As a university cancelled a talk I was about to give (due to being too sensitive a topic supposedly), I ponder whether taxpayers should keep funding such censorious institutions.
Very disappointing! New Zealand universities are not serving their purpose. They are increasingly places of ideological homogeneity, where students are treated like kindergarteners who must be protected from the world and ideas.
"why do we have universities if they cannot discuss tough topics? Why do New Zealanders work long hours to fund institutions that are scared to talk, an essential prerequisite of learning?"
Universities have now become the 'gargoyles of woke'!
I attended a Free Speech Union meeting recently on 'Institutional Neutrality: Academia and the Fight for Open Dialogue'! Three University academics spoke!
Not surprisingly the conversation moved away from the stated topic to something else, ‘academic freedom’, which I believe is a totally different subject!
Only one of the speakers seemed to be on point in respect to what I & I expect others came to hear debated.
Instead the two men were indulging in for the most part, ‘intellectual sophistry’, with no connection to reality; what is actually happening in society, our Universities & also other work places, especially Government funded ones but not exclusively!
I would say at best they were indulging in ‘introspective navel gazing & intellectual dishonesty’! They didn’t address the topic, which is how universities or other academic institutions are dictating to their students & faculty what they should think, believe & hence say!
They were mostly talking from their own perspective as employees of a university! Did they not understand the topic, or were they being deliberately evasive?
To be honest, it got a bit boring as things do when we are no longer on task, & NOT addressing the ‘elephant in the room’; what is actually happening to our society with Cultural Marxism inveigling its way into every ‘cultural sphere’ of society, so that we are being led into a another 'lock down' of ideas & open debate! Another Dark Ages!
Look at what has been happening in England, literally people being arrested for a ‘thought crime’ as in silent prayer or preaching the gospels!
The very idea that universities should be the ‘critic & conscience’ of society, ‘nice slogan’, is actually quite scary given where they are going! Plus whose conscience? Woke Marxist Progressives’?
Remember, society used to be predicated on Judeo-Christian values, which gave rise to our western liberal democracies, but now those very democracies & values have been hi-jacked in the name of ‘democracy’ by left wing ideologues & activists, which Universities have been & are hotbeds for! Their goal is to ultimately suppress ‘thought & debate’ as in the novel ‘1984’, which is what in effect happened during this 'debate'!
The shift away from those traditional ‘underpinning values’ is the problem! Take away the foundations of a building & it will fall! Mt 7:24-27, Mt 28:18-20
The Left have craftily shifted the goal posts so that we are now debating according to their ‘terms & references’, & what is now ‘supposed orthodoxy’!
The ‘Treaty of Waitangi’ is an example! They have so deviated the meaning of the Treaty to mean something other than what it actually states with a bit of ‘clever mistranslation’ from Maori back to English! Yet English is the ‘source language’ & everyone understands English! It’s not like having to learn Greek & Hebrew to understand the source documents of the Bible! (Look up the ‘Littlewood Draft’ re the Treaty)
People have been so brainwashed about the Treaty that even Parliament was too scared to debate or even want to acknowledge David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill’! There’s your left wing progressivism silencing people & debate even in the hallowed ‘debating chambers’ of Parliament!
Hence my frustration!
For ‘free speech’ to be ‘free speech’, it does require the ‘truth’, not ‘misinformation & word salads’!
What did Jesus say? “The truth will set you free”, not just in an existential way, but also in practical material ways, hence we have science for that purpose plus everyday truths about the world around us & how to live safely in an ever changing physical world as even our parents taught us!
If political candidates lie to us about their true intentions, then we can’t make an ‘informed decision’ about who to vote for! So ‘truth & honesty’ underpins a ‘free’ & ‘well functioning society’! If you don’t know the rules to a game, you can’t be ‘free’ playing it!
All these institutions as so the Government must be held up to the ‘scrutiny of truth’, & that is why people must be educated enough to know what is going on in their nation, as whilst people are in the dark & not actively involved, then we will be led to somewhere we don’t want to go, as both Fascism & Communism have proved!
The Marxists, Progressives are leading an ‘unwitting population’ like lambs to the slaughter!
Intellectual banter among academics is all well & good, but it won’t save our nation!
I totally agree, Simon and support the Free Speech Union and any others who wish to see ideas once more argued and debated in our Universities.
