As Provost, Prof. James holds one of the university’s most senior positions. That made it all the more troubling to see how weak a grasp she has on the concept of free speech, something universities are required to uphold in the Education and Training Act.  

Prof. James’ piece is a series of reflections on Victoria’s panel discussion on free speech, which was held last year. ‘This event,’ she correctly says, ‘stirred strong feelings.’ But she then goes on to describe the event and the response to it in terms that can generously be described as misleading.  

Prof. James summarizes the response to Victoria’ free speech event as follows (to use her punctuation):  

What surfaced, from one direction, was genuine anxiety about amplifying views that might cause harm.  What this provoked from the other direction was, at best, a mischievous and provocative misinterpretation of the word “postponed” (swapping it for that most charged of words; “cancelled”).  At worst it was vitriolic petulance, best summed up in the quote, by one of the parties; “Good news, kids. It’s OK; words aren’t violence.”  

How Prof. James knows how genuine the anxiety about certain people’s views was is not clear. It is worth noticing, though, that many of the claims that student activists made about how worried people were about speech strained credulity.   

A few students, for example, were described as ‘freaking out’ over ‘right-wing voices,’ those voices apparently belonging to Free Speech Union director Jonathan Ayling and one of us (Michael), neither of whom are especially right-wing. VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson, for her part, said she was concerned that students would not have been able to ‘avoid that area’ – that is, the Kelburn campus’ central ‘Hub’ – ‘if they didn’t feel comfortable being around the debate.’   

But it seems hard to believe that anyone would be seriously discomfited by Ayling or Michael’s speech. Ayling spent three years at Vic, and Michael spent a decade there, both fairly recently. In neither case have there been reports of serious trauma being caused by their speech.   

Prof. James asserts that this ‘genuine anxiety’ provoked ‘at best, a mischievous and provocative misinterpretation of the word “postponed” (swapping it for that most charged of words; “cancelled”).’   

‘Postponed,’ of course, usually implies that the event is question has remained basically the same, but has simply been shifted to a different date. That is obviously not what happened in the case of Victoria University’s ‘free speech’ event. The original event was going to feature four speakers and be held in the Hub, a public area at the heart of Victoria’s Kelburn campus. The event that actually took place featured eight speakers and was held in a lecture theatre. It also had a changed format that ensured there was no exchange of arguments among the panellists. Most reasonable people would agree that saying that the original event was ‘cancelled’ would be perfectly fair.   

It is also not true to describe the response to the cancellation of the first event as ‘at best…mischievous and provocative.’ Sean Plunket invited VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson onto The Platform to discuss the cancellation. Jonathan Ayling was able to remind VUW leadership via the The Post that universities have an obligation to ‘allow for ideas to be thoroughly tested and for robust debate to occur.’ And Michael was able to make a number of important points about Victoria University, free speech and diversity, both in The Post and in an episode of our Free Kiwis! podcast.  

Finally, Prof. James describes a social media post by the Free Speech Union stating that ‘words aren’t violence’ as ‘vitriolic petulance.’ If the Provost of Victoria University views a simple statement of fact as ‘vitriolic petulance,’ what does that suggest about the climate for free speech there? At the very least, Prof. James’ reaction should remind us that what New Zealand academics describe as ‘harmful’ or ‘violent’ speech is often simply speech that they disagree with.

Prof. James goes on in her piece to reflect on the way ‘the internet has provided incredible ease of connection, and simultaneously created communication cul-de-sacs, that trap people in isolated cliques and sycophantic claques.’ She notes that free speech is protected in the UN Declaration of Human Rights alongside freedom of thought, and interestingly takes from this an ‘encouragement to pause before we express our opinions.’ And she reflects on how her ‘privilege is being in the white majority’ and in ‘revelling in robust argument,’ something she somewhat unexpectedly characterizes as ‘my approach to debate.’  

Prof. James ends her article with ‘a last word on words’ that deserves to be quoted in full:  

when I was walking to work a few mornings ago a pile of leaves was swirling down the curb and my mind said, “there is the wind”. The wind, though, was all around, strong and invisible and shaping the way I leaned into is as I walked.  We choose to notice some words, the lively, swirling ones; or the ones that blow stinging dust into our eyes.  We need to remember to notice all the other words; that have shaped our environment, our thoughts, and twisted some of us into beautiful, windswept oddities.  

