New Zealand’s university leaders seem restless. In recent months, Massey, Victoria, Canterbury and Auckland Universities have all advertised for new Vice Chancellors (VCs).
Along with the things one might expect in a VC, like an outstanding academic record and experience in senior management, the jobs ads all emphasise Treaty of Waitangi considerations. The Massey ad says that ‘Te Tiriti principles are central to its governance and operations.’ Canterbury University wants its new VC to ‘embed Te Tiriti principles across all aspects of university life.’ The University of Auckland claims that ‘a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi is fundamental to its future direction.’
These statements are all rather vague. Victoria University of Wellington is more specific. It will require its new VC to “promote mātauranga Māori through all aspects of learning, teaching and research.”
The Treaty is foundational document for New Zealand. But the way it is invoked in these statements has implications for the institutional neutrality of universities and for academic freedom.
The Education and Training Act stipulates that universities must develop freedom-of-expression statements, committing them not to take “public positions on matters that do not directly concern their role or functions.” In other words, universities must maintain institutional neutrality on contested political matters.
The VC job ads all sit uncomfortably with that requirement. There are few things in New Zealand today more hotly contested than the role of the Treaty.
But why should universities maintain institutional neutrality?
Part of an academic’s job is to publicly contribute expertise to important policy questions. When universities take institutional positions on such questions, academics, who are their employees, may feel too intimidated to disagree with them publicly. Institutional neutrality therefore protects academics in fulfilling their public-facing roles.
It also protects the credibility of universities. If universities are seen to be politicised, people who disagree with their politics will not trust them, pay attention to them, or want to fund them. They will look for insight elsewhere.
The result will be a less trusting and more polarised society. So, while universities are free to take public positions on matters like funding for universities, they should avoid doing so on, say, the ethics of euthanasia or climate change.
Given the profound implications of Treaty debates for the future of the country, academics with relevant expertise should have a strong role in those debates. Yet several surveys in recent years have shown that the Treaty is the issue academics and students feel least comfortable discussing. When universities make open-ended statements linking Treaty principles to their operations, which include teaching and research, they risk blunting the contributions dissenting academics might make.
As well as threatening institutional neutrality, the Massey, Canterbury and Auckland statements might also infringe academic freedom. Victoria’s requirement almost certainly does.
Academic freedom, enshrined in the Education and Training Act, protects academics to teach their courses and conduct their research as they see fit, within the constraints of disciplinary norms. While the Act also affords freedom to universities to regulate courses, historically, this has been confined to deciding what courses will be offered.
Some interpretations of Treaty principles would have no impact on academic freedom. For example, if a university established a programme to help Māori students succeed, there would be no problem. On the other hand, if Treaty principles were invoked to control course content, there would.
Victoria’s requirement signals an explicit requirement for academics to include certain content in their courses and an intention to regulates the conduct and focus of their research. In so doing, it risks overriding the disciplinary expertise of academics. Imposing course content that has nothing to do with the discipline within which a course is situated is overreach. It opens the door to ideological control.
If, in conducting their research and teaching, academics have to go along with things with which they disagree, they are, in effect, being forced to lie. If students have to recite political beliefs they do not hold, all they are really learning is obedience to authority.
This not a hypothetical concern. One former Victoria academic has discovered, at considerable personal cost, what dissent can mean in practice.
In 2024, Dr James Kierstead, a Senior Lecturer in classical studies at Victoria University, was made redundant. He wasn’t alone. The university was strapped for cash and many academics and administrators lost their jobs. But Dr Kierstead, who has also written several reports on universities for The New Zealand Initiative, believed there were anomalies in the process leading to his redundancy. He took legal action against the university.
Through his lawyer, Dr Kierstead obtained a document from the university outlining the reasons he was made redundant. The document noted his strong research record and contribution to teaching. However, it also cited ‘limitations’ in ‘incorporating Māori and Pasifika perspectives’ in his courses on ancient Greek history.
Vague commitments to Treaty principles and promises to incorporate mātauranga Māori in all courses and research are more than window dressing. They have real consequences, both for academics’ professional lives and for universities’ duty to protect academic freedom and integrity.
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