Although the university has since back-tracked and watered down much of the language used in public-facing documents, the underlying messaging around place,  Māori ways of thinking and te Tiriti o Waitangi appear to be intact.

In 2022 the university management consulted with staff and students about a Curriculum Framework Transformation project that would roll out across the whole university. How genuine the consultation was remains contested. A major thrust of the proposed changes it would lead to was a compulsory WTR (Waipapa Taumata Rau)  course at the introductory level in all faculties which would foreground “place” in education. It was described as transformative, but argued for in only the vaguest of generalities.

The WTR course ran into immediate problems, with criticisms coming from inside and outside the university. Some staff objected to the top-down design and implementation of this new course, which included a common core of material developed centrally and pushed to the different versions taught by different faculties. The student verdict, when it was rolled out in 2025 as a compulsory course for all commencing undergraduates, was markedly negative. The university was forced into a crisis review and partial climbdown: the course would no longer be required for all undergraduates. But it remains a requirement for all in pathways for “accredited programmes” such as medicine, engineering and education. The current description of the WTR courses as a suite emphasizes their general study skills component. “Place”, however, remains prominent in the course descriptions: “This course considers how knowledge of place enhances your learning, the significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and how knowledge systems frame understanding.”

What is the rationale for this emphasis on place?  In June 2022, I submitted the following concerns as part of the formal consultation process that brought in the curriculum transformation. There has been no attempt by the university to respond to the substance of these concerns.

Submission: CFT Consultation

The CFT [Curriculum Framework Transformation] consultation document offers as its rationale only “Expectations of what a university education should be and do are changing” (p. 1), but offers no evidence of what these changing expectations are, or whether they are warranted, other than noting increasing digitization and the impact of Covid-19.

When there is so little and so vague an explicit rationale driving CFT, one wonders: is there some other rationale? 

Place

The CFT document declares that its “taumata or transformational principles” “arise from and return to place” (p.1) and that “The curriculum will provide a foundational understanding for all students of what it means to study at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, and how place shapes our educational experience, through a ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ foundational course” (p. 7).

“Place” throughout the CFT document seems merely a strategic rhetorical evasion. A consideration of “place” in relation to Tāmaki Makarau could include, for instance:

• geology, the country as a sunken continent, or the processes of uplift, erosion, and volcanism that formed the isthmus; or
• botany, the relationship between the indigenous flora of Aotearoa and the rest of Australasia and of South America; or
• zoology, the unique evolutionary radiation of birds in Aotearoa in the absence of terrestrial land mammals; or
• geography, the large percentage of East, South-East and South Asians now living in the city.

Image by AR on Unsplash

It could include, for that matter, in

• history, the burning off of much of the land’s forest cover by early Māori, and the extinction of the moa in the centuries after Māori arrived, or the tribal battles for territory between different iwi within the isthmus that had largely depopulated it by the 1830s, or the urban influx since 1950 of formerly rural Māori. 

“Place” as a concept related to this university could be the topic of open inquiry. But that does not seem what is proposed.

Instead what appears to be proposed is an idealized, romanticized ethno-nationalist ideology of Māori as uniquely spiritually connected to this place and without the fallibility and limitations every human group has shown.

Knowledge, Open Inquiry and Universities

The first principle of universities is the discovery and dissemination of knowledge through open inquiry.

The first principle of CFT is the “commitment to mātauranga Māori, kaupapa Māori pedagogies, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles and accountabilities” (p. 7), which is elaborated thus: “Our curriculum and teaching model will reflect the value and recognition that Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland accords to Māori knowledges and ways of knowing, and the relationality of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. As a knowledge institution we have the responsibility and honour to develop, nourish and protect the Māori-led revitalisation of mātauranga.”

“Protect” here is in direct conflict with the first principle of universities.

Knowledge in a university is not protected, although it is preserved. Rather, it is contested. Science (in the broad sense that includes all serious scholarship, including that of the humanities and the social sciences) grows by challenging with argument and evidence what has been thought to be known, and learning where what we thought we knew has been mistaken, incomplete, or inadequate.  Science in this sense actually reflects a position of humility and equality: no one can be sure of possessing the truth; anyone can propose ideas, and anyone can challenge them.

Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland by its very nature has a commitment to preserving knowledge, whether of Māori or any other traditions those working here have an interest in. But it must also be committed to challenging what is thought to be known, because this may err (we are all fallible), as it is usually discovered to do when inquiry pushes hard enough.

It is proposed that the obligatory foundational course “will provide Māori-focused curriculum content and Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles and accountabilities and will ensure all students have the relevant knowledges of place to enhance their learning” (Recommendation 5).

Nothing in the language in which Te Tiriti o Waitangi is introduced reflects the fact that interpretations of its history, texts, intentions, subsequent application and present implications are genuinely contestable. The implication is clear: that despite Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland having hitherto been a place of open inquiry, open inquiry about Te Tiriti will not be allowed: “the principles and accountabilities” are ideologically predetermined and prescribed.

And nothing in the way mātauranga Māori has recently been introduced into the university suggests that the foundation courses will be taught in a manner that invites or encourages the open inquiry that drives universities and discoveries. To judge by practices already in operation, the course will consist of ideological indoctrination, with no room for dissent—which will be branded racist, harmful, and dangerous—and even with enforced re-education reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution.

Or to take a perhaps closer parallel, the advancement of an idealised Hindutva in the Indian education system over the last twenty years: another ethno-nationalistic move limiting free inquiry and serving the supposed interests of one creed over other kinds of believers, like that country’s many Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and others (see Meera Nanda’s discussion here and here).

The Curriculum Structure Paper includes (p. 5) the “assumption” that “including te ao Māori in programmes, teaching and student experience will appeal to existing student markets whilst growing appeal to Māori and Pacific students, international students and lifelong learners.” An open inquiry into place in Tāmaki Makarau might indeed have appeal; but indoctrination, while it may convince or cow some, is more likely to generate outward adherence to officially-proclaimed doctrine and inner resentment at the loss of intellectual freedom, openness, and the right to dissent. This is no more likely to draw international students or staff or to appeal to local students of whatever cultural origin than the promotion of Hindutva in Indian universities has increased their international appeal or international ranking.

Identity-based ideology and enforced and misguided virtue signalling at the expense of open inquiry, indeed, threaten the future of Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland.

I note that the document Manu Kōkiri: Māori Success and Tertiary Education: Towards a Comprehensive Vision (2021), written by Dr Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal for Taumata Aronui, offers a vision of Maori success in tertiary education, a goal I hope we all share, but does not put any stress whatever on a sense of “place.” Since a major motive behind the CFT seems to be the promotion of Māori success within the university, which we all want, may I suggest that the means advanced in CFT seems irrelevant, as Taumata Aronui’s ignoring “place” implies. But not only does “place” not help, as proposed for teaching it would be dangerous to the open inquiry that has so far been central for Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, as for every other great university.

