In his 1996 Boyer Lectures titled ‘The View from the Bridge,’ the eminent Australian academic Pierre Ryckmans argued the university as a bastion of learning was dead.  Such was the destructive impact of cultural-left theory and the success of the left’s long march that universities were no longer committed to concepts like wisdom, truth and the pursuit of knowledge. 

The recent public declaration by Professor Corinne Reid, the deputy vice-chancellor at Victoria University, proves how prescient Ryckmans was.  In response to the coronavirus pandemic Reid makes the startling observation that the virus “will be one of the defining moments of our generation” and that people...