Ananish Chaudhuri: There is a free speech crisis at our universities

A recent article in The Post by two University of Auckland academics makes three primary assertions. First, there is no free speech crisis at our universities. Second, universities are autonomous and should be “allowed to make this judgment call”. Third, universities should not be forced to “bend the knee to an external agency of the state.”

The authors are wrong on all three counts.

There is a free speech crisis at our universities

I provide three examples that I am familiar with. There are others but this should suffice.

Readers may be familiar with the Listener Seven controversy. A group of academics from the University of Auckland published a letter in The Listener arguing that while Mātauranga Māori has value, it should not be accorded the same status as science. This is a valid view, certainly not illegal and one that is a matter of academic debate. Despite this, the university’s Vice Chancellor put out a statement that this position contravened the university’s view. The authors were subject to relentless harassment and various ignominies, both big and small.

The academics who formed Covid Plan B and argued against extended lockdowns were making an academic argument based on the idea that the cost of the lockdowns far exceeded their benefits. Yet many of them were also hounded. One of them, Simon Thornley, has recently taken the University of Auckland to the Employment Relations Authority. According to the New Zealand Herald, “…court documents suggest his complaint relates to academic freedom…”. (Disclosure: I was closely associated with this group but I am not privy to details of the lawsuit.) .

As the journalist Graham Adams has highlighted, recently a Professor of Education was instructed by the University’s Equity Office to change her course outline to indicate that sex is not binary but rather a continuum. Now, whether sex is dichotomous, or a continuum, may well be the subject of debate, but the University’s Equity Office does not have the requisite expertise to arbitrate this. Its attempt to impose its view on an academic matter violates the academic freedom of the instructor.

A group of senior academics including leading biologists pointed out the fallacy in the Equity Office’s position, resulting in an apology to the concerned academic. But this does not detract from the fact that the incident should not have happened in the first place. Many others, especially junior academics concerned with academic progression, choose to accede instead of fighting back.

Should universities, as autonomous, self-governing institutions be allowed to make this judgment call?

The 1967 University of Chicago Kalven Report argued: a university “…cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. … if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted.”

The university’s Vice Chancellor or Senior Management may have a view and it is fine for them to express that view. Putting the imprimatur of “the university’s view” on the view of the university’s management can and does significantly chill dissenting views. After all, who wants to go against the “university’s view”?

Universities in New Zealand are funded with tax revenue and have to bend the knee routinely

Given their public funding, university autonomy is circumscribed by a multitude of government demands. These include: the extent to which we can raise tuition fees from one year to the next; the size of the government subsidy for domestic enrolments; the size and composition of University Councils; the need to maintain a particular operating surplus; the need to make people redundant if we fail to maintain this surplus; whether and how our international students are treated by government agencies and so on.

The status quo cannot persist

A key problem is that our universities have become excessively focussed on a particular set of social justice goals and these objectives are detrimental to our research and teaching mission.

Recently, a broad curriculum transformation project at the University of Auckland was overwhelmingly voted down by the University’ Senate, which represents academic staff in what the New Zealand Herald called an “unprecedented revolt.” The protesters disagreed on many issues but were united in the view that academics, not the University’s Executive, get to decide what to teach and how to teach it.

As I point out elsewhere, these events are causing reputational damage and may be a cause for high achieving students leaving for overseas institutions. This has implications for the quality of education we offer and perceptions of New Zealand universities. This is important because universities are key drivers of productivity and are a major source of export earnings.

So, if and when our universities prioritize a particular set of views that are at odds with fundamental principles of academic freedom, when University Executives and Councils routinely ignore protests against managerial overreach, what other option is there than to ask that universities adopt institutional neutrality?

Ananish Chaudhuri is Professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland. Besides Auckland, he has taught at Harvard Kennedy School, Rutgers University, Washington State University and Wellesley College. This article was first published HERE