With Mark Vaile not taking over, outgoing (until yesterday) chancellor Paul Jeans continues

“I look forward to working with our communities, in particular our staff and students, to take our university forward,” he said yesterday.

Presumably including the staff and students who effectively over-ruled Mr Jeans by refusing to accept the university council’s choice of coal company chair Mr Vaile as the new chancellor (CMM yesterday).

This is as big a victory for staff activism on climate-change as the UWA community rejecting a federally-funded research centre for political scientist and climate change economics commentator Bjorn Lomborg.

UWA withdrew after widespread campus criticism including warnings that Dr Lomborg’s appointment would not have been subject to peer review and would do reputational damage to the university’s research (CMM, April 23 2015, May 11 2015).

At Uni Newcastle, National Tertiary Education Union branch president Dan Conway made a similar point why Mr Vaile should not be welcomed, “the university has made a public commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2025 – all of our administrative appointments – especially those at senior levels – should be consistent with our forward-looking stance,” (CMM June 11).

There was no word yesterday on how long Mr Jeans intends to remain chancellor but if he will stay until a replacement is found who is willing to run the risk of a staff veto it may be a while.