A determined push by the university to minimize inequality of opportunity by advocating and acting to improve literacy and numeracy skills for less advantaged students in our catchment area and across the country would do far more for the university’s future, including for the diversity, quality, education, and research of its students and staff, and for its reputation, than institutionalising the indoctrination that the CFT so evasively proposes.

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Universities are supposed to be bastions of free inquiry. Increasingly, they are more interested in indoctrination – training faculty to adopt and enforce a single ideological framework.

In February 2026, the University of Alberta advanced a draft revision to its recruitment policy, proposing to eliminate references to historically underrepresented groups and remove equity-based tiebreakers when candidates are equally qualified.

Some hail these changes as signaling the end of “woke” capture, yet the ideological infrastructure driving woke/EDI orthodoxy persists across higher education: dedicated EDI offices, race-based hiring and admissions, racial segregation of events/spaces/awards, anonymous bias-reporting systems, and EDI-specific research grants.

Anti-racism training is another widespread element of this infrastructure. It is common at universities across Canada including Wilfrid Laurier, Guelph, Queen’s, McMaster, Concordia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Dalhousie, and McGill and it further primes scholars in ideology over inquiry.

Wilfrid Laurier University’s “Anti-Racism 101” onboarding course for new faculty and staff, introduced in 2023, exemplifies this persistent machinery. Far from a dated artifact, it reveals why universities often amplify societal orthodoxies rather than critiquing them – from cultivating racial guilt and anti-Western self-loathing to the uneven response to campus antisemitism following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

Courses like Laurier’s contribute to this orthodoxy in two principal ways. First, they chill dissent by presenting a single interpretive lens as authoritative and morally compulsory. Second, they actively re-shape how scholars are permitted to think about prevailing ideologies – replacing the Popperian model of conjecture and refutation with an unfalsifiable doctrinal framework.

Far from an exercise in balanced scholarship, Antiracism 101 proceeds from a foregone conclusion – that systemic racism is pervasive in Canada – and employs a battery of manipulative techniques to shepherd participants toward that view. Its opening glossary installs critical social justice theory as the sole framework. It relies on hyperbole and selective historical framing to overstate slavery’s role in Canada’s past. It treats simple group differences in outcomes as proof of causation, while ignoring alternative explanations and multivariate analysis. Finally, the course steers learners toward ideological conformity through unfalsifiable claims and a guilt-entrapment structure that routes every response toward complicity.

As Jonathan Haidt warns, when dissent goes silent, institutions become “structurally stupid.” Laurier’s course embeds this risk at the faculty entry point by prescribing orthodoxy instead of promoting free inquiry. This analysis offers a lens on why reforms like Alberta’s face uphill battles – revealing the entrenched, doctrinaire machinery that sustains ideological conformity at the expense of scholarly rigour.

The university’s purpose

The legislative object of Laurier is “the pursuit of learning through scholarship, teaching and research within a spirit of free inquiry and expression.” The Act emphasizes intellectual openness because it is the indispensable condition for the Popperian process. Jonathan Rauch puts the point plainly: “you can’t have the advancement [of] knowledge, you can’t have science broadly defined without disagreement – that’s the engine of the whole thing.”

By presenting Critical Social Justice Theory (CSJT) as both morally authoritative and intellectually privileged, the course encloses inquiry within one worldview. Alternative perspectives are not engaged as legitimate competitors. Doctrinal training of this kind erects an intellectual fence: the scholar so confined cannot discover what lies beyond it and thus cannot exercise the freedom of inquiry the university is meant to protect.

The ideological framing

The course opens with a “Glossary of Terms” that initially appears to be a neutral primer defining concepts such as power, oppression, and privilege. These apparently familiar words are actually key terms in CSJT, and they establish the interpretive frame that governs everything that follows.

The glossary redefines “power” as a morally suspect distribution of advantage aligned with group benefit, echoing Michel Foucault’s concept of power–knowledge, rather than as legitimate authority. Within this framing, to dispute claims of racism is to side with “power” rather than truth. Oppression renders group identity morally decisive while making intent irrelevant. Privilege asserts inherited moral guilt, grounding the course’s claim that all Canadians “inherit the legacy of racism.” Together, these definitions displace classical moral individualism and replace it with collective moral responsibility.

These concepts are not presented as contested, nor are competing perspectives – such as classical liberal accounts – acknowledged or examined.

This framing is deepened through the land acknowledgement, which states that “colonialism is a current, ongoing process.” Residence is transformed into participation in an active structure of domination. By explaining that land acknowledgements express gratitude “to those whose territory you reside on,” the course implicitly calls into question Crown sovereignty and fee-simple ownership. Yet the course does not explain the context of these claims in post-colonial theory nor acknowledge their contested status.

Together, the glossary and land acknowledgement function as ideological priming, furnishing the learner with a vocabulary and narrative that interpret racial relations primarily through an oppressor–oppressed binary. A university onboarding program worthy of the name would disclose its theoretical commitments and expose faculty to competing interpretations rather than silently foreclosing them.

Historical hyperbole

In its section on slavery, Antiracism 101 tells learners that “slavery is one of Canada’s best-kept secrets.” The claim is hyperbolic. It is not presented as a question open to debate – but as established fact—and it rests on no contextual evidence whatsoever.

The course notes that “Between 1628 and the 1800s, 3,000 people of African ancestry who were enslaved in the United States were brought to Canada and forced to live here in slavery,” while acknowledging Canada as “also the destination for the Underground Railroad.” Yet the very next sentence pivots to examples of post-abolition discrimination: “generations of African Canadians faced overt discrimination in employment, housing, schools, churches, restaurants, etc.” By briefly nodding to the Underground Railroad’s role as a refuge only to immediately offset it with later forms of racism, the section performs a not-so-subtle bait-and-switch.

While slavery is indefensible in any form, the course downplays the historical distinctiveness of Canada’s record: in 1793, Upper Canada passed the first anti-slavery law in the British Empire; by 1833, the British Empire abolished slavery altogether – three decades before the American Civil War. Estimates suggest fewer than 8,000 people were ever enslaved in what became Canada (including both African and Indigenous captives) – a fraction of the nearly 10 million enslaved in the United States over a comparable period.

This evidentiary omission, both of Canada’s history and of its relative scale, leaves the “best-kept secret” claim unsubstantiated. Reaching a moral conclusion without evidence is poor historical analysis, beneath the standards of a university.

Ignoring alternatives

Module 2, which is derived from an Ontario Human Rights Commission training course, advances a clear hypothesis: that systemic racial discrimination remains deeply embedded in Canadian institutions. To support this claim, the course relies on univariate comparisons of outcomes between racial groups – particularly high unemployment rates for racialized youth (23 per cent vs. 16 per cent) and high poverty rates for racialized individuals (22 per cent vs. 11 per cent).

