-- Australian history lecturer is caught defaming Anzac heroes who fought at Gallipoli as 'killers'
Gallipoli was a WWI campaign to assist Russia -- and by killing 300,000 troops of Russia's enemy, Turkey, it certainly did that. But it was not the big success against Turkey hoped for. And the allied soldiers were of course killers. That was their job. It appears however that the Lecturer was denouncing them for doing their job, which is grievous to the relatives of the over 8,000 Australians who died at Gallipoli.
There are no survivors left but there are many younger relatives alive, of whom I am one. Men who did a difficult and onerous task honourably and bravely in response to their country's call do not deserve disrespect
A lecturer has been caught teaching students at a prestigious Perth university that Australian soldiers who fought at Gallipoli were 'killers'.
Dr Dean Aszkielowicz, from Murdoch University, also told students that Anzac Day commemorations were a 'cliché' and that many of the young people who attended Anzac Day services in Gallipoli were 'drunk,' according to The Australian.
An audio recording of one of Dr Aszkielowicz's lectures obtained by the publication contained the statements, leaving some students questioning whether they are being taught a biased version of history.
When asked by one student if Anzacs who fought during the First World War should be viewed as murderers, Dr Aszkielowicz said that he didn't see why 'that isn't a viewpoint that shouldn't sit alongside this other version of how we look at the Anzacs'.
'If you go and you kill people, whether it's in a foreign campaign or not, then you've killed people and you're a killer,' he said.
More than 8,000 Australian soldiers died during the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which ran from February 1915 to January 1916.
Many Australians and New Zealanders view the campaign as the moment the young nations lost their innocence and became proudly independent.
The comments on the Gallipoli campaign come as students at the same university were told that both the federal government and 'right-wing media' were misinforming the public about refugees on Manus Island and Nauru.
Anne Surma, an English and Creative Arts lecturer, urged her students to read a book by Manus Island asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani, who she described as 'prisoners'.
The University issued a statement that said it was important for all viewpoints to be taught to students – as well as the tools to allow them to form their own opinions.
The interim pro-vice-chancellor of the College of Arts, Business, Law and Social Sciences, Professor Rikki Kersten, said that they actively encourage students to draw from arguments that range across the political spectrum.
'They might not agree with all the viewpoints they hear or read, but it is important they understand them and have the tools to form their own views.
'In the context of these lectures, our academics provided informed but challenging comment respectfully — this is academic freedom in action.'
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And that you may not think that I show you the example of a man who is a solitary person, who has neither wife nor children, nor country, nor friends nor kinsmen, by whom he could be bent and drawn in various directions, take Socrates and observe that he had a wife and children, but he did not consider them as his own; that he had a country, so long as it was fit to have one, and in such a manner as was fit; friends and kinsmen also, but he held all in subjection to law and to the obedience due to it. For this reason he was the first to go out as a soldier, when it was necessary, and in war he exposed himself to danger most unsparingly.
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