Free speech goes too far

‘Auniversity is a shared idea,’’ say the signatories of an open letter signed by nearly 800 Auckland University staff and academics over recent days. A university, they stress, is not simply an institution or an employer, but ‘‘a community dedicated to the creation, preservation and sharing of knowledge’’.

These and other statements were written and agreed on in direct response to the university’s perceived inaction over a racist campaign on the Auckland campus.

At first glance, the response might seem disproportionate. The group behind posters and stickers on campus is a tiny, marginal organisation that seems to exist largely online and in the imaginations of its anonymous founders. Members disguise their identity in photos and use mocking pseudonyms in their manifestos. They exist, they say, for white men aged between 18 and 35. Women, non-Europeans, the middle-aged and elderly, libertarians and drug users need not apply.

Besides sharing ideas, they go on nature walks. Their online presence veers dangerously close to a self-parody of a white supremacist sect.

It would once have been bizarre that intellectuals as significant as Dame Anne Salmond, Brian Boyd, Jane Kelsey and Sir Peter Gluckman would put their names to a letter denouncing inaction over a minor poster and sticker campaign, but these are not normal times. The language of white supremacy shows even material presented as a joke or a parody can have violent repercussions.

There is growing frustration over comments from university vice-chancellor Stuart McCutcheon, who would not instruct staff to remove the material or condemn the group and its message. The posters and stickers are not illegal, he said, nor would they incite violence. But that seems a little naive when they are designed to be gateways to the group’s website, which openly promotes white supremacist ideas.

Instead, McCutcheon relied on an argument in favour of free speech. Backing McCutcheon, ACT leader David Seymour made the same argument. Rather than banning objectionable material, Seymour said, it is better to debate it in an open society.

However, it is difficult to debate a group that refuses to name members, disguises their identities and ignores interview requests from the mainstream media. The group’s promotion of a Christchurch chapter, with three members photographed on the city’s Bridge of Remembrance, would seem to be in utterly poor taste after recent events. An image like that would once have been mere trolling. Now it seems much more ominous.

These are tricky times for universities and free speech issues, especially when the idea of free speech itself is sometimes abused or exploited. Massey University’s contentious ban of a talk by former National Party leader Don Brash in 2018 is being followed by the same university’s hosting of controversial Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy, notorious for criticisms of the transgender community.

While disagreeing with Murphy’s views, Massey said it supports academic freedom and free speech. For Brash backers, this will be a case of better late than never. But the transgender community and its many supporters will wonder why a university has given the imprimatur of academic respectability to a one-sided panel discussion about an enormously inflammatory topic that could more easily have been hosted in a private venue.

An image like that would once have been mere trolling. Now it seems much more ominous.