It doesn’t matter whether you’re studying engineering, accounting, science or arts, you will have to enrol in one of the Waipapa Taumata Rau (WTR) papers, even if you can see no value in the topic, and object to having to pay for it. Domestic students are obliged to pay fees of more than $1300 for the single paper but international students are being stung for up to $5730.
It should come as no surprise to the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Dawn Freshwater, and her management team that the courses are not universally popular. A petition titled “Stop the WTR100 Series Courses ASAP” has gained 1467 signatures across multiple faculties since it was launched in early April.
The organisers of the petition were very careful to make it clear that their objection isn’t to students being taught about the Treaty and “the true significance of Māori history in modern Aotearoa” per se but rather the execution of the course material.
Their objection centred on students’ assessments that “the content is vague, poorly structured, and disconnected from the degrees they are enrolled in… It is oversimplified, politically one-sided, and lacking academic depth.”
However, students who gave their reasons for signing the petition were more forthright. One said: “The course has a very small amount of valuable content compared to the amount of bullsh*t content presented... I haven’t learned sh*t so far and we’ve done almost six weeks of it. Waste of time, waste of money, waste of resources. Never should have been created in the first place.”
Others described it as “racist”, “brainwashing”, “propaganda and the grooming of our youth”, and “woke nonsense”, with the content controlled by “apartheid enthusiasts”.
One female student wrote: “It’s just pure, unnecessarily forced, indoctrination of Māori mythicism and totally inaccurate New Zealand history, as well as the extortion of money... 99 per cent [of students] would elect to spend their course fees on a subject they are passionate about, rather than these Marxist courses designed to turn them into angry radicals.”
It is not clear how many of the signatories are first-year students currently enrolled in the courses (which are tailored for different faculties) but the university estimates around 7000 students in total will complete them this year.
Dissent is not limited to the petition; criticism is common on social media. A common theme is that the WTR courses “feel kinda like a scam”, with accusations the university is using them to extract income from a large number of students while making savings by under-resourcing their tuition. They are also widely viewed as “compulsory indoctrination” rather than education.
One Facebook friend contacted me to say: “I wonder how long the WTR papers will continue. My son is at Auckland Uni and he said the students are pushing back in class; the lecturers are very defensive.”
Making the course not only compulsory but also costly is a bold and risky move by the university to enforce its programme of “decolonisation” — aka “indigenisation” — on students. And it is certainly not hiding its long-term aim to expunge what it sees as the oppressive influence of “colonisation” and euro-centric structures in its teaching.
In fact, when Eru Kapa-Kingi — a vice-president of Te Pāti Māori who develops and teaches courses for Law School — was interviewed for an Auckland University newsletter in March, he said: “We need to start realising that universities were one of the primary tools of colonisation in Aotearoa, replacing Māori philosophy, Māori ways of thinking, speaking and acting. That places an obligation on academics today to really contribute to the deeper, longer-term decolonisation project”.
It is not difficult to find other papers apart from the compulsory first-year courses that are motivated by the same ideology.
One is the Anthropology third-year paper titled “Whiteness in the settler state”. The course description says it “examines the concept and construct of ‘whiteness’ within the construct of the ‘settler state’ through the lens of critical anthropology. Explores the development of white supremacy as an ideology and expression of social and political power and provides students with the conceptual and intellectual frameworks to consider the invisibility of whiteness as a social habit.”
You’d have to say, the “invisibility of whiteness” looks very much like code for “unconscious bias”.
Students are also advised, “They may find course material challenging and that they may be asked to engage in significant self-reflection in order to engage properly with the academic work.”
It is clearly not enough to discuss the topic dispassionately as you might expect of a university course. The warning seems to signal a struggle session in which only those who humbly and remorsefully accept their “white privilege” will succeed.
Just as extraordinary is the course outline for a second-year paper in Māori Studies. The blurb for “Māori 233: Tikanga Ancestral Ways” announces the course is “tapu”:
“Due to the tapu nature of the content of this course, students are required to attend all lectures and tutorials as these will not be recorded.”
A university that has courses transmitting priestly knowledge classed as “sacred” is turning itself into a seminary.
