding my decision to withdraw from this year’s Adelaide Writers Festival.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowAs we approach the end of 2025, historians @michellearrow.bsky.social and @zorasimic.bsky.social reflect on Anne Summers’ 1975 book, Damned Whores and God’s Police, fifty years later. Read more here ⬇️ www.auswhn.com.au/blog/anne-su...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowLooks like we've become complacent since the gun restrictions of the 1990s - time for even more stringent rules. The worst gun violence in Australia in 30 years...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowIt's wild that there appears to be more current concern for the Lost Library of Alexandria than for the British Library. The BL's crisis exemplifies the accelerating destruction--through apathy as much as by design--of human knowledge & learning. I'm not even being dramatic.
- ‘No one seems to care’: scholars decry plight of British Library Historian Peter Mandler said it was “a sorry state when a major piece of public infrastructure like this is hit so badly and no one in authority even seems to notice, much less care”. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowTHIS 👇
- And putting Whitlam in a longer context - short essays on all the PMs since Whitlam here: theconversation.com/how-did-the-...
- It’s that time of year when too much Whitlam is barely enough! Here’s my addition to the fray: theconversation.com/extraordinar...
- I watched six hours of Australian history on TV so you don’t have to (though I think you should!) www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-a...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowFree event 📣The right to enquire? A Symposium on #academicfreedom. 📅 Tues 25 Nov 📍 University of Melbourne Tickets: bit.ly/4qg5Q0y Speakers include Prof @michellearrow.bsky.social, Prof @joelobianco.bsky.social, Prof @adriennestone.bsky.social, Prof Frank Bongiorno, Prof Peter Greste & more.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowDiane Keaton in her Manhattan apartment with Buster, an Abyssinian, photographed by Jill Krementz in 1977
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowNever have I so badly needed Daniel Craig to say these words
- Bleak times at Macquarie Uni, as management moves to implement large scale job cuts in arts and science (because who needs that expertise, right?). Amanda’s threat outlines the lies that underpin these changes. We need urgent governance reform now: but is the government listening?
- 1/At Macquarie Uni we are losing 50% of our units in my faculty. This is on top of cuts in 2020. We estimate by next year my faculty will be teaching 80% fewer subjects than pre Covid. Disciplines being cut do not have declining enrolments. @jennaprice.bsky.social @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThis is disgraceful - both the workload and the AI ‘workaround’
- Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThis is shoddy but unsurprising behaviour from an institution that continues to lionise Ben Roberts-Smith despite multiple courts having determined him to be a murderer.
- Great piece on the failures of governance and regulation over our university sector by Richard Dennis: australiainstitute.org.au/post/imagine...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowMost humanities research — including the best, most world leading research by people we’ve all heard of — is unfunded, by which they mean produced as part of one’s routine job as a university lecturer, just “not funded by a big competitive external grant”. This would mean the death of research.
- Ministers ‘want to shift funds away from low-quality research’ . Universities UK president says institutions cannot afford “unfunded hobbyist research”. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...
- Reposted by Michelle Arrowhis father was unavailable for comment
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow“of course it struggled to be viable – it’s a literary magazine. almost no literary magazines around the world are financially viable; that’s not their purpose. the point is their cultural value, the role they serve as a platform for ideas and creativity…” www.theguardian.com/books/commen...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowForced redundancies and restructuring at ANU must stop - in the least pause - while TEQSA investigates the university. Leadership also must step aside while the regulator examines their conduct. How can an investigation be completed fairly any other way? www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/defaul...
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow"A lot of the business majors didn’t think they had learned anything particularly useful in college." Knock me over with a feather. www.chronicle.com/newsletter/t...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThanks to @michellearrow.bsky.social , @frankbongiorno.bsky.social and Anna Clark for bringing solutions to the higher ed crisis - as teachers and researchers, not consultants theconversation.com/universities...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowDr Liz Allen’s evidence today was heartbreaking, brave and infuriating. This is the devastating personal toll of broken governance. Julie Bishop must resign immediately or be sacked. t.co/O9W9nhpydN
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowSenator @mehreenfaruqi.bsky.social: ‘Does it worry you that the staff students and alumni are so dissatisfied and untrusting of governance and the university?’ Kate Witenden, ANU Chief People Officer: ‘I’m not aware of this.’ Senator Faruqi: ‘Why am I aware and you are not?’
