ACADEMIC FREEDOM is one of those “public goods” that most people seldom question. Even in New Zealand, a country not especially hospitable to intellectuals of any sort, academics are seldom identified as persons in need of official restraint. New Zealanders prefer to joke about the otherworldliness and impracticality of academic research – especially in the social sciences and liberal arts. That is to say, they used to joke about it. Over the last few years academics have given ordinary New Zealanders small cause for laughter.
Indeed, it has become increasingly clear to the Free Speech Union, along with many other advocates of freedom of expression, that the place where academic freedom is most at risk is, paradoxically, academia itself.
The banning of Don Brash from the Palmerston North campus of Massey University – by no lesser person than the Vice-Chancellor herself – was one of the most dramatic early examples. There have been many others. Not the least of these was the initial failure of the University of Auckland to defend the seven members of its own academic staff who dared to declare, on the pages of The NZ Listener, that Mātaurānga Māori was not Science.
While paying lip-service to the principle of academic freedom, New Zealand’s university authorities have begun to hedge it around with all manner of restrictions. The pursuit of research subjects and/or the articulation of ideas capable of inflicting “harm” on other staff and students has become decidedly “career-limiting”
To discover exactly how pervasive this revisionist approach to academic freedom has become, and to identify how many academics still uphold freedom of expression, the Free Speech Union commissioned Curia Research to survey a representative cross section of the New Zealand academic community. That survey is ongoing, but one of the responses received was so startling that the FSU posted it on its website.
This is what it said:
Tēnā koe,
Please remove me from your e-mail list.
Freedom is an archaic feudal principal (sic) employed by colonial capitalism to advance the upward mobility of the few and maintain the status quo, and I do not subscribe to it.
It is important to bear in mind that the person who wrote this is a member of the academic staff of a New Zealand university. Someone bound by the terms of their employment to uphold the highest standards of scholarship. Someone who is almost certainly lecturing to and/or tutoring young New Zealanders. Someone who, by their own admission, does not subscribe to the principle of freedom.
Disturbing.
Let us begin by unpacking the anonymous respondent’s declaration.
The first observation to make is that the his/her understanding of both European and New Zealand history is entirely untethered from reality. To begin with, feudalism was not based upon the idea of freedom, but of reciprocity.
In the fiercely hierarchical societies of the medieval period even those at the summit of the social pyramid owed a duty of care and protection to those whose status was inferior to their own. Those at the bottom, far from being free, were legally tied to their lord’s land. Male dependents of the lord were also expected to fight for him when required to do so.
What the serfs (as these dependents were called) received in return was access to the sustenance that the lord’s land provided, as well as military and legal protection against those seeking to harm them. In certain rare circumstances a serf might be released from his obligations, thereby becoming a “freed” man. With nobody now obligated to care for him, however, such a person faced a difficult future. Unless he was especially gifted, a freed man would hasten to “bind” himself to another lord or master.
Clearly, feudalism and freedom are not concepts one usually finds grouped together – quite the reverse in fact. What about “colonial capitalism”? Is it legitimate to associate the capitalist economic system with feudalism and freedom?
Not really.
Historically speaking, capitalism is the economic system that dissolved feudalism, along with the aristocratic political system it sustained. Rather than a society founded upon hierarchy and mutual obligation, capitalism gave rise to a society based upon the freedom of the individual to enter into contracts with other individuals – for money. If you were inventive, clever, or just plain lucky, these contracts could make you rich. If you had nothing to offer but your unskilled labour, then the contracts entered into generally offered little more than the barest subsistence.
In the context of New Zealand’s colonisation, however, a persistent shortage of skilled – and unskilled – labour offered working-class colonists a considerably better existence than the one they were escaping on the immigrant ships. At least initially, it wasn’t freedom that underpinned the growth of the colony, but the prospect of a more prosperous and open-ended life – which emigration to New Zealand promised.
New Zealanders’ interest in political freedom grew out of the failure of the colony’s rulers to ensure that opportunity and prosperity remained a realistic prospect for the ordinary colonist. A large part of that failure was attributable to the difficulty encountered by the colonial authorities in acquiring sufficient land from the Māori to keep the New Zealand enterprise going.