In mid-March, Act called on Auckland University to scrap the WTR courses, describing them as a “perversion of academic freedom”.
David Seymour said: “It is actually a form of indoctrination because it’s largely being taught by people outside a particular faculty, for frankly political purposes rather than educational.”
And while there is “an element of truth” in the assertion that the university is independent and is free to do what it wants, he intended to “appoint better people” to the University Council who have the “ultimate say”.
This caused consternation among left-leaning academics, including Dame Anne Salmond. On LinkedIn, the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Auckland University described Seymour’s stand as “a case of ideological overreach by a party backed by only 8.6 per cent of the electorate”. She provided a link to an article about Nazi Germany and the USSR as evidence of what can happen when academics bow to a government’s prescription.
Dave Frame, a professor of physics at Canterbury University who has also worked as a policy analyst for Treasury, didn’t share the Dame’s alarm at Seymour’s stance. He replied: “I think you’re misinterpreting what Act is trying to do. I think they’re trying to make sure that compulsory university classes do not become political indoctrination exercises. This seems a reasonable request... If we stick our fingers in our ears and tell them it’s none of their business, when so much of university revenue comes from government sources, then we put those revenue streams at risk.”
He sees Act’s position as a shot across universities’ bows: “Academics who are not of the left are likely to welcome the attempt to formalise institutional neutrality. (I certainly do.) Basically, I think folks on the right are trying to give universities a chance to reform themselves. We should take it… Why should we expect governments (left or right) to forever tolerate state-funded institutions which show evidence of clear political bias?
“My hunch is that they will give universities a couple of goes at reforming ourselves, and then go the Henry VIII/monasteries route. They’ll pluck out and save medicine, engineering, bits of science, law, and then simply defund the rest and sell the land beneath them. There was no great clamour to restart the monasteries, was there?”
Even a decade ago, such a prediction would have seemed preposterous and scarcely believable but that was before Donald Trump began his battles with prestigious US universities over their political bias, including the threat of cutting federal funding to Harvard and removing its tax-free status.
And it’s not as if New Zealand’s academics haven’t already had a taste of the government’s scalpel. In December, Science minister Judith Collins cut all support for the social sciences and humanities from the $77 million Marsden Fund. She also changed the fund’s terms of reference to mandate 50 per cent of its grants should go to supporting “proposals with economic benefits to New Zealand”.
Various online sites have publicised examples of the fund supporting research in the nation’s universities that can only be described as absurd:
• $360,000 to study Big Things such as the Ohakune Carrot, with a focus on “a critical gaze to the privileging of Pākehā-centred narratives in current research on roadside “Big Things” and “Weaving together feminist, participatory, and filmic geographies, this project seeks to re-centre alternative stories currently hidden in the Big Things’ shadows.“
• $360,000 to collect disabled indigenous stories about climate change with “establishing how such stories resist ableist narratives and theorise and advance disability-centred ways of creating sustainable and just environmental futures.“
• $861,000 to link celestial spheres to end-of-life experiences to “create opportunities to rekindle the ancient connection to the stars and re-imagine the meaning of death, while also advancing understandings about the practical application of Māori astronomy in contemporary times.“
• $861,000 to help decolonise ocean worlds from imperial borders.
How long taxpayers will agree to support universities which dedicate themselves to “decolonisation” and the overthrow of “Western knowledge” — and boast about it as Auckland University’s newsletter has done — is an open question.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was sourced HERE
The organisers of the petition were very careful to make it clear that their objection isn’t to students being taught about the Treaty and “the true significance of Māori history in modern Aotearoa” per se but rather the execution of the course material.
Their objection centred on students’ assessments that “the content is vague, poorly structured, and disconnected from the degrees they are enrolled in… It is oversimplified, politically one-sided, and lacking academic depth.”
However, students who gave their reasons for signing the petition were more forthright. One said: “The course has a very small amount of valuable content compared to the amount of bullsh*t content presented... I haven’t learned sh*t so far and we’ve done almost six weeks of it. Waste of time, waste of money, waste of resources. Never should have been created in the first place.”
