As Provost, Prof. James holds one of the university’s most senior positions. That made it all the more troubling to see how weak a grasp she has on the concept of free speech, something universities are required to uphold in the Education and Training Act.
Prof. James’ piece is a series of reflections on Victoria’s panel discussion on free speech, which was held last year. ‘This event,’ she correctly says, ‘stirred strong feelings.’ But she then goes on to describe the event and the response to it in terms that can generously be described as misleading.
Prof. James summarizes the response to Victoria’ free speech event as follows (to use her punctuation):
What surfaced, from one direction, was genuine anxiety about amplifying views that might cause harm. What this provoked from the other direction was, at best, a mischievous and provocative misinterpretation of the word “postponed” (swapping it for that most charged of words; “cancelled”). At worst it was vitriolic petulance, best summed up in the quote, by one of the parties; “Good news, kids. It’s OK; words aren’t violence.”
How Prof. James knows how genuine the anxiety about certain people’s views was is not clear. It is worth noticing, though, that many of the claims that student activists made about how worried people were about speech strained credulity.
A few students, for example, were described as ‘freaking out’ over ‘right-wing voices,’ those voices apparently belonging to Free Speech Union director Jonathan Ayling and one of us (Michael), neither of whom are especially right-wing. VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson, for her part, said she was concerned that students would not have been able to ‘avoid that area’ – that is, the Kelburn campus’ central ‘Hub’ – ‘if they didn’t feel comfortable being around the debate.’
But it seems hard to believe that anyone would be seriously discomfited by Ayling or Michael’s speech. Ayling spent three years at Vic, and Michael spent a decade there, both fairly recently. In neither case have there been reports of serious trauma being caused by their speech.
Prof. James asserts that this ‘genuine anxiety’ provoked ‘at best, a mischievous and provocative misinterpretation of the word “postponed” (swapping it for that most charged of words; “cancelled”).’
‘Postponed,’ of course, usually implies that the event is question has remained basically the same, but has simply been shifted to a different date. That is obviously not what happened in the case of Victoria University’s ‘free speech’ event. The original event was going to feature four speakers and be held in the Hub, a public area at the heart of Victoria’s Kelburn campus. The event that actually took place featured eight speakers and was held in a lecture theatre. It also had a changed format that ensured there was no exchange of arguments among the panellists. Most reasonable people would agree that saying that the original event was ‘cancelled’ would be perfectly fair.
It is also not true to describe the response to the cancellation of the first event as ‘at best…mischievous and provocative.’ Sean Plunket invited VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson onto The Platform to discuss the cancellation. Jonathan Ayling was able to remind VUW leadership via the The Post that universities have an obligation to ‘allow for ideas to be thoroughly tested and for robust debate to occur.’ And Michael was able to make a number of important points about Victoria University, free speech and diversity, both in The Post and in an episode of our Free Kiwis! podcast.
Finally, Prof. James describes a social media post by the Free Speech Union stating that ‘words aren’t violence’ as ‘vitriolic petulance.’ If the Provost of Victoria University views a simple statement of fact as ‘vitriolic petulance,’ what does that suggest about the climate for free speech there? At the very least, Prof. James’ reaction should remind us that what New Zealand academics describe as ‘harmful’ or ‘violent’ speech is often simply speech that they disagree with.
Prof. James goes on in her piece to reflect on the way ‘the internet has provided incredible ease of connection, and simultaneously created communication cul-de-sacs, that trap people in isolated cliques and sycophantic claques.’ She notes that free speech is protected in the UN Declaration of Human Rights alongside freedom of thought, and interestingly takes from this an ‘encouragement to pause before we express our opinions.’ And she reflects on how her ‘privilege is being in the white majority’ and in ‘revelling in robust argument,’ something she somewhat unexpectedly characterizes as ‘my approach to debate.’
Prof. James ends her article with ‘a last word on words’ that deserves to be quoted in full:
Prof. James’ piece is a series of reflections on Victoria’s panel discussion on free speech, which was held last year. ‘This event,’ she correctly says, ‘stirred strong feelings.’ But she then goes on to describe the event and the response to it in terms that can generously be described as misleading.
Prof. James summarizes the response to Victoria’ free speech event as follows (to use her punctuation):
What surfaced, from one direction, was genuine anxiety about amplifying views that might cause harm. What this provoked from the other direction was, at best, a mischievous and provocative misinterpretation of the word “postponed” (swapping it for that most charged of words; “cancelled”). At worst it was vitriolic petulance, best summed up in the quote, by one of the parties; “Good news, kids. It’s OK; words aren’t violence.”
