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.

David Farrar: Auckland Uni gets it right

The Auckland University Freedom of Expression Statement looks very good. It is clear with few weasel words. Key extracts:

The University actively fosters and supports lawful and constructive debate by its staff and students on any topic, including with the participation of external speakers invited by a staff member, or a recognised student association or student club.

Roger Partridge: The Open Mind and the Closed University

Last month, Dame Anne Salmond issued a public challenge to the very idea of reason – the commitment to shared standards of inquiry that has delivered unprecedented human flourishing over the past three centuries.

Salmond is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated public intellectuals. She was writing in Newsroom on 18 November – the same day legislation requiring universities to protect open debate and remain “institutionally neutral” received royal assent. Salmond opposes the reform. For her, neutrality is a fiction: there is no common ground – only competing worldviews.

Mike Grimshaw: Constrained and framed? The limitation of academic freedom by research funding and strategies

While most debate on academic freedom concerns the question of what can be stated, argued, proffered and responded to – and how, such a focus has enabled a more central and insidious attack and undermining of academic freedom to occur via explicit and implicit constraints upon research.

It’s almost a year since the radical reduction, cutting and refocussing of the Marsden Fund that occurred, to our institutional shame, without any sustained or high-level public push-back, critique or challenge from the Universities. Rather, it seemed the universities waited, desperate for any reallocated government funding and ready, willing and able to do whatever was expected, demanded or imposed so as to gather as many crumbs as they could.

David Lillis and Peter Schwerdtfeger - Free Speech and Academic Freedom on Campus: a Manufactured Crisis?

Are Claims of Suppression of Free Speech Not Real?

In the Post of 26 June, Dr. Sereana Naepi and Emeritus Professor Peter Davis inform us that concerns about constraints on free speech on university campuses constitute a manufactured crisis (Naepi and Davis, 2025). The authors claim that the crisis is designed to erode academic freedom while appearing to protect it. This is a very bold claim but how do they evaluate the intent of others in creating a manufactured crisis unless they can see into the minds of those other people?

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 Allan: Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

I have hesitated to respond article-by-article to Roger Partridge’s continuing attacks on the Trump administration beyond my initial response and rebuttal in these pages to his first anti-Trump piece. That was where I argued that Roger’s comparisons of Trump to Hitler, Mussolini and Hugo Chavez were, shall we say, a tad overdone. My general view is that more than a few people on the political Right side of politics (and near on everyone on the Left side) have been infected with a strong dose of TDS, or ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’. All of us can agree or disagree with this or that policy of a US President, including those of President Trump.

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.

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.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: ‘Career suicide’ - the price of dissent in NZ universities

“We have become a corporate body concerned about brand image in a content marketing world in a climate of cancel culture,” lamented one academic.

“I feel my job is at risk if I question the direction the university is taking. The last round of redundancies was definitely about getting rid of those who were not boot lickers,” another reported.

A third warned, “Questioning anything about the radical current interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi is likely to be career ending.”

David Farrar: NZ Initiative on academic freedom

The NZ Initiative has published a thorough report on academic freedom. I’ll quote some data, and then their recommendations:

David Farrar: Not much academic freedom at Massey

Go read the story of Dr Paul Crowhurst. The short version is:

David Farrar: Universities and the Treaty

Grant Duncan writes:

University management should take note of that, as there have been unrealistic efforts to force poorly defined “Treaty obligations” into teaching and research. For example, one university is now telling its academic staff that all curricula should, as a high priority, be “designed, developed and delivered in authentic partnerships with Māori [and] uphold provisions of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.

Henry Ergas: Universities offer course in self-serving cowardice

When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge could possibly arise: to be a hypocrite one has to know right from wrong.

Beware the university seeking to limit the freedom of speech

The Education and Training Act enshrines academic freedom in law. It distinguishes aspects of academic freedom over which the university itself has jurisdiction, from aspects that protect its students and academic staff from institutional interference.

An example of the former is “the freedom of the institution and its staff to regulate the subject matter of courses taught at the institution.” This makes clear that academic staff cannot unilaterally decide to teach whatever courses they like. They must negotiate the content and format of courses with the university as an institution.

Bryce Edwards: Rising toxicity in NZ politics

A top university academic, selected by former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to head a big project aimed at reducing division and extremism in New Zealand, is currently in trouble for lashing out at the new Government, accusing it of racism, child-hatred, and being a “death-cult”.

Prof Joanna Kidman was appointed as the director of the He Whenua Taurikura, the Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, funded by the Department of Cabinet and Prime Minister (DPMC). But in posting colourful critiques of politicians this week, she has brought on questions about her suitability for the role of reducing extremism in society. This minor scandal also provides a useful case study about the rising political temperatures in New Zealand politics at the moment.

Mike Grimshaw: It’s about critiquing power, stupid!…

Or the societal necessity to support (yet critique) Academic Freedom and Free Speech.

The other day I attended the Free Speech Union AGM and was on the Academic Freedom panel. It was an interesting experience because while I am a committed supporter of Free Speech and Academic Freedom, in many ways this was a field trip into communities who see the world quite differently to how I do. That in itself is not an issue because central to both free speech and academic freedom is the central necessity of allowing and protecting a true diversity of opinions, beliefs, and attitudes.

Penn Raine: The NZ University - Poacher turned Gamekeeper

The communist revolutions in Russia, China, and Cambodia had tens of thousands of educators - intellectuals - killed.  

Stalin’s and Mao’s eliminations were countless. Between 1975 and 1979 it is estimated that Pol Pot’s Marxist regime in Cambodia almost eliminated all its educated citizens and amongst the 200,000 murdered only 87 of the country’s 1000 academics avoided state sanctioned death. 

The mistrust that totalitarian regimes have for academics is easy to understand as coercive politics bring pain to most of their citizens while waiting for present suffering to bring about a promised utopia. Those most likely to examine and question unpalatable changes are a nation’s intelligentsia, therefore they must remain silent, or if they refuse, be got rid of.

Bob Jones: More wisdom from Melissa Derby

Melissa is a Senior lecturer (Education) at Waikato university and a Council member of the Free Speech Union.

Her article below attacking diversity quotas for maoris in our shameless universities should be seen in the light of her own part maori heritage.

James Kierstead: Back to the farm

Spread out over 8, 000 acres (hence ‘the Farm’), Stanford University’s campus is an impressive sight. Palms line the triumphant main drive. Sleek modern buildings ring a historic core of sandstone quads. Sprinklers soothe the manicured lawns.

I was lucky enough to spend six years at Stanford, and a couple of weeks ago I got the chance to go back for a conference. The campus seems as serene as ever.

But all has not been well on the Farm.