Step out of the shadows.

By Te Pou Ahurei | National Secretary Sandra Grey

Why did 1200 unionists at Education International’s World Congress recently decide we need to globally campaign against the pressure of right-wing actors in our institutions?

For some nations the answer is much more urgent than in Aotearoa – academics and researchers are being jailed and losing their lives for speaking up publicly against right-wing regimes.

But even in peaceful and democratic nations like Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Norway, and the Netherlands, the scientific and academic communities are under pressure.

Addressing 1200 unionists at the Education International 10th World Congress, I shared what we have seen in Aotearoa that threatens the autonomy of our academic and scientific communities and in return what the public needs from these people.

Here are just a few of them.

We have seen massive cuts to the public sector which has seen many science advisors losing their jobs. Most recently, the massive cuts to GNS were announced the day I spoke. This means a government that apparently can make decisions without getting good advice.

While the Education International World Congress was meeting, our government was opening its first boot camp. In doing so, they ignored all of the evidence from academics and experts regarding the treatment of young offenders. Those who have studied youth offending say boot camps do not work.

We have a government forcing tertiary education institutions to write ‘free speech policies,’ even though there is no need. Free speech is already covered by legislation. What advocates of free speech policies are aiming to do is limit academic freedom in the interests of generalised and often uninformed commentary.

And then there is the financialisation of the universities, polytechnics, and wānanga, which sees decisions made not on good evidence but just to balance the books. The government’s ‘plans’ for Te Pūkenga are not based on pedagogical, student, or community need but on the drive to ‘make institutions financially stable’ in a funding system even the government says is broken.

There is no doubt we have an anti-academic, anti-expert, and anti-science government in Aotearoa right now. We have a government that makes decisions based only on ideological grounds. They are no friends of our union, or of workers.

Then we spoke up with representatives of 32 million education workers through a congress resolution. In a nutshell, here’s the key to one of the resolutions on academic freedom:

“Higher education and research, and their staff, teacher researchers and researchers, are currently facing pressures of all kinds, including outright attacks of varying severity, in all countries around the world.”

“The involvement of scientists in society, as experts called upon to address matters of concern to all citizens, is also called into question when it risks upsetting industrial and economic interests.”

“The 10th Congress of Education International mandates the EI Executive Board to lead international campaigns in defence of scientific personnel and their institutions and against conservative and neoliberal policies that not only call into question academics and researchers from expressing themselves, both within their institutions and society at large.”

When the campaigns are rolled out, will all who work in the tertiary education sector and all unionists stand up?

We won’t be risking our lives like some of our colleagues worldwide who suffer under violent authoritarian regimes.

We might find ourselves on the wrong side of politicians and capitalists, or even our own employers. But, surely we cannot stand by passively and let the global right-wing push scientific and academic knowledge into the shadows.

So, join us at TEU’s Academic Freedom Conference in September to hear more and share your thoughts about the need to defend academic freedom and the critic and conscience functions set down in legislation here in Aotearoa.

To register for the online conference, simply click the link below and enter the password: Freedom24

https://www.cognitoforms.com/NZTEU/_2024AcademicFreedomConference