This kind of lyricism is obviously something that recipients of Oko are free to spend some portion of their mornings on if they feel so inclined. But there are at least two things about James’ ‘thing about words’ that we found quite disturbing.  

The first is that this is an article sent to all academic staff by a very senior administrator (i.e. boss) at one of our leading universities. It is on the freedom of speech, the keystone principle of both liberalism and democracy, and a topic on which there is (understandably) an enormous literature in fields such as political theory, the philosophy of law, and intellectual history. Obviously, a full panoply of footnotes and scholarly references wouldn’t have been appropriate in an op-ed in a staff newsletter. But some indication that James wasn’t thinking about this most important of topics for the first time might have been reassuring.  

This is especially the case in view of the fact that we have been having a debate about free speech and academic freedom across the English-speaking world for at least a decade now (though admittedly this debate has tended to be more lively outside the academy than inside it, for obvious reasons).   

We have tried to contribute to this debate ourselves, most substantively in the report we released with the New Zealand Initiative last year. In it, we presented a number of surveys of academics and students, a selection of anonymous testimonies from academics, and a catalogue of incidents involving academic freedom that have taken place on our campuses over the past decade.   

Prof. James doesn’t have to cite our work. But the fact that she seems to feel no need to even mention any of the now overwhelming evidence that we have a problem with free speech at New Zealand universities is interesting, to say the least. ‘Can the modern University be the place where robust, relevant debate can happen?’ she asks, before immediately answering her own question, astonishingly blithely, ‘We already are!’   

It is of course true that a lot of ‘robust, relevant’ debate does take place at our universities. But it is also true (as several different surveys have now shown) that substantial numbers of academics and students feel uncomfortable discussing a few crucial topics, including the Treaty of Waitangi and the nature of sex and gender.   

Prof. James’ column appeared at just the right time, as the government was preparing its revisions to the Education and Training Act, revisions that will include enhanced protections for academic freedom. Draft legislation has now been released.   

What Prof. James’ column shows, yet again, is that New Zealand universities cannot be trusted to uphold their statutory or ethical obligations to academic freedom and the freedom of speech. Senior administrators either do not understand free speech, actively dislike it, or are not willing to openly defend it, and the same can be said for a good proportion of New Zealand’s academics. As Prof. James’ piece reminds us, they are often not even willing to educate themselves on the issue or to engage with the now plentiful evidence that academic freedom in under threat in an honest way.  

So make no mistake: senior administrators at our universities have neither the wit nor the wherewithal to restore genuine academic freedom themselves. It is vital not only the academic freedom legislation that is currently before the house passes, but also that it has teeth, and doesn’t naively trust our largely anti-free speech university managers to police themselves.

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The bigger issue is a basic problem of information asymmetry between the universities that “sell” research and education services and the students and taxpayers (represented by public commissioning agencies) that “buy” their services. They are not selling shampoo or even silicon chips. The 18 year-olds signing up for 3 to 5 years of debt and foregone earnings don’t know if they are being sold a lemon. If they peruse the public resources that supposedly help them choose a university, they are advised to consider the “vibes” of the place, along with amenities and support services. The internet bears traces of an earlier initiative to make information on degree costs and career outcomes available to students, but the promised ‘key indicators’ are so well-hidden I suspect they do not exist. There are no accessible, independent measures of how well  universities have taught their students. It is inherently hard to assess the value of university research. If it could be assessed on the basis of commercial outcomes, it would not need to be publicly funded. The case for public funding of both research and teaching is a strong one: there are enormous potential positive externalities to both. But only if the research and teaching are well done.

If the research and education are not well done, simply freeing the universities to compete and innovate will waste public and private resources. For a vision of such a future, we can see what has happened in the United Kingdom. There, attention tends to go to the small number of elite universities that enjoy high prestige. But freeing the system as a whole to compete and innovate on the basis of taxpayer-subsidized public lending to students has led to high fees, grade inflation, and a proliferation of mediocre degree programmes.

New Zealand universities are facing more than a cashflow crisis. In the words of one senior academic, ‘we no longer deliver on the most important part of what we promised.’ Why not?

