Professor Kendall Clements, Dr Michael Johnston: The Irony Of Relativism

When new evidence emerges, scientists update their theories, sometimes radically. Good scientists actively seek evidence that could disconfirm their theories.

Scientific uncertainty owes a lot to cross-cultural encounters. For example, when Jesuit missionaries visited China in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were fascinated by Chinese astronomical records.

According to conventional Christian scholarship at the time, all human civilisations postdated Noah’s flood, thought to have occurred around 2350 BCE. But Chinese claims of continuous historical records and civilization challenged Biblical chronology.

Even though those claims may have been overstated, the Jesuits were able to verify Chinese records of planetary motions mathematically, which, over time, led them to doubt the biblical account. Through reason and evidence, Chinese astronomers and European scholars had cast doubt on religious doctrines.

All this goes to show that Dame Anne Salmond was quite right when, in a recent article, she pointed out that the Enlightenment was sparked by cross cultural encounters. She also correctly observed that those encounters shook up European certainties.

Dame Anne’s argument falters, though, in her assertion that all knowledge systems are equally valid and cannot meaningfully be compared. That view is rooted in an intellectual tradition very different to science.

For over three decades, much academic work in the humanities and social sciences, none more than Dame Anne’s discipline of anthropology, has been influenced by the postmodernist view that reality is relative to culture.

This is inimical to science. Scientific knowledge-seeking is based on the idea that objective reality exists. Through reason and evidence, science brings human understanding into closer alignment with reality.

Ironically, the postmodern turn has led universities away from scientific doubt, towards a culture of (paradoxical) certainty – the certainty that knowledge is relative. Under this view, the commitment of science to gradually revealing reality is at best, a fool’s errand. At worst, it is an exercise in ‘colonising’ other knowledge systems, especially indigenous ones.

To relativists, a belief that reason transcends culture is a sign of blinkered arrogance, closing off the possibility of ‘other ways of knowing.’ The prevalence of this doctrine has led to a campus climate in which any criticism of ‘non-western’ knowledge systems is an anathema. It has led to some academics being actively shut down, and many feeling too intimidated to speak their minds.

To Dame Anne and others, though, in drawing attention to this situation, organisations like the Free Speech Union (FSU) and the New Zealand Initiative have manufactured a free speech crisis. They accuse these organisations of imposing their views on universities through the academic freedom provisions in the recently passed Education and Training Amendment Act.

The Act requires universities as institutions to be neutral on matters of academic debate, and to develop Freedom of Expression policies. Far from imposing on universities, these provisions help safeguard them as venues for open debate.

The impetus for these protections came from academics themselves, not from external organisations. The FSU’s submission on the bill was developed by the Inter-University Committee on Academic Freedom, an advisory group affiliated to, but independent of, the FSU. Its membership comprises academics from most of New Zealand’s eight universities. We are both members and helped draft the submission.

The submission was informed by two sources: input from academic colleagues and university leaders, and empirical evidence from surveys and testimonials.

One source was the biennial Kōrero Mai staff survey from the University of Auckland, which has a response rate of well over 60%. In both 2023 and 2025, less than half of respondents agreed with the statement, “I feel able to respectfully voice my views to others at the University without fear of negative consequences.” Other surveys have shown similar results.

The institutional neutrality provision in the legislation recognises that the university itself should not have views. Instead, it should be a venue in which competing views are discussed and debated. Universities taking sides risks politicising debates and putting a thumb on the scale. It can also have an intimidatory effect on academics who disagree with their institutions.

But fear of repercussions from university management is not the only reason academics might fear consequences for expressing their views. Potential ostracism by peers is another.

Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom argued that academics’ reluctance to express minority views is largely a result of self-censorship driven by peer pressure. The requirement for universities to adopt Freedom of Expression policies will not change this censorious culture on its own, but there is evidence that it has already influenced university policy in a positive direction.

In September 2024 the University of Auckland (UoA) Senate voted nearly 3:1 to reject a weak Freedom of Expression policy proposed by the university’s leadership. Following the announcement of the legislation, UoA leadership proposed a revised, more robust Freedom of Expression statement that included a commitment to institutional neutrality.

The UoA Senate overwhelmingly endorsed this revised statement. Sir Peter Hunter, Chair of the University Freedom of Expression Senate Working Group, told us after the vote, “I’m quite sure we would not be where we are without the new legislation.”

Attacks on supporters of legislation by some of its critics reflect political tribalism, not reasoned argument based on evidence. Contrary to what Dame Anne and her allies would have us believe, depoliticisation is not the same as politicisation in the opposite direction.

Kendall Clements is a Professor in the Faculty of Science, Biological Sciences at Auckland University, Areas of Expertise: Ecology & specialises in Evolution and Behaviour, Physiology

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 originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.