However, last week conflict broke out across campus when the Otago Daily Times reported that the university had prepared a discussion document outlining its wares as part of an attempt to pitch for contracts with the New Zealand Defence Force.
The document was drafted after the university responded to NZDF tender documents, which included a contract for weapons research.
That led some to conclude that the university was therefore hoping to play a part in developing weaponry — a misapprehension it was swift to dispel, telling the ODT that the university was not proposing to bid for the defence weapons portion of the tender.
‘‘The university has capabilities in areas such as protection, sensing, geospatial capability, communications, human health and wellbeing, leadership and organisational development, environmental and ecological science, disaster management and clean energy innovation — among many other things,’’ deputy vice-chancellor for research and innovation Prof Greg Cook said.
The question which arises from this dispute is why should it not sell the fruits of its labour to the New Zealand Defence Force — or to providers of defence technology in other countries for that matter?
Otago has a long and proud connection to New Zealand’s military. Graduates have served in all its branches, service personnel have been part of its faculty.
In generations past a link to the military would have been something to celebrated, but for some that is now something to beat a hasty retreat from.
One university staff member said the implications for academics were fraught as it could impinge on their moral or ethical views. It could also make the university more prone to cyber espionage or other forms of sabotage.
Dunedin Green list MP and former Otago University Students Association president Francisco Hernandez said any involvement in weapons development would be deeply shameful and antithetical to the university’s values.
The university’s own document recognised the potential for controversy, ‘‘given the culture of anti-militarism which has arisen in much of the country’’.
New Zealand is a peace-loving country and no sensible Kiwi wants the country to become embroiled in a war.
But not everyone on planet Earth has such a benign view of the world. There are wars aplenty aflame today, but there are also armistices aplenty, where NZDF personnel are serving as peacekeepers.
Being well armed does not indicate a willingness to use those weapons, but it does indicate an ability to defend ourselves if need be, and a readiness for New Zealand to meet its obligations as a member of the international community when called upon.
Technology used in warfare by the military can just as readily be turned to other uses: the aforementioned peacekeeping missions for one, humanitarian relief for another.
Those service personnel should not be sent into a danger zone without the best equipment, and should that be locally designed military technology so much the better.
The university document went to say that it would be necessary to communicate to the public ‘‘the ethical values and necessity of the tech and the safer world it provides’’.
The ethics of defence technology are in the morals of the beholder — which the institution acknowledges, noting that individual academics were free to abstain from such work.
But defence technology is not exclusively used in war. Among a myriad of possible uses, search and rescue, fisheries surveillance, mapping and surveying, resilience and medicine spring to mind.
The university says that any future work it may secure in this sphere would to be lawful, meet New Zealand government standards and comply with the university’s ethics policies and procedures.
So it should. But such work should not face an automatic moral veto simply for being in connection with the defence force.
