Dr James Kierstead: Another academic freedom case

Academic freedom has become a major concern at universities across the English-speaking world in recent years. Speakers have been disinvited, papers retracted, and academics disciplined or even dismissed for things they have said or positions they have taken. My 2024 Initiative report on academic freedom at New Zealand universities demonstrated that academic freedom is also at risk here.

Dr James Kierstead: Manic compression

If you enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey (either the book or the movie), there’s no guarantee that you will enjoy Fifty Shades of Grades, the research note on grade distribution at New Zealand universities that I released earlier this week.

Still, I like to think that the latter has enough titillating detail, spanking new analysis, and breath-taking climaxes (if only of series of data) to satisfy most readers.

Dr James Kierstead: 50 Shades of Grades - Grade Compression at New Zealand Universities

A grades are now only a few years away from becoming the most common grade awarded at New Zealand universities.

The research note, ‘Fifty Shades of Grades: Grade Compression at New Zealand Universities’, builds on the Initiative's August report, ‘Amazing Grades’, which identified a substantial rise in A grades as well as rising pass rates. This new analysis examines what has happened to all grades – not just As – revealing how the entire grading scale is shifting.

Dr James Kierstead: Albanese’s rugby diplomacy shows New Zealand the way

Rugby, as readers of this newsletter will know, is a game played by men with funny-shaped balls.

But as well as being a lot of fun to play and to watch, it turns out that the game has other uses.

Dr James Kierstead: Deflating grade inflation

Grades have been inflating at universities across the English-speaking world, including in New Zealand. That was the message of my first two columns in this series.

But why has grade inflation taken hold at our universities? And what can we do about it? That is the subject of this final instalment.

Dr James Keirstead: Amazing grades

In my last Insights column, I explained what grade inflation is and why it’s bad. I also surveyed research showing that grade inflation is a problem at universities in the US, the UK, and Australia. 

What about New Zealand? My report Amazing Grades: Grade Inflation at New Zealand Universities, which was released this week, shows that grade inflation is a problem here too.

Dr James Kierstead: Grade expectations

‘Every five years or so, I crunch the numbers on college grades across the US and report what I’ve found,’ writes Stuart Rojstaczer modestly on his website.

What Rojstaczer, a former professor, has found is that grades are going up, and have been going up for quite some time. Until the 1960s, only around 20% of grades awarded at US colleges were As. The most common grade was a C.

Dr James Kierstead: Another high-ranking Victoria University of Wellington administrator doesn’t understand free speech

A while back now, we opened Oko, the staff newsletter at the university where both of us still have adjunct positions. One of the featured articles that week was ‘The Thing about Words’ by Bryony James, who (the article reminded us) was ‘Te Herenga Waka’s Provost, and member of Te Hiwa.’ (The latter, if you haven’t been keeping up, is the name that the university’s Senior Management Team adopted a couple of years ago.)

Dr James Kierstead: How to put teeth in the bill

At midnight last night, submissions closed on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No. 2). The bill would introduce new measures to protect academic freedom, which is defined in the Education and Training Act as ‘the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas, and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.’

Dr James Kierstead, Geoff Neal: Politicians are disconnected from the people they represent

Like most of the developed world, we in New Zealand live – we like to think – in a representative democracy. Rather than directly voting on issues, we vote for politicians who represent us in Parliament and in local councils. These politicians are responsive to our views, and if they’re not, we can kick them out at the next election and vote in another set of politicians who are.

Dr James Kierstead: A new approach to neutrality

Last week, the University of Otago came out with its new statement on institutional neutrality – a statement that was not only new, but that also forged a bold new approach to the whole concept of neutrality.

Institutional neutrality, the statement declares, ‘means that University leaders will not communicate institutional positions on controversial political topics except where such issues directly impact the University’s role or functions.’ So far, so neutral – and nothing much that’s new.

Dr James Kierstead: The importance of not being Donald

‘History doesn’t repeat,’ Mark Twain is said to have said, ‘but it often rhymes.’ And there could hardly be a better example of two events rhyming than the recent Canadian and Australian elections.

In both countries, the centre-right was flying high in the polls, with leads of up to 20% in Canada and 10% in Australia. In both countries, those leads had evaporated by the time the election took place, leading to victories for centre-left parties that had only recently been counted out. In both countries, hard-charging conservative leaders who had seemed on the cusp of becoming prime minister were instead out of parliament, having lost their seats.

What happened?

Dr James Kierstead: How to work well with others

Worries about social cohesion are on the rise. Initiative Chair Roger Partridge aired his concerns in the Herald last month, and this month saw the launch of a report on the subject by the Helen Clark Foundation.

One aspect of social cohesion is cooperation. Studies have repeatedly shown that ethnically diverse societies are worse at some types of cooperation, especially when it comes to providing public goods.

Dr James Kierstead: Shock! Horror! Young people getting drunk at music festivals

Panic ensued this week after it was revealed that young people have been going to summer music festivals, listening to music – and in some cases even getting drunk.

As a report for RNZ revealed, there has been a crackdown on outdoor festivals all through the summer, with four postponed and another four cancelled outright.

Dr James Kierstead: The heterodox hiatus

A few years ago, when I was still a classics lecturer, I started to notice a disturbing trend. Scholars were being denounced on Twitter (RIP) for wrongthink. Scholarly associations put out asinine statements uncritically aligning themselves with the latest political trends. Papers were retracted, books withdrawn from publication, and visiting speakers deplatformed.

Dr James Kierstead: Hayek's real bastards

In Hayek’s Bastards, the distinguished historian Dame Anne Salmond takes issue with Act’s Regulatory Standards Bill, which she sees as the attempt of a fringe party to impose its ideologies and which she thinks would “elevate individual rights and private property above all other considerations in law-making” and thus undermine democracy.

Universities must be neutral

Academic freedom is a hot topic at the moment. The coalition agreement required universities to have academic freedom policies to receive government funding. Most universities have now produced draft policies.

Academic freedom is key to the university’s mission. It allows students and academics to explore ideas in the classroom and to produce innovative research. It is also explicitly protected in the Education and Training Act.

Victoria University stands up for academic freedom - with a few caveats

Only a few days after the University of Auckland’s so-called academic freedom policy was rejected by the university’s Senate, Victoria University of Wellington’s own academic freedom policy has come to light.

Victoria’s policy is likely a response to the government’s stated intention to make such policies a condition for government funding.

Dr James Kierstead: ‘Academic freedom is now seriously under threat in New Zealand’

Academic freedom is an essential ingredient in any flourishing university system. It allows ideas to be put forward and debated, and thus underpins high-quality research and teaching.

An aspect of the freedom of expression that is protected in our Bill of Rights, academic freedom is also recognised in the Education Act, where it is defined as the freedom of academics and students ‘to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas, and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.’ New Zealand has a proud legacy of academic freedom, with Karl Popper, in exile from his native Vienna, able to write his The Open Society and its Enemies here during World War II.

Dr James Kierstead: The open academy and its enemies

A couple years before the outbreak of the Second World War, the philosopher Karl Popper moved across the world to take up a position at what was then Canterbury College. Popper, who lost no fewer than sixteen family members in the Holocaust, was under no illusions about what would have happened to him had he stayed in Vienna.

While in Christchurch, Popper wrote The Open Society and its Enemies, one of the classic defences of liberal democracy against totalitarianisms of the left and the right. Canterbury had a poor research culture at the time, and Popper butted heads with the chair of his programme. But his academic freedom – his freedom to think and write what he wanted – was never seriously in doubt.