I note your picture of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, which commemorates the four million Jews who died at the hands of Nazi Germany during WWII, and cannot help asking how a people who underwent such suffering, could inflict such similar suffering on another people today. If the 78 years since the establishment of Israel had been spent in establishing friendships with their neighbours, instead of seeking security and nuclear weaponry in secret, we might be seeing a far different middle East today.
I know there are quite terrible and tragic enmities, historic too, as characterised by Shakespeare in 'The Merchant of Venice'. But a similar if not totally aligned situation was present between France and Germany prior to 1945 producing the only two world wars there have ever been, yet from the 1950s onwards a reconciliation took place that saw them draw together and provide the foundations of what we know today as the EU. Miracles do happen!
As we both value freedom of expression, allow me to disagree with your contention that somehow Israel is at fault for not ‘being friendlier’ to its neighbours. Sounds like a Cindy ‘be kind’ mantra of ignorance. The EU largely comprises countries who share Judeo Christian heritage, whereas Israel is surrounded by lands of completely different religious views & utterly hostile to their existence. Yet thanks to Trump and Israel’s engagement, they have formed peaceful arrangements with the Saudis, UAE etc. they even have an enduring if-not-perfect peace with Egypt (who learnt a lesson in 67). Israel is a kind country, ask those of varying faiths who live there, but they ain’t naive and I suppose they get sick of arseholes trying to destroy them.
Walking through hallways of Canterbury university it is such a disappointment to see (these days)Rainbow and pink blue white stickers on the doors of lecturers...as if a badge of cult membership. How ridiculous to signal their submission to cult beliefs. In the past one saw political cartoons, inspiring quotes and thought provoking one liners.
Your comment about being able to "discuss complex, controversial, and complicated issues at a university then why have universities at all" explains the whole situation here.
You are not capable of discussing complex or complicated issues at a level worthy of public hearing. You could discuss controversial issues since being a nonsense magnet has been your specialty for a number of years now. If it was pandemic stupidity or pandering to conspiracy believers then you'd be the guy to provide the supportive view. Otherwise, a random person out on any street would generally be more qualified to discuss complex topics.
You are not the expert in the field, so you have been cancelled. Deal with it. You have taken one item from the legislation claim you have a right to a platform. The rest of the legislation explains why you don't.
You have simply used a section to manipulate the narrative.
Very disappointing! New Zealand universities are not serving their purpose. They are increasingly places of ideological homogeneity, where students are treated like kindergarteners who must be protected from the world and ideas.
"why do we have universities if they cannot discuss tough topics? Why do New Zealanders work long hours to fund institutions that are scared to talk, an essential prerequisite of learning?"
Good question
Universities have now become the 'gargoyles of woke'!
I attended a Free Speech Union meeting recently on 'Institutional Neutrality: Academia and the Fight for Open Dialogue'! Three University academics spoke!
Not surprisingly the conversation moved away from the stated topic to something else, ‘academic freedom’, which I believe is a totally different subject!
Only one of the speakers seemed to be on point in respect to what I & I expect others came to hear debated.
Instead the two men were indulging in for the most part, ‘intellectual sophistry’, with no connection to reality; what is actually happening in society, our Universities & also other work places, especially Government funded ones but not exclusively!
I would say at best they were indulging in ‘introspective navel gazing & intellectual dishonesty’! They didn’t address the topic, which is how universities or other academic institutions are dictating to their students & faculty what they should think, believe & hence say!
They were mostly talking from their own perspective as employees of a university! Did they not understand the topic, or were they being deliberately evasive?
To be honest, it got a bit boring as things do when we are no longer on task, & NOT addressing the ‘elephant in the room’; what is actually happening to our society with Cultural Marxism inveigling its way into every ‘cultural sphere’ of society, so that we are being led into a another 'lock down' of ideas & open debate! Another Dark Ages!
Look at what has been happening in England, literally people being arrested for a ‘thought crime’ as in silent prayer or preaching the gospels!
The very idea that universities should be the ‘critic & conscience’ of society, ‘nice slogan’, is actually quite scary given where they are going! Plus whose conscience? Woke Marxist Progressives’?
Remember, society used to be predicated on Judeo-Christian values, which gave rise to our western liberal democracies, but now those very democracies & values have been hi-jacked in the name of ‘democracy’ by left wing ideologues & activists, which Universities have been & are hotbeds for! Their goal is to ultimately suppress ‘thought & debate’ as in the novel ‘1984’, which is what in effect happened during this 'debate'!