It was precisely the freedom to contract, or not to contract, with the Crown in respect to the sale of land – a freedom guaranteed by the Treaty of Waitangi – and exercised vigorously (to the consternation and rising fury of the settler government) by the Kingitanga and its allies, that caused the British Crown to make war upon the Māori.
If anyone was defending freedom in 1860s New Zealand it was the tangata whenua.
In making war upon the Māori, the colonial capitalists and their servants in the colonial legislature were not defending the status quo, they were tearing it – and the Treaty of Waitangi – to pieces. Their legal justification for seizing Māori land had nothing to do with the laws of capitalist enterprise, but to archaic English laws pertaining to rebellion against the Crown. Feudal laws.
What’s more, the seizure of Māori land did not advance the upward mobility of wealthy capitalists alone. Thousands of Pakeha colonists benefitted from the parcelling-out of the territories seized, mostly in the form of leased small-holdings – later translated into freehold farms. It was the Pakeha many who prospered, and the Māori few who were dispossessed.
It is hard to see how this great wrong can ever be righted in an Aotearoa-New Zealand where freedom has no subscribers among the tangata whenua. Harder still to see such a rectification being accomplished where the research and intellectual labour needed to convince a majority of New Zealanders that change is necessary is not rigorously monitored, or the fierce debates it sparks given the freest rein. Academic freedom must amount to more than protecting ignorance and sanctioning disinformation.
The simple truth of the matter is that freedom is always and everywhere indivisible. Suppress it in our universities and its suppression elsewhere will soon follow. Those who do not subscribe to freedom have no place in our halls of learning – or anywhere else enlightened human values are cherished.
I’m all for diversity of thought but…let us only hope that such ‘gospel’ does not emanate from a History Dept. Or perhaps a quick sabbatical to the Ukraine or Afghanistan might encourage a quick evaluation of the relative merits of Freedom. As a tax-payer, I would happily fund such a trip so that future generations of students might benefit.
Too late. Its a professor of history running the Royal Society Of NZ that organised the failed witch hunt against scientists at Auckland Uni defending science against the Identity Politisc impostors.
You will also find a distain of history coming from the same source. Even where history supports their world view. A kind of ‘I reject your reality and substitute my own’, sort of approach. It makes any sort of discussion or compromise impossible and hardens attitudes on both sides.
Yep Alan, well put.
you have it in a nutshell alan,
nice piece chris…though the reciprocity in feudal relationships was only theoretical and more honoured in the breach
It was a lot easier for the Identity Politics cult to infiltrate and purge the Humanities and “soft sciences” back in the 80s and 90s with their pseudo intellectual Marxist gibberish. But 30yrs later they nearly have total control of the hard sciences too. A few hold outs left like that Auckland Uni science dept. gun fight where a handful of mostly old skool white male scientists are making one last heroic stand.
Academia needs a thorough flush out. There are entire faculties that are fraudulent these days.
Did you see this?
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2022/03/you_tuber_gets_rave_review_for_fake_paper_from_fake_person_at_massey_university_conference.html
Yes Andrew, that Fat Studies debacle is illustrative of the gullibility of the critical theory (most definitely not to be confused with critical thinking) adherents generally.
Some of the more famous exposés, piss takes really, of the “Emperor’s new clothes” has been the Sokal hoax and, more recently Lindsay, Pluckrose and Boghossian with their so called Sokal squared. Though the revelation that our institutions of (what used to be called) higher learning are batshit crazy won’t come as a complete surprise to many, their pernicious influence on young minds should be a cause for concern. You know things are pretty far gone when the idea that physical reality itself is a “social construct” is being promoted a swallowed whole by these fools.
Sokal sets out his reasons for faith in science: “there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in eternal physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the objective procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the scientific method.
Sokal went on to “disprove” his credo in fashionable jargon. “Feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ‘objectivity,’” he claimed. “It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ‘reality,’ no less than social ‘reality,’ is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/
Mr. Crowder isn’t always the most reliable witness, and if he really did hoax the conference, I’m wondering why he’s taken over 18 months to crow about his exploits.
But what is undeniably and horrifically true is that Massey University has hosted three international “Fat Studies” conferences, organized by one Dr Cat Pausé, (gotta love that name) “a senior lecturer at Massey’s Institute of Education and well-known New Zealand-based fat studies scholar and activist” :
https://www.massey.ac.nz/about/news/new-zealand-conference-exploring-fatness-in-society-goes-global/
Yes folks, that’s where some of your tax dollars are going.