Others described it as “racist”, “brainwashing”, “propaganda and the grooming of our youth”, and “woke nonsense”, with the content controlled by “apartheid enthusiasts”.
One female student wrote: “It’s just pure, unnecessarily forced, indoctrination of Māori mythicism and totally inaccurate New Zealand history, as well as the extortion of money... 99 per cent [of students] would elect to spend their course fees on a subject they are passionate about, rather than these Marxist courses designed to turn them into angry radicals.”
It is not clear how many of the signatories are first-year students currently enrolled in the courses (which are tailored for different faculties) but the university estimates around 7000 students in total will complete them this year.
Dissent is not limited to the petition; criticism is common on social media. A common theme is that the WTR courses “feel kinda like a scam”, with accusations the university is using them to extract income from a large number of students while making savings by under-resourcing their tuition. They are also widely viewed as “compulsory indoctrination” rather than education.
One Facebook friend contacted me to say: “I wonder how long the WTR papers will continue. My son is at Auckland Uni and he said the students are pushing back in class; the lecturers are very defensive.”
Making the course not only compulsory but also costly is a bold and risky move by the university to enforce its programme of “decolonisation” — aka “indigenisation” — on students. And it is certainly not hiding its long-term aim to expunge what it sees as the oppressive influence of “colonisation” and euro-centric structures in its teaching.
In fact, when Eru Kapa-Kingi — a vice-president of Te Pāti Māori who develops and teaches courses for Law School — was interviewed for an Auckland University newsletter in March, he said: “We need to start realising that universities were one of the primary tools of colonisation in Aotearoa, replacing Māori philosophy, Māori ways of thinking, speaking and acting. That places an obligation on academics today to really contribute to the deeper, longer-term decolonisation project”.
It is not difficult to find other papers apart from the compulsory first-year courses that are motivated by the same ideology.
One is the Anthropology third-year paper titled “Whiteness in the settler state”. The course description says it “examines the concept and construct of ‘whiteness’ within the construct of the ‘settler state’ through the lens of critical anthropology. Explores the development of white supremacy as an ideology and expression of social and political power and provides students with the conceptual and intellectual frameworks to consider the invisibility of whiteness as a social habit.”
You’d have to say, the “invisibility of whiteness” looks very much like code for “unconscious bias”.
Students are also advised, “They may find course material challenging and that they may be asked to engage in significant self-reflection in order to engage properly with the academic work.”
It is clearly not enough to discuss the topic dispassionately as you might expect of a university course. The warning seems to signal a struggle session in which only those who humbly and remorsefully accept their “white privilege” will succeed.
Just as extraordinary is the course outline for a second-year paper in Māori Studies. The blurb for “Māori 233: Tikanga Ancestral Ways” announces the course is “tapu”:
“Due to the tapu nature of the content of this course, students are required to attend all lectures and tutorials as these will not be recorded.”
A university that has courses transmitting priestly knowledge classed as “sacred” is turning itself into a seminary.
In mid-March, Act called on Auckland University to scrap the WTR courses, describing them as a “perversion of academic freedom”.
David Seymour said: “It is actually a form of indoctrination because it’s largely being taught by people outside a particular faculty, for frankly political purposes rather than educational.”
And while there is “an element of truth” in the assertion that the university is independent and is free to do what it wants, he intended to “appoint better people” to the University Council who have the “ultimate say”.
This caused consternation among left-leaning academics, including Dame Anne Salmond. On LinkedIn, the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Auckland University described Seymour’s stand as “a case of ideological overreach by a party backed by only 8.6 per cent of the electorate”. She provided a link to an article about Nazi Germany and the USSR as evidence of what can happen when academics bow to a government’s prescription.
Dave Frame, a professor of physics at Canterbury University who has also worked as a policy analyst for Treasury, didn’t share the Dame’s alarm at Seymour’s stance. He replied: “I think you’re misinterpreting what Act is trying to do. I think they’re trying to make sure that compulsory university classes do not become political indoctrination exercises. This seems a reasonable request... If we stick our fingers in our ears and tell them it’s none of their business, when so much of university revenue comes from government sources, then we put those revenue streams at risk.”
