Professor Jerry Coyne: Unsettling the settler colonial university...

Unsettling the settler colonial university - a “feminist decolonization” of higher education in New Zealand

This link was sent to me by a despondent (and of course anonymous) New Zealander with the comment, “This is now unstoppable in NZ.” It’s from the Times Higher Education site, and the authors are Mahdis Azarmandi and Sara Tolbert, both on the Faculty of Education of New Zealand’s University of Canterbury.

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It’s fairly clear that by full “decolonization,” the authors propose a full disruption and subversion—yes, they use those words—of universities, with the ideal being to give the lands and waters back to the Māori people, as well as completely transforming college education into a program that caters to the indigenous people. I’ll give the authors’ intentions, and then show their “praxis” for decolonization. Excerpts are indented and bolding is mine.

As non-Indigenous scholars, we can engage in anticolonial and feminist practices that subvert the settler colonial university, but we cannot promise “decolonisation”, especially in a country such as New Zealand, where the effects of colonisation are ongoing and where, in the words of Indigenous climate activist India Logan-Riley, “land back, oceans back” is yet to be realised. Unless the university is fully engaged in land back, oceans back, decolonisation will be used by the settler colonial university to justify settler occupation of stolen land, water and knowledge (see “additional links”, below).

Rather than offer how-to tips for “decolonising the university”, we suggest a few points as a call for collective action to change things that are unjust ­– inside and outside the university. We argue that to engage in anticolonial, feminist practice, we must address the systems that produce violence and exploitation, not just in the scholarly aspect of our work but also within our own institutional and material conditions such as housing, jobs and access to health. Some of these points are taken from our forthcoming chapter “A manifesto for transdisciplinary (transgressive) feminist praxis in the Academy”.

It’s clear from these words that the authors, who are both non-indigenous, don’t want merely a cosmetic redo of universities, which they see as not only having stolen the land and water from the indigenous people, but also “produce violence and exploitation.” They mean what they say: they want a complete rethink and redo of how the countries universities are run and what they teach.

Unless by “violence” the authors mean “offense”, the hyperbole is strong, especially since New Zealand’s government and universities are doing everything that can to create equity for the Māori. (Indigenous people constitute 16.5% of New Zealand, just ahead of the 15.1% Asian and well behind the 70% European people.) One question underlying all this is whether the whole system has to be transformed to cater to the people who got to the islands first. But I’ll leave that aside and move on, because it’s worth seeing the reforms these two scholars suggest. There are six of them:

1.) We can’t both love and change the university at the same time. We must actively engage in the disruption of oppressive, settler colonial and patriarchal practices. Learning from abolitionist struggles, we need to engage in non-reformist reform – that is, practices that improve the lives and conditions of those most marginalised (outside and inside the university) but that do not consolidate the power of the institution.

By “most marginalized,” I presume they mean the Māori people, though later they pull others into the reformist tent. Note that their purpose is not education, but social reform, outside as well as inside the university. There is not a word about what sort of education people will get, save that it’s going to be centered on indigenous “ways of knowing”:

2.) A crucial aspect of anticolonial praxis in the university is recognising and respecting Indigenous epistemologies and, where possible, engaging these as central to its curriculum while also peripheralising European and settler knowledge, which has been foundational in its formation. However, how and to what extent Indigenous knowledge should be in the university is not for non-Indigenous people to decide, but the way we act within our natural and knowledge environment must not be extractivist. We can and must resist extracting resources and knowledge from land, water and people. We need also remember that some knowledge is not ours to share; “sometimes the knowledge does not need to be moved out of the communities where it resides into the pages, websites and walls of the academic industrial complex” (Tolbert & Azarmandi, forthcoming). What anticolonial feminist praxis centres is being-in-relation (with place and people). We need to approach the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge with humility – there is a fine line between incorporation of Indigenous knowledge and cultural appropriation. What we can do is make space by disrupting disciplinary boundaries and challenging the limitations of academic disciplines that discourage collaboration and maintain competition.

Here we see that the “settler colonialists”—that is, able-bodied heterosexual males of European descent (see below)—should have no say in what passes for knowledge in the university. Indigenous knowledge must be central, and settler knowledge peripheral. In practice, this means the Māorization of the entire curriculum, including science.

