Ben Espinar: Communications Academic Declares War on Dialogue

Another academic has their knickers in a twist. Who’s turn is it to add to the nation’s ever-expanding mountain of contorted scholarly undergarments? That would be Dean’s Chair in Communications at Massey University, Professor Mohan Dutta. 

Professor Dutta last week penned a uniquely deranged opinion piece entitled “The far-right’s cancel culture and communication studies”.

In this piece, he takes aim at writer Karl du Fresne’s criticism of bias in academia, and, like plenty before him, advocates against the free and open discussion of ideas, citing the imagined emergence of a cogent network of far-right conspiratorial mis informants polluting the arena of political discourse.

Much like an old carton of goat’s milk covered in mayonnaise on a sunny porch, this argument is becoming increasingly difficult to swallow.

Dutta misleads his readers by placing at the centre of his article a piece focusing on the pitfalls of a specific discipline (Communications courses) and attempts to engineer an entirely non-existent correlation between the public debate of these concerns and a wider global rise in hate, colonial oppression, and far-right rhetoric.

Dutta begins by asserting that ‘the far right has launched attacks targeting academics and universities, both in digital and public spaces, resulting in violence on campus’ and that ‘it’s obsession with academics and journalists studying and covering misinformation and hate, have made carrying out research and sharing it publicly unsafe’.

In the same breath he references The Platform, and a piece written by me criticising Journalism academic Dr Greg Treadwell; “attend here to The Platform’s targeting of journalism academic Dr Greg Treadwell for his public writing on harmful disinformation’.

You might remember last year an article I wrote in response to Treadwell, who espoused his disturbing vision for the immediate future of journalism in a piece published to Newsroom. Mr Treadwell did not ‘carry out research’. He watched Fire and Fury once, decided journalism doesn’t need ‘balance’ anymore and then wrote a preachy, self-righteous column in which he tried to compare a three-week protest on Molesworth Street to reporting on war crimes in the Middle East. Seriously.

First off - I never ‘targeted’ anyone. Treadwell wrote an opinion piece calling for sweeping changes to the principles of journalism which he refused to defend when given the opportunity, and I wrote a piece criticizing his view and drawing attention to his hypocrisy. As far as I can tell, criticising ideas and viewpoints has been standard practice within academia since its inception.

Second – That Dutta characterises criticism of ideas as an ‘attack’ and then accuses the author of inciting violence on campus is among the more outrageous abuses of academic authority I’ve ever observed.

Despite what the voices in Professor Dutta’s head would have you believe, there is absolutely no connection between the robust contest of ideas and whatever violence he is alluding to, and the spurious construction of this correlation in the minds of his students is a significant contributor to the wider issue with modern public discourse that Karl du Fresne and others like him are attempting to highlight. 

What does Dutta make of this rebuttal to his outrage? Who could say. The academic specialising in ‘communications’ has blocked most people who disagree with him on most platforms and has in the past advertised his disdain for discourse. Attend here to his article in E-tangata in which he denounces dialogue as a tool for ‘reproducing and magnifying the disinformation and hate perpetrated by white supremacists’.

What a fascinating view on public discourse for a dean’s chair in communications to hold. What a source of a great concern it should be that a man in such a position has written anything under the subheading ‘whiteness and dialogue’, let alone this; “the uncritical and celebratory view of dialogue as a human right reflects the whiteness of the mainstream approaches to dialogue, which upholds as universal the values of the dominant white culture’.

What utter word salad. This apparent uprising of opposition to freedom of speech, and clear disdain for the foundations of academic and political discourse that have given way to some of the greatest advances in human and societal thinking in history is denigrating our approach to dialogue.

The unhinged views of people like Mohan Dutta should be viewed with absolute contempt by anyone with even a modicum of respect for academic and political processes.

As for why Mohan won’t front up to publicly defend his intellectually desolate ideas – he seeks refuge in the claim that The Platform and other independent media are proponents of a vast web of conspiratorial right-wing agents of destruction with designs against impending changes to power structures, and therefore his refusal to engage is evidence of his upstanding moral fortitude and cause for a hearty pat on the back.

I would offer a counter suggestion however…

It is generally believed that the most ignorant and indefensible of ideas wilt the fastest under the light of public scrutiny, which is an adage that I very much doubt has escaped Mr Dutta’s consideration. Take from that what you will. 

Ben Espiner produces the breakfast show on The Platform. He has a BA in Political Science and English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.