It seems some of these fat activists do have a sense of humour. Here’s keynote speaker Professor Rothblum: “Fat studies scholars ask why we oppress people who are fat and who benefits from that oppression. At a time when many of us are sheltering in place, it is delightful that we can get together virtually and throw our weight around”.
“Academia needs a thorough flush out. There are entire faculties that are fraudulent these days.”
OK, but who’s going to do it? Not Luxon – he’s a corporate Hollow Man and a weather vane. And any threat to cut indigenous studies (which is now mostly activism rather than open-minded inquiry) will be met with a tremendous hue-and-cry about “treaty obligations”. Who among NZ politicians has the will and the backbone to face that sort of pressure?
In fact we don’t know what Luxon is – he’s keeping his cards close to his chest for the moment.
I think the plan is for him to play it straight and offer little in the way of a target to Labour. Only when he’s won (or should I say Labour has lost?) and gets into negotiations with ACT will he reveal his hand.
As far as academia is concerned his government pulling funding on all the obviosuly corrupted faculties – that would include most of the humanities for starters. Study these subjects if you will, but not on my dollar. They could do this under the heading of ‘national interest’ – why fund something that’s never going to deliver anything useful for the nation? Move the mony into science, engineering and medicine. There will be a lot of cheering if that happens!
well we do know he’s a religious nutter who will try to destroy womens rights and he thinks common kiwis are ‘bottom feeders’
A religious nutter and a racist in coalition, should be fun!
please define which type of women would lose what types of rights.
abortion rights for a start bratty or are you telling us fester is insincere about his fundamentalist convictions? if so what else is he insincere about?
One thing we know about Luxon is he doesn’t like “bottom feeders “. He comes from an unknown Christian tenet who knows what they preach to their converted. It’s certainly not humility or care for another human being worse off than themselves and as for freedom ,be careful what you wish for one man’s freedom is another mans prison
There are bottom feeders in the world. They’re the parasites that could be working but prefer to live off welfare. There are people in the world who are poor but have the pride to live by their own effort. The bottom feeders don’t have that pride.
It’s been removed
I would hazard an educated guess that this is not an uncommon view in academia, including NZ. Even the NY Times Editorial (hardly a bastion of anti-woke) is recognising this. It’s bad, real bad, and destroying cherished traditions that everyone in society benefits from.
But the concern coming from Chris Trotter is beyond hypocrisy. This is the man who cheered on those hypochondriac, Safetyism-is-my-religion Left-wingers as they yelled “freedumb, more like” with pitchforks from their influential social and mainstream media caccoon. The man who wished the “lumpenproletariat” who should be squashed because their vision of freedom (which ultimately equalled simply having fundamental rights returned – that’s actually all that was ultimately asked; hardly a radical proposition and a month later, now partly Government policy as of 4 April) didn’t suit his nose.
Freedom, and freedom of speech, is the antithesis of everything this Government and virtually every social and cultural institution (including universities) now stand for.
Forgive me if I laugh my ass off the chair right now as Labour-apologist Trotter comes with his “see here young man” concern now for freedom.
Another cracker Chris
“Freedom is an archaic feudal principal (sic) employed by colonial capitalism to advance the upward mobility of the few and maintain the status quo, and I do not subscribe to it”.
Freedom in the general sense? Academic freedom in sense of ‘freedom of expression’? Are they the same? It seems to me that the author of the statement simply has an axe to grind but given deconstruction of the key premises clearly doesn’t think it through.
When I think of academic freedom, or for that matter, freedom of expression, what comes to mind is the role of the university as critic and conscience of society, something that is I believe enshrined in some Education Act. What this entails is an environment that encourages creativity, radical ideas and criticism of the status quo.
I guess what this unknown academic is trying to express is just that, but is blinded by a combination of their own ideological beliefs and uncertainty of the provenance of key terms. Language does matter. Ironic really, coming from an academic (although to be fair not all academics are language specialists). And in recent times there are of course all sorts employed in the ivory towers of learning, from those long abandoning the lectern for senior management roles, to contract researchers who have no particular interest in education per se, to a precarious workforce made up of postgraduate students and casualised part-timers? These days never quite know who’s on the receiving end of an email survey.
So in short. We’re heading back toward ‘Serfdom?’
A free man, woman, … will become more and more rare?
