Bob Edlin: Professor to become a Tumuaki at NZ’s major science society....

....where the Treaty galvanises governance

The Royal Society of New Zealand seems to have been conflicted, when announcing its new president.

The headline on its press statement says: Next President of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

The first paragraph of the statement described her as the next “Tumuaki”.

The Council of the Royal Society Te Apārangi is delighted to announce that Professor Emerita Penny Brothers FRSC FRSNZ FNZIC will become the Society’s next Tumuaki (President) on 1 July 2027.

The English translation is helpful, because readers otherwise might have been confused about which post Brothers would be filling.

The Te Aka Maori dictionary gives this meaning:

tumuaki 

 1. (noun) crown of the head.

2. (noun) head, leader, president, principal, head (of an institution), chancellor, chief executive.

This suggests the society has two tumuaki – the president and the chief executive.

The statement goes on to tell us:

Professor Brothers will join the Council as President-elect with immediate effect, and will succeed the current President, Distinguished Professor Dame Jane Harding DNZM FRSNZ FRACP, at the end of her 3-year term next year.

Professor Brothers is an inorganic chemist with more than three decades of experience in research, teaching, and academic leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. She has made significant contributions in both countries – in internationally recognised research and in leadership of several notable research institutions and funding bodies.

But let’s get to grips with the name of the society over which she will preside.

The formal and legal name of the organisation is the Royal Society of New Zealand. But it is also known as the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi and is branded as Royal Society Te Apārangi.

According to Google, in response to PoO’s question about the society’s name –

• Legal name: Royal Society of New Zealand
• Formal bilingual name: Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi
• Common/branded name: Royal Society Te Apārangi
• Original name at founding (1867): New Zealand Institute

The brand was announced in April 2017 when the society was celebrating its 150 year anniversary.

The press statement on that occasion said:

… our full name is currently Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi. The Council has agreed to use a shortened version that highlights our Māori name – hence you will now see more of the ‘Royal Society Te Apārangi’.

Te Apārangi means ‘group of experts’ and this name was proposed to us by Professor James Wharehuia Milroy in 2007. The use of Māori should differentiate us from other Royal Societies and again reflects our New Zealand culture. Our legal name remains the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Why anyone might confuse “the Royal Society of New Zealand” with any others is mystifying.

To the contrary, it is fair to suppose more people overseas would be puzzled by the location of the Royal Society Te Aparangi.

This country has just one science organisation which carries the title the Royal Society Te Apārangi and legally remains the Royal Society of New Zealand.

There are some smaller specialty groups with royal patronage, such as the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand.

Overseas, PoO could find no exact count of “royal societies” because hundreds of independent historical, scientific, agricultural, and arts organizations hold royal charters.

Famous examples include the original The Royal Society in London (founded in 1660), the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Royal Society of South Africa.

PoO could find no major documented opposition to the name change.

But the society’s role in promoting biculturalism, managing representation, and elevating Māori knowledge (māturanga Māori) has generated controversy.

This was evidenced in 2021, when seven prominent University of Auckland professors published a letter in The Listener defending traditional definitions of science against plans to give mātauranga Māori parity in the school curriculum.

The society strongly disputed the authors’ views, triggering a disciplinary investigation into some of its own Fellows. This sparked a global backlash from advocates for academic freedom and organisations like the Free Speech Union, which have accused the society of “cancel culture”.

Richard Dawkins, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, wrote to Dr Roger Ridley, who was Acting Chief Executive.

Dawkins said he had read Jerry Coyne’s “long, detailed and fair-minded critique of the ludicrous move to incorporate Māori ‘ways of knowing’ into science curricula in New Zealand, and the frankly appalling failure of the Royal Society of New Zealand to stand up for science – which is, after all, what your Society exists to do”.

Dawkins said:

The Royal Society of New Zealand, like the Royal Society of which I have the honour to be a Fellow, is supposed to stand for science. Not “Western” science, not “European” science, not “White” science, not “Colonialist” science. Just science. Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what “tradition” they may have been brought up in.

True science is evidence-based not tradition-based; it incorporates safeguards such as peer review, repeated experimental testing of hypotheses, double-blind trials, instruments to supplement and validate fallible senses etc. True science works: lands spacecraft on comets, develops vaccines against plagues, predicts eclipses to the nearest second, reconstructs the lives of extinct species such as the tragically destroyed Moas.

If New Zealand’s Royal Society won’t stand up for true science in your country who will? What else is the Society for? What else is the rationale for its existence?

On the other hand, thousands of other Kiwi academics signed letters condemning the original Listener letter and disagreeing with the likes of Dawkins and Coyne and the esteemed writers of the Listener letter.

Further attesting to an ideological shift, prominent Māori scholars issued an open letter to the society’s president in 2024 to oppose a proposed down-sizing of the governance structure that would remove dedicated, reserved Māori seats from the governing council.

The restructuring would have eliminated seats reserved for special interest groups, including early-career researchers, regional representatives, and the two seats elected by Māori (which makes them race-based). The society proposed moving those groups to a separate, lower-level advisory committee.

The backlash was inevitable: more than 30 prominent Māori professors and scientists signed an open letter to the society’s president, condemning the move as “a major step backwards” that – here it comes – undermined the principles of partnership under the Treaty of Waitangi.

The New Zealand Association of Scientists also criticized the proposal, warning it would demote critical diverse voices into a strictly advisory capacity.

The Treaty has become a powerful political weapon in this country. Brandishing it more likely than not will cause an adversary to retreat.

After an intense consultation period and public pushback, the dedicated Māori Electoral College positions were retained and they remain an active part of the society’s governing council.

And that – dear reader – likely explains why Professor Emerita Penny Brothers FRSC FRSNZ FNZIC will become the Society’s next Tumuaki.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE.