The Senate considered Knopfelmacher's published criticisms of Moscow, and its apologists, to be unduly strong meat. He had written of Melbourne leftists that "like rats, they wish to operate in the dark" ("Twentieth Century" magazine, Volume 18, 1964). Those firmly supporting him included Sydney philosopher David Malet Armstrong, who called Knopfelmacher "a man fatally ahead of his time by a few years. A short time afterwards academic rebels were saying pretty much anything they liked, how they liked, about their opponents. If anyone tried to censure them or impede their careers as a result of this, the shouts that their academic freedom had been violated were deafening. To Knopfelmacher, however... Saki's saying applied: it is the first Christian martyr who gets the hungriest lion."