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow‘Our public universities have become corporatised, governed from behind closed doors by people with little connection to the daily realities of staff and students. The consequences have been catastrophic.’ Dr Alison Barnes, NTEU National President at today’s Senate Inquiry into university governance
- Help us reach our target of 5000 signatures - please sign and share!
- It baffles me that @australianlabor.bsky.social wants to hang this failed, unfair policy around its neck, when they could condemn it as a folly of the unpopular Morrison government and ditch it. Sign our petition to urge them to abolish it now! www.openpetition.org/au/petition/...
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow12 single mums chaired by an academic could put together an entire system in a day for the cost of lunch
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThe crux of their argument is that if they're found liable, then the consequences of their own actions that no one forced them to take could ruin them and the rest of their industry that undertakes similar practices. To which I say motherfucker did you never hear about Napster
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThe government is under mounting pressure to dump a Morrison-era policy that has drastically cut university funding, saddled many students with debts they will never be able to repay and driven many more away from higher education altogether. satpa.pe/MA6GXR1
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowWe are so close to reaching our target of 2500 signatures on this petition calling for the repeal of Job-Ready Graduates! If you care about equity in higher education and want the BA to be affordable and accessible for *all* students, please sign! www.openpetition.org/au/petition/...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowSydney turning out in support of Palestine. So good to see.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowFrom our tiny patch. #MarchforHumanity
- We only made it about a quarter of the way across the bridge before the march was turned around. A huge crowd, hugely diverse: proud to be there with my family #MarchforHumanity
- Heading into the city for today’s March for Humanity across the Harbour Bridge
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow[This post could not be retrieved]
- It baffles me that @australianlabor.bsky.social wants to hang this failed, unfair policy around its neck, when they could condemn it as a folly of the unpopular Morrison government and ditch it. Sign our petition to urge them to abolish it now! www.openpetition.org/au/petition/...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowAnd! People of all professions, including people in the business and corporate sphere, have signed our petition, leaving comments about the enduring social, political, and economic value of the BA. Sign the petition, read the comments, leave your own in support! www.openpetition.org/au/petition/...
- And it’s not just writers: comedians, business leaders, academics, musicians and chefs have signed our letter:
- A great comment piece on @austhistassoc.bsky.social open letter urging the PM to repeal Job-Ready Graduates: theconversation.com/top-australi...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowThank you to @theconversation.com for sharing the open letter calling for @albomp.bsky.social to repeal Job-Ready Graduates. theconversation.com/top-australi...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowTop Australian writers urge Albanese to abolish Job-Ready Graduates, calling their humanities degrees life changing theconversation.com/top-australi...
- A great comment piece on @austhistassoc.bsky.social open letter urging the PM to repeal Job-Ready Graduates: theconversation.com/top-australi...
- Wonderful! Thanks David!
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowForeclosing access to Arts degrees by shackling students to heavy debt is damaging for all. Demand the Labor Govt reverse the policy by adding your name here www.openpetition.org/au/petition/...
- More than 100 high-profile and distinguished Australians -and BA graduates- have signed the @austhistassoc.bsky.social open letter calling for the repeal of Job-Ready Graduates: a policy that punishes humanities students with life-changing debts: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowTo repeal this would be a relatively 'easy' win, politically. And be life-changing for student access.
- More than 100 high-profile and distinguished Australians -and BA graduates- have signed the @austhistassoc.bsky.social open letter calling for the repeal of Job-Ready Graduates: a policy that punishes humanities students with life-changing debts: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowPlease sign this.
- Reposted by Michelle ArrowIt's really time for the ill-named Job-Ready Graduates policy to go. It is demonstrably poor policy, failing to meet its own (dubious) objectives and driving more rather than less educational inequality, in direct contravention of this government's stated priorities.
- Reposted by Michelle Arrow“If Labor won’t act to defend equity in education, what is the point of them – I mean, what do they really stand for?” Tim Winton “Only thing stopping labor from doing labor things is… labor” Australia Institute #auspol
- More than 100 high-profile and distinguished Australians -and BA graduates- have signed the @austhistassoc.bsky.social open letter calling for the repeal of Job-Ready Graduates: a policy that punishes humanities students with life-changing debts: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