Which a majority of NZ’ders who are owned by debt, be it mortgage or every other kind of debt that follows?
Or is freedom just a fantasy that people are just waking up to?
All humanities courses and faculty need to be disbanded as this rot goes right through.
It is they who have driven the insane agenda that has resulted in men donning some makeup and having a beat down on women in MMA matches. How brave they are!
There’s a particularly scary one ensconced at Auckland University run by a South African import on data management.
As in people.
This is symptomatic of the slow moving cultural revolution of the Critical Theorists that has been gradually moving through and coming to dominate in western academia, progressive activism, the cultural left and now the civil service, government, business and public discourse via ‘woke’ politics especially in the anglophone world.
The particular flavour of CT relativism, historical inaccuracy combined with moral superiority, expressed by the anonymous respondent is likely to be from ‘Post-Colonial Studies’ but there are other flavours (Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Gender Critical Feminism etc).
Herbert Marcuse’s ‘Repressive Tolerance’ is a point of reference to understand where this comes from and to get a sense of how it moves through institutions, this article discusses what is coming down the pipe in the US legal system.
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-takeover-of-americas-legal-system
You make it sound likes its a bad thing.
Quite frankly we need to purge all religious conservatism and white supramacey from civil society and all people to live how they want to live.
You posting a link to Bari Weiss’s substack page is evidence to me that you are on the site of reactionary Pentecostal Christian dominionism and intend to impose Old Testament law at gunpoint.
That makes you an enemy of humanity.
Bari Weiss?? You don’t mean Barry White? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOHoaP36hgA
Weiss and her IDW mate would cancel Barry White for 1) being black and 2) driving white women into a sexual frenzy with his deep voice.
Bazza is a chick
Hi Milsy, I thought I’d engage with your deeply substantive, insightful and above all logically constructed comment. However as it must be hard feeling so resentful and angry all the time I won’t stir the bile pot. Take a walk, enjoy the sunshine, find a hobby. pottery or the flute is relaxing, go on a date with someone who makes you smile try to make them happy too (Barry White may help).
Remember to breathe.
*** THE BEST OF MILSY RANT SCRIPTS ***
[person(s) I disagree with] is/are racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic old Testament supporting Christians who oppose tax, high wages, unions, welfare and public services.
[person(s) I disagree with] have/has no place in the ‘working class’
[person(s) I disagree with] are a religious Trump supporter who thinks LGBT’s should be banned and women should be relegated to being baby machine.
[person(s) I disagree with] supported George Floyd’s execution at the hand of racist cops.
Why dont you just admit you support police brutality and the percecution of LGBT’s?
What is ‘freedom’ anyway? Too many people think its the “freedom” to impose Christian sharia biblical law on others. Rather like elements of the anti-vax movement.
You posting a link to Bari Weiss’s substack page is evidence to me that you are on the site of reactionary Pentecostal Christian dominionism and intend to impose Old Testament law at gunpoint.
That makes you an enemy of humanity.
*** THANK YOU FOR FLYING MILSY-BOT ***
Jeez Tui, you put all that effort into finding all my posts. Or, copying and pasting when you read them.
At least you recognise your own work, that’s a start.
“…and all people to live how they want to live.”
But you dont practice that nillsy. If a person or group wants to start a club that does not allow individuals who believe there are 83 gender identities to join you will not let them do that. In fact you will try and destroy their lives.
“enemy of humanity” – seriously? Talk about psychological projection.
@MR This is fairly normal, there is the ‘Iron law of Woke projection’.
The way they characterise individuals and society is exactly what they embody in themselves and bring into being.
Religious Conservatism is the only way out of this mess.
tell that to florida where they ban books…how long before they burn them?
The comment from the anonymous person reeks of Critical Race Theory and follows closely what has already been expressed by other activists disguised as academics overseas: that the concept of “freedom” reeks of “whiteness” and of colonial power structures.
That we have reached a point in time where-by not even the concept of “freedom” is free from race driven identity politics is a sad indictment of where we are headed.
But I am also curious: if freedom is a bad (colonial) thing then what is the opposite of freedom?
Slavery? Oppression? control? captivity? all of the above?
Therefore if you don’t subscribe to freedom and you lose your land to another person(s) by force (ie lose your freedom) then surely that must be seen as a just outcome in the struggle for power and control? You know, the way of the warrior, might is right and all that. The strongest prevails.