Even at the level of univariate comparison, the inference does not hold. A 2022 Statistics Canada comparison of weekly earnings for men across visible-minority groups shows no uniform pattern of disadvantage: some racialized groups earn more than Whites, others the same, and others less.

As Karl Popper observed, universal claims are tested not by the accumulation of confirming cases but by exposure to counterexamples. Even a single group that outperforms Whites is sufficient to falsify the claim that racialization, as such, produces systematic economic disadvantage.

The deeper problem is methodological. Univariate gaps do not identify causes; they merely describe group differences. After controlling for alternative explanations – such as age, education, language, occupation, and other relevant variables – there is no consistent pattern between racialization and earnings. The hypothesis of uniform racial disadvantage is rejected.

By treating unadjusted disparities as causal proof and excluding multivariate evidence, Antiracism 101 substitutes motivated reasoning for statistical inference.

The vignettes as unfalsifiable evidence

The emotional and pedagogical core of Antiracism 101 is a series of dramatized vignettes depicting interpersonal encounters in which a racialized individual experiences harm. Each vignette is followed by a knowledge-check question that permits only one answer: “Yes – this is racial discrimination.” Although presented as illustrative scenarios, they are non-random, non-verifiable, and selectively curated. As a result, they function not as pedagogical demonstrations but as evidentiary substitutes.

The predetermined conclusion is secured by two core doctrines: that racial discrimination “doesn’t have to be intentional,” and that racism operates through “unconsciously held beliefs.” Once these premises are accepted, the outcomes are pre-set. If harm is experienced and the person affected is racialized, discrimination is deemed to have occurred regardless of motive, awareness, or self-understanding. This reasoning reflects the controversial disparate impact standard in equity jurisprudence, which treats univariate differences in outcomes as evidence of discrimination even in the absence of intent.

The consequence is that alternative explanations are excluded from consideration. Ordinary possibilities – miscommunication, rudeness, error, ignorance, poor training, or situational ambiguity – cannot count against the conclusion, because none is permitted to function as exculpatory evidence. This pattern is illustrated in the Shayla vignette, where plausible alternatives – such as the fact that stroke symptoms can closely mimic intoxication – are ignored, reframing the encounter as unambiguous racial profiling.

The effect is intellectually and morally corrosive: the learner is conditioned to override charitable interpretation, dismiss nuance, and rush to harsh judgment.

Beyond this exclusionary logic, the vignettes commit a fundamental category error. The course repeatedly asserts that racism in Canada is primarily systemic and structural, yet the evidence offered consists almost entirely of interpersonal anecdotes. The vignettes identify no policy, cite no rule, and specify no institutional mechanism. The leap from “a receptionist was stricter with Desmond” to “Canadian institutions are systemically racist” is asserted purely by narrative force.

Combining the claim of systemic racism with the assertions that intent is irrelevant and racism is unconscious yields a system that admits no other explanation. Imagine two customers – one White and one Black – enter your shop at the same time. Whichever customer you serve first is racist: attend to the Black one and you’re accused of presuming criminality; attend to the White one and you’re accused of centering “Whiteness.”

Heads, racism wins. Tails, racism wins. Nothing counts against the theory.

When interpersonal narratives are coupled with intent irrelevance and unconscious racism, and then presented as proof of systemic injustice, the reasoning becomes self-sealing. As Karl Popper observed, “A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” The framework deployed in Antiracism 101 therefore belongs to non-science, which encompasses practices such as divination, astrology, and religion.

The Kendi Binary and the Kafka Trap

Where Module 2 fails by foreclosing empirical falsification, Module 3 goes further by building a structure of guilt and complicity that leaves no possibility of moral exit.

It opens with Ibram X. Kendi’s familiar claim: “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’” What appears as a moral assertion functions, in practice, as the entry point to a Kafka trap.

A Kafka trap is an accusatory structure in which every possible response confirms guilt. It has four defining elements:

1. guilt is predetermined;
2. denial is treated as proof;
3. confession also counts as proof; and
4. silence or inquiry are recoded as culpability.

All four are present in Module 3.

First, the presumption of guilt is built in. The course states that “there is racism in all of us,” echoing Robin DiAngelo’s formula: “The question is not ‘Did racism take place?’ but rather ‘How did racism manifest in this situation?’” Racism is presented not as a hypothesis to be tested, but as a universal condition requiring no evidence.

Second, denial is treated as proof. Learners are told that “By saying ‘I am not racist’ is in fact denying that racism exists [sic].” Critical race theorists such as Barbara Applebaum argue that denials work to preserve White innocence.  In the New Normal video, viewers are instructed that, when called out on racism, “the thing to do is to bite back your defensive reaction. Bite back the urge to explain what you really meant.” Attempts to defend oneself simply confirm the accusation.

Third, confession offers no exit. Admission merely affirms the premise and initiates an endless process of self-interrogation. Learners are instructed to continually educate “… yourself about what Whiteness is” and to treat antiracism as “a lifelong commitment.” Confession does not lead to redemption, but rather to endless penance.

Finally, silence or inquiry are recoded as complicity. To remain silent is to “leave systems firmly in place.”  To ask questions is to impose emotional labour: “I can’t answer the same question over and over again.”

There is thus no possible response – denial, agreement, questioning, or silence – that does not reaffirm the accusation. Every path leads to a guilty verdict.

This structure is not merely rhetorical. In the summer of 2020, Laurier’s president announced an action plan to address “systemic racism … at our university.” In response, David Haskell and I co-authored an open letter grounded in classical liberal principles – challenging the uncritical embrace of CRT, calling for a clear definition of racism and methodologically rigorous, quantitative evidence, and pressing for public dialogue with competing scholarly voices.

Our critique was swiftly framed as moral failure through a coordinated social-media campaign (#wluchangeisdue). A statement declared that “Wilfrid Laurier University has open racists on its faculty in tenured positions.” Follow-up posts demanded tenure renegotiation, investigations, and accountability. The student newspaper amplified the attacks, questioning whether tenured professors could be fired for “inflammatory” views and likening our critique to Holocaust denial. Despite the letter’s scholarly tone, our dissent was taken as evidence of complicity and answered with calls for professional punishment.

Module 3 engineers an inescapable system of guilt in a manner alien to scholarly disciplines. Math may leave you feeling foolish, but it never makes you question your moral worth.

Critical Theory’s challenge to liberalism

This critique reflects a fundamental conflict of principles between classical liberalism and CSJT. Liberalism affirms the primacy of the individual and holds that each person should be judged by the content of their character. CSJT elevates group identity as the primary moral category. The course’s assertion that “As a Canadian, you inherit the legacy and history of racism of generations who came before you” exemplifies this doctrine of group-based moral guilt.

