A statement by Victoria University

Tēnā koutou katoa! I would like to make a brief statement about Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellingtons Free Speech Symposium. It was to be a discussion of Free Speech by some of the greatest living minds today.

• Noam Chomsky
• Slavoj Zizek
• Cornel West
• Martha Nussbaum
• Alasdair Macintyre
• Philip Kitcher
• Peter Singer
• Amartya Sen
• Judith Butler

Fortunately, all of the speakers booked for this symposium will be unable to attend.

Due to the ongoing crisis in the middle east it was felt by the Student Union that Mr Chomsky, Martha Nussbaum and Judith Butler must be rejected because of their being of Jewish descent. Slavoj Zizek could not be invited because of his views on transgender persons. Cornel West because he is Christian. MacIntyre because he is Catholic. Kitcher for being "white". Singer for his ableist conceptions of disability and Amartya Sen because he married a Rothschild.

It was also noted by the Student Union that only two of the invitees professed to be woman, most were either white or white adjacent and that there was, unfairly, no persons of Maori descent in the shortlist of greatest living minds.

Furthermore, because the overwhelming majority of Wellingtonians are of European descent, we would not be creating an inclusive and non threatening space for persons of other ethnicities. This concern was also echoed in regards to gender as most participants would statistically be cis gender male or cis gender female.

Compounding these concerns with the symposium was also a deep distrust of free speech and the Student Union (and in fact much of the faculty) raised concerns that we would be unable to guarantee the safety of peoples diverse views without knowing what was going to be said in advance in order to protect them from it.

The Department of Philosophy also raised the question of whether diverse views can be held in the face of a single speaker and/or line of reasoning and surmised that it might be better protected by everybody talking at the same time.

As such, I am sad to say that there will be no Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellingtons Free Speech Symposium tonight and that, due to your privilege in being able to attend and pay for the symposium, the proceeds have been given to the Disinformation Project along with a list of your names in order to fund an investigation into how things went so desperately white supremacist so fast.

The Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington would like to apologise in advance of there not being a symposium to those we have harmed. We are contrite, humbled and our only hope for forgiveness is through the goodness of your hearts.

Whāia te mātauranga hei oranga mō koutou. Haere rā. Thank you.

Discussion

I wrote this in response to Victoria University cancelling a Free Speech event because the students might be hurt by what is said and you can safely assume it is satirical.

What should be of concern though was that the list of people was fairly randomly chosen. I simply stole a list from the website Big Think called 10 Living Philosophers and Why You Should Know Them and then went through the Wikipedia page of each of these experts and found a way to attack or discredit them based on modern identity politics.

Based on the ease of, and lack of, research I had to do to find reasons to attack or discredit these people I think that Victoria University will be unable to hold any meetings on any subject involving anyone of sufficient note. Once you can dismiss someone on their identity or relationship to another persons identity the content of their thought ceases to matter. 

If Victory University won’t stand up for questioning and testing received wisdom, putting forward new ideas, and stating controversial or unpopular opinions then who will? What else is the University for? What else is the rationale for its existence?