So logically if you don’t believe in freedom then how can you complain that you lost your land to a more powerful (colonial) force? That makes no sense.
To be pedantic it’s likely from Post Colonial studies not CRT.
The Critical Theory schools typically operate along a particular dimensions of ‘cultural’ conflict theory with a supposedly inherent oppressor/oppressed power dichotomy.
CRT is the dimension of race typically a white/Black power dichotomy (note the capital ‘B’)
Queer theory is sexuality, sex, gender so straight/gay, male/female, cis/trans
Post Colonial studies is self explanatory colonial/indigenous
etc note the absence of a socio-economic class component.
Critical Theory is a ‘reflective discourse to find fault’ (problematise) and contains an activist imperative to overthrow the systems of oppression. It does not seek to understand the world, it seeks to change it.
All values of the existing order (which is oppressive), uphold the exiting order (and are therefore oppressive). So ‘freedom’ and ‘Freedom of speech’ must be problematised. For CRT freedom supports structural racism, for Post Colonial studies it supports things like ‘colonial capitalism’. UNLESS freedom enables Critical Theorists to speak then it is serves liberation so it’s fine.
Do not expect universal principles or logical consistency. CT is a completely different world view and philosophy. It does not seek to understand, it seeks to problematise and change. It does not seek universal values, it denies they can exist because it believes there is no objective truth, while at the same time claiming to be ‘True’ itself.
in essence then it ‘over medicates’ culture
Is it possible that the writer was trying to imply that colonial capitalist ‘freedom’ is far from this for indigenous and other oppressed minorities. Further, the wonder that we dote on, democracy, is again flawed if you are not part of the majority.
what do you recommend bob, minority rule based on race? or income? or being a landowner?
some academics have always promoted rank bullshit..
aryan archeology – nuff said
eugenics….step up and take a bow suffragettes and plunkett
bucolic pastoral romanticism…step on down adolf and the ‘romantic poets’
phrenology, anyone who believes in that needs their bumps felt
the ‘invention’ of europian cultural history/traditions in late19th/earlyC20th…see ‘eisteddfod’ druids and tolkein though at least had the decency to write his as fiction.
afro-centric studies, don’t hear much about that anymore
oh and ‘Maori invented trench warfare’
‘Star Trek studies’ has more intellectual rigor than most of these.
and the list goes onnnnnnn, it’s nowt new…but as evidenced by the list above it’s results in society can be very destructive….lock ’em in their ivory towers and throw away the key.
Many wish to be ground breaking avant-garde, to discover the next missing link, to go down in the history books. Motivated by fame and prestige, with truth being the first casualty of war. Many also wish to just be controversial, stirrers, to be acknowledged by the herd of other academics. A loud baaaaaa emits from the flock.
Many times science is weaponised by high priests to steer society in economic and social ways for the benefit of the ruling classes and also altruistic reasons such as global warming.
Take evolution for example: Reducing Africans to sub human allows others to use them in ways that most others would find abhorrent if Africans had the same evolutionary status as white people. Yes, evolution did consider blacks to be closer to apes than whites.
Most A-lister rock star type academics are tools for steering public opinion. And have notoriety not for academic ability, but for the people and ends they serve.
Positive change happens slowly. Take for example the germ theory medical guy who was ridiculed and died young from frustration. It was only 50 years later that his work regarding surgeon hygiene during operations was accepted as fact.
And today we have the same situation in most areas of thought.
Thought crime has been with us since the beginning of time, and the bible speaks widely of guarding ones speech least one is killed for speaking truth.
Metaphysically, if the world was run totally on truth, then peoples immunity to deception would weaken due to lack of exposure. The whole god/satan axis like the yin yang symbol keeps the world is balance.
If all dropped their guards due to a paradise society totally free of deception and non truth, a lie would be like a virus and like little open minded babies it gets absorbed into the psyche due to lack of exposure to harmful thought. Learned discernment needs bullshit.
The peaceful harmonious nation suffers invasion from the barbarian hordes, as they are unversed and unpractised in the ways of deceivers and bad people.
In the same way, a vaccine or inoculation serves to bolster and guard against dis-ease. Fiction and theatre are like inoculations for thought cancer. However a day should come when a warrior class is employed by the king to protect the flock of worker bees from wolves…. oh wait…A good shepherd protects his flock from wolves, but only to eat them later on.
