Stuart Macintyre
Encyclopedia
Stuart Forbes Macintyre (born 21 April 1947), Australia
n historian, academic and public intellectual, is a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne
. He has been voted one of Australia's most influential public intellectuals
Macintyre was born in Melbourne
, Victoria
in 1947, the son of Forbes Macintyre and Alison Stevens. He was educated at Scotch College
, and later studied at the University of Melbourne
, specialising in history
, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1968. He also holds a Master of Arts degree from Monash University
(1971) and a PhD
from the University of Cambridge
(1975), for which he was awarded the Blackwood Prize. He married Martha (Bruton) Macintyre http://www.chs.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/macintyre.html, a social anthropologist, in 1976.
While a postgraduate student at Monash in the early 1970s Macintyre joined the Left Tendency of the Communist Party of Australia
. His membership lapsed while he was studying in the United Kingdom, and on returning to Australia he joined the Australian Labor Party
. He now considers himself to be a democratic socialist
. As an historian he identifies with the tradition of labour historians
, such as Henry Pelling
, who was his doctoral supervisor in Britain.
Macintyre has had a long and distinguished academic career at a range of institutions in Australia and internationally. From 1977 to 1978, Macintyre was a research fellow at St John's College
at the University of Cambridge. He returned to Australia in 1979 as a lecturer at Murdoch University
in Perth
, Western Australia
, and the following year returned to Melbourne where he lectured at the University of Melbourne until 1981. From 1982 to 1983 he was a research fellow at the Australian National University
in Canberra
, and in 1984 he was promoted to Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. From 1988, Macintyre was a reader
in history at the University of Melbourne, before being promoted to professor in 1991, when he was given the Ernest Scott chair
in history. Macintyre was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1999. In 2002 he was made a Laureate Professor of the University of Melbourne. Macintyre has also been a visiting scholar or fellow at Griffith University
(1986), the University of Canterbury
, New Zealand
(1988), the University of Western Australia
(1988), the Australian National University (1991) and the University of Otago
, New Zealand (1992).
From 1987 to 1996, Macintyre was a member of the Council of the National Library of Australia
(NLA) and from 1989 to 1998, a member of the Council of the State Library of Victoria
(SLV). He also served as chairperson of the Humanities and Creative Arts Panel of the Australian Research Council
(ARC) in 2003. Recently, Macintyre has been outspoken about the actions of former federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson
, who personally vetoed several ARC grants which had already been approved by the ARC's peer review
process.
Macintyre has published a number of books, including a history of Marxism
in the United Kingdom
in the early 20th century, based on his doctoral thesis, a history of the labour movement in Australia, and a history of the Communist Party of Australia
. Perhaps his most widely known work is The History Wars (with Anna Clark), a study of the history wars
, a public debate about the recent interpretation of various aspects of the history of Australia
. The book was launched by former Prime Minister of Australia
Paul Keating
, who took the opportunity to criticise conservative views of Australian history, and those who hold them (such as the then current Prime Minister John Howard
), saying that they suffered from "a failure of imagination", and said that The History Wars "rolls out the canvas of this debate." Macintyre's critics, such as Greg Melluish (History Lecturer at the University of Wollongong
), responded to the book by declaring that Macintyre was a partisan history warrior himself, and that "its primary arguments are derived from the pro-Communist polemics of the Cold War
." Keith Windschuttle
said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate" but failed to explain what he meant. In a foreword to the book, former Chief Justice of Australia
Sir Anthony Mason said that the book was "a fascinating study of the recent endeavours to rewrite or reinterpret the history of European settlement in Australia."
Macintyre has received many awards, including the Premier of Victoria's Literary Award for Australian Studies in 1986, for his work in authoring the fourth volume of the Oxford History of Australia, and the Redmond Barry
Award from the Australian Library and Information Association
in 1997, in recognition of his work with the NLA and SLV. His book The Reds won The Age
Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award in 1998. The History Wars won the 2004 Premier of New South Wales' Australian History Prize.
Macintyre finished a second term as the Dean of Arts in mid-2006. For the 2007-8 academic year he holds the Harvard Chair of Australian Studies, retaining his academic appointment at Melbourne. He is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n historian, academic and public intellectual, is a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
. He has been voted one of Australia's most influential public intellectuals
Macintyre was born in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
in 1947, the son of Forbes Macintyre and Alison Stevens. He was educated at Scotch College
Scotch College, Melbourne
Scotch College, Melbourne is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia....
, and later studied at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
, specialising in history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1968. He also holds a Master of Arts degree from Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
(1971) and a PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
from the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
(1975), for which he was awarded the Blackwood Prize. He married Martha (Bruton) Macintyre http://www.chs.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/macintyre.html, a social anthropologist, in 1976.
While a postgraduate student at Monash in the early 1970s Macintyre joined the Left Tendency of the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
. His membership lapsed while he was studying in the United Kingdom, and on returning to Australia he joined the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
. He now considers himself to be a democratic socialist
Democratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
. As an historian he identifies with the tradition of labour historians
Labor history
Labor history may refer to:* Labor history , a subfield of the discipline of history**Labor history of the United States, describes the history of organized labor, as well as the more general history of working people, in the United States...
, such as Henry Pelling
Henry Pelling
Henry Mathison Pelling , was a British historian best known for his works on the history of the British Labour Party, including:*The Origins of the Labour Party and*A Short History of the Labour Party ....
, who was his doctoral supervisor in Britain.
