Dr Stephen Lake is a founding member of Academics for Public Universities and Public Universities Australia. He studied history and theology at Flinders University and completed his PhD on medieval monasticism at the University of Cambridge. He subsequently taught at the University of Tbingen and the Universit de Paris IV-Sorbonne followed by a research position at the Universitt Konstanz. He is currently enrolled in a second PhD at the University of Sydney with a project on ‘The Contingency of Perception: The Responses of the Frankfurt School and Contemporaries to Fascism, ca. 1920-ca. 1950’. He lectures regularly for his local U3A group in the Southern Highlands, NSW.