Free speech and tertiary education in NZ
Given the recent debates, disputes, and discussions concerning free speech in New Zealand universities, it’s timely to go back and examine a forgotten episode from which we might learn how – and how not – to proceed today. In a time where issues of free speech are somehow taken to be primarily a right-wing concern and cause, we need to be constantly reminded that free speech was often a left-wing cause – and it should be a cross-political spectrum cause. This debate arose out of a book written on the future of the modern university – and the response of the Chancellor of the University of New Zealand to its discussion on academic freedom.
In 1949 the British philosopher and university administrator Sir Walter Moberly published The Crisis in the University. From 1938-1947 Moberly had been part of ‘The Moot’, a discussion and societal planning group of noted intellectuals, including T.S. Eliot, sociologist Karl Mannheim, writer John Middleton Murray (and the New Zealand Presbyterian-Christian Socialist Lex Miller). They were concerned with questions of social planning and freedom and wondered if, in the face of both fascism and communism, what values postwar society could be constructed upon? Was there to be any role for religiously based values? And if not, what could take their place?
Moberly’s book was a call for the post-war university to recover societal relevance and influence and reassert its role and civilisational values in a world in crisis; that is, a world experiencing a pervading sense of insecurity. The central question was the role of the individual in the face of mass society. Written from a Christian viewpoint, Moberly’s book had a significant and widespread impact across the English-speaking world, including here in New Zealand. In the context of the early years of the Cold War, Moberly’s discussion of university autonomy and intellectual freedom – and its limits and possibilities – attracted attention. He argued for the freedom both of the institution and of the individual teacher; that is, for an ‘open university’, accommodating what he termed “even academic ‘infidels’…No thinking will be suppressed as ‘dangerous’. Above all there will be no ‘tests for teachers’, no articles of faith, however widely drawn, which will be prescribed as a condition of service.”
Moberly therefore supported the right of what he termed “ ‘honest heretics’ [to] be employed and teach in the university, and not only their right but that they should “be made welcome”. The only reason to exclude anyone “is not to silence honest advocacy of any doctrine, however offensive, but to present a dishonest manipulation of university machinery for the subversion of everything for which universities stand.” That is: “To accept the wrong answers is less serious than to fail to ask the right questions.”
Moberly’s book and challenge was taken up and commented on by Chancellor David Smith in his address to the Senate of the University of New Zealand in 1950. At a time when such addresses were widely reported and printed as stand-alone pamphlets, Smith’s views attracted widespread attention. Having first addressed the need for a National Archives system, and then discussed the University Grants Committee, Smith then turned to “the basic conditions of University education”. Following a detailed precis of Moberly’s book, Smith asks whether New Zealand can undertake Moberly’s desire for universities to be places where there can occur “discussion between first-rate minds of different intertest on the level at which real convictions are formed?” Smith, in line with Moberly argued for the appointment of staff whose beliefs and values may be seen to opposed to basic common values – if they hadn’t hidden their views upon appointment. For Smith agreed with Moberly that as long they constituted a minority, so as not to disturb what was taken to be the normal outlook founded on common basic values, such heretics could and should, be appointed: “That means, I take it, that the university, while holding itself free to appoint to its staff a heretic with high technical qualification, will not consciously appoint heretics in such number as to disturb the normal orientation founded on the common basic values,”. He did wonder whether New Zealand’s governing bodies would agree with that view? Would the Academic Board and professorial boards, who might be asked to advise their college councils, agree with it? If they didn’t, what was the true attitude which they thought should be adopted in making appointments to the staff?
Smith concluded with a (qualified) statement for academic freedom:
“For my part, I think that Sir Walter Moberly’s view is not only legitimate but desirable. In a college so oriented, but with room for the heretics, conditions will be established in which each student will not only be trained for his profession but also will have opportunity of acquiring ‘a clear and worthy view of life.’ Under these conditions, creative minorities will have their influence, but they will exert it within a moral order upon which the college is by basic view and postulate well founded.”