The shift away from those traditional ‘underpinning values’ is the problem! Take away the foundations of a building & it will fall! Mt 7:24-27, Mt 28:18-20
The Left have craftily shifted the goal posts so that we are now debating according to their ‘terms & references’, & what is now ‘supposed orthodoxy’!
The ‘Treaty of Waitangi’ is an example! They have so deviated the meaning of the Treaty to mean something other than what it actually states with a bit of ‘clever mistranslation’ from Maori back to English! Yet English is the ‘source language’ & everyone understands English! It’s not like having to learn Greek & Hebrew to understand the source documents of the Bible! (Look up the ‘Littlewood Draft’ re the Treaty)
People have been so brainwashed about the Treaty that even Parliament was too scared to debate or even want to acknowledge David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill’! There’s your left wing progressivism silencing people & debate even in the hallowed ‘debating chambers’ of Parliament!
Hence my frustration!
For ‘free speech’ to be ‘free speech’, it does require the ‘truth’, not ‘misinformation & word salads’!
What did Jesus say? “The truth will set you free”, not just in an existential way, but also in practical material ways, hence we have science for that purpose plus everyday truths about the world around us & how to live safely in an ever changing physical world as even our parents taught us!
If political candidates lie to us about their true intentions, then we can’t make an ‘informed decision’ about who to vote for! So ‘truth & honesty’ underpins a ‘free’ & ‘well functioning society’! If you don’t know the rules to a game, you can’t be ‘free’ playing it!
All these institutions as so the Government must be held up to the ‘scrutiny of truth’, & that is why people must be educated enough to know what is going on in their nation, as whilst people are in the dark & not actively involved, then we will be led to somewhere we don’t want to go, as both Fascism & Communism have proved!
The Marxists, Progressives are leading an ‘unwitting population’ like lambs to the slaughter!
Intellectual banter among academics is all well & good, but it won’t save our nation!
I totally agree, Simon and support the Free Speech Union and any others who wish to see ideas once more argued and debated in our Universities.
I note your picture of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, which commemorates the four million Jews who died at the hands of Nazi Germany during WWII, and cannot help asking how a people who underwent such suffering, could inflict such similar suffering on another people today. If the 78 years since the establishment of Israel had been spent in establishing friendships with their neighbours, instead of seeking security and nuclear weaponry in secret, we might be seeing a far different middle East today.
I know there are quite terrible and tragic enmities, historic too, as characterised by Shakespeare in 'The Merchant of Venice'. But a similar if not totally aligned situation was present between France and Germany prior to 1945 producing the only two world wars there have ever been, yet from the 1950s onwards a reconciliation took place that saw them draw together and provide the foundations of what we know today as the EU. Miracles do happen!
As we both value freedom of expression, allow me to disagree with your contention that somehow Israel is at fault for not ‘being friendlier’ to its neighbours. Sounds like a Cindy ‘be kind’ mantra of ignorance. The EU largely comprises countries who share Judeo Christian heritage, whereas Israel is surrounded by lands of completely different religious views & utterly hostile to their existence. Yet thanks to Trump and Israel’s engagement, they have formed peaceful arrangements with the Saudis, UAE etc. they even have an enduring if-not-perfect peace with Egypt (who learnt a lesson in 67). Israel is a kind country, ask those of varying faiths who live there, but they ain’t naive and I suppose they get sick of arseholes trying to destroy them.
Walking through hallways of Canterbury university it is such a disappointment to see (these days)Rainbow and pink blue white stickers on the doors of lecturers...as if a badge of cult membership. How ridiculous to signal their submission to cult beliefs. In the past one saw political cartoons, inspiring quotes and thought provoking one liners.
Your comment about being able to "discuss complex, controversial, and complicated issues at a university then why have universities at all" explains the whole situation here.
You are not capable of discussing complex or complicated issues at a level worthy of public hearing. You could discuss controversial issues since being a nonsense magnet has been your specialty for a number of years now. If it was pandemic stupidity or pandering to conspiracy believers then you'd be the guy to provide the supportive view. Otherwise, a random person out on any street would generally be more qualified to discuss complex topics.
Yeah, couldn't get any more random than this comment of yours!
Something I would like to encourage everyone to watch: https://rumble.com/v5kt83x-mel-k-united-we-stand-returning-power-to-the-people-worldwide-selma-nc-spee.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp_f
You are not the expert in the field, so you have been cancelled. Deal with it. You have taken one item from the legislation claim you have a right to a platform. The rest of the legislation explains why you don't.
You have simply used a section to manipulate the narrative.