Dr Michael Johnston: An innovative approach to research funding

You might think that a national organisation awarding research grants would fund the best proposals. You might even think that funding decisions would be made by experts who can identify quality when they see it.

The Royal Society Te Apārangi oversees the awarding of the prestigious Marsden grants. In its 2024 round, Marsden funding went to truly cutting-edge projects.

Paul Brennan chats to Dr Muriel Newman on Reality Check Radio

Dr Muriel Newman On What’s Hot On Her ’NZ Center For Political Research Website’ – 28 Jul 2023

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Barend Vlaardingerbroek: ‘Affirmative action’ – an obstacle for some ‘minorities’

Donald Trump is in trouble again with the PC crowd for fingering affirmative action (AA) as his next target. The more I see of this guy, the more I like him!

AA is both sex-based and race-based. 

The former is not the issue it was a few years back, although it remains a thorn in the side for many a man sidelined for appointment or promotion because he had the misfortune to be up against a woman and thus the cards were stacked against him whatever his credentials. But it is race-based AA that is under the spotlight not because it has trodden on the toes of any nebulous ‘majority’ but rather those of some ‘minorities’.

Richard Epstein: The Dream Derailed

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of over 200,000 people. The crowd had gathered to protest the dangerous state into which race relations had fallen in the summer of 1963. King’s memorable speech was part of “the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” and its solemn cadences ring as powerfully today they did 50 years ago. No one who heard it could forget its immensely powerful assault on segregation, the demise of which no respectable person—northerner or southerner—mourns today. No one should forget that King’s speech was a major catalyst in moving a still reluctant nation to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Mike Butler: Implications of treaty in constitution

What are the implications of the view that most people think the Treaty of Waitangi must have constitutional status, and why would the Maori Party have a goal of goal of ensuring that the current constitutional review gives effect to the treaty? Aside from the legal arguments whether the treaty is or should be in or out of the New Zealand constitution a significant body of race-based affirmative action has grown around the Waitangi Tribunal’s interpretation of the treaty, and the government’s response.

So how does the Waitangi Tribunal interpret the treaty? The tribunal says the use of the word “kawanatanga” in Article 1 of the treaty was an inadequate translation of the word “sovereignty”, and this led Maori to believe they “ceded to the Queen a right of governance in return for the promise of protection, while retaining the authority they always had to manage their own affairs”.