‘The University will not take a position on public matters and issues that do not pertain to the mission and purpose of the University.’ So states Victoria University of Wellington’s Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression Policy, which was adopted earlier this year.
With these words, Victoria belatedly joined a number of respected US institutions – most notably Harvard – which publicly recommitted themselves to institutional neutrality last year.
Institutional neutrality is the principle that universities as institutions (though not individual academics) should be politically neutral. It makes even more sense for taxpayer-funded institutions, like all of New Zealand’s universities, than it does for private colleges like Harvard.
So why have Victoria academics asked their university to take up a position that would contradict not only this widely recognised principle, but also their own clearly stated policy?
VUW’s Academic Board recently voted to endorse ‘boycott, divestment and other non-violent’ measures against Israel, according to a press release by Student Justice for Palestine (Pōneke), who tabled the motion.
The motion passed ‘with 55 votes in favour and one abstention,’ the press release also noted, and ‘directs the University to sever ties and not build future ones with’ Israeli institutions.
Strictly speaking, institutional neutrality has not yet been violated. The decision about whether to do so – by adopting boycotting and divestment as an official university position – now rests in the hands of VUW’s Te Hiwa (formerly the Senior Leadership Team).
Whatever they do, though, the vote shows that there are clearly a good number of academics at VUW who want their university to contravene a principle it publicly committed to only a few months ago.
It also shows that the institutional neutrality statements that have recently been adopted by other New Zealand universities (Otago, for instance) are going to be severely tested in the years ahead.
This is important, as the current government is placing a great deal of faith in universities committing to institutional neutrality on paper. Its package of amendments to the Education and Training Act, which is currently going through Parliament, would simply require universities to include a commitment not to ‘take positions on matters that do not directly concern their role or function’ in their freedom of expression statements.
What if the universities renege on their commitments, though, or uphold the letter of their commitments but not their spirit? What happens then? The legislation, at least in its current form, has no answers.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with academics criticising or peacefully protesting the actions of the state of Israel. That is rightly protected by academic freedom.
A line would be crossed, though, if a university adopted a corporate position on a controversial political issue, as VUW’s Academic Board has apparently just urged it to do.
As the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven report put it, ‘the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.’ Taking up an institutional position risks chilling the speech of students and academics, who are, after all, the university’s employees.
It also raises questions among the public about what exactly their tax money is being used for. Is it funding politically neutral educational institutions that follow the evidence where it leads, hire on the basis of merit, and foster students of all political and religious persuasions? Or is their money instead being ploughed into political causes that happen to be favoured by the professoriate?
You might have hoped – and we did hope – that academics at VUW and other institutions would see the writing on the wall, and voluntarily dedicate themselves to upholding institutional neutrality and other principles that were once central to academic life.
You might also have hoped that when a group of student activists tabled a motion at Academic Board, VUW academics would have recognised this as a ‘teachable moment.’ They might have explained to the students why it is so important for universities as institutions to remain politically neutral. And why asking the university to take on a position on a political issue – any position on any political issue – would therefore be inappropriate.
That none of them did so is concerning. So is the fact that the motion to ask the university to violate institutional neutrality passed 55-0, with only one abstention.
None of this bodes well for the future of our universities. University leadership will have to hold firm and make sure their taxpayer-supported institutions remain the politically neutral entities we pay them to be. And the government will have to make sure its new bill incentivises them to do so.
Drs James Kierstead and Michael Johnston are senior fellows in education at The New Zealand Initiative and former VUW academics