The conflict extends to epistemology. Classical liberalism encourages disagreement and debate as the means to truth; it accepts the correspondence theory of truth (statements are true if they accurately describe reality) and welcomes criticism – even of itself. CSJT, by contrast, rejects these as mechanisms that reinforce dominant discourses, a stance reflected in the course’s treatment of dissent as defensiveness rather than inquiry.

The question, then, is which philosophical tradition better aligns with the university’s aspirational goal expressed in its motto Veritas Omnia Vincit? Liberalism honours this ideal with its built-in truth-seeking mechanism; critical theory rejects it, insisting there are many truths shaped by values and power. On the university’s own terms, Antiracism 101 betrays the ideal expressed in its motto.

Conclusion

A university is a collegium of scholars, with academic authority resting in the faculty, whose role is to safeguard academic judgment from external pressures – ideological, political, or economic. Collegial governance works only if faculty remain autonomous thinkers – free to dissent without pressure to conform to prescribed doctrines. A faculty onboarding course incorporating only one ideological lens is inconsistent with the collegial model, as it threatens intellectual independence.

A genuine university response to racism would treat claims of discrimination as testable hypotheses, evaluated through evidence, debate, and counter-argument.

Antiracism 101 rejects this methodology. It assumes the existence of systemic racism rather than treating it as a testable hypothesis, and it embeds that assumption in a non-falsifiable framework. Empirically, it treats unadjusted group disparities as causal proof while excluding multivariate analysis, and it uses interpersonal narrative, rather than institutional evidence, to support the claim of systemic racism. The course’s underlying philosophy recasts scholarly disagreement as moral failure. The result is an ideologically closed system engineered through inescapable guilt to enforce conformity.

Recent history illustrates what happens when skepticism is treated as moral failure. In 2021, the announcement of unmarked graves at the Kamloops, BC, residential school triggered national mourning – yet, more than four years later, no bodies have been excavated, and the evidentiary basis of the initial claims has gone largely unexamined in mainstream discourse. As Haidt has observed, when institutions silence dissenters, they become “structurally stupid” – not because individuals lack intelligence, but because the system discourages the open inquiry needed to test claims against evidence. A university that trains its faculty in a single ideology and forecloses criticism will become structurally stupid. To avoid that fate, Wilfrid Laurier University should remove Anti-Racism 101, and universities across Canada should follow suit.

William J. McNally is a professor of Finance at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

Cover image by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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Does this apply to the university sector? Universities have a very high degree of institutional autonomy, which is a critical safeguard that protects academic freedom and research integrity. In return for this freedom, universities bear duties. Our ability to innovate and meet the needs of our society depends on nurturing the resources of the university sector wisely and well.

So it’s pretty important that those in charge of universities do their jobs well, and unless we assume they are both infallible and paragons of virtue, there needs to be accountability somewhere in the system. 

Holding universities accountable: the Commission and the councils

Who holds the universities to account? The current law provides for two main avenues of accountability: one via the universities’ annual reporting and funding agreements with the Tertiary Education Commission and the other via the council that each university is required to have. The law endows university councils with a lot of authority. Councils formally make or approve university decisions and internal policies (or delegate responsibility for them) on pretty much everything the university does as a corporate entity. Of course, the actual day to day running of a university is delegated to the Vice Chancellor, who is effectively the CEO. Councils have the critical responsibility of appointing the Vice Chancellor and holding that person to account for his or her management of the university.

This means it is a big deal who gets to be on the council and how they get to be there. What does the law say? Actually, not that much. The law says councils must have between 8 and 12 members, with 3 or 4 of these appointed by the minister. A few types of people are disqualified (undischarged bankrupts, for example) and a few types of people must be included: a student representative, two staff representatives (one academic, one non-academic) and at least one council member must be Māori. And there’s general language about needing to ensure representativeness, appropriate skills and experience, and ability to perform their duties as members.

Beyond that, the law basically leaves university councils to decide for themselves how they will operate. Section 279 of the Act says: ‘An institution’s council may make statutes relating to the appointment of members..’ Even the minister responsible for the universities needs to consult with the council before deciding on the 3 or 4 individuals he or she gets to appoint: Section 278(7) says that ‘Before making an appointment under this section, the Minister must seek, and consider, nominations from the relevant council.’

Council roles to be filled at the University of Auckland

So councils get to write their own statutes setting out how they appoint members. What do these statutes say? I’ll take the University of Auckland’s one as an example. Others may be different, but the University of Auckland is our country’s largest. It is also in the process of appointing four council members. And, because the current Vice Chancellor resigned only a few months after being reappointed by the current council, the council is tasked with the weighty responsibility of choosing a new Vice Chancellor over the coming months.

The council revised its procedures for appointing its own members three times in the last three years. Its 2023 statute sets out desirable qualities in council members and notes they can be appointed for a maximum of four years and a maximum of three times – so one could serve for up to 12 years. The statute says the Vice Chancellor is always a member of the council, by virtue of being Vice Chancellor. The statute also sets out the procedures for the election of staff and student representative members. There’s another document – made by the council – that gives a bit more detail on how exactly members get appointed or reappointed. This shows that the central role is played by something called the VCRERC – the Vice-Chancellor’s Review and Executive Remuneration Committee. This committee gets to specify what skills and experience members should have, before a call for expressions of interest in joining the council is made. The VCRERC also gets to view these expressions of interest and draw up a shortlist, to present to council, along with its recommendation. 

The powerholders answerable to.. themselves

Who is on the VCRERC? It is a committee of the council itself and comprises just four people: the Chancellor, who chairs the council, the pro-chancellor (effectively the deputy) and chairs of the council committees for finance and audit.

A look at its responsibilities shows that the VCRERC really is the centre of power on the council. As well as reviewing and recommending appointments or reappointments of council members, it also has the responsibility of ‘Reviewing and managing the performance, composition and succession of Council.’

What all this boils down to is that the council, the body charged with holding the university’s paramount manager, the Vice Chancellor, to account: a) includes the Vice Chancellor; b) determines for itself how it will operate; c) appoints and reappoints itself (with the exception of the 3 elected members and the minister’s appointees – but it gets to nominate ministerial appointees; d) reviews its own performance.

Managing conflicts of interest

All pretty cosy. There’s a cute provision for managing conflicts of interest in the appointment of council members: ‘If any member of VCRERC is a candidate for appointment as a Council member, that VCRERC member will not be present or participate in any part of the appointments process for the relevant position including the receipt and consideration of expressions of interest.’ So (for example), when considering the expressions of interest in positions that are currently vacant or up for reappointment, should the current Chancellor wish to be reappointed as the alumni member, she will excuse herself as a member of the VCRERC, which she has led since 2021, while the rest of the committee considers any competing expressions of interest received for the alumni role she currently fills on council. No problem at all.

