Graham Adams: Compulsory Treaty courses tip of the iceberg

Last week, David Seymour enthusiastically welcomed the recommendation by Auckland University’s Senate to make the compulsory first-year courses on the Treaty and te ao Māori voluntary after Act had publicly campaigned on the issue.

He described the Senate’s “two to one” vote in favour of voluntary enrolment as a “massive victory for people… to make up their own mind”.

In fact, the “victory” was even more decisive. Seventy-five per cent of the deans and other academic staff who sit on the Senate, alongside student representatives, endorsed the motion, making the majority three to one.

The decision — expected to be ratified by the University Council on October 15 — was also more complicated than initially reported. While the Waipapa Taumata Rau (WTR) courses for the majority of first-year students will likely become optional, they will continue to be compulsory in some faculties — such as medicine and engineering — to fulfil professional accreditation requirements.

Individual faculties, of course, have long made some papers compulsory where they are considered essential to master a discipline. For instance, a degree in psychology requires students to pass a course in statistics. However, that is entirely different to making a course compulsory for all first-year students that may have no connection with the subject they enrolled in.

Arguments made by faculty representatives opposed to the WTR courses continuing to be compulsory included that they erroneously equate science and mātauranga Māori; their content duplicates material covered elsewhere in the curriculum; and prioritising Te Ao Māori risks crowding out teaching competency in the cultures of the many students who aren’t Māori.

An AUSA survey of 161 students showed satisfaction with the courses was low at 35.3 per cent. A petition set up to oppose them being compulsory — and which gathered more than 1700 signatures — makes it clear that many students see them as irrelevant to their studies, ideologically biased and often poorly taught.

A problem identified by those who voted in the Senate, whether for or against the courses remaining compulsory, is how the university’s aims set out in its Graduate Profiles can be achieved if most first-year students are no longer compelled to be instructed in Te Ao Māori.

The Graduate Profiles — which outline the qualities and virtues Auckland University hopes to instil in its students and are published on the university’s web pages — are an eye-opener. They appear to be a better fit with the prospectus for a wānanga than a modern university.

The first and most important requirement in the general profile states:

“Graduates connect to knowledge of place. They are conversant with mātauranga Māori, kaupapa Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi and their context in Te Moananui-āKiwa [the Pacific] and the world. They appreciate the importance of belonging and diversity. They advocate for just and equitable societies.”

In other words, the University of Auckland formally puts knowledge of Te Ao Māori, Te Tiriti and mātauranga Māori — alongside highly contested views of what constitutes “just and equitable societies” — at the apex of its aspirations for those who pass through its lecture halls and tutorial rooms.

Astonishingly for a university, the ability to think critically takes fourth place behind knowledge of Te Ao Māori; sustainability (“Graduates realise that they are interdependent with the natural world and acknowledge kaitiakitanga”); and being “aware of different knowledge systems and transdisciplinary perspectives”.

“Knowledge systems” is an oblique — and charged — reference to mātauranga Māori, where science is viewed as just another body of knowledge and its secular and powerful methodology no more significant than the creationism and vitalism of Te Ao Māori.

The university slips in yet another reference to “knowledge systems” when advocating for critical thinking:

“Graduates think critically and creatively to engage constructively with knowledge systems, practices, theories, evidence, and ideas.”

In the profile for science students, the university also recommends: “They appreciate how science can be applied in local contexts” — which is a nod to the localism of mātauranga Māori, in which knowledge is specific to a particular area and the hapū or iwi who live there.

In marked contrast, science is, of course, universal and admits no ethnic or national boundaries in its quest for empirical, replicable and falsifiable knowledge. There are no protected local or cultural carve-outs in science as there are in mātauranga Māori.

The university’s commitment to embedding Te Ao Māori into policy is not new. That was made vividly apparent in the reaction to the letter published in the Listener in July 2021 titled “In Defence of Science” — signed by seven Auckland University professors — who pointed out, “Indigenous knowledge may indeed help advance scientific knowledge in some ways, but it is not science.”

In response, the Vice-Chancellor, Dawn Freshwater, stepped in with a statement that made it crystal clear where the university’s loyalties lay:

“A letter in this week’s issue of The Listener magazine from seven of our academic staff on the subject of whether mātauranga Māori can be called science has caused considerable hurt and dismay among our staff, students and alumni.

“While the academics are free to express their views, I want to make it clear that they do not represent the views of the University of Auckland.

“The University has deep respect for mātauranga Māori as a distinctive and valuable knowledge system. We believe that mātauranga Māori and Western empirical science are not at odds and do not need to compete. They are complementary and have much to learn from each other.

“This view is at the heart of our new strategy and vision, Taumata Teitei, and the Waipapa Toitū framework, and is part of our wider commitment to Te Tiriti and te ao principles.”

In fact, mātauranga Māori and science are clearly “at odds with each other”. As Chicago University’s Jerry Coyne, one of the world’s pre-eminent evolutionary biologists, put it:

“Mātauranga Māori is a mix of religion, ethics, morality, tradition and superstition” albeit with some “empirical, trial-and-error based knowledge that can be taken as part of science.…

“Mātauranga Māori is not a ‘way of knowing’ but a ‘Māori way of living’.”

Yet, extraordinarily, the university makes understanding mātauranga Māori a pre-eminent objective for its graduates.

And who knew until Freshwater entered the debate that the university had “views”? Well, it does, apparently, when it comes to promoting Te Ao Māori.

It is true, of course, that universities can teach what they want. Under the Education and Training Act 2020, academic freedom includes “the freedom of the institution and its staff to regulate the subject-matter of courses taught at the institution” and the “freedom of the institution and its staff to teach and assess students in the manner they consider best promotes learning”.

However, a big proportion of universities’ income comes from taxpayers, who may increasingly object to an organisation they fund being so entirely captured by the ideology of decolonisation, which seeks to expunge “Western” ways of thinking.

Furthermore, as the nation’s biggest and most prestigious tertiary education provider, Auckland University trains many of our professional-managerial class, which includes lawyers, economists, engineers, academics, and bureaucrats.

If the public comes to realise just how determined the university is to normalise radical interpretations of the Treaty and sacralise Te Ao Māori and mātauranga Māori among students who will go on to form the most influential echelons of society, expect to hear increasingly loud calls for its funding to be slashed.

Act’s Tertiary Education spokeswoman, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, has publicised the cost of the WTR courses. Roughly 8000 students — including 1224 international students who paid up to $5730 each for enrolling in a paper — contributed $14 million to the university’s coffers, with taxpayers who subsidised it stumping up the same amount.

While there has been speculation about disgruntled students who have paid for a WTR course demanding a refund — or perhaps a credit on their fees for a course they may want to study — taxpayers have no such remedy available to them.

What they do have is the ability to apply political pressure. It seems inevitable that if the university doesn’t reform itself, a future government will be given a mandate to do exactly that on behalf of voters and taxpayers. Or to substantially defund it.

It is not impossible that local academics who are observing Donald Trump’s attacks on elite US universities can feel the cold winds of change blowing in their direction and are realising that their own continued employment depends on maintaining their social licence.

In which case the Senate rejecting a deeply unpopular and compulsory course can only be said to be a wise career move.

Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.