He sees Act’s position as a shot across universities’ bows: “Academics who are not of the left are likely to welcome the attempt to formalise institutional neutrality. (I certainly do.) Basically, I think folks on the right are trying to give universities a chance to reform themselves. We should take it… Why should we expect governments (left or right) to forever tolerate state-funded institutions which show evidence of clear political bias?
“My hunch is that they will give universities a couple of goes at reforming ourselves, and then go the Henry VIII/monasteries route. They’ll pluck out and save medicine, engineering, bits of science, law, and then simply defund the rest and sell the land beneath them. There was no great clamour to restart the monasteries, was there?”
Even a decade ago, such a prediction would have seemed preposterous and scarcely believable but that was before Donald Trump began his battles with prestigious US universities over their political bias, including the threat of cutting federal funding to Harvard and removing its tax-free status.
And it’s not as if New Zealand’s academics haven’t already had a taste of the government’s scalpel. In December, Science minister Judith Collins cut all support for the social sciences and humanities from the $77 million Marsden Fund. She also changed the fund’s terms of reference to mandate 50 per cent of its grants should go to supporting “proposals with economic benefits to New Zealand”.
Various online sites have publicised examples of the fund supporting research in the nation’s universities that can only be described as absurd:
• $360,000 to study Big Things such as the Ohakune Carrot, with a focus on “a critical gaze to the privileging of Pākehā-centred narratives in current research on roadside “Big Things” and “Weaving together feminist, participatory, and filmic geographies, this project seeks to re-centre alternative stories currently hidden in the Big Things’ shadows.“
• $360,000 to collect disabled indigenous stories about climate change with “establishing how such stories resist ableist narratives and theorise and advance disability-centred ways of creating sustainable and just environmental futures.“
• $861,000 to link celestial spheres to end-of-life experiences to “create opportunities to rekindle the ancient connection to the stars and re-imagine the meaning of death, while also advancing understandings about the practical application of Māori astronomy in contemporary times.“
• $861,000 to help decolonise ocean worlds from imperial borders.
How long taxpayers will agree to support universities which dedicate themselves to “decolonisation” and the overthrow of “Western knowledge” — and boast about it as Auckland University’s newsletter has done — is an open question.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was sourced HERE
30 comments:
On the money again. These 'courses' are nothing more or less than propagandist indoctrination. The lack any actual academic relevance in a modern world (and believe it or not we do apparently live in a modern world).
It is heartening to hear that there are plenty of students out there who resist being forced to 'study' these bullshit papers. It is actually a violation of their human rights to force them to promote a political position with which they disagree (reinforced by the UK Supreme Court in 2018). Universities should be places where anything at all can be openly discussed, but the marxofascists have turned them into indoctrination centres where no dissent is tolerated.
Message to these people. We are year 2025 and if we are obsessed with this looking back to 1840 we will never achieve anything like the potential that the future holds
We pulled our Daughter out of that idiot infested institution. She's off to a real university (if we can find one).
Trump the lot of them the miserable b@$tards.
But huge number of " academic" staff are now clinging like barnacles to massive salaries based on this false narrative.
1930s Third Reich type indoctrination, and if you object you will be persecuted by firstly the academic activist administration, and then by the woke politicians.
There must be many University staff that are keeping their heads down below the parapet, who are hoping they sanity will prevail in the long term.
I despair that NZ has reached this level of subjection.
MfK
If there are 7000 required to do the course and say 50% are overseas students that comes to something in the order of $24M for a pile of horse manure. Keep this up and China will bomb us!
So true, Anon 12:01. And most of those pseudo-academics would have nothing to do without those 'courses' to run as they possess no useful knowledge about anything, nor do most of them appear to have the mental capacity for higher reasoning.
Ticks two boxes for Dawn 'Freshwater for Brains' (1) is suitably racist and woke, and (2) is a nice little earner with 7,000 students times between $1,300 and $5,730 equalling a handy $10 million (but for who?).
How long will taxpayers agree to support universities?
Starve this state funded corporate apartheid pushing institution into oblivion, or until the “beast” is driven out.
