David Lillis, John Raine, Peter Schwerdtfeger, Rex Ahdar, Cathy Downes: Open Letter to the Coalition Government

Restoring the Standing and Reputation of Science in New Zealand - Open Letter to the Coalition Government

The recent news that GeoNet has been merging science with the myth, mysticism and legend of Māori traditional knowledge in their 2024 Geohazard Information has provoked a scathing response from international commentator, Professor Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago). This follows close behind publicity around the public funding of research projects that involve mixing of traditional knowledge and modern science which invited the inference that New Zealand had given equivalence to traditional knowledge and modern science.

David Lillis and Peter Schwerdtfeger: Enhancing Science, Innovation and Technology in New Zealand

The Science System Advisory Group has been established by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in order to provide advice to Government on science, innovation and technology. It will review challenges and aspirations of the sector and its structure, efficiency and effectiveness. A two-part report will be published; the first delivered end of June and the second in October. The first part will focus on principles for the sector and providing advice and recommendations. The second will provide final recommendations and advice on long-term changes in order to ensure the future success of science in New Zealand.

Peter Schwerdtfeger, John Raine and David Lillis: Is the Decolonisation and Indigenisation Movement Dividing our Country?

Decolonisation and the Undermining of Sound Education

It is difficult not to be aware of cultural reshaping in New Zealand society. Moves have also been made by New Zealand’s Ministry of Education to politicise our schools’ education curriculum through casting it within a Treaty of Waitangi framework, and presenting mathematics and the sciences from a postmodern, relativist and decolonisation perspective which appears hostile to the core areas of student learning. Fortunately, the curriculum is now being further reviewed and developed but both this, and some university programmes, remain vulnerable to being used as a vehicle of cultural indoctrination. Here, we examine decolonisation, the need for open and constructive academic debate, and the imperative to protect democracy in New Zealand.

Peter Schwerdtfeger, David Lillis and John Raine: New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Sector in Deep Financial Crisis

...the historical telos of universities as depositories of our collective cultural wisdom and knowledge is thus changed from forms of debate and free speech to those of multiple truths and power plays to impose dominance. In this way, the universities and those academics within them are transformed from fallible but authoritative judges and teachers of the sum of human knowledge to being part of a broader political struggle between a binary of oppressed versus the oppressors.
- Doug Stokes in "Against decolonisation" (p. 81-82)

Universities losing their Best People

As we write, several universities in New Zealand are facing severe financial problems and cuts to expenditure.

John Raine, David Lillis and Peter Schwerdtfeger: Universities or Indoctrination Centres?

The assertion that all human knowledge is equally valid and the university is a site of power contestation makes it easier to understand the abandonment of fundamental academic principles, not least that of academic freedom
- Doug Stokes in “Against Decolonisation” pp. 83-84.

Becoming Ethno-institutions?

As New Zealand Universities move further towards becoming ethno-institutions we state again our serious concerns for the survival of the New Zealand university as an independent and internationally-focused place of higher learning and research, where diverse views may be discussed on any matter and where modern world science is not diminished through promotion of “other ways of knowing.”

Dr. David Lillis and Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger: Defending Science – Again!

More on the Listener Letter

We refer to an article by Georgina Stewart, published in the Blog of the American Psychological Association (APA) on 21 August 2023 (Stewart, 2023a). Professor Stewart’s article concerns a debate in New Zealand on the relationship between traditional Māori knowledge and science. This debate has been ongoing for several decades but re-ignited by the well-known Letter to the Listener, signed by seven professors at Auckland University (Clements et al., 2021). Subsequently, the APA has not published a response from us, but nevertheless we believe it important to reply to particular points that were made in her article.

David Lillis, John Raine and Peter Schwerdtfeger: Funding of Research in New Zealand

Mixing Traditional Knowledge and Science

The embedding of the Treaty of Waitangi, and an increased focus on Māori research and Māori researchers in our innovation system, follow similar trends in education and public health. According increased status to Māori culture and Māori researchers, also to Pacific research, in research funding decision-making may enhance the profile of Māori and Pacific in research and create needed role models for young Māori and Pacific people. However, negative consequences for our research sector are sure to follow.

We assert that merit­-based science is both effective and fair, and that replacing merit with social engineering such as critical race theory and ideological control will lead to damage in the foreseeable future (see also Abbot et al, 2023). We hold deep concerns about the proliferation of identity-­based ideology that seeks to replace core liberal principles, essential for scientific and technological advances, with principles derived from postmodernism and Critical Social Justice. Such principles claim routinely that world science is racist, patriarchal, colonial and a tool of oppression.

David Lillis, Peter Schwerdtfeger, John Raine & Raymond Richards: Misinforming the Public

We Decline to Publish

For those interested, here is another letter that was written to the editor of the New Zealand Herald, which they have not published. It was submitted last week. This is the third letter that I and my colleagues have written to news media in order to defend science and education. None were published. 

Our motives are honourable. Indeed, we want to do the right thing in defending the integrity of our education system and protecting science from being reduced to the level of “other ways of knowing” of scattered communities of the distant past. 

Misinforming the Public

We refer to an article in the Waikato Herald of 14 July 2023 - Can Māori knowledge of moon phases help farm resilience? Bay of Plenty farmers gather to learn (Smith, 2023).

Dr. David Lillis, Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger & Professor John Raine: In Defense of Science and Education

 The Guardian Declines to Publish

For those interested, here is a letter that was written two weeks ago to the editor of The Guardian - which they declined to publish – refusing, by the way, to give a reason.

It is wonderful that the Māori holiday, Matariki, was covered in The Guardian of 13 July by Charlotte Graham-McLay - Indigenous renaissance: Māori hope Matariki holiday will help cement status of local knowledge.

Peter Schwerdtfeger, John Raine and David Lillis: Post-modernism and the Degrading of Education in New Zealand

Education in Serious Decline

Make no mistake - New Zealand’s education system is currently in steep decline (Armstrong, 2023), and the country cannot afford another generation of young people getting a second-rate education. In this article we discuss the causes and remedies for this damaging long-term slide. 

 

The transition of twenty years ago to the NCEA schools qualification system, with its lack of rigour in the delivery of core knowledge and skills, most markedly in mathematics and the sciences, heralded a decline in education standards in New Zealand. 

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?