Further, while it has been several months in the making, the statement’s approval this week is good timing. It occurred at the first university council meeting for new vice-chancellor Grant Robertson.
He is leading an institution desperate for good news and a boost in morale. Staff should welcome the statement. Hopefully, they have not become too worn down and cynical.
It will not remove the various acute pressures or make a noticeable difference to ongoing restructurings. But it could lift just a little what some staff see as an oppressive atmosphere.
After all, free speech should apply not just to society’s issues and academic ideas, but also to the university itself and its behaviour. If, as described, free speech is the ‘‘lifeblood of the university’’ then staff should have scope, in theory at least, to criticise the administration and its operations and policies.
While the opinion page of this newspaper has published searching pieces about the university, they have almost all been from ex-staff members or peripheral colleagues. Employed staff are unlikely to dare.
Although it would still be challenging for them publicly to ‘‘Dare to be Wise’’ (Sapere Aude, the university’s historic motto), this is now conceivable.
The judge in this week’s health and safety decision on Auckland University and high-profile Associate Prof Siouxsie Wiles reinforced this possibility. The judgement acknowledged academic freedom includes the freedom to criticise one’s employer.
Indeed, universities are not just like other businesses providing services and endeavouring to make surpluses. They are not just teaching and research organisations under a typical ‘‘managerial’’ ethos.
Although academic staff — and they should all recognise this — need to be cognizant of student demands and interests and financial imperatives, universities must be different.
They ought to be more transparent, more open to debate and exemplars of free speech rather than the all-too-often groupthink. If they are to fulfil that oft-quoted, and legislated, role as ‘‘critic and conscience of society’’, they should feature robust and unsettling discussions.
Surely, too, there is room for conservative voices as well as progressive points of view.
The free speech policy dialogue was led, sensibly, by a philosopher, Prof James Maclaurin. The university has had an international reputation and proud tradition in this relatively objective discipline.
The statement is as simple as it could be and relatively short. It also precedes the government’s free speech requirements for universities.
Free Speech Union spokesman Jonathan Ayling called it the best statement on free speech at any university in the country. He hoped it would set the tone for the others.
One part says: ‘‘The university affirms that it will not restrict debate or deliberation simply because the ideas put forth are thought by some to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the members of the university community — its students and staff — to make those judgements for themselves. The university is not a place for safety from ideas — it is a place to engage in critical thought and debate in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Our students will not be prepared for a complex and challenging world unless they have experience negotiating conflict and disagreement.’’
And so say us. An emphasis on microaggressions, trigger warnings and treating students as delicate daffodils unable to weather the slightest breeze has infected parts of United States’ academia. Keep it out.
Let debate — respectful, naturally — flourish. And that means on the issues, not the person. It does not mean dissing differences with labels like racism and misogynism or woke and politically correct.
It will not be easy, of course, and Māori policies, for example, could run into conflict with the statement.
Act New Zealand, the political party insisting on university free speech, summed up what has transpired. While it will have to wait and see how Otago’s policies function in practice, the statement looked like a strong foundation for free expression and open academic inquiry.