And to the organizers of the petition, you must object about “their treaty” because their treaty is the fake false fraudulent 1841 Freeman’s English language version (used since 1975) that does NOT agree with the original Maori language treaty, and Kawharu’s (in his own words) “attempt at a reconstruction of the literal translation of the Maori text”.
The documents to back you up on this are, Busby’s final draft (used to translate the 1840 English text into the tangata Maori treaty) and the OFFICIAL 1869 back translation of the tangata Maori treaty by Mr T E Young of the Native Affairs department.
Why was Reti moved to universities after Health? A second Maori Health initiative has been launched and unis move ahead on indoctrination. Is Reti the minister who caretakes an area while its Maorification advances?
i now see why so many plastic maori's identify as maori-they're suffering 'white guilt' from their other genetic makeup. poor sensitive souls....
There were no compulsory courses to obtain a degree in the years I went to university (and when a degree had some prestige attached).
There were only core subjects for obtaining a "major".
It is with good reason the students have petitioned if they feel they are being ripped off by the institution.
Let the free market decide Auckland university's fate.
It could be! Luxon has a plan doncha know and it involves buckets of DEI, Maorification and co-governance, not to mention the Maori veto.
Maori language classes are credible, particularly when lecturers have learned other languages to understand broader linguistic context. Maori Studies classes occupy other disciplines, whether Education or Sociology or Anthropology or Law or Science. Maori Studies is content lite and hence experiential and/or qualitative. Read any MA or PhD in Maori Studies.
As I have said before - I am a retired pharmacist.
If I was starting to study pharmacy in New Zealand nowadays, with this ridiculous and completely irrelevant "cultural" course being compulsory, I would move to Australia.
"Read any MA or PhD in Maori Studies", says Anon 3:19.
By the same token, read any mediaeval MA or PhD thesis in witchcraft and sorcery - and yes, they did have them at the top universities such as the Sorbonne - to find a niche for witchcraft and sorcery in formal knowledge.
Maori Studies in anthropology and sociology, fine; not so science, as there is an incompatibility of epistemologies (the way things are found to be true, which in modern science is strictly empirical i.e. must be observable/measurable, no hocus pocus, no spooks).
'Content lite'....... well, that's one thing we agree on.
I cannot let this one go without comment.
When they say:-
$360,000 to study Big Things such as the Ohakune Carrot, with a focus on “a critical gaze to the privileging of Pākehā-centred narratives in current research on roadside “Big Things” and “Weaving together feminist, participatory, and filmic geographies, this project seeks to re-centre alternative stories currently hidden in the Big Things’ shadows.“
My response would be "Could you please translate that into English?"
Why oh why do overseas students come here? Do they not realise our education system is abyssmal and propogandised? Are they all just smoothing a path for family and claimed family to come and cash in on our ultra generous and soft welfare system paid for by hard working couples who have foregone significant sized families?
So, the students have to " pay " to learn this material. SO where is that money going?
And if those who " complete said course/ exam/ supply a Thesis on subject matter, where are they going to use said learnt subject matter - ?? as Real Estate Agents.
Oh the other matter Te Reo is NOT an International Language - can not see any European Country placing said subject on their scholastic must learn list. That applies to Japan as well, ask any former NZ Rugby Player who has worked there/whilst playing for a Japanese Rugby Club.
To B.V thank you for the thought provoking Comments - one you should use to " beat around the heads of fellow Academics ". Can we ask ( I know this is a silly thought - but) do you think it would be possible for Luxo to ' take a leaf out of Trump's playbook ' - re funding NZ Uni's with taxpayer dosh - oh dear I can suddenly hear someone gagging!
PS Last para. All irrefutable proof is consistently rejected and ignored. Only false documents which fit the separatist narrative are recognized. This is not evidence-based academic enquiry. AU is no longer a proper university - it is an indoctrination centre.
Follow the money - who received the mega dollars for these ridiculous proposals, and where are they now ?
Who are these officials who knew full well that they were simply gifting these millions to these scammers ?
Why do they do this, repeatedly ?
Is there a kick back ?
Is anyone checking their personal finances?
Do they really expect to see any tangible value from funding these intangible proposals ?
Am I the only person asking these questions ?
Where is the Serious Fraud Office in all this ?
