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Rob MacCullough writes –
Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.
Auckland University of Technology
Massey University
It installed former Labour Party Finance Minister Grant Robertson as Vice Chancellor & has former Labour Cabinet Minister, Clare Curran, on its governing Council. Professor Michael Baker, who is also there, became a key part of Labour’s Covid Messaging, Marketing and Communications strategy. Everywhere you look, Otago is a veritable swarming nest of Labourites. Strange given that its surrounded by salt-of-the-earth Southland famers.
It is located in Wellington Central – now a Green Party stronghold. Not only that, but it’s also surrounded by tens of thousands of bureaucrats. If they weren’t left-wing before the 2023 election, they sure as heck will be now, having been laid-off by the new Coalition. Victoria cancelled a debate that had five speakers on the basis that two of them were suspected of having right-wing views, namely Free Speech Union president Jonathan Ayling and the NZ Initiative’s Dr Michael Johnston. What was Victoria complaining about? That balanced, informed debate is offensive? Even being fair to both sides is too much for Vic for swallow. Being named after Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, and ruler of the British Empire, must really grate on many of its “stakeholders”.
Canterbury University
It keeps its nose out of trouble & has a strong engineering school – engineers being largely solid, hard-working types who have little time for the antics other students get themselves into. I also have a young student friend who was in Canterbury’s Gravity & Cosmology group who has just topped his class at Cambridge and is about to start a PhD with the best folks in the world in Quantum Physics at Oxford, so Canterbury is on fire as far as I’m concerned.
Centre (?)
Evidence
Its Vice Chancellor, Neil Quigley, hired former National Party Cabinet Minister, Steven Joyce, to give it advice, paying nearly $1 million to Joyce’s advisory firm. Waikato wants a new medical school. Not joining other universities who’ve defined themselves as National, ACT & NZ First Party haters will help it get one. Sir Anand Satyanand, our impressive former Governor General is its Chancellor – he moderated a free speech debate I organized at Auckland University in which Brash spoke after Massey cancelled him. Its former Chancellor was National PM Jim Bolger. Being in dairy-land also does Waikato’s non-leftist credentials no harm, though the fact it graduated Ardern weakens its case. It gave a Distinguished Alumni Award to Shane Legg, the co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence revolution – he started DeepMind. The award was purely on merit. It was not on based on any political considerations, like so many prizes nowadays. Waikato may have more to be proud of than any other NZ university right now. Legg received a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by the UK government, yet has not been honored by his own (NZ) one.
Lincoln University
Evidence
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