Waikato University has started an internal inquiry after a number of senior Māori staff alleged structural racism from the institution. One former and one current staff member say the issue’s been bubbling away for years. In 2018, staff and students of the University of Waikato’s Māori and Indigenous Studies faculty fought to stop the faculty … Read more
Emerging Māori and Pacific academics are already severely underrepresented at universities. Now they’re in jeopardy of being the first ones to go. As the impacts of Covid-19 bite, universities are looking for ways to cut budgets. There’s a serious danger that in doing so, they erase a generation of Māori and Pacific researchers. The pandemic … Read more
With the university campus rapidly becoming a space of conflict, is it possible to remain faithful to academic freedom while at the same time mitigating the most harmful effects of hate speech? Massey University provost Giselle Byrnes discusses. Academic freedom and free speech have been much debated in New Zealand in recent months. Chief among … Read more
Otago University professor James Flynn says the ‘banning’ of his book by the publisher that rejected it is an attack on free speech. That’s an obtuse understanding of what free speech really is, writes Danyl Mclauchlan. James Flynn, an emeritus professor at Otago University, is one of New Zealand’s most renowned social scientists. His work … Read more