Legislation committing universities to free speech policies

 

By Chris Whelan
Chief Executive
Universities NZ - Te Pōkai Tara

Yesterday Minister Simmonds and Minister Seymour announced that long-expected amendments to freedom of speech obligations on universities would be enacted in 2025 for implementation in the first half of 2026.

Universities and their communities all have a wide range of views on the proposal and will share those views as the legislative process progresses. That is entirely in line with the concepts of both free speech and academic freedom.

I don’t have enough detail yet to know for sure whether these changes will be useful. I do know:

1. Universities will be required to have a free speech statement. An example of a free speech statement is the one published by the University of Otago in July this year. You can see a copy of it here.
2. The free speech statements will need to cover a number of matters agreed to by Cabinet. These include matters such as “universities should recognise that freedom of speech is critical to maintaining academic freedom.” I understand that these requirements will be refined as the legislation is drafted up.
3. Universities will be required to regularly survey staff and students with questions that are consistent enough across the universities to support comparisons and benchmarking.

Free speech is one of the important areas where Vice Chancellors share a common viewpoint. For example, all Vice Chancellors agree that:

• It is enormously important that academics are able to bring their expertise and insights to public understanding and debate. It is equally important that academics can debate publicly to help our communities understand that there are different ideas and perspectives.
• Both academic freedom and freedom of expression serve our university communities best when interactions are civil and respectful – where interactions are about debating ideas – rather than attacking the character or motivation of the people holding different views.
• University communities are enormously diverse and full of people who have a wide range of experiences, perspectives, preferences, and beliefs. All members of university communities have the right to express their views – so long as they do not cross over into behaviour that is unlawful, defamatory, threatening, or harassment.

This appears consistent with what is being proposed in the legislation and I know the university sector will be keen to work with government to ensure whatever is finally put into legislation is workable and useful. For this to be successfully implemented across all 8 universities, it will need to be necessarily high level, and not prescriptive.

In communities as large and diverse as a typical university, these proposed changes are going to be interpreted in different ways. It will take time to ensure genuine ownership and broad support for each university’s free speech statement. It will be worth taking the time to get it right.