Another quirk of the council appointments process is that the council’s appointments statute stipulates that the university’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Māori), a member of the university’s executive team, ‘is to be invited to attend meetings of the VCRERC to assist the VCRERC… when the appointment of a Māori member is being considered.’ So the council member with particular responsibility for monitoring the university’s performance with respect to Māori interests – performance which is led by the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Māori) – is appointed on the advice of that same Pro Vice-Chancellor. Taken together, we may not have a chumocracy, but we surely have a system vulnerable to chumocracy and all the risks associated with it. Of course, everyone may be doing their job honourably and competently. Nothing I have written here suggests otherwise. But it’s a system that bears some similarities to what historian Peter Hennessy calls the ‘good chaps’ theory of British government. That’s a system that depends on everyone being a self-restrained good chap – which is to say, a system that is vulnerable to decay and capture.

Photo by Roberto Carlos Román Don on Unsplash

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The Minister of Education, Erica Stanford is determined to introduce a knowledge rich curriculum for all New Zealand students. What does this mean? First, it is a standardised curriculum which ensures that students across the country receive the same high-quality knowledge. That knowledge consists of academic subjects with content selected for its value and justified for its veracity. Furthermore, the content must be designed so that it is coherently organised and built progressively from the most basic to the more complex.

Second, it is about planning for teaching. It is here that teachers take the designed national curriculum and turn it into effective teaching plans suitable for their school and their students. The latest ideas from cognitive science about secondary mental abilities, time perception, memory load, and feedback are needed at this stage. They help connect the content to students’ thinking processes.

Third, both good curriculum design and planning for teaching set the foundation for the actual teaching. Many teachers know their subjects well and use teaching methods that best connect students to rich content. They will welcome a knowledge-rich curriculum because it is what they have taught for years. We know and respect those teachers. The real benefits will be for those teachers and students who have been disadvantaged by eighteen years of a localised curriculum.

This ambitious knowledge-rich curriculum will link Erica Stanford to Peter Fraser. His commitment in the 1940s to prescribed subject content laid the foundation for the first-rate education system enjoyed by the post-war generation. Stanford’s knowledge rich curriculum will be as momentous and as far-reaching as Fraser’s. However, its success is not yet assured. The professional class which benefited most from that post-war subject-based curriculum has worked tirelessly to dismantle the source of its privilege in a strange alliance of decolonisation and socialism.

This ambitious knowledge-rich curriculum will link Erica Stanford to Peter Fraser. His commitment in the 1940s to prescribed subject content laid the foundation for the first-rate education system enjoyed by the post-war generation. Stanford’s knowledge rich curriculum will be as momentous and as far-reaching as Fraser’s. 

We can thank the recent secondary school incident for revealing what this alliance looks like in practice – a junior English class, a video playing, a teacher instructing how to analyse the video’s tone and mood. In the video, How colonisers went from learning to reo Māori to trying to exterminate it, students hear the authoritative voice of sociolinguist, Dr Vini Olsen-Reeder declaiming, Once the pakeha government was established here, from there the desire grew to exterminate the Māori people.

The video’s content is either wrong or seriously distorted. Such propaganda will be difficult to teach in a knowledge-rich subject that requires the selection of content to be justified. That’s the sticking point – who justifies the content? What criteria are used?

In the coming months, the public will be consulted on the draft English curriculum. This is right and proper – it is not a curriculum for teachers alone, but for the nation.  It is here, in the national discussion about the subject of English that I predict a simmering conflict will surface. Some, like me, regard school English as the study of language and literature in the English language. For others, English is the tool of the capitalist coloniser, intent on locking the colonised into a permanent state of subjugation. Their demands are for the decolonisation, then indigenisation, of the entire education system.

It is unsurprising that English is at the centre of the gathering storm, although History and Science are not far behind. English has a very particular role – that of creating society’s cultural repertoire. When we study English at school we are taught, or should be taught, the content and conventions of our nation’s most widely spoken language. New Zealand’s democratic institutions, social practices and universalist values were developed in English. It is the language of the 19th century colonial era and of 20th century nation building. According to one secondary school principal, the most effective way to decolonise the nation is by removing English, that dangerous language of the Eurocentric coloniser from the school curriculum.

New Zealand’s democratic institutions, social practices and universalist values were developed in English.

If we agree that the subject is the study of English language and literature, then the content selected must be justified. A straightforward process, one might think. But no, at the very source of the creation and justification of academic knowledge is the wellspring of the conflict. It is in the nation’s universities that decolonisation and indigenisation are being promoted. School subjects which are drawn from university disciplines and accountable to their rules and methods, will be hostages to the unaccountable ideologies of our decolonising universities.

English as a school subject draws in the main from the disciplines of literary criticism (including Shakespearean studies), linguistics, sociolinguistics, and history. Decolonising those disciplines removes all means of accountability – those methods of empirical evidence, logical argument and ongoing criticism which ensure that disciplinary knowledge is always on trial and always subject to rejection, revision, or provisional confirmation. These methods are what gives the disciplines, and by extension those who practise them, authority and status.

Although Dr Olsen-Reeder does not identify himself in the video as a university lecturer, his title and sociolinguist label convey authority. Teachers and high school students are likely to take him at his word. If anything, thanks are indeed due to the secondary school incident mentioned above for providing us with a glimpse of a decolonised education system. It should alert us to the difficulties faced by those tasked with introducing a knowledge rich curriculum.

If you contribute to the consultation of the draft English curriculum, I ask that you justify what you want taught. The content must have value not only for its literary beauty, its grammatical precision, its vocabulary richness, but it must challenge students. When teachers introduce young people to abstract content beyond their immediate experience, the students develop the secondary cognitive abilities necessary for the complexities of modern life. 

A decolonised curriculum does not provide quality content. Instead it locks young people into emotional responses. But emoting is not thinking. Abstract thinking develops only when students are confronted by complex content. A knowledge-rich English curriculum offers both that content and the development of the mental skills needed for the modern world.

Professor Elizabeth Rata is an international curriculum expert. She is a co-author of Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Turn. Springer.  

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74661-1.

Cover photograph of Peter Fraser by S P Andrew Ltd: Portrait negatives, reference 1/4-020106-F, Alexander Turnbull Library Collection. Available at https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23146991. Used with permission of the National Library of New Zealand.