Macintyre has had a long and distinguished academic career at a range of institutions in Australia and internationally. From 1977 to 1978, Macintyre was a research fellow at St John's College
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
at the University of Cambridge. He returned to Australia in 1979 as a lecturer at Murdoch University
Murdoch University
Murdoch University is a public university based in Perth, Australia. It began operations as the state's second university in 1973, and accepted its first students in 1975...
in Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
, and the following year returned to Melbourne where he lectured at the University of Melbourne until 1981. From 1982 to 1983 he was a research fellow at the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
in Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
, and in 1984 he was promoted to Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. From 1988, Macintyre was a reader
Reader (academic rank)
The title of Reader in the United Kingdom and some universities in the Commonwealth nations like Australia and New Zealand denotes an appointment for a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation in research or scholarship...
in history at the University of Melbourne, before being promoted to professor in 1991, when he was given the Ernest Scott chair
Chair (official)
The chairman is the highest officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office is typically elected or appointed by the members of the group. The chairman presides over meetings of the assembled group and conducts its business in an...
in history. Macintyre was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1999. In 2002 he was made a Laureate Professor of the University of Melbourne. Macintyre has also been a visiting scholar or fellow at Griffith University
Griffith University
Griffith University is a public, coeducational, research university located in the southeastern region of the Australian state of Queensland. The university has five satellite campuses located in the Gold Coast, Logan City and in the Brisbane suburbs of Mount Gravatt, Nathan and South Bank. Current...
(1986), the University of Canterbury
University of Canterbury
The University of Canterbury , New Zealand's second-oldest university, operates its main campus in the suburb of Ilam in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
(1988), the University of Western Australia
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...
(1988), the Australian National University (1991) and the University of Otago
University of Otago
The University of Otago in Dunedin is New Zealand's oldest university with over 22,000 students enrolled during 2010.The university has New Zealand's highest average research quality and in New Zealand is second only to the University of Auckland in the number of A rated academic researchers it...
, New Zealand (1992).
From 1987 to 1996, Macintyre was a member of the Council of the National Library of Australia
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
(NLA) and from 1989 to 1998, a member of the Council of the State Library of Victoria
State Library of Victoria
The State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state of Victoria, Australia, located in Melbourne. It is on the block bounded by Swanston, La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets, in the northern centre of the central business district...
(SLV). He also served as chairperson of the Humanities and Creative Arts Panel of the Australian Research Council
Australian Research Council
The Australian Research Council is the Australian Government’s main agency for allocating research funding to academics and researchers in Australian universities. Its mission is to advance Australia’s capacity to undertake research that brings economic, social and cultural benefit to the...
(ARC) in 2003. Recently, Macintyre has been outspoken about the actions of former federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson
Brendan Nelson
Dr Brendan John Nelson is a former Australian politician and former federal Opposition leader. He served as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from the 1996 federal election until 19 October 2009 as the Liberal member for Bradfield, a northern Sydney seat...
, who personally vetoed several ARC grants which had already been approved by the ARC's peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
process.
Macintyre has published a number of books, including a history of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in the early 20th century, based on his doctoral thesis, a history of the labour movement in Australia, and a history of the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
. Perhaps his most widely known work is The History Wars (with Anna Clark), a study of the history wars
History wars
The history wars in Australia are an ongoing public debate over the interpretation of the history of the British colonisation of Australia and development of contemporary Australian society...
, a public debate about the recent interpretation of various aspects of the history of Australia
History of Australia
The History of Australia refers to the history of the area and people of Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Aboriginal Australians are believed to have first arrived on the Australian mainland by boat from the Indonesian archipelago between 40,000 to...
. The book was launched by former Prime Minister of Australia
Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
Paul Keating
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...
, who took the opportunity to criticise conservative views of Australian history, and those who hold them (such as the then current Prime Minister John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
), saying that they suffered from "a failure of imagination", and said that The History Wars "rolls out the canvas of this debate." Macintyre's critics, such as Greg Melluish (History Lecturer at the University of Wollongong
University of Wollongong
The University of Wollongong is a public university located in the coastal city of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, approximately 80 kilometres south of Sydney...
), responded to the book by declaring that Macintyre was a partisan history warrior himself, and that "its primary arguments are derived from the pro-Communist polemics of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
." Keith Windschuttle
Keith Windschuttle
Keith Windschuttle is an Australian writer, historian, and ABC board member, who has authored several books from the 1970s onwards. These include Unemployment, , which analysed the economic causes and social consequences of unemployment in Australia and advocated a socialist response; The Media: a...
said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate" but failed to explain what he meant. In a foreword to the book, former Chief Justice of Australia
Chief Justice of Australia
The Chief Justice of Australia is the informal title for the presiding justice of the High Court of Australia and the highest-ranking judicial officer in the Commonwealth of Australia...
Sir Anthony Mason said that the book was "a fascinating study of the recent endeavours to rewrite or reinterpret the history of European settlement in Australia."
Macintyre has received many awards, including the Premier of Victoria's Literary Award for Australian Studies in 1986, for his work in authoring the fourth volume of the Oxford History of Australia, and the Redmond Barry
Redmond Barry
Sir Redmond Barry KCMG was an Irish colonial judge in Victoria, Australia.-Early life:Barry was the son of Major-General Henry Green Barry, of Ballyclough, County Cork and his wife Phoebe Drought, daughter of John Armstrong Drought and Letita Head...
Award from the Australian Library and Information Association
Australian Library and Information Association
The Australian Library and Information Association is the peak professional organisation for the Australian library and information services sector....
in 1997, in recognition of his work with the NLA and SLV. His book The Reds won The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award in 1998. The History Wars won the 2004 Premier of New South Wales' Australian History Prize.
Macintyre finished a second term as the Dean of Arts in mid-2006. For the 2007-8 academic year he holds the Harvard Chair of Australian Studies, retaining his academic appointment at Melbourne. He is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia is an autonomous, non-governmental organisation, devoted to the advancement of knowledge and research in the social sciences. It was established in 1971...
. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.