The appointment of Professor Kidman was always deeply problematic
Victoria University professor spoken to about anti-government social media post
Victoria University is speaking to one of its professors about the language they used in an anti-government social media post.
The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) has warned Victoria University that the comments “may bring the centre into disrepute”.
Professor Joanna Kidman heads up the publicly-funded but independent anti-extremism centre, which was set up after the mosque shootings and is funded by the Department of Prime Minister through a charitable trust.
In a post on X, responding to the government’s military boot camp policy, she questioned if it was a “death cult” that “hates children”.
In a statement, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet spokesperson Bridget White said Professor Kidman was employed by Victoria University and not a public servant.
“However, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has conveyed to the university via the Trust its concerns that Professor Kidman’s comments may bring the centre into disrepute.”
ACT public service spokesperson Todd Stephenson said she should be sacked.
Professor Kidman has not responded to RNZ’s requests for comment.
There are so many ironies here it is difficult to know where to begin.
Firstly, how eye rolling is it that ACT, the cheerleaders of free speech (right up until they hear something they don”t like) are ironically acting like early triggered woke snowflakes by demanding Professor Joanna Kidman be sacked.
Secondly, how extra eye rolling is it for Professor Joanna Kidman to use extremist language when she is supposedly attempting to advise on how to de-radicalise radicalism?
The truth beyond both ironies is that Professor Joanna Kidman should never have been appointed to the position to the anti-extremism centre first place!
All Trevor Mallard managed to do during the Dumb Lives Matter Parliament Lawn protest was radicalise 10 000 Kiwis to the far right and Qanon conspiracy swamps.
That’s why the appointment of someone like Professor Joanne Kidman to the National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism was so counterproductive and problematic.
This new Ministry of Truth will help the lidless Eye of Morder work out who the intelligence apparatus should focus on when it comes to domestic terrorism.
Professor Joanne Kidman is the public academic who has led crusades and social media Lynch mobs on great breaches of woke culture wars dogma.
There was her attack on the Listener 7 scientists…
…Then there was her fear a cat named by Auckland University was a hate crime…
…the good professor was also the one who called out and started the woke cancellation of Dress Maker Trelise Cooper for a dress called the ‘Trail of Tiers’ which Kidman argued was a play on the ‘Trial of Tears’, the genocidal forced march of 46,000 Native Americans between 1830 and 1850 by the United States federal government.
Hands up who thinks for one second that Trelise bloody Cooper had any idea whatsoever what the Trail of Tears was or intended to culturally appropriate a genocidal forced march?
Kidman wanted Cooper cancelled for a dress, that’s her threshold for hate and extremism, a dress maker who had no idea of an indigenous atrocity.
That’s the person in charge of an Academy on Extremism? Someone who is triggered by a dress and who used their platform to start a woke Lynch mob?
We need the National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism to advise the Eye of Mordor on whom to burn, we need surgical precision here, not someone who thinks a fucking dress is a hate crime!
When it came to spying on Muslims, Nicky Hager, Me, Greenpeace, Māori protesting oil drilling, environmentalists and the MANA Party, oh the State breached our civil liberties without blinking, but when it came to a white supremacist terrorist who used white supremacy keywords online, who was downloading extremist material online, who was generating complaints from other gun owners as to his behaviour on gun ranges and whom Police screwed up the gun licence of, when it came to all that, apparently our entire Intelligence Apparatus failed and didn’t have any idea whatsoever that a terror attack was being planned on our soil for two years.
How will this Extremism Academy succeed where they all failed?
This isn’t left wing or right wing anymore, this is about us! There is a rising tide of extremism and the conditions for making it worse are all collapsing in upon us. We don’t need the extreme force of the State brought on anyone other than real threats, in case we start radicalising those miss-targeted and speed up the process of extremism.
Once we start this rollercoaster you can’t stop it.
The appointment of Professor Kidman was always deeply problematic.
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Kidman’s a bit of a nut, but not that bad by comparison to her fellow director of this ‘Institute’ Paul Spoonley, who was responsible for the insane 2021 ‘antisemitism’ survey funded by the NZJC to attack critics of Israel that defined any New Zealanders who recognized that Israel was “committing mass murder” as “antisemitic”.
I’ve been surprised by Paul Spoonley’s approach to everything from his eminent position in Humanities at Massey University, connected to Victoria (Wellington) University I think.
Pass his utterances by the Kindness plus Practicality analyser and it doesn’t come up with a high score.
Which one of our universities shows up well on a measure of passing on worthy universal knowledge reflecting a civilised enlightened culture? The Auckland ones are skewed for business efficiency and profit aren’t they? I don’t really know how our unis would score on old-fashioned? considerations.
She’ll be looking for a new job soon, maybe McDonalds is hiring.
Even if she perhaps doesn’t come up with the smartest of ideas or is the smartest choice for the role academic freedom means the university ought to protect her from the prime ministers dept and Seymour and the TDB.
Meanwhile no matter what you think of Jordan Peterson on economic, theology and psychology his warning to the US Congress on Surveillance is good. https://youtu.be/KdhHO9HBZvc?feature=shared
I’m sorry, I don’t listen to demented drug addicts.
Maybe MK you should, neither side holds a monopoly on wisdom. Unless you experience the thinking of your opponents there is nothing to test your thinking against.