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As Johnston and Kierstead have described, in New Zealand our ratio of non-academic to academic staff of 1.5 to 1 is much higher than in Australia, the UK, or the USA (where it is about 0.8 to 1). If research-only staff are treated as academic staff this ratio still only improves to 1.4 to 1. Numerous “managers” and support staff have appeared in areas such as Human Resources, Health and Safety, Student Learning Support and Pastoral Care, Outreach, Māori and Pasifika directorates, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

This growing administrative cost has to some extent been offset by the growth in international student business. By 2019, over 117,000 enrolled students delivered the country a total economic benefit of around $5Bn. University international 2019 student fee revenue was about $600m, or around 15% of universities’ total revenue.  International students pay up to five times the domestic student fee rate. Covid-19 dramatically reduced the number of international students studying within New Zealand, though partly replaced by students enrolled for on-line studies. Mid-2020, universities faced a year-end financial shortfall from lost international enrolments of about $200m, and this was expected to rise to $400m in 2021. The financial hangover for the universities has been major, damaging, and aggravated by financial commitments to ongoing new building projects.

Looking now at what and how we teach, it is usual for the universities to periodically rationalise their course offerings with the aim of greater administrative efficiency and to contain costs, particularly where courses may have low enrolment numbers. I note at the outset that what is important is not necessarily the low enrolments in a particular course, but the total of the taught Equivalent Full-Time Student (EFTS) count for each academic staff member. Many courses are important but will have low enrolments because they are specialised, or they are pitched at postgraduate level. A staff member’s personally attributable EFTS, added up over their undergraduate and postgraduate teaching plus supervision commitments, tells us how much they earn for the university. Most academics who teach large enrolment courses teach small enrolment courses too. This reality should be part of the analysis in current curriculum transformation projects. If a narrow view is taken simply of the enrolment numbers per course, the richness and diversity of course offerings will be damaged.

A critical and controversial factor in the current course rationalisation exercises is the increasing pressure to include courses that reflect relativist postmodern views (“other ways of knowing”) and Te Ao Māori (specifically matauranga Māori), even within science programmes. This situation raises questions that must be answered.

The University of Auckland has stated, “The rationale is to reduce workload to allow time to develop relational pedagogies, to address timetabling constraints, and to reduce costs….”.  One can infer that “relational pedagogies”, mean relativist views that come through in traditional knowledge courses, for example, where we are seeing courses offered in science programmes that do not strictly stand the test of being taught science, but instead may deliver a mix of observational knowledge, cultural lore, myth, mysticism and animism or vitalism. Most of us support the inclusion of such content in history, sociology or anthropology courses, but not in the Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) area. This situation comes into closer focus if such courses are intended to replace pre-existing science courses, as appears to be the case.

As one colleague at the University of Auckland said, “It’s quite extraordinary that we are launching a course called “Epistemological justice: indigenising STEM” while at the same time we’re being forced to cut science courses.”  

There is a clear logical fallacy in any university course that seeks to indigenise STEM:

• As regards STEM subjects, when European colonists arrived in the late 18^th and into the 19^th century, Māori scientific/technical knowledge was approximately at the stage of other developing societies at or pre-3,000 BC, acknowledging that the spiritual/vitalist/animist parts of matauranga Māori would have been differentiated form those of other societies by the names for, and qualities ascribed to, flora, fauna and inanimate objects, and also to gods such as Ranginui/sky father.  This was a society without the wheel, and without mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology, but which had extensive phenomenological understandings of food sources, that fire cooks and can cause burns, that clean water is necessary for life, that some plants have medicinal properties, weather patterns, and navigation by the sun and stars, etc. Such knowledge is of very considerable interest from a historical point of view, clearly desirable to preserve for cultural reasons, but of current relevance to STEM courses only if it complements modern science in a functional way, as unpalatable as that is to those who would include it.
• STEM rests heavily on knowledge discovered during the liberal enlightenment from the 17^th century up to today, and modern science (not “Western” science, as many non-Western societies Asia, the Middle and the far East contributed, for example) went through similar earlier processes of knowledge development through observation of nature and phenomenological discovery, as did matauranga Māori.  It then developed through new discovery to the present day.
• Unless it adds science content to a STEM degree programme, to insert matauranga Māori or other indigenous knowledge back into modern STEM education means excluding something else that had been deemed important in any one course, with older knowledge and belief that has long been superseded in the same way in which Mechanical Engineering students no longer study the steam engine – as I confess we did when I was a student!  STEM course content is continually updated to reflect the latest scientific discoveries, computational techniques, and the advent of AI, for example.  When I was a student, we were learning about how transistors worked, as they were then a recent development. By contrast, we spent little time on obsolescent radio valve technology. Why should we be obliging students to study something in the sciences that should be sitting in a course outside modern science (e.g. history, history of science, anthropology). Abbot et al., in “In Defense of Merit in Science” compare liberal epistemology, under which the scientific method falls, versus critical social justice theory, where indigenous and traditional knowledge find a more comfortable home. To “indigenise” STEM can only mean to re-introduce older knowledge and belief into courses where it is no longer relevant. This in my view can only be for ideological or political purposes, as otherwise it defies logic.

My foregoing remarks are not intended to diminish or disrespect traditional knowledge. However, curricula in STEM degree programmes are constantly under pressure to introduce new content and drop material that can be let go.  Even this is problematic, and past considerations have been given to increasing the Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) from four to five years to avoid dropping essential content.  In our modern world we cannot afford to impose traditional knowledge content in science programmes for purely ideological reasons (or to determine academic staff career progression based on their acceptance or adoption of this ideological position).  Apart from the potential diminishment of the overall scientific content of the degree, doing so will inevitably reduce the standing of these degree programmes internationally.

Photo by Ram Kishor on Unsplash

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Cover Photo by Khashayar Kouchpeydeh on Unsplash

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Any edifice that rests on the shifting sands of contemporary academic fashion is bound sooner or later to fall. The university of the future will, paradoxically, need to offer its students an education with deeper historical roots

Ferguson and Howland

Compulsory Courses at the University of Auckland

The University of Auckland is set to deliver courses entitled ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’. All students must complete a Waipapa Taumata Rau core course in their first year of study. 

The university website informs us that ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ is the Māori name gifted to the University of Auckland and that the relevant courses are called by this name to symbolize students’ aspirations as they seek to be a part of the University and to succeed in their studies. 

 “Designed to transition you into University life, your Waipapa Taumata Rau course provides knowledge vital to your studies and essential skills (like critical and ethical thinking, effective communication, and the ability to work well with others).

Each faculty course teaches you why place matters, introducing you to knowledge associated with the University, the wider city, this country, and its people and history, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

You’ll learn about different knowledge systems that underpin your area of study to provide a foundation for your future learning. Your Waipapa Taumata Rau core course will play a key role in shaping your first year of study with us.

Completion is required to progress into your second year of study where you will have opportunities to build on what you have learned.”

Some of the material does seem very relevant, especially critical and ethical thinking, effective communication and the ability to work well with others. Also positive is the discussion of knowledge associated with the University, the wider city, this country and its people and history, provided that a balanced picture of New Zealand’s history is encouraged.