Managerialism

The sector excels at regulations, policies, metrics and documentation requirements. Centralized, intrusive directives have created a compliance culture heavy on paperwork, processes, and performative quality assurance systems. This is likely one reason for the bureaucratic bloat that universities carry: New Zealand universities appear to lead the world in the ratio of non-academic to academic staff. Managerialism also diverts academic time. In some faculties, the number of academics with some sort of “dean-ship” or equivalent in their job title has increased nearly threefold in a decade. The compliance work affects all academics, making the creeping growth of managerialism an enormous barrier to quality and innovation at the coal face.

Moralism

Universities have become very preachy places. Moralistic goals adopted by university leaders are distorting almost every aspect of what we do. This moralism is often justified under the general banners of “equity”, “fairness” and “inclusion” which have been adopted across the English-speaking world. Here in New Zealand, we have a specific version driven by deference to the Treaty of Waitangi, which has become a trojan horse for politicization – as it must, in a country where very obviously there is no broad social or political consensus about the role of the Treaty. An agenda of  “indigenising” the university radically overturns the traditional mission of the university.

The moralism makes institutional neutrality – the idea that a university in its corporate form should not take sides on issues of current social and political contestation – impossible. Evident institutional non-neutrality erodes the credibility of teaching and research.

Moralism of the protective sort, that seeks to prevent “harm” and protect “wellbeing”, to promote “diversity” and “honour Te Tiriti”, also curtails academic freedom and freedom of expression. Not only does such moralism create an overall chilling effect on freedom of expression, it is given bite in official speech codes, research ethics requirements, promotion criteria and curriculum requirements. The university policies that put the decolonization agenda into the myriad managerial policy frameworks of the organization ‘invoke a particular, static, idea of the Treaty as if debate about it has been resolved’; they also place the individual academic in the peculiar position of being an agent of the Crown, unable to contest supposedly foundational Treaty principles as asserted by university management.

Disciplinary degradation

Academic disciplines are the guardians of knowledge. They are responsible for the gatekeeping that maintains standards and rigour. For a whole variety of reasons, including managerialism and moralism, the disciplines have become degraded as institutions for responsible, scientific gatekeeping. Moral agendas, rather than scientific merit, now overtly influence editorial policy at many major science journals, to the detriment of disciplinary rigour.

Epistemic relativism – the idea that there is no objective knowledge (even as something to pursue or work towards) and that science as a method of knowledge discovery is just one of many ‘knowledge systems’ or ‘ways of knowing’ – has moved from the fringes of the humanities and social sciences to take hold in much of the institutional apparatus of the university. Not all academic research is infected; much of the academy retains rigorous peer review processes.  But the creeping relativism makes it harder for those who want to defend disciplinary standards.

Institutional incoherence

It is impossible to see any strategic direction for the tertiary sector. The government’s tertiary education funding agency and watchdog, the TEC, has a “tertiary education strategy that talks about wellbeing, achievement, identity and other platitudes. It could be talking about the kindergarten sector. The other so-called guardian of our education system, the NZQA, is so agnostic about actual educational quality it will accredit colleges of wellbeing and homeopathy. The last government’s review of public sector science and research funding looked more concerned with embedding the Treaty of Waitangi across the entire science system than actually producing a more effective one. No wonder New Zealand suffers from long-term and severe educational mismatches: the percentage of the school leaving cohort going on to university has expanded hugely since the 1990s, but large areas of society suffer from critical skill shortages.

I initially thought of these problems as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, university-style. But on reflection, they haven’t come galloping up brandishing messages of doom. Instead, managerialism, moralism, disciplinary degradation and institutional incoherence are more like termites. They are largely invisible to outsiders and they silently eat away at the foundations of the university system.

There is still great value in our universities. I want to see the sector thrive and believe it has an essential role to play. But these termites function as de facto taxes on the research and education spend. And that’s the optimistic reading of the situation. The worst-case scenario is that they threaten to bring the whole house down.

This is an edited version of an address delivered by the author at a symposium on the Future of the Universities organized by the New Zealand Initiative, Wellington, 15 May 2024.

Photo by Roberto Carlos Román Don on Unsplash

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