Summarised by Centrist
Veteran journalist Graham Adams says dissent is mounting at Auckland University over compulsory Treaty courses that he describes as politically driven, ideologically rigid, and intellectually shallow.
Adams reports that students across faculties are pushing back against the WTR100 series, which forces all first-year students – from engineers to accountants – to take a paper centred on a particular view of Te Tiriti and mātauranga Māori.
A petition against the courses has gathered nearly 1500 signatures. While organisers claim the intent isn’t to reject Māori history outright, Adams notes the critiques go further.
Students describe the content as “vague,” “brainwashing,” and “woke nonsense.” One wrote: “I haven’t learned s*** so far and we’ve done almost six weeks of it. Waste of time, waste of money, waste of resources.”
Another called it “extortion… designed to turn them into angry radicals.”
Adams draws attention to other ideologically charged papers like “Whiteness in the settler state,” which he says promote struggle sessions and demand students “engage in significant self-reflection.”
Adams says the courses are part of a larger “decolonisation project,” openly described as such by staff like Eru Kapa-Kingi of Te Pāti Māori, who told a university newsletter: “Universities were one of the primary tools of colonisation in Aotearoa… that places an obligation on academics today to really contribute to the deeper, longer-term decolonisation project.”
Read more over at Bassett, Brash, and Hide
Image: Winstonwolfe