However, we ask why all students must take such a course in order to progress into second year at a time when STEM courses are being cut. Why is Te Tiriti an enforced part of these courses but apparently not the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852? Will the Constitution Act of 1986 be discussed, or other recent legislation?  

Knowledge Systems?

What exactly are the ‘knowledge systems’ that underpin students’ areas of study and that will provide a foundation for their future learning? How will these knowledge systems support electrical, civil and mechanical engineering, theoretical and experimental physics, pure mathematics, theoretical and applied statistics, organic and inorganic chemistry, evolutionary biology and cancer research? How will they assist in combatting malnutrition and infant and child mortality, clean energy technologies, efficient transportation and many other fields of endeavour?

Will students of forestry science at New Zealand universities be introduced to traditional medicine for restoration of kauri forests? One account of such medicine asserts  the “need to tune into the vibrations of the forest” and recommends burial of mauri stones within the affected areas, along with appropriate rituals? Will students be taught that sperm whale oil embodies healing properties for kauri? Will they be encouraged to “send out a call to the world, asking communities to hold special ceremony on behalf of kauri” and “invite the world to Aotearoa to join us in prayer and ceremony in the initiation of our future Rongoā interventions.”? In that account we are told:

“Through listening and traditional meditation in the forest, will assist those to align to the cellular frequency of the forest and to become more enlightened in the work of looking after the forest.”  

Will students of agriculture learn that farmers should manage their farms on the basis of the phases of the moon, when in reality the lunar cycle has no effect whatsoever on plant growth or physiology?

If the thinking behind such traditional knowledge is taken as an allegory for loving and caring for the natural world and its living environments, then something wonderful has indeed been gifted to us. But if such beliefs are accorded the status of literal truth then we have the makings of a very serious problem in tertiary education.

In New Zealand, what about the approximately 25% of tertiary students who are non-Māori/non-European? Will their knowledge systems be presented too? Will the international students who are forced to take these courses consider their fees to be money well spent?

Today in various countries we hear demands for decolonization of mathematics. For example, Rowena Ball claims that mathematics has been gate-kept by the West, defined to exclude entire cultures and that almost all mathematics that students have ever come across is European-based. Among others, she wants to enrich the discipline through the inclusion of cross-cultural mathematics. However, Sergiu Klainerman responds as follows:

“If mathematics was in fact a cultural artifact, like music, literature or the arts, it would be impossible to explain its extraordinary effectiveness in the physical sciences, weather prediction, engineering or artificial intelligence.“

We agree with Professor Klainerman. Further, we believe that both science and mathematics transcend all political, cultural, ethnic and religious frontiers.

A Core Curriculum?

Today, readings at many universities in the Western world cover “progressive preoccupations” that include anti-colonialism, sex and gender, antiracism and climate. Surely, there is great merit in dialogue and action on such issues but it is critical that students’ readings are diverse rather than comprising only the perspectives of the contemporary left.

Ferguson and Howland tell us that if students are to become active and reflective individuals, they must learn to regard the past not merely as the crime scene of bygone ages, but as the record of human possibilities – an always unfinished tapestry of both admirable and shameful lives and both noble and base deeds. They must develop an ear for the English language and the language of ancestral wisdom, as well as the various languages of intellectual inquiry, including mathematics. They need a good grasp of modern statistical methods and they must also allow themselves to be inwardly-formed and cultivated by the classics.

They suggest that a sound foundation would also require an introduction to the modes of cognition, including intellectual and moral intuition and scientific demonstration. Aristotle, informal logic and Karl Popper would introduce students to the “preeminently learnable and knowable things.”

Will Students Vote with their Feet?

The perceptions of international students that New Zealand is indigenizing its degrees could lead to a significant loss of international enrolments and reduced credibility of our universities. The motive of preparing students to be effective learners is laudable, but is it strictly necessary to demand of them to assimilate these systems in order to progress in their other studies?

If the academic and political initiatives relating to these courses were truly about preparing students for university studies, then perhaps they should take the form of preparatory courses, possibly available online, before students begin their degrees. In the United States, for example, many universities provide future students access to “Cornerstone” courses in order to prepare them for assessment on writing, reasoning, research and literacy.  

Any mandatory belief-based curriculum amounts to indoctrination and should have no place in our universities. In a competition amongst the universities for fee-paying students and Government funding, will universities that insist on such courses see their enrolments fall, as students go to wherever they are not forced to pay for indoctrination?

Dr David Lillis trained in physics and mathematics at Victoria University and Curtin University in Perth, working as a teacher, researcher, statistician and lecturer for most of his career. He has published many articles and scientific papers, as well as a book on graphing and statistics. 

An earlier version of this article was first published at Breaking Views

Cover image by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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These may be necessary, if painful, adjustments. Universities need to stay relevant and efficient. But what exactly is being prioritised in these restructuring and rationalisation moves? Academic merit, research excellence and ability to teach the content that students will need? Or is it part of an effort to fundamentally rewire the university to serve different agendas? Could this even be a way to silence staff who have spoken out in support of science, academic freedom and free expression? The procedures and criteria set out in recent staffing reviews raise questions.

Look at the Faculty of Education and Social Work document at the bottom of this post. For some reason they don’t seem keen for the world to see it. We’re interested in the criteria for deciding whether an individual academic is safe – getting a green light on their traffic light system. For example, getting a “green” rating on research requires an output far beyond what is usual for even high performing social scientists (20 scholarly articles in two and a half years). What this means is that research performance effectively drops out of the criteria – almost no staff will be “green” on research. So other criteria will come into play. Such as “Contribution to the faculty’s expertise in Mātauranga Māori “. Take a look at appendices E and G.

