Ivory Folly? The University of Auckland’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon, upheld the right of the radical nationalist group, Action Zealandia, to exercise their freedom of speech – no matter how distasteful that speech might be. A wiser community of students and scholars would have nodded their agreement and moved on. But, no: the position taken by the Vice-Chancellor was immediately challenged by his own staff. Into the valley of censorship and suppression rode the four-hundred!
FEW SPECTACLES are more tragic than those in which a
community destroys its core values in the misguided belief that it is upholding
them. The 400+ academics who put their names to an open letter condemning
racism and white supremacy on the Auckland campus undoubtedly did so with the
best of intentions, but in signing the document they have either deliberately,
or unwittingly, endorsed a document of profound illiberality. They have placed
their reputations at the disposal of extremists whose exhortations will only
exacerbate the intolerance they purport to condemn.
The Open Letter begins by invoking the idea of the
university as a community of scholars and students: a place “dedicated to the
creation, preservation and sharing of knowledge”. This fine beginning is marred
almost immediately by the jarring claim that the university is also a place
where: “We build our collective understanding of the world and ourselves, while
nurturing innovation and maintaining what is best in our society.”
This transformation of knowledge: from the fruits of work
undertaken by individual scholars; to a collectivist endeavour undertaken for
the maintenance of “what is best in our society”; is as sinister as it is
tendentious. By this definition, the university is a place where individual
insights must be subordinated to those which, in the collective judgement of
the individual’s peers, constitute “what is best”. Ignored completely in this
formulation is the fact that “what is best”, both in and for “our society”, has
been a matter of continuous disputation since at least the time of Socrates and
Plato.
In case we were in any doubt, the Open Letter declares it to
be the opinion of the 400+ signatories that “racism and white supremacy have no
place at the University of Auckland”.
No place? Not even in the disciplines of Anthropology,
History, Philosophy and Sociology? Is it truly the case that the ideas and
behaviours constitutive of so many of the characters and cultures of the
University of Auckland’s students (and staff) are unworthy of academic
scrutiny? Is the ideology of white supremacy, potentially so dangerous when
driven underground, not to be interrogated and analysed? Is the near ubiquity
of racism in everyday human behaviour not something to be investigated and
discussed?
Apparently not.
The Open Letter makes it clear that its authors have already
investigated the website of those responsible for postering and stickering the
Auckland campus – the casus belli of this little culture war – and, in
their own words: “have no difficulty in identifying this group and such
displays as white supremacist in nature”.
It is most unlikely that “Action Zealandia”, the proprietor
of the website and publisher of the offending posters and stickers, would
disagree. These “radical nationalists” (as they prefer to call themselves) make
no attempt to disguise their belief that a reassertion of European male
supremacy is “what is best” for New Zealand society.
Many New Zealanders would assume that such an obviously
anachronistic political organisation would not present much of a threat to a
university full of highly-educated men and women. Surely, a group of confused
young men, nostalgic for the lost social and political verities of the
nineteenth century, are more to be pitied than feared?
That was certainly the opinion of the University of
Auckland’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon, who upheld the right
of those putting up the posters and stickers to exercise their freedom of
speech – no matter how distasteful that speech might be. A wiser community of
students and scholars would have nodded their agreement and moved on. But,
alas, throughout the twenty-first century academic world such expressions of
tolerance (and intellectual maturity) are as rare as they are inflammatory. The
position taken by the Vice-Chancellor was not to be allowed to stand
unchallenged. Into the valley of censorship and suppression rode the
four-hundred!
The world-view of the Open Letter’s authors merits every bit
as much scrutiny as that of Action Zealandia’s – if only because both display
an equal measure of ideological vehemence. Enveloping the academics’ critique
is the Tiriti O Waitangi, serving here as the incongruous stand-in for New
Zealand’s yet-to-be-written bi-cultural constitution. As such, it becomes the
principal tool for delegitimating not only Action Zealandia and its
by-right-of-conquest arguments for the hegemony of European males in Aotearoa,
but also un-reconstructed Vice-Chancellors.
According to the Open Letter, these colonialist throwbacks
are guilty of taking the “absolutist” position that “freedom of speech extends
to the right to speak in ways that are hateful.” Hateful to whom? Ah well,
that’s not a question that can be responded to straightforwardly. To answer
that question required this little masterpiece of what the unkind might call
“woke-speak”. (Or, what the even more unkind readers of George Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty-Four would call “Newspeak”.)
“We also understand that the language of rights is complex
and nuanced, recognising that such displays create an environment that brings
harm to segments of our community, fraying the cultural tapestry that provides
our diverse campus community with vitality and energy.”
Or, to render this unicorns-and-flowers circumlocution
into plain speech: “Our students have become so fragile, psychologically and
ideologically, that they fall to pieces when confronted by people who do not
like them or the cultures they come from.”
Not that the authors of the Open Letter were above fraying a
cultural tapestry or two of their own. How about this for a flowery way of
calling the Vice-Chancellor a “pale, stale, male”?
“We also note that by virtue of their race, gender, class,
country of origin, religious affiliation, sexual or gender identity, many
people empowered to judge conduct on university campuses are less likely to be
the focus of hate speech, and may be slower to recognise its impact on its
intended targets.”
Upon further analysis, however, the humour of this sentence
begins to fade. At its heart is the idea that credible political judgement
derives purely and simply from one’s identity. Followed to its logical
conclusion this variety of “identity politics” accords more weight to the
opinions of a 19-year-old undergraduate woman from a non-European cultural
background, than it does to a male Professor of Philosophy who has been
teaching, writing and publishing peer-reviewed articles and books for the best
part of 40 years.
This surrendering of expertise to identity is not the worst
of it, however: not when one considers this remarkable sentence:
“However, ‘speech’ has many forms, including gesture and
nonviolent protest. If these posters constitute ‘free speech’, the same can be
said of the actions of individuals who remove those that they encounter.”
Um, no, actually, it can’t. Action Zealandia, in displaying
its posters and stickers, is asserting its right to have its ideas considered,
debated, and, if unable to convince its interlocutors, rejected. Bluntly, it is
declaring: “We are here – so come and contend with us openly on the battlefield
of ideas.” The only honourable answer that “any university worthy of the name”
can give to such a challenge is: “Bring it on!”
No such luck. That is not the way the authors of the Open
Letter roll. They are not really into contending openly on the battlefield of
ideas. The only form of speech they’re willing to defend is the form that rips
down posters and tears off stickers. The form that screams “STFU!” at everyone
with whom it disagrees.
The anonymous authors of the Open Letter may wax eloquent
about an “environment that celebrates free and open enquiry, teaches the
lessons of the past, and builds a better future for all”, but their
interpretation of “what is best” for society looks suspiciously like the one
provided by every other totalitarian ideology: “What is best is what we say
is best.” It may be the Academic Left that is ripping down posters today,
confident that it possesses the power to silence all those who refuse to toe
its line. But, times change.
Those insisting upon ideological conformity and suppressing
dissenting opinion today may yet be given cause to look back upon the
sentiments contained in this Open Letter and rue the day that the “critic and
conscience” of society gave away the chance to expose the Right’s weaknesses in
front of those who, 20 years later, are telling them that their left-wing ideas
“have no place at the University of Auckland”.
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 4 October 2019.
