A Monash academic accused of misconduct with a student

Dr David Wright-Neville was until recently an expert commentator on 3AW's top-rating Neil Mitchell morning program. His expertise is international terrorism. Like many of Mitchell's expert commentators he sounded interesting until he got off his speciality and extemporised on political matters. I made a comment on one such occasion back in 2007.

A few weeks ago Wright-Neville's name suddenly appeared under searches in my daily website statistics. It took no time to discover the reason. Monash University had suspended Wright-Neville because of 'allegations of sexual misconduct'. Now I have nothing to say at this point about the case, except that I can't help feeling some sympathy for Wright-Neville. The cards are staked against him, whatever it is he has (allegedly) done. Relations between female students and male lecturers have not been unusual through the years. What is now different is that in our feminised universities a male is guilty (of whatever) until he proves himself innocent.

But my real interest in this is Neil Mitchell's reaction. What could it have been? What an irony that 3AW's great denouncer of the sexual misconduct of Catholic clergy, should be such good mates with someone now under a similar cloud.

Terror expert in sex case probe

Monash academic quits over allegation

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com