Massey University has staggered from one PR disaster to another, leaving a trail of muddy footprints over the bodies of anyone who makes the fatal mistake of thinking that Massey University will uphold the principles of free speech and welcome a contest of ideas.
It turns out that at Massey University old white males are shit out of luck, as Don Brash found out, and so it seems are gay and straight white feminists and Chinese students who are supportive of the protests in Hong Kong and show their solidarity by putting up posters on university grounds.
At Canterbury University, on the other hand, Maori gang members have been welcomed with open arms as they appear to take free speech really, really seriously there. Massey University rejects white men and women on the basis of their politics but at Canterbury, they are so supportive of free speech that they have invited senior Mongrel Mob members to lecture their criminal justice students.
Then again this is the same university that controversially awarded an A grade to a thesis that denied the Holocaust! Then there is Auckland University that employs a professor who is affiliated with a terror group so perhaps a gang member lecturing is, sadly, not about free speech at all but more about an across the board decline of tertiary institutions in New Zealand.
While there may be merit in criminal justice students listening to criminals, there is no excuse for deplatforming feminists and Don Brash, lauding Holocaust denial, promoting terror affiliates or ripping down posters supportive of democracy and anti- an oppressive communist regime.
How low can Massey University go? Judging what is happening in other New Zealand Universities I would say even lower than they have already gone.
