John Raine: A Country Too Easily Swayed by Minorities?

I started writing this with the Doors singing Strange Days. It seemed apt.

We now live in a surreal world where the post-modernists and critical social justice warriors are determined to give equal standing to traditional knowledge and vitalist belief systems against modern world science [see Raine, Lillis, and Schwerdtfeger [1]). Calls to preserve democracy by ensuring equal rights for all ethnicities in our country are now labelled extreme right-wing and racist. In our new world, climate science has been politically weaponised, and biological women can be censured for objecting to a transwoman who is still a biological man being able to use the same changing room.

John Raine, David Lillis, Peter Schwerdtfeger: Where are our Universities Heading?

Troubled times in New Zealand Academia

A perfect storm is hitting our university sector right now. Current social-justice political activism is an aggravating factor in the present extreme financial difficulties our universities are experiencing. They will have welcomed the announcement on 27th June by the Minister of Education to inject $128 million into the tertiary education sector, but this is just a drop of water on a hot stone. A full review of the tertiary education sector funding model is long overdue. The current situation raises a long-term risk to the operational health and international reputation of our universities. This risk has in turn been intensified by the very slow post-Covid restart to international student business. What needs to be done to restore the sector to full health?