The follow-up discussion of Smith’s address by the Senate focused on whether, while the Communist party was legal in New Zealand, a communist should be appointed? Communism appeared to be outside the limits of acceptable heresy, as the Press reported on 27 January 1950:
“I would not appoint such a man [a communist], to the staff of a university college in New Zealand, no matter how brilliant he was,” said Sir David Smith. ‘‘l would get some Government department to take him,” he added with a smile. There were some very brilliant men in the universities, who subscribed to doctrines involving the use of power without moral restraint and good faith, said Sir David Smith, who referred specifically to brilliant scientists on the staffs of British universities. A man’s academic allegiance to communism might not be sufficient to debar him from the staff of a university, if the university was quite certain he would not support any practical application of the doctrines. It might be said that although he was a member of the Communist Party, it was nevertheless a legal party in New Zealand, and he could be appointed. “However, any university college council which today is faced with an application from an avowed Communist should be very careful indeed when he has openly showed that he would defy good faith.”
Smith’s view was criticised by the New Zealand Student’s Congress: “The destruction of academic freedom, which was the basic nature of the university, would result if such a policy were followed” and they passed a motion which included: “It seems that such a policy will of itself immediately destroy the basic nature of the university as a place where truth is taught by the interaction of thought. We believe the Chancellor sincerely wishes to safeguard our university from a view which, when applied, excludes freedom. but a university siding with the suggested policy itself destroys freedom and this renders its avowed ideals meaningless. We think, therefore, that a policy of exclusion is mistaken.”
One of the more interesting responses was that of the editor of the Listener, M.H. Holcroft, in his editorial “The Toleration of Heresy” (10 February 1950), that “this is obviously an issue which compels a university to reveal its intellectual and moral standing”, and he endorsed the necessity of including radical thought in the university. He made an interesting observation regarding the role of wider society to debates on academic freedom – an observation that is just as true today: “…if the moral and intellectual climate – which comes in the main from the surrounding community – is healthy, they will be studied objectively.” Holcroft concludes with a clear statement for academic freedom – and free speech:
“Disturbing ideas are to be found in every age and culture. The quickest way to give them an inflated value is to declare them unsuitable for discussion. They are better in the open.”
The debate then moved into the literary and cultural journal Landfall in its June 1950 issue, with editor Charles Brasch noting academic freedom affects everyone in New Zealand “who are seriously concerned about political and intellectual issues.”
In the first discussion R.G. Durrant states the real harm to the university is done by the lecturer who stops thinking in their subject, and instead is content with just “endlessly repeating lectures from the same notebook”. Durrant warns that to undertake heresy hunting in the university is to limit the central necessity of “the most complete intellectual freedom”. Similarly, the Canterbury economist and philosopher Wolfgang Rosenberg argued for the central necessity of a critical mind coupled with courage, emphasising that both facts and values must come under critical scrutiny.
His discussion applies as much to today’s issues as it did to that context in 1950:
“Thought if it is to be honest and realistic must follow where the argument leads; thought is indivisible, you cannot set any limits to it, prescribe its direction, or dictate its methods. The whole of our philosophy and science is based on this fundamental freedom. To forbid one mode of thought, or exclude any one result of thinking is in effect to cripple thought itself, and to make it a toy not worth the attention of serious minds. Destroy freedom of thought in the university and you destroy the very purpose for which the university ultimately exists. That is the result to which the Chancellor’s banning of communists and communism from the university would lead. For if you start banning thought in one direction you will inevitably have to ban it in others as well.”
Rosenberg combines academic freedom with the question of civil liberties, declaring “the very meaning and purpose of the university” as a place of “non-conformist, independent minds questioning our values and examining our behaviour critically and fearlessly.” If this is not allowed, he feared a New Zealand version of the notorious Cold War Un-American Affairs’ committee.
What can we learn from this discussion?
I believe we need to be able to articulate what a university stands for – and then defend, within each university, what this means in practice. That is, the right to express heretical ideas – whether heretical to staff or heretical to students – needs to be defended, both within the institution and outside of it.
We also need to show more courage than both Smith and Moberly and not only tolerate heresy but support it – and that extends to current viewpoints and beliefs regarded as akin to how communism was viewed in the 1950s.
But perhaps most importantly, we need to remember Holcroft’s insight that the issues within the university reflect the issues and values outside it. Academic freedom cannot be separated from wider questions of societal freedom, values – and civil liberties.
