Melissa Madsen’s Posthaven

The news depresses me greatly at the moment. Each morning, I read my feed on BlueSky over coffee and vegemite toast, and it turns into doom-scrolling. The only thing that has cheered me up recently is the story of the Perth Zoo elephant Permai being relocated to South Australia in order to combat loneliness.

4. Participate or organize boycotts of companies that are enabling the Trump regime, starting with Elon Musk’s X and Tesla, and any companies that advertise on X or on Fox News

I did a quick review of public Australian university accounts (plus Bond University) on X, and the majority are active. Flinders University and Queensland University of Technology are exceptions, together with the University of Canberra and The University of Newcastle. The table below shows my findings. (Apologies for the poor formatting of the table - my html skills are rusty.)

I classified accounts as follows:

1. Stated Inactive if the account has an indicator that the account is inactive, irrespective of when the last post was created;
   
2. Functionally Inactive if the account has not posted in the past month, but no obvious indicator that the account is inactive;
   
3. Active if they had a post in the last month.

Here's the message that appears on the X account for Flinders University:

Only two universities had no presence on X that I could find - the new Adelaide University and the University of New South Wales. 

Call to Action

I will write to the Marketing Director for the university where I currently work to respectfully suggest that they should cease using X to promote the university's activities, as associating the university brand with a platform whose proprietor uses Nazi salutes and flirts with the far right in Germany is ultimately damaging.

I will also write to the Marketing Director for the university from which I graduated to suggest the same.

Universities Australia (whose X account appears to be active) helpfully publishes a directory of Australian university Marketing Directors.

It is not the boycott that Robert Reich advocated, but universities withdrawing from X helps to stop the normalisation of anti-semitism and hate speech. I urge you to write to the universities with which you have a relationship also.