3.) We must build collaborative partnerships and alliances with other marginalised communities, acknowledging the intersections of colonialism, racism, sexism, homo-transphobia, ableism and other forms of oppression. Building genuine relationships and collaborative partnerships with Indigenous and marginalised communities is essential. If these relationships benefit scholars and the academy more than the community, chances are they are meant to further empower settler colonial regimes and not disrupt and decolonise them. Adapt feminist and collaborative writing practices; refuse symbolic service requests and instead strategise and work towards systemic change: unionise, organise for a living wage and improve institutional practices such as parental leave and access to healthcare and housing.

In the above they pull into their tent everyone considered marginalized, including the disabled, people of color, women, gay people, and trans people. It’s not just that these people deserve equal rights and equal educational opportunities—something that nobody would oppose—but that they will also participate in overthrowing and subverting the violent and exploitative universities. As for parental leave, healthcare and the like, that is the responsibility not of the universities themselves, but of the New Zealand government, which funds the universities.

4.) Anticolonial praxis requires institutional transformation at all levels. This also means securing the right to education and making sure public universities exist and are supported. In the institution, we need to critically examine and restructure policies, procedures and practices that perpetuate settler colonial regimes of power. It involves addressing systemic barriers that maintain inequality, such as access to education, hiring practices, tenure and promotion criteria, curricular decisions and funding allocations. Resist symbolic change and cultural window dressing. Name it; make it explicit.

#4 is more of the same, express a deep animus towards the “settler colonial regimes of power”, something they never give examples of. They also argue that “systemic barriers” (i.e., codified systems of bigotry) must be dismantled, although they give no examples of such barriers and I know of none.

5.) Anticolonial and feminist praxis requires constant self-reflection and a commitment to unlearning. It involves critically examining our own complicity within the settler colonial structures. Be mindful, however, that this reflective and personal work alone does not create change – and sometimes, as feminist scholar Sara Ahmed has illuminated, it can become another way of not doing things with words. Connect, resist and organise.

6.) Finally, we must dare to dream beyond the university. What if the university can’t be unsettled or decolonised? If we do unsettle or decolonise the institution, will it be recognisable once we are done? As la paperson (the avatar of K. Wayne Yang, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego) has written (and we cite in our forthcoming chapter), we should understand “the university as a machine that is the composite of many other [disloyal] machines” – ones that ‘break down and travel in unexpected lines of flight – flights that are at once enabled by the university yet irreverent of that mothership of a machine’. May we find each other…beyond the university, and unite in our irreverent lines of flight”.

Here the, the universities are seen as mere staging areas for society-wide transformation, something they implied when they said, “Building genuine relationships and collaborative partnerships with Indigenous and marginalised communities is essential. If these relationships benefit scholars and the academy more than the community, chances are they are meant to further empower settler colonial regimes and not disrupt and decolonise them.”

One gets the impression here that the writers would be happiest of all the Europeans (save the marginalized ones, like the gays or people of color, were heaved out of the country so it would revert to a system of Māori governance. Now it’s true that the Māori were historically oppressed, but were also given the rights of “colonialist” settlers as well as the right to keep all their lands and properties, in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. This treaty, which is ambiguous and wasn’t even signed by all the indigenous leaders, is a holy document in New Zealand, interpreted by locals to mean that they get most of everything (the fearful Europeans dare not say otherwise).

When you read something like this, you wonder about not only the philosophy of Times Higher Education, which decided to print what is largely an incoherent (and incorrect) set of assertions and accusations, but you also wonder about what will happen to New Zealand. The authors, after all, are “settler-colinialists”, calling for their own decimation.

What is happening in New Zealand—with all the many official attempts to create equity only serving to provoke tirades like the one above—is the world’s most far-reaching attempt at ideological capture of an entire country by the people who consider themselves entitled to run the whole country: the descendants of the original Polynesian settlers. But the world has moved on, and who can deny that “settler colonialists”, by bringing with them their knowledge, medicines, free national healthcare, and inventions, have improved the lives of most people in New Zealand. It is not as if colonialism has been an unmitigated evil.

I think the person who sent me this screed is right: this movement is unstoppable, and it’s going to ruin New Zealand. Apparently the Luxon government is either ignoring this stuff or doesn’t care to stop it. Soon it will be too late, if it isn’t already. I pity New Zealanders who want to get a good college education in the face of people like Drs. Azarmandi and Tolbert, whose program will sink New Zealand to the bottom of the academic ranking of comparable countries.

Professor Jerry Coyne is an American biologist known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design, a prolific scientist and author. This article was first published HERE