Professor Elizabeth Rata, who has spoken and written publicly in defence of science, was among many staff in the old Faculty of Education and Social Work who recently received notice that their positions were “in scope” in a staffing review. We reproduce the letter sent by the Free Speech Union to the Dean of her faculty in response:

30 July 2024

Prof. Mark Barrow

Dean of the Faculty of Education and Social Work

m.barrow@auckland.ac.nz

Academic Staffing Review – Prof. Elizabeth Rata

Good morning, 

1. The Free Speech Union is a registered trade union with a mission to fight for, protect, and expand New Zealanders’ rights to freedom of speech, conscience, and intellectual inquiry. We believe that freedom of speech is not only a legal principle, but a social good that allows for people in modern liberal democracies to peacefully, freely advocate for the causes they care about without risking unjust retribution.
2. The Free Speech Union represents Prof. Elizabeth Rata, a sociologist of education and a professor in the School of Critical Studies within the Faculty of Education and Social Work (“the faculty”) at the University of Auckland (“UoA”).
3. It has been brought to our attention that the faculty is currently undergoing a restructure, more specifically, an ‘Academic Staffing Review’ (“the review”). Following the faculty’s release of the outcomes of Phase One of the review, Prof. Rata was informed that her position is ‘in-scope’ and may be disestablished. 
4. Of concern to us is how data relating to ‘strategic contributions’ will be used by the Selection Committee to recommend whether positions be disestablished or not. One of these ‘strategic contributions’ is contribution to the faculty’s expertise in mātauranga Māori. As you will be aware, there is significant public debate as to whether mātauranga Māori constitutes science – a debate sparked by a letter signed by seven UoA professors (including Prof. Rata) to the New Zealand Listener in July 2021.
5. Under section 267(4) of the Education and Training Act, UoA staff have the right to academic freedom which includes freedom “within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas, and to state controversial or unpopular opinions stipulates academic freedom in relation to a university.” In performing its functions, the UoA must give effect to this by preserving and enhancing academic freedom and autonomy. Underpinning this is the requirement for institutional neutrality.
6. The role of mātauranga Māori in our education institutions is a controversial political issue. Considering an employee’s contribution in this area as part of a restructure process discriminates against employees who do not share the UoA’s institutional view of the role and status of mātauranga Māori in education. Setting aside the fact universities should remain apolitical and neutral, the UoA is in clear breach of its obligations under the Education and Training Act as it is requiring its staff to adopt a specific view on mātauranga Māori. 
7. Further, the Selection Committee’s consideration of ‘strategic contributions’, specifically, contribution to the faculty’s expertise in mātauranga Māori, may be in breach of the Employment Relations Act, namely:
   1. Section 4 (Good Faith)
   1. Section 104 (Discrimination)
8. To be clear, this letter is not notice of a Personal Grievance. Rather, we wish to bring to your attention our concerns with the unlawful nature of the ‘strategic contributions’ and invite your comment on whether the consideration of contribution to expertise in mātauranga Māori will be withdrawn in light of the above.
9. We look forward to hearing from you.

And here’s the Faculty document:

Cover Photo by Khashayar Kouchpeydeh on Unsplash

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Kendall Clements is the corresponding author of the letter.

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To any neutral observer, though, the event will have made clear quite how far our universities have strayed from being the politically disinterested, open institutions we pay them to be, and how urgently government intervention is now needed to make them fit for purpose again.

The first sign of that was the set-up. Smith had originally invited two speakers willing to defend free speech as traditionally conceived: Jonathan Ayling of the Free Speech Union, and my New Zealand Initiative colleague Michael Johnston. 

When a few students said they were ‘freaking out’ over these ‘right-wing voices,’ though, Smith re-organized the event with Ayling, Johnston, and eight other speakers, none of whom would describe themselves as right-of-centre. He also moved the event from VUW’s central, open ‘Hub’ to a closed lecture theatre, apparently in response to VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson’s concerns that students wouldn’t have been able to ‘avoid that area…if they didn’t feel comfortable being around the debate.’

Most of the speakers at the event also seemed worried about the harm speech could cause. Anjum Rahman of the Inclusive Aotearoa Collective stressed that students should feel ‘uncomfortable’ during discussions at universities, but not ‘unsafe,’ which she left tantalizingly undefined. Khylee Quince, the Dean of AUT’s law school, felt sure that some on campus ‘pose a threat to’ the ‘safety and well-being’ of others, though she, too, declined to precisely define these terms. 

Queensland University of Technology’s John Byron also seemed unsure about speech, which, he said, could ‘shut down other people’s speech,’ something that was exemplified at Victoria only a couple months ago, when top US diplomat Bonnie Jenkins was shouted down by protestors. 

Byron, though, didn’t mention that incident, and didn’t seem to be confining his remarks to the kind of heckling that literally prevents someone from being heard, and that has long been recognized as falling outside the protection of the First Amendment in the United States. What he had in mind was ‘intimidation’ and ‘humiliation’– two more terms that seemed to cry out for further definition.

Speakers for the most part failed to engage with the evidence that New Zealand universities have a problem with free speech. Several speakers dismissed the Free Speech Union’s 2023 survey of academics for its methodological weaknesses, but failed to mention other surveys without those weaknesses that came to similar conclusions, such as the 2022 FSU survey of academics, the 2022 Heterodox New Zealand survey of undergraduates, and the University of Auckland’s internal survey, all of which showed that substantial numbers of people were fearful of voicing their views. 

Anjum Rahman seemed particularly keen to explore important philosophical questions such as whether incitement to violence could be considered free speech, but didn’t bring up more concrete cases such as Massey’s deplatforming of Don Brash in 2019 or AUT’s deplatforming of Daphna Whitmore in 2022. 

Some speakers did, however, think that academic freedom faced some threats at our universities. University of Auckland Professor Emerita Jane Kelsey said that in her forty-year experience of the university, ‘those who’ve been shut down have not been those [on the right] – it’s been because the donors could potentially be upset, or “We can’t have the Uyghur woman speaking because the Chinese are going to be upset.”’

In the report on academic freedom that I am currently preparing for the New Zealand Initiative, we have found a number of lines of evidence which suggest that over-powerful managers, the idea of universities as businesses, and the Chinese Communist Party do indeed pose a threat to academic freedom in this country. A considerable body of evidence, though, also points to a threat from the left within universities, and this was something that only Victoria University of Wellington’s Nicole Moreham even acknowledged, though she also took clear to qualify this ‘pressure from the left’ on free speech as ‘well-meaning’ and only ‘slightly overzealous.’

Most of the speakers were also keen to dismiss the idea that new legislation was needed to protect academic freedom, either in the form of a requirement that universities have academic freedom policies (mentioned in the coalition agreement), or of a New Zealand equivalent of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that has just received royal assent in the UK, which would allow students or academics whose free speech rights have been violated to seek redress through the courts.

For Nicole Moreham, this would undermine universities’ autonomy, though it is not clear how it would have any effect on academics’ freedom over their own research and teaching (other than to protect it against bullying administrators and colleagues). Several speakers seemed to see government intervention on this front as hypocritical, as if everyone calling for the change was a cartoon libertarian, and as if left-wing academics suddenly opposing government intervention couldn’t equally be accused of hypocrisy. After the event, Nic Smith told journalists that there was ‘an inherent irony’ in ‘legislating for free speech,’ but didn’t say whether he would be calling for the repeal of existing legislation for free speech such as the New Zealand Bill of Rights. 

My own experience as a lecturer at VUW over the past decade has long convinced me that the universities cannot be reformed without outside intervention. Those opposing the restoration of free speech and political neutrality within our universities are simply too numerous, too powerful, and too shameless. Nic Smith’s ‘free speech’ event has only confirmed me in this view. 

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