Come on, we need proper answers !
A relative who is a nursing student recently showed me the stuff that nurses now have to consider in their care related to tino rangatiratanga which is essentially self determination. Goodness knows why such political ideology has to be considered when caring for a sick person.
Just getting any answers would be a start. How AU actually have any students is a surprise, especially overseas students
Mains stream Christianity particularly the Presbyterian Church should speak out against education being filled up with animism , ancestral worship and other cult and dishonest revisionist history teaching practices instead of restricting itself to genuine learning as was done traditionally in this country . After all , according to scripture you bring curses on yourself if you start dabbling in cult knowledge. .
What Graham describes should be of concern to the majority of free thinkers. Look, a university might provide some courses on cultures, myths and pagan beliefs, along with languages related to those classes, if they wish; it’s up to them.
There might be sufficient students for such topics to survive, if not they won’t.
In reality students generally enrol for specific courses and unsurprisingly they expect the lectures to relate to their particular choices.
Irrelevant cultural courses, akin to indoctrination, have no place in this. A university which cannot understand that will eventually fail, in my view.
Socialism—in all its race/gender/class/sexual preference manifestations—is best-described as a ‘secular social religion.’
‘Woke’ is in fact a profoundly religious movement in everything but terminology.
The idea that whites/males/the CIS-gendered are permanently stained by their white/male/CIS-gender privilege, gaining moral absolution only by eternally attesting to it, is the ‘woke’ version of original sin.
Considerations as to whether an opinion is “problematic” are equivalent to explorations of that which may be blasphemous.
Cancel culture’s social mauling of the person with “problematic” thoughts parallels the excommunication of the heretic.
What is called “public virtue signalling” channels the impulse that might lead a Christian to an aggressive display of her faith in Jesus.
Much of the ‘woke’ patrolling on race/gender/class/sexual preference these days displays an obscene relish in dog whistling up a mob to pile onto the transgressor, which under the foregoing religious analysis is perfectly predictable.
When some ‘wokester’ attests to his white/male/CIS-gender privilege with his hand up in the air, palm outward—which I have observed more than once—the resemblance to testifying in church is clear.
The ‘woke’ secular humanist who views Christians as superstitious kooks reveals himself as, of all things, a parishioner.
Marxist intersectionality slices and dices a formerly cohesive society into groups that 'oppress' and groups that are 'oppressed.'
Once enough groups can be persuaded of their institutionalised 'oppression,' the Communists aim to weld all these groups into a revolutionary force -- a ‘grand coalition of the oppressed' -- that outnumbers all those outside of it.
This can then be deployed to overthrow the existing social, economic, and political order.
All these groups need to ask whether Communists care more about their group’s hobby horse or about revolution.
Someone is writing about translation of the maori version of the treaty.
How many word ( spoken only but not writing ) did have the maori before 1840??
As far as I know: only about 1000 words. So, what could the REAL treaty in te reo be.
I think that there is a truck load ( maube a shipload ) of BS going on here.
At least some students have woken up, now the lefties have to wake up.
It for sure is a good reason for many Kiwis to leave NZ behind.
I certainly am looking into moving. Problem is: in most countries the BS is paramount. The USA has woken up.
Leaving the Paris Accourt S... Where is that money going?? In rich peoples pockets.
The same with the World Hoax Organisation ( WHO ) lead by a Ethiopian ( former ) terrorist boss
We certainly are on our way to become New Zimbabwe..
It is good that the students are re-acting with common sense.A few years ago, the two Canadian social commentators, Stefan Molyneaux and Lauren Southern , did a speaking tour of Australia - 5 cities- their main message was- "the west (wesern civilisation) is the best" - also - " it is ok to be white". They were booked to also speak in Auckland, but their venue was canceled by the dirty labour party socialist Phil Goff - then mayor of Auckland. this was shortly after 'crooked' Hilary Clinton was permitted to speak at the same venue.
The clever Maori activists have learnt to exploit the stupid deranged socialists. The 'majority ' will win in the end , hopefully without bloodshed.
Victor Davis Danson is currently saying that a liberal arts degree is likely to make you less employable rather than more employable. As a former employer, I would agree.
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