Universities have two core missions. One is to produce and test knowledge. The other is to teach students to think using the methods of rigorous disciplines like science and history. Both require environments in which ideas can be freely expressed and contested.
In recent years, though, universities have become political monocultures. Dissent is often suppressed. On certain hot-button topics, ideology has replaced debate. Anyone challenging prevailing views on equity and narrow definitions of identity is at risk.
In 2024, a New Zealand Initiative report cited surveys showing that many academics and students feel intimidated into silence on these kinds of issues. Similar data are available across the Anglosphere.
At the tip of the iceberg, dissident academics have been censored and sacked. Invited speakers have been deplatformed. Beneath the surface is a culture of censoriousness and ideological capture.
Politicians have belatedly noticed that universities aren’t always doing what they’re funded to do. In the UK, legislation has been enacted to penalise universities financially if they allow free speech to be infringed on their campuses. The New Zealand government has signalled similar legislation, to be introduced in March.
Legislation may not fully address what is ultimately a cultural problem. Scholar and free speech advocate Peter Boghossian favours a more radical approach. Boghossian believes public universities should be defunded, enabling new institutions to fulfil the roles they have abandoned.
In the US, green shoots are already sprouting. In 2021, historian Niall Ferguson, entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, and journalist Bari Weiss conceived the University of Austin (UATX).
UATX is founded on traditional university values of free speech and open enquiry. With hundreds of millions of dollars raised, a who’s-who of affiliated public intellectuals, and an inaugural cohort enrolled in 2024, it is off to a very promising start.
New Zealand universities are established by statute, making an equivalent of UATX difficult to establish here. Furthermore, our small population may mean that such an institution would not be viable.
Even so, there would be no harm in trying. Taxpayers should not have to support institutions that refuse to fulfil their key roles. If the government’s academic freedom legislation fails to refocus universities on their core missions, defunding and deregulation might be the way to go.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
In 2024, a New Zealand Initiative report cited surveys showing that many academics and students feel intimidated into silence on these kinds of issues. Similar data are available across the Anglosphere.
At the tip of the iceberg, dissident academics have been censored and sacked. Invited speakers have been deplatformed. Beneath the surface is a culture of censoriousness and ideological capture.
Politicians have belatedly noticed that universities aren’t always doing what they’re funded to do. In the UK, legislation has been enacted to penalise universities financially if they allow free speech to be infringed on their campuses. The New Zealand government has signalled similar legislation, to be introduced in March.
Legislation may not fully address what is ultimately a cultural problem. Scholar and free speech advocate Peter Boghossian favours a more radical approach. Boghossian believes public universities should be defunded, enabling new institutions to fulfil the roles they have abandoned.
In the US, green shoots are already sprouting. In 2021, historian Niall Ferguson, entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, and journalist Bari Weiss conceived the University of Austin (UATX).
UATX is founded on traditional university values of free speech and open enquiry. With hundreds of millions of dollars raised, a who’s-who of affiliated public intellectuals, and an inaugural cohort enrolled in 2024, it is off to a very promising start.
New Zealand universities are established by statute, making an equivalent of UATX difficult to establish here. Furthermore, our small population may mean that such an institution would not be viable.
Even so, there would be no harm in trying. Taxpayers should not have to support institutions that refuse to fulfil their key roles. If the government’s academic freedom legislation fails to refocus universities on their core missions, defunding and deregulation might be the way to go.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
3 comments:
100% agree. Defunding should be on the table. Auckland Uni in particular has really lost it. The new Maori paper, now compulsory for all first year students, is blatant indoctrination and a far cry from the uni I knew early 1980’s and again mid 1990’s. Silly I know, but it actually makes me sad.
Too many within the NZ Universities believe that universities should be agents of social/political change. That is, too many are activists. Also, too many within the NZ Universities have made no truly significant contribution to their disciplines or they work in bogus ‘disciplines’. That is, too many are, at best, mediocre scholars. Both the activists and the at-best-mediocre find some lucrative refuge in university administration/management. Once they are safe in such positions they take care to hire people who subscribe to their views or who do not threaten their power. Recently, the activists and the administration/management have been firing the real scholars. Merely being at the top on one’s field is enough to warrant cancellation at present. Add to this as well that too many students are more interested in their grade than in the doing the work involved in getting an advanced education.
Until the NZ Universities can be made inhospitable and unappealing places to activists, managers and administrators, and uninterested students, the universities will continue their downward spiral. This is why the only way forward is through a return to merit and a scholarly elite.
Elitism is a dirty word in NZ, but students who don’t read, who don’t write their own essays and reports, or who are too risk-averse to try on their own generally aren’t mature enough for university study. Mediocre scholars aren’t good enough at what they do to set the norms within a university. And activists lack the wisdom to appreciate that destroying a status quo is not always a good thing. When all those sorts of people no longer want to be part of a university, the universities will be healthy again and higher ed will thrive. That requires govt funding cuts. Right now, we have the wrong people in power, making bad decisions because they don’t really belong in universities. But they don’t know that they don’t belong, and the mediocre scholars don’t want to give up salaries which typically begin at about $130,000. The administrator/management salary scales are considerable higher.
A way to rebuild in NZ would be for the govt to restrict nationwide the number of PBRF B and C researchers (perhaps by the years post-PhD, eg, 10yrs from PhD for Cs, 15yrs from PhD for Bs). Severely limit their numbers. Protect all the PBRF A researchers and allow them to build and protect a community of scholars, working from the values which most PBRF As share.
This problem of destructive ideologies in Universities is across all of Western Universities.
It is not nostalgia that causes me to long for what we used to have in NZ but a realization that the values of Traditional Education need to be reestablished. Truthfulness and Intellectual honesty may seem such stuffy old fashioned concepts but they are time tested and shown to work.
We need a renaissance . Melanie Philips a conservative English journalist says it was Christianity that built up the Western World which includes our education system and its value systems , and that is what is needed as well for reclaiming it.
The Climate Cult is a religion (as is DEI and Critical Race Theory) according to Queensland academic James Allan and this is freely preached in an indoctrinating way to current students.
Yet , the current ideology in , generally most of academia has contempt for Christian values. If we cherish what is distinctive about Western Civilization , including education and science -whatever our religious convictions -we should respect not denigrate its Christian roots.
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