Patrick Corish
Co-ordinator
Free Speech Coalition
The past week has been a busy one on the free speech front.
Massey, Massey, Massey… this university should have its status as a tertiary education provider revoked. As per our last e-mail, you will know that Massey University banned the Speak Up for Women’s event last week.
Yet again the ‘health and safety’ catchall has been deployed by Massey’s spineless administrators to cater to a select few cry-bullies that cannot handle adverse ideas.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Massey ‘upped the ante’ as New Zealand’s most illiberal university by tearing down pro-Hong Kong protest posters on campus. These posters were carefully created so as not to show any violent material – it is unclear what reason Massey had in taking them down.
Many Hong Kong students would raise this matter with the university if their identity did not make them targets for punishment from their government.
To all those who are, or know someone enrolling at university, we highly discourage applying to Massey. The university leadership clearly do not understand their duties as educators.
Appealing the High Court judgement
I want to thank all of you who have contributed to our Court of Appeal fund for the Auckland Council de-platforming case. We have raised over $35,000. That puts us close to our target in funding the appeal.
You can read our filed notice of appeal to the Court of Appeal here.
If you have not yet, you can donate to the fund and help us make history by firmly blocking the “thug’s veto” as a legitimate cause to ban speech.
New episodes of the FSC podcast
We have a few new episodes of the Free Speech Coalition podcast ready for you to listen.
We have a two part episode where Stephen Franks and I sat down with Nadine Strossen to discuss her insights gained while being the American Civil Liberties Union’s youngest president and her book on hate speech Hate: How We Must Resist It with Free Speech and Not Censorship.
In our most recent episode I sat down with Melissa Derby, a lecturer at AUT who was scheduled to speak at Massey’s banned Speak Up for Women event. Ironically, Melissa’s speech was going to be on the dangers of identity politics and the importance of hearing different ideas. It is ironic, that those that cancelled the event were exactly those that would benefit most from Melissa’s speech.
You can listen to the Free Speech Coalition podcast on all of your podcast listening programmes including: Apple Podcast or Spotify.
A book on free speech in New Zealand
We were very fortunate to be sent a copy of a new book on free speech in New Zealand.
Free Speech Under Attack is a book by Peter Cresswell, Jeremy Fisher, David Round, Robert Stanmore and Tim Wikirishi.
This is a book catered specifically to the free speech threat in New Zealand. I’ve just started reading it and if you are interested in becoming more informed about censorship in New Zealand I’d recommend it.