We are all addicted here to finding out what is happening politically and socially MK, and everyone is a bit addicted to something, so one can’t get too precious about how pure you are! I myself find I listen and watch and read less of available public media because their addiction to shock, horror, and choosing individual targets either to honour, or deface like talibans, is specious. But I come here for thoughtful honesty and concern, with the knowledge that everyone is under the influence of some leading behest which they know and rise above. Drug addicts find it difficult to rise above their addiction and are known as more devious in pursuit of their substances so more unreliable than the rest of us.
Only a matter of time till you started putting wojaks on your blog I guess.
This strikes me as a classic example of the Peter Principle – someone promoted to their level of incompetence. Yes, there definitely was a need for a watchdog to scrutinize the obvious incompetence of the intelligence agencies in this country and their abysmal failure over the right wing mosque attack. Yes, there is definitely a need for ongoing scrutiny over the same agencies for their failure to infiltrate and document the growth of right wing extremism and its infiltration of the National, ACT and MZF parties. But the person appointed was not up to the task.
Trouble is now that the infiltrators of those parties, will do all in their power to ensure this initiative withers on the vine
I think Joanna Kidman is doing a pretty good job of doing everything to ensure this initiative withers on the vines.
Nothing like biting the hand that feeds you.
No I suggest the parliament protestors were always radicalized. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault that they decided to march on parliament and set up home there. This group of protesters were anti everything. David Seymour is now getting away with murder because Luxon can’t control him both Peters and Luxon are running rings around him. How long will this last . David Seymour is nothing but an opportunistic shill, he has become the minister for everything and master of nothing. Remember his explosive words about the ministry of pacific affairs Its only free speech when David Seymour says it is
I agree that Joanna Kidman often goes over the top in ways that don’t sit well with academia. However her comments were phrased as a question to which we should be giving measured answers, and it should also be recognised that it was her intention to provoke. Perhaps she hoped that she would provoke a discussion about government policies rather than a discussion about whether she is a fit person to occupy her present position. If that was the case she clearly does not understand how the Realm of New Zealand works. New Zealand’s political elite will choose to crucify its critics rather than allow them to initiate important discussions.
“Kidman tweeted that there was “so much evidence that military-style youth boot camps don’t work and are expensive, that I can only assume that this government hates children”.
“Is this a government or a death-cult?” she asked online.”
We can answer that simply. The government does not hate children. Neither does it have a love for children.
It has no compassion for the tens of thousands of children that have been killed and injured by bombing, shelling and small arms fire in Gaza. Carnage that it has implicitly supported by repeating the mantra of “Israel’s right to defend itself” and practically assisted by its military contribution towards clearing the Yemeni blockade on Israeli and allied shipping. It has no compassion for the thousands of children now starving in Gaza. Starvation which has been exacerbated by the New Zealand government’s deliberate suspension of funding for emergency aid to UNRWA.
Here in Aotearoa the colonialist government has the same cold-hearted attitude towards the suffering of our own children. Its main concern is for the financial well-being of multinational corporations that are destroying our environment and impoverishing our people.
Yes, our communities are stepping up to feed and otherwise care for those of our children in great need, the homeless and the hungry. They are doing what they can to end the suffering in Gaza. But they are getting no help from the fake Christians at the head of the colonialist regime.
It would make no practical difference if the government was being led by a death cult rather than the acolytes of prosperity theology. It would make no practical difference if the government hated children rather than just being profoundly indifferent to their fate. So Kidman was justified in asking her questions.
Oh how measured you are. It’s a pity that everyone isn’t as sane and careful as you are. But some of us can get a bit stirred up and ignore all that adult stuff can’t we. The angry child or scheming devil pops out of the lamp; an evil genie that resists being tamed. So, no Kidman in her position was Not Justified in The Way she chose to ask her questions. And further, the fact that she did choose, as of right using her platform of responsibility, is a disgrace more to the person who chose her, (who?) than to herself.
I am more concerned about men who have a callous disregard for the lives of children than I am about women who are overly passionate in their defence. The way Ms Kidman chose to ask her questions should not be the principle consideration. I also wonder whether the media and the politicians would have taken the slightest bit of notice if Kidman had used more moderate language in relation to the plight of children from Otara to Gaza as a consequence of this government’s policies. I suspect not, because if they would have, they would be addressing the substantive issue right now.
this gang and its skin head gang leader care nothing for children or the 90% that dont own 90% of the wealth of NZ
There is a difference between asking question and gas lighting. With position comes responsibility, but appears to be someone promoted beyond her capabilities.
Kidman’s trashing Auckland Uni for allegedly naming a cat after a murderous colonialist, while remaining mute about a local family swimming complex called after murderous pillaging cannibal Te Rauparaha, was racist hypocrisy at its worst, IMO.
She upset Nth American Indians by meanly and unnecessarily suggesting that Trelise Coopers’s pretty ethereal frock was designed to diminish them, whereas she herself being dubbed a Professor of anything at all, diminishes academia, IMO, but the show’s not over ‘til the xxx lady sings.
Got to be careful when acting on known histories. Who wrote that story and from whose viewpoint? At least put ‘said to be’.
stephen, dare you to ask Kai Tahu if Te Rauparaha indulged in cannibalism.
Plenty of that on plenty of occasions, how was he able to claim any of the South Island is my question back at you.
Isn’t there a name for someone who enters a discussion and brings up off-point matters that increase confusion and uncertainty rather than explaining earlier matters?
The person must keep her appointment as a professor at Victoria. It would be wrong if extreme but lawful views lost the person a job. However for the other role, the person is not open minded and needs to go forthwith.
Who in there right mind would go to a woman to get rights granted and or protected?