Some chronology for John Joseph Ray

1971


A most scenic drive near where I grew up -- the road from Cairns to Port Douglas



Lecturer in Sociology

After I finished my Doctoral thesis (written in six weeks) at Macquarie University I got a job as Lecturer in Sociology at the University of N.S.W. That was in early 1971.

Macquarie took a couple of years to get the thesis marked so my Ph.D. was not actually awarded until 1974. A certain Fred Emery from A.N.U. knocked it back on the grounds that it used parametric statistics. Since most psychologists do use parametric statistics, this was rightly seen as eccentric and other markers had to be found.

I did research projects at a great rate while I was a lecturer. I did up to half a dozen surveys in a year and got a lot of articles out of each survey. The record speaks for itself. I had over 20 articles published in some years compared to the single one that most psychology and sociology academics battle to get out.

I doubt that I am all that much smarter than my fellow academics. It is just that I see things in ways rather different from others (often because I am not a Leftist) and this makes me full of ideas to test. Being very efficient and energetic as well I get to test a lot of those ideas. So it is creativity and hard work that gives me the big edge.

On the other hand, the unusually high speed at which I can learn things "is" diagnostic of high intelligence so maybe I just got it all at birth.

Doing an M.A. (honours) in a third of the normal time and then topping the year should mean something -- particularly with a course in Economics and a full¸time job to fill in my spare time during that same year. I have always attributed my learning ability to my good memory, however.

When I want to be I am much better socially than many academics and I am certainly better at making money. To be a millionaire in the 80s still meant something. Putting it another way, in 1989 I owned 8 quite nice houses. That is 8 times better than the norm. So high intelligence would explain all that.

I have certainly never met anyone with better verbal abilities, though many talk a lot more than I do.

Anyway, my articles are there to be read by anyone that wants to so they are the final testament to what I was thinking and doing more or less month by month at that time. In other words, these autobiographical notes are designed to be "read in conjunction with....".

Though it should also be said that what I got published was very much limited to what the academic culture of the time allowed. I would have spoken much more boldly on some things if I could have got it published.



Academic bigotry

My career as a social science researcher was not a difficult one. As a conservative, I had to write at a much higher standard than if I had been a common or garden variety Leftist but I could do that so 200+ of my articles got published in the academic journals.

One episode from the '90s, however, I still remember with displeasure. In the early '90s the editor of Sociology & Social Research was David Heer -- a sociologist who was basically interested in the facts of the matter rather than pushing an ideological wheelbarrow. He was located then and still seems to be at USC.

And I did at one stage submit a paper to him for publication in S. & S.R. which he accepted for publication. He seems however to have been too mild for the frantic Leftists in USC sociology and got pushed out of the journal editorship shortly thereafter.

And his successor at the journal -- Marcus Felson -- did something almost unheard of in academe: He "unaccepted" my paper. It was apparently too conservative for him, though he gave some other quite specious reason for rejecting it. He seemed to be a young man in a hurry so I appealed the matter to his Department Head at the time: Paul Bohannan. Bohannan was unmoved. So I appealed to the university President. But he was unmoved too.

The paper eventually appeared in another journal so Heer was vindicated and Felson was shown up as the nasty piece of work that he is. Without blowing the dust off some very old files (which makes me sneeze) I cannot remember for certain which paper it was but I am pretty sure that it is this one. I submitted the paper to S. & S.R. because it dealt with a matter originally raised in that journal.

I did write a scornful letter to Bohannan when the paper finally appeared in print. Felson I regarded as beneath contempt.



An amusing episode

When I was teaching sociology at the University of NSW, I was located in the Morven Brown building, which formed one side of a grassy quadrangle in front of the library.

And the students' union would from time to time arrange pop music concerts on the library steps so people could sit on the grass of the quadrangle and enjoy the music concerned. The music would be a lunchtime concert scheduled from 1 to 2 pm.

There were however some occasions when I was scheduled to take a tutorial at 2pm in the Morven Brown building. And there were also some occasions when the musicians got so enthused with their music that they carried on beyond 2pm

Rock music was however not the background I wanted for my tutorials so when such enthusiasm occurred, I used to take a stroll over to the library, trace the power cord to the band's amplifiers and then pull the plug out at the wall. So the music suddenly went from amplified to acoustic.

The band members always looked sheepish when that occurred and promptly wrapped up. They probably thought it was some sort of official censure but it was in fact my sole deed. Why should I waste time going through some bureaucratic process when direct action would do?

I taught in the School of Sociology at the University of NSW from 1971 to 1983. I was very good at my job by most criteria but by 1983 (when I was 39 and a Senior Lecturer), I had made a lot of money out of various real estate ventures so no longer had to work for my living. I therefore retired to Queensland at that time.



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E.&O.E.

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