MEDIA WATCH: Of course Massey went to the Spinoff to justify strangling free speech
If you want to win over woke millennials, you go to the Spinoff, so it should come as no surprise that was where Massey grovelled to as they spinelessly attempted to justify their intellectual cowardice by banning the Feminism 2020 conference.
NZ Universities have a mandated obligation to be the social conscience of society and they uphold that obligation with academic free speech.
Those obligations are to the wider society, and are part of their social contract with a liberal progressive democracy. That’s why they get so much public money.
They also have an obligation to provide a work environment and study environment that protects staff and students from physical harm and harassment. To conflate this obligation into a health and safety responsibility to protect staff and students from ideas that will trigger them however is intellectually dishonest.
A University doesn’t have an obligation to shield staff and students from ideas that might trigger them, that is the relationship between a parent and a child. A University has an obligation to challenge their staff and students and provide support that enables their ability to cope with that challenge.
What Massey have done is conflate the relationship between University and staff/students to that of a parent protecting their children from unpleasant content, that’s not their responsibility.
It is intellectual cowardice to circumvent their obligations as a critic of society by conflating health and safety issues to protect staff and students from being triggered. Massey’s job is to challenge and support their students and staff, not wrap them in cotton wool and protect them from thought crimes.
This afternoon the new venue for Feminism 2020 will be announced. The new venue is sacred space for NZ democracy and it is place that can not and must not ever be silenced so any attempt by the Wellington Woke to shut it down simply won’t be tolerated by anyone else in NZ.
This fiasco will end up empowering ACT, the Left’s ability to self mutilate and score home goals never ceases to disappoint and astound me.
We on the left should be championing free speech, not justifying its censorship!
Identity Politics would eat its own young if they weren’t all vegan.
“A University doesn’t have an obligation to shield staff and students from ideas that might trigger them”
Maybe, maybe not Martyn but it IS a workplace and as such has a duty of care to staff & students alike
If students themselves want to hold an event on campus grounds, you’d have a point. But why should that apply to EXTRERNAL GROUPS that have little connection to the University it self?? University management’s first duty of care is to the people who work & study there, not to others who feel entitled to use their spaces
I fail to understand why that should be the case. Would you let white supreamists post whatever they want on TDB? I doubt that
Can you please explain to us Mjolnir how a conference held by ‘outsiders’ during the term break when no staff or students would have been around would have been so triggering for the poor wee lambs?
“This fiasco will end up empowering ACT….”
Yup. I’m a lifelong Labour voter; but not next election. ACT will get my vote: at least Seymour understands what freedom of speech means.
“Identity Politics would eat its own young if they weren’t all vegan.’
Hahahaha! Nice: I wish I’d thought of that.
+100 D’Esterre.
My political sentiments exactly.
The beehive is certainly important for free speech