However I digress.
The great reset will ask many questions of academia. But if we continue to still harm others due to ignorance or financial gain, the reset will only be partial, and society may revert to kind due to lack of momentum. Boost boost boost
Gene therapy for the true benefit of humanity is best achieved thru thought inducing the needed MRNA changes.
Bypassing the mind and its effects on MRNA and subsequently DNA, will not yield the same results as an injection. An injection to the mind will serve humanity much more holistically and properly, with reduced unwanted side effects and lasting results.
All disease begins in the mind, including the collective mind of humanity. A vaccine is like the tail wagging the dog.
Yes there’s nothing like the freedom of the majority to rip the minority off.
There is still far too much Settler mentality in this Country, especially from the Right.
I can understand academics being reluctant to openly challenge current woke orthodoxy, especially if those who have “given hostage to fortune” i.e. if have dependents. Any academic who gets pilloried online for “racism” or “transphobia” etc will be viewed as a liability by their employer. And the way NZ universities (or “Unicorps” as they might better be called) are funded leaves them vulnerable to activist pressure – the user-pays funding model is one of the drivers of the wokification of our unicorps, a problem that the NZ right doesn’t want to know about.
But a response like the one documented above (if genuine) isn’t from someone who’s just trying to keep their head down and stay out of trouble. It’s the response of a fervent ideologue – or maybe of a parlour-room firebrand who wants to crow to his/her friends about having sent a “far-right-adjacent” organization away with a flea in their collective ear.
I think the woke ideologues make up only a minority of academics in NZ, but their numbers are growing as our unicorps hire more and more millenials, who often seem to know disturbingly little about the world before neoliberalism. As Trotter has argued in an earlier article, they’ve been led to believe that NZ (and the West) pre-1984 was a cesspit of racism and sexism. So some at least are going to fancy themselves as revolutionaries and freedom fighters – strange when their stated beliefs often align with those mouthed by the leaders of tech giants like Twitter.
Who understands the world in 2022? Not I.
Why dont you just admit you support police brutality and the percecution of LGBT’s?
Probably also worth mentioning that before 1984, homosexuality was criminalised, marital rape was legal, women had to have a male relative or husband co-sign for a bank loan, and Maori were freely discriminated against in employment, housing, etc.
To employ the mediaeval spelling, no doubt, phuque me! Plus I would have thought that a modern academic of all people would know that principal was a non-gendered term for headmaster or headmistress, regardless of their principles.
prince + pal
What is ‘freedom’ anyway? Too many people think its the “freedom” to impose Christian sharia biblical law on others. Rather like elements of the anti-vax movement.
Hence the ideal of universalism. You do realised that a hyper-slacktivist persona is not going to help you get laid?
Agree Chris, especially as, as you point out, it effectively shuts out the dialogue on what needs to be discussed fulsomely and consensus sought.
I have a friend at Vic who has been there 15 years in lower/middle management and we have had this convo. Effectively she said its always been the same, every year there are new protocols and cultural add ons and social mores. Such that after a few years, you forget to even question it or think about what it all means. You know its BS but you do what you’re told and go with the flow because that is how you survive.
People are so inured that they dont see the ridiculousness around them. So what do you do with that? How do you practically unpick it? Especially when its happening right around the world.
big tick millsy
Here’s Siouxsie Wiles telling her fellow academics how to use their freedom of speech correctly.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/300480580/academics-use-your-mana-to-aid-colleagues-not-fight-them
“Yes, those professors have freedom of speech, but wouldn’t it be great if they used their voices to help break down the systemic barriers that exist within our institutions rather than fighting so hard to, perhaps unwittingly, uphold them?”
Such is Siouxsie’s lack of self-awareness that she doesn’t realize she’s just showed us she doesn’t believe in free speech.
That’s because Siouxsie Wiles has developed a ‘critical consciousness’ when it comes to systemic oppression. At least systemic oppression according to the narrative-based epistemology and narrowly defined identity-based-equity, (which is very different from equality) of middle class Critical Theorists. All speech that does not seek to overthrow this (typically misdiagnosed) oppression by definition upholds it. There is no neutral position and there is no honest disagreement that is not ‘problematic’.
Welcome to the Temple we hope you enjoy your (by which we mean ‘our’) Utopia!