How Prof. James knows how genuine the anxiety about certain people’s views was is not clear. It is worth noticing, though, that many of the claims that student activists made about how worried people were about speech strained credulity.
A few students, for example, were described as ‘freaking out’ over ‘right-wing voices,’ those voices apparently belonging to Free Speech Union director Jonathan Ayling and one of us (Michael), neither of whom are especially right-wing. VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson, for her part, said she was concerned that students would not have been able to ‘avoid that area’ – that is, the Kelburn campus’ central ‘Hub’ – ‘if they didn’t feel comfortable being around the debate.’
But it seems hard to believe that anyone would be seriously discomfited by Ayling or Michael’s speech. Ayling spent three years at Vic, and Michael spent a decade there, both fairly recently. In neither case have there been reports of serious trauma being caused by their speech.
Prof. James asserts that this ‘genuine anxiety’ provoked ‘at best, a mischievous and provocative misinterpretation of the word “postponed” (swapping it for that most charged of words; “cancelled”).’
‘Postponed,’ of course, usually implies that the event is question has remained basically the same, but has simply been shifted to a different date. That is obviously not what happened in the case of Victoria University’s ‘free speech’ event. The original event was going to feature four speakers and be held in the Hub, a public area at the heart of Victoria’s Kelburn campus. The event that actually took place featured eight speakers and was held in a lecture theatre. It also had a changed format that ensured there was no exchange of arguments among the panellists. Most reasonable people would agree that saying that the original event was ‘cancelled’ would be perfectly fair.
It is also not true to describe the response to the cancellation of the first event as ‘at best…mischievous and provocative.’ Sean Plunket invited VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson onto The Platform to discuss the cancellation. Jonathan Ayling was able to remind VUW leadership via the The Post that universities have an obligation to ‘allow for ideas to be thoroughly tested and for robust debate to occur.’ And Michael was able to make a number of important points about Victoria University, free speech and diversity, both in The Post and in an episode of our Free Kiwis! podcast.
Finally, Prof. James describes a social media post by the Free Speech Union stating that ‘words aren’t violence’ as ‘vitriolic petulance.’ If the Provost of Victoria University views a simple statement of fact as ‘vitriolic petulance,’ what does that suggest about the climate for free speech there? At the very least, Prof. James’ reaction should remind us that what New Zealand academics describe as ‘harmful’ or ‘violent’ speech is often simply speech that they disagree with.
Prof. James goes on in her piece to reflect on the way ‘the internet has provided incredible ease of connection, and simultaneously created communication cul-de-sacs, that trap people in isolated cliques and sycophantic claques.’ She notes that free speech is protected in the UN Declaration of Human Rights alongside freedom of thought, and interestingly takes from this an ‘encouragement to pause before we express our opinions.’ And she reflects on how her ‘privilege is being in the white majority’ and in ‘revelling in robust argument,’ something she somewhat unexpectedly characterizes as ‘my approach to debate.’
Prof. James ends her article with ‘a last word on words’ that deserves to be quoted in full:
when I was walking to work a few mornings ago a pile of leaves was swirling down the curb and my mind said, “there is the wind”. The wind, though, was all around, strong and invisible and shaping the way I leaned into is as I walked. We choose to notice some words, the lively, swirling ones; or the ones that blow stinging dust into our eyes. We need to remember to notice all the other words; that have shaped our environment, our thoughts, and twisted some of us into beautiful, windswept oddities.
This kind of lyricism is obviously something that recipients of Oko are free to spend some portion of their mornings on if they feel so inclined. But there are at least two things about James’ ‘thing about words’ that we found quite disturbing.
The first is that this is an article sent to all academic staff by a very senior administrator (i.e. boss) at one of our leading universities. It is on the freedom of speech, the keystone principle of both liberalism and democracy, and a topic on which there is (understandably) an enormous literature in fields such as political theory, the philosophy of law, and intellectual history. Obviously, a full panoply of footnotes and scholarly references wouldn’t have been appropriate in an op-ed in a staff newsletter. But some indication that James wasn’t thinking about this most important of topics for the first time might have been reassuring.
This is especially the case in view of the fact that we have been having a debate about free speech and academic freedom across the English-speaking world for at least a decade now (though admittedly this debate has tended to be more lively outside the academy than inside it, for obvious reasons).
