In a recent column in The Post, Sereana Naepi and Peter Davis claim that ‘the current push to mandate “free speech” policies in New Zealand universities’ – including through the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No. 2) that is currently before Parliament – represents ‘a manufactured crisis.’
But they fail to engage with the now substantial body of evidence that academic freedom and free speech are under threat at our universities, much of which was summarised in the New Zealand Initiative report on the subject that came out last year.
Naepi and Davis complain that ‘a recent op-ed’ on the topic ‘did not cite a single recent example of a major intrusion on “free speech” that would have required the exercise of the powers envisaged in the bill.’
Our report documents 21 academic freedom controversies that have taken place over the past decade, including the deplatforming of Don Brash at Massey in 2019, of the ‘Feminism 2020’ conference (also at Massey), and of the gender-critical feminist Daphna Whitmore at AUT in 2022.
All these deplatformings would have been much more difficult under the current bill, which specifically requires universities to commit to not denying ‘the use of university premises by an invited speaker because of that speaker’s ideas or opinions.’
Naepi and Davis quote officials as claiming that ‘many of these concerns are anecdotal’ and that there is ‘limited evidence on the actual extent and impact of freedom of speech concerns in New Zealand.’
As our report showed, though, there have now been six surveys touching on academic freedom in this country in recent years. All of them suggest that substantial numbers of students and academics feel uncomfortable discussing certain topics in a university context, with colonialism and sex/gender topping the list.
Naepi and Davis accuse opponents of confusing academic freedom with free speech. They argue that this transforms ‘universities from institutions that advance knowledge and education into platforms where any idea can claim legitimacy simply by demanding access.’
This is where it might have been helpful to actually look at the evidence. Brash (who had been invited to speak by a student politics club) was deplatformed because of his views about colonialism. Feminism 2020 and Whitmore’s talk were cancelled because they would have discussed biological sex. Are Naepi and Davis suggesting these topics should be off-limits in our universities?
Meanwhile, their own definition of academic freedom (‘Academic freedom protects rigorous inquiry conducted according to scholarly standards’) conflicts with the way academic freedom has long been defined in the Education and Training Act.
The Act emphasises ‘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.’ It imposes no limitations based on ‘scholarly standards.’ This is as it should be. If a speaker expresses bad ideas on university campuses, academics have an opportunity to debunk them. And ideas that disagree with scholarly orthodoxy sometimes turn out to advance knowledge.
Naepi and Davis are also laudably keen to defend university autonomy, which they think the bill would undermine.
Academics should be autonomous in their teaching and research. But nothing in the bill would change this. In fact, the bill would enhance academic freedom by making it more difficult for powerful university managers to punish academics for their views.
Moreover, the Education and Training Act makes clear academic freedom is a principle that universities have to uphold. If they are failing to do so, the state (which, after all, largely funds the universities) is well within its rights to take measures to remedy the situation.
But ‘if universities were to lose [their] autonomy,’ we are warned, ‘they would also lose their credibility as independent learning institutions—and ultimately endanger the very concept and nature of a university.’
As we have seen, the current bill would enhance academic freedom without diminishing universities’ autonomy in any meaningful sense. But the credibility issue is worth addressing.
In the US, the proportion of Americans with “little” or “no” confidence in higher education has tripled since 2015, a period during which the country’s universities have seen a marked increase in attempts to deplatform speakers and punish academics for their views.
With New Zealand universities seemingly following their US counterparts along the same path, there is a very real risk that confidence in tertiary education will experience a similarly dramatic decline here.
The provisions for academic freedom in the Education and Training Amendment Bill would help reduce this risk, especially if it is bolstered in the way we have recommended in our submission on the bill.
Meanwhile, it might help our universities’ reputation if current and former New Zealand academics took the time to do the necessary reading and engage with the relevant evidence before writing ill-informed columns on vital issues of academic principle.
Drs. James Kierstead and Michael Johnston are senior fellows in education at the New Zealand Initiative and former Victoria University of Wellington academics.