Siouxsie says:
“Study after study shows that systemic barriers exist for Māori and Pacific peoples within our academic institutions. ”
What she doesn’t mention is the fact that these conclusions are rarely if ever based on proper evidence, but rather on cherry-picked “lived experience” anecdotes. For an example, see the recent report by the “task force” at Waikato Uni:
https://www.waikato.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/686762/Report-of-the-Taskforce-April-2021.pdf
Siouxsie goes on to say:
“They [Maori & Pasifika) are less likely to hold fixed-term contracts and permanent academic positions. When they do get a job, they will earn less money and have lower odds of being promoted to associate professor or professor.”
Where do we start with this? Firstly, Siouxsie has apparently ruled out the possibility that *on average* Maori and Pasifika might be less well-qualified than Pakeha or Asian Kiwis. Secondly, it’s surprising she didn’t mention the independent Gardner-Parata review of procedures at Waikato Uni, which found ZERO evidence that Maori were paid less or promoted less than equally well-qualified non-Maori staff.
Here it is: https://cms.its.waikato.ac.nz/major-projects/taskforce/?a=629577
Siouxsie’s tendentiousness and outright dishonesty does a great disservice to her fellow academics – the same is true of her fellow-traveller Shaun Hendy. But it’s doubtful they will have sufficient self-awareness to look in the mirror when a future right-wing government slashes funding to universities.
or is she just subscribing to the fashionable views of the demographic she belongs to?
and would do so whatever the fashion might be at any given time.
@gagarin – You are probably right and I’m giving her too much credit.
She’s more likely to be useful idiot than informed ideologue.
I think Siouxie Wiles believes in speech that is usefu, informative and aimed at a good outcome. Not any brain fart that comes to mind. Hers are constrained by science which is a help with that sort of chat which is more opinion, and rekuns than anything.
yea but much to my regret that’s not how freedom of speech works grey…the stupid have the right to be stupid and I have the right to call them stupid…it’s flawed but so are most things.
only if it is usual for her agenda
I guess free speech is harmless until it’s harmful. Chris mentioned Don Brash and strangely he could have gone back a lot further with DB to 2004 and the Orewa speech. An interesting speech because it was all about treating people the same but in reality of course this idea wasn’t working for Maori and other minorities. The left hated Brash because the speech won the National party votes from more of the white middle class. He was cancelled by the left and the speech became infamous. He was labeled racist. I believe his thought process seemed ok but wasn’t working. That’s not racist. These days if somebody says something publicly that isn’t accepted by the current thinking, they’re cancelled. That’s ok and they have the right to say it, In any reasonable society the majority idea should be maintained. We know this doesn’t always work for the minorities and that is a real problem, and the pressure of discontent builds. Those disadvantaged say the system is broken but is it. I believe we are approaching that point where the majority middle class are fast joining the other minorities in that housing is unattainable for many, wages don’t cover the cost of living and health services are inaccessible for all but the dying. When the minority becomes the majority, and are dissatisfied, something will give. That’s when we’ll see change. We need to be careful in NZ that when arguing our case we don’t overplay the race card when a lot of issues are a systematic failure. Maori and Pakeha are both calling each other racist now, and our Maori Party seems happy to capitalise off that. Having said that they have the right to free speech the same as anybody else.
Excellent Post in my opinion @ C.T.
indeed NV revolutions are made by the bourgeoisie via ‘vanguardist parties’ not the proletariat..
uncomfortable truth that invalidates my ‘revolutionary romantic’ ideals.. but a historical fact
That Anonymous reponse gives every indication that someone has just had their value system challanged. There is no point talking to them in academic terms about the definition of ‘fuedal’ because they used it for emotional purposes to express their feeling that they had just come across something barbaric.
It’s partciularly worrying that this is an attitide toward the concept of ‘freedom’ – although I have to admit it’s a term that has been much abused by the US
‘Historically speaking, capitalism is the economic system that dissolved feudalism, along with the aristocratic political system it sustained. Rather than a society founded upon hierarchy and mutual obligation, capitalism gave rise to a society based upon the freedom of the individual to enter into contracts with other individuals – for money’
Except if you ask yourself what is ‘money’ ,where does it come from and who allocates it,you must conclude all the ruling class have done, is change the window dressing of ….Feudalism.
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