We have tried to contribute to this debate ourselves, most substantively in the report we released with the New Zealand Initiative last year. In it, we presented a number of surveys of academics and students, a selection of anonymous testimonies from academics, and a catalogue of incidents involving academic freedom that have taken place on our campuses over the past decade.
Prof. James doesn’t have to cite our work. But the fact that she seems to feel no need to even mention any of the now overwhelming evidence that we have a problem with free speech at New Zealand universities is interesting, to say the least. ‘Can the modern University be the place where robust, relevant debate can happen?’ she asks, before immediately answering her own question, astonishingly blithely, ‘We already are!’
It is of course true that a lot of ‘robust, relevant’ debate does take place at our universities. But it is also true (as several different surveys have now shown) that substantial numbers of academics and students feel uncomfortable discussing a few crucial topics, including the Treaty of Waitangi and the nature of sex and gender.
Prof. James’ column appeared at just the right time, as the government was preparing its revisions to the Education and Training Act, revisions that will include enhanced protections for academic freedom. Draft legislation has now been released.
What Prof. James’ column shows, yet again, is that New Zealand universities cannot be trusted to uphold their statutory or ethical obligations to academic freedom and the freedom of speech. Senior administrators either do not understand free speech, actively dislike it, or are not willing to openly defend it, and the same can be said for a good proportion of New Zealand’s academics. As Prof. James’ piece reminds us, they are often not even willing to educate themselves on the issue or to engage with the now plentiful evidence that academic freedom in under threat in an honest way.
So make no mistake: senior administrators at our universities have neither the wit nor the wherewithal to restore genuine academic freedom themselves. It is vital not only the academic freedom legislation that is currently before the house passes, but also that it has teeth, and doesn’t naively trust our largely anti-free speech university managers to police themselves.
Dr James Kierstead is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington.This article was first published HERE
6 comments:
If bryony James had an editor such as Harold Evans, this is what her musings would read like:
Free speech is important. Which is why we ‘postponed’, not cancelled, the free speech event — replacing it with a completely different one in another building with twice the speakers and no actual debate. Students were genuinely anxious about right-wing extremists such as Jonathan Ayling and… someone else I can’t remember, so obviously it’s my duty to protect them from the trauma of overhearing opinions in a public space.
Some people — the bad people — misinterpreted “postponed” as “cancelled” and behaved with what I can only describe as vitriolic petulance, i.e., stating obvious facts like “words aren’t violence.” My job is to remind everyone that words can be swirling leaves, or dust in the eyes, or strong invisible winds shaping our destiny — but only if they’re the right words. Which we already have, because robust debate is alive and well at Victoria University — apart from on the topics where it isn’t. But it is. Because I said so.
In a nutshell: The university already has free speech. It’s just that the university (and I, me, myself -pronoun ‘WE’) decides what counts as speech. And what counts as free.
New Zealand universities need a good dose of Trumpism!
What's wrong with all these liberal women ? How have they become so damned opinionated ? Were they raised as petulant children who never learned to accept correction ? Sure it can hurt to have your pet theories contested but none of us are infallible and we all can be easily deceived by wrong ideas. It is a blessing , surely to have our wrong thinking corrected and healthy debate can do this for us. You can dislike people's thinking without disliking the person .
Free Speech is a tenet of Christianity along with freedom of religion and thought and conscience. Science and civilization developed in the West , uniquely because of freedoms , like these ,which other cultures didn't have .
You don't have to be a Christian to believe in Free Speech but genuine Christians should uphold it.Consider other cultures like authoritarian Iran , China or North Korea - no free speech there and rotten places to live in. You are forbidden to criticise the state.
If we don't fight for Free Speech we will lose it and most certainly we will miss it.
Get rid of this far left loonie who is restricting free speech. If a debate hurts their feelings, then great. Hate to say it the left are teaching failure.
I am sure the mere mention of Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson , and Douglas
Murray would present bryony with a severe dose of conniptions.
Anon. Put their books in the Vic. library would be a good start eg.;
Shapiro's books " How American Universities Indoctrinate Youth"
' Bullies, How the Left 's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans'
The Right Side of History:How Reason and Moral Principles Made the West Great'.
Murray's: "The Madness of Crowds:Gender, Race, And Identity"
"The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason" .
All of which were best sellers., so deserve space in the library. Students are being deprived of debates going on in the wider world.
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