By Rebel News | Created at 2025-03-20 02:11:32 | Updated at 2025-03-20 17:46:00
16 hours ago
Macquarie University law students have condemned their course’s growing ideological focus, revealing they have been pressured to perform a “privilege walk” and adopt personas to understand power and status. They say their education has been hijacked by political activism, with a key course convenor now doubling down on controversial assessment criteria.
Holly Doel-Mackaway, convenor of the elective Age and the Law course, defended the requirement for students to perform an Acknowledgment of Country as part of their assessment. She reportedly said on Wednesday that those who failed to deliver a suitable proclamation would “not meet the metric or rubric.”
Students have pushed back against what they see as a politicised curriculum, with one saying they felt pressured to “express an opinion that I don’t truly believe in.”
A former honours student, speaking anonymously, told The Australian that students were required to deliver an “exceptionally thoughtful and respectful Acknowledgement of Country or Welcome to Country” as part of their thesis presentation, taking up around 30 seconds of their three-minute speech. The student said this had no connection to their thesis subject.
Doel-Mackaway reportedly told students that the requirement was about “acknowledging your positionality as a student of law on this unceded land.”
This is dark. Ideological tyrants in universities are coercing students to adopt their language or face failure.
The university in question, Macquarie, receives two to three million dollars per year in taxpayer funding.
DEFUND NOW. pic.twitter.com/SGWPF5tSPJ
“It’s the fault of the university, and no one is suffering the harm more than the students of its law school,” the student said. “It reflects upon the students who are going out and applying for these jobs. And you’ve got these partners at places like Mallesons, Freehills and Allens who would look at this stuff and think, ‘That’s crazy. I don’t want to hire a kid who’s been taught by people like this.’”
Another student, also speaking anonymously, described being made to participate in a “privilege walk” in the Age and the Law course. Students were assigned different backgrounds, from “poor children with diseases to CEOs of large companies,” and told to step forward if statements applied to them. Those deemed “privileged” moved ahead, while others were left behind.
“We were then made to feel bad for having these positions. The convener told those of us with jobs or positions of power that we had achieved our positions by ‘stepping on the shoulders of others,’” the student said.
Other course material reportedly included claims that childhood was a social construct and that children should be considered equal to adults.
If ever you need a lawyer you should probably avoid those from Macquarie University, where acknowledgements of country and "privilege" seem more important than actual law.https://t.co/Eh4BzN1ghK pic.twitter.com/MupM4oLxuk
— Ron Dunn (@ronInBendigo) March 19, 2025“Unfortunately, Age and the Law is not the only subject at Macquarie that has been completely hijacked by this mentality … a lot of the classes are the same,” the student said.
Macquarie University confirmed that the compulsory acknowledgment was removed from an honours unit last year but said it remained in Age and the Law as it helped students “better connect with the cultural context in which they might be working.”
A university spokesperson insisted that “providing an Acknowledgement of Country is not part of the assessment for any other law subject at Macquarie University.” However, the university declined to answer whether students were informed about the assessable Acknowledgment before choosing the elective.
It's not the university's first 'woke' controversy, with former media and communications lecturer Rachael "Raygun" Gunn's doctoral research on "gender dynamics in breakdancing" called out over radical feminist perspectives.
