Melbourne writer posted at Harvard

By David Rood

Melbourne academic, writer and cultural commentator Dennis Altman has
been appointed to the chair of Australian studies at Harvard
University.

The La Trobe University politics professor, known for his work on gay
identity, the cultural politics of HIV/AIDS and globalisation will
begin the posting in January.

Professor Altman said that despite an element of "appalling elitism
and snobbery" around the Ivy League universities, the Boston
appointment was an opportunity to show the American academic
establishment that there was an intellectual life in Australia.

"Australia just doesn't figure on the consciousness of people in (US)
universities except in very specialised areas," he said yesterday.

"We have a lot of people who engage in intellectual work which is
relevant, and Americans might actually know some of us, but they
don't think of us as Australian."

The annual visiting professorship was a gift from the Australian
Government to commemorate the 1976 American Bicentenary.

Previous holders of the chair include former prime minister Gough
Whitlam, historian Manning Clark, feminist historian Marilyn Lake and
scientist Tim Flannery.

Professor Altman is president of the AIDS Society of Asia and the
Pacific and has written books such as Global Sex, Power and
Community: Organisational and Cultural Responses to AIDS and the 1971
Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation.

He will teach in sociology on the topic of globalisation and said he
hoped to use Harvard's intellectual arena to show Americans how they
looked to those outside the United States.

"Because the United States is a dominant power, I don't think it has
any understanding of its impact on the rest of the world," Professor
Altman said.

"To Americans, it seems like opening free markets; to Australians,
it's destroying our film and television industry."

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/09/1076175101777.html