Gavan Butler

Gavan Butler

Dr Gavan Butler is one of the founders of the innovative program in Political Economy which began within the Discipline in 1975. He has been on the editorial committee of the Journal of Australian Political Economy published within the Department, since its first appearance in 1977 and has contributed to the Encyclopedia of Political Economy published in the UK and the USA in 1999. Dr Butler was re-elected in 1997, 1999 and 2001 by the academic staff of the University as a member of the Senate of the University and previously served for many years as a staff-elected member of the Academic Board.

Dr Butler’s primary research interest has been in the development of the state, economic policy and human resource development in the countries of Southeast Asia. He has had a long association with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and with academics and organisations in the region. He was invited to teach in the English-language Bachelor of Economics program at Thammasat University in Thailand in 1999 and has continued to do so until the present time.

Education

• Studied at University of California Berkeley

• Studied at The University of Melbourne

Student protest

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Frank Stilwell has just sat down for lunch at his favourite cafe when he starts dropping - in the nicest possible way - the names of some of his former students.

"This respectable federal minister, I recall, was actually suspended from the university for his activism on one occasion," he says with a smirk. "He broke into the clock tower of the main quadrangle as part of an occupation movement."

He's talking about Anthony Albanese, the federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, when a student at the University of Sydney in the early 1980s.

Stilwell played a role in one of the most acrimonious and long-running disputes in the history of Australian academia: the 40-year fight to establish a separate department of political economy at Sydney Uni, finally achieved in 2008.

The dispute was between rival factions of economists and students. The mainstream orthodox economists were on one side, proponents of an alternative program in political economy the other.

Stilwell says when he arrived at the university he found himself at the centre of this aggressive push by radical students to have a range of alternative theories taught.

As the decades unfolded, the protests stirred plenty: tactical police units called in; rooms occupied; the clock tower occupied; vehicles parked on the lawn in protest; tents erected; national conferences and dissident workshops held.

Stilwell says he had actually come to teach the orthodox economics in which he had been trained.

Once he got here his opinions of mainstream economics, and how it was taught, changed thanks to three big influences: the Vietnam War protest movement, his friendship with the late Professor Ted Wheelwright and the enthusiasm and dedication of his radical students.

Albanese says he remembers Stilwell's support for protesters in the early 1980s.

"[Frank] was very supportive of political activism," Albanese says. "There was an attempt by the conservative ideologues to shut down debate about progressive economic thought. That was the context. It was a very interesting struggle because it was overtly political about education and people's rights to learn a diversity of views."

The story of the long struggle is now documented in Political Economy Now!, penned by three of main combatants in the fight – Frank Stilwell, Gavan Butler and Evan Jones. These renegade academics were not deterred by the David and Goliath situation that emerged, as they came up against the likes of Vice-Chancellor Bruce Williams and other orthodox economics stalwarts such as Professors Warren Hogan and Colin Simkin.

Butler, Stilwell and Jones were relatively junior lecturers when they arrived in the early 1970s, but they were backed by other farsighted academics, notably Associate Professor ‘Red’ Ted Wheelwright and Geelum Simpson-Lee, staff-elected Dean of the Economics Faculty.

Tribune

Tribune, August 2, 1989

In the 1980s Gavan Butler was a regular contibutor to Communist Party of Australia newspaper with a "Taking Stock" column.

Australian Left Review

In the 1980s Gavan Butler was a regular contibutor to Australian Left Review.

Political Economy Group

In 1975 Sydney University introduced the Economics 1 (P) course, taught by the "disident Political Economy Group" Ted Wheelwright, Geelum Simpson-Lee, Margaret Power, Gavan Butler, Frank Stilwell, Evan Jones, Debesh Bhattachrya, Louis Haddad and tutor Jock Collins.