Parmjeet Parmar, ACT Party, and Threats to Academic Freedom: The Disinformation around University Rankings

In the latest organized attack on academic freedom in Aotearoa New Zealand, the constellation of far-right actors, ACT Party, the Indian-origin MP Parmjeet Parmar, and Hobson's Pledge, have concocted a crisis around the international reputation of Universities. 

Academic Freedom and Institutional Autonomy

As I have argued elsewhere, the autonomy of institutions lies at the heart of academic freedom. 

This means that universities as spaces for teaching, learning, research, and engagement have the freedom to determine curricular structures, research infrastructures, and infrastructures for public engagement, enabling the development of an institutional space where academics have the freedom to pursue teaching, research and public engagement that is anchored in peer review, academic expertise, and deliberation among academic experts who are trained in a subject area.

This institutional autonomy is particularly critical in Aotearoa New Zealand, where the Education Act places on academics the responsibility of serving as "critics and conscience of society." 

To serve as "critic and conscience of society" is to critically interrogate power and its workings, to draw upon academic knowledge and expertise to challenge established norms, and to serve as the reflexive anchors to society.

Far-right parties across the globe, emboldened by the Trump project and specifically Trump's Project 2025, pushed by powerful capitalists (many in the extractive and tobacco industries) channeling their monies through think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and astroturfs such as the Taxpayers Union, have turned education into the fundamental site of targeting. 

The rule book is fairly straightforward: manufacture a crisis around the academe and universities, set up a narrative of declining universities that are rotting, and deploy the narrative to impose a far-right agenda. This undemocratic game is paraded as the promotion of free speech and democracy (including as the promotion of academic freedom), communicatively inverting the very attack on free speech and democracy (including the attack on academic freedom) it orchestrates. 

ACT and the manufactured crisis of the NZ University

In the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, the ACT Party and Parmjeet Parmar are the face of the campaign targeting academic freedom.

So what is the crisis that ACT is manufacturing? 

Deploying a wide range of disinformation resources, ACT and Parmjeet Parmar have been constructing the narrative that New Zealand universities have been taken over by woke culture. They are joined in by the usual Far Right actors in the ecosystem, the Free Speech Union and Hobson's Pledge.

This woke culture narrative is a sorry replica of the narrative of "war on woke" we are witnessing across the Trumpian platforms in the U.S. that have posed one of the most aggressive threats to academic freedom in contemporary times.

ACT's attack on Te Tiriti

In Aotearoa, the target of ACT's version of "War on Woke" is Te Tiriti. 

This attack on Te Tiriti is strategic for the ACT Party. 

It achieves multiple goals for the Party. 

First, it indicates to the global far-right that the party is one willing to carry out the far-right agenda in Aotearoa, shamefully copying it from the Trumpian, Heritage Foundation and Atlas Network Universe. It signals to the global far-right the legitimacy of the party as a far-right infrastructure in Aotearoa ready to carry out the dirty agenda, irrespective of the fact that the Trumpian ecosystem has very little resonance to the fundamental ethos of Aotearoa New Zealand, anchored in a commitment to justice and reparations of past harms caused by the colonial project.

It also appeals to the mix of libertarian, far-right, and ethnic migrant voter bases that the party markets itself to. 

Consider, for instance, the upper-caste, Hindutva-espousing voter base that ACT appeals to. Anti-Indigenous and casteist in its very makeup, this far-right voter base that imports into Aotearoa the cultural nationalism of Hindutva is seduced by the performance of casteist grievance, with the heady concoction of migrant marginalization and the model minority myth. This voter segment loves to tell itself the myth of the hard-working Indian migrant that is paying the taxes and feeding the "lazy Maori on dole." Any attack on Te Tiriti and the supposed "special privileges for Maori" appeals to the model minority aspirations of the base. Consider carefully the various upper-caste religious community events that Parmar is present in, replete with ethnic attire, and you get a clear sense of the convergence between anti-Maori racism and promotion of ethnic upper caste religious cultural spaces (a powerful paradox that forms the basis of this voter base).

The latest attack: The fiction of falling university reputation 

The latest round of attack by ACT and Parmar constructs the fiction of falling reputation of NZ Universities.

To set up the fiction, the disinformation campaign picks on only one component of University rankings from the Times Higher Education rankings, "international outlook." This component, is one of five components of evaluation in the THE rankings, including Teaching, Research Environment, Research Quality, Industry and International Outlook. 

Let's take the dimension of Teaching for instance. In the 2016 to 2026 timeframe, the score for Massey University went from 23.1 to 30.1.

In the same timeframe, the score for research quality at Massey went from 31.9 to 62.3, meaning the score almost doubled in the timeframe. Research quality is one of the most robust indicators for the performance of a University internationally and the esteem with which it is held, including its impact.

 In the same timeframe, the score for Industry went from 35.8 to 81.6, more than doubled.

A declining international outlook? Dismantling the propaganda

Now, let's closely consider the pattern for International Outlook in that timeframe that is the subject of ACT's propaganda. 

The International Outlook component of the THE ranking evaluates a number of components including (a) the proportion of international students: This metric assesses the diversity of the student body and the institution's success in attracting students from other countries; (b) proportion of international staff: similar to the student metric, this measures the diversity of the academic and professional staff, reflecting a globally-minded faculty; and (c) international collaboration: this indicator evaluates the proportion of a university's research publications that have at least one international co-author, highlighting the extent of global research networks and influence.

 Looking at the two end points in the frame, 2016 and 2026, the score for Massey went from 80.5 in 2016 to 86.2 in 2026. 

The score in international outlook did decline in the 2023-2026 period, with the largest drop in size evidenced between 2023 and 2024, from 92.9 to 87.5.

Is the drop in international outlook because of Te Tiriti?

Parmar and ACT make the claim that the drop in international outlook of New Zealand universities is because of an insular culture around Te Tiriti.

Writes Parmer on her platforms, and the same narrative is amplified by ACT on its platforms,

"New Zealand’s universities risk becoming internationally irrelevant if they don’t change their offerings.

Scores from Times Higher Education reveal every university in New Zealand has dropped sharply in its score for ‘international outlook’ over the last five years. The international outlook score measures universities’ ability to attract students and faculty from around the world.

If we can’t attract international talent to our universities, local students will be denied access to world-class knowledge. If we can’t attract international students who pay full fees, local students or taxpayers will be forced to pick up the financial slack.

More to the point, how can we say we’re preparing Kiwi students for success on the world stage when the world looks at our universities and says, ‘why bother’?

Yesterday at select committee I questioned Universities NZ about this. They excused the drop as a ‘blip’ caused by COVID-19. I don’t think that excuse is good enough – universities have had years to reset after the pandemic. Nor do I think universities can rely just on promotional programmes to restore their international reputations. The actual educational offering needs to improve.

What is clear to me, and to ACT, is that universities will not become internationally relevant by continuing down an inward-looking, te Tiriti-centric path that wraps every student and lecturer in a thicket of matauranga Māori and a narrow view of New Zealand history.

Every university should learn from the debacle at the University of Auckland, where students were forced to take ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ papers, and are now denied compensation even as the university realises it stuffed up. International students who had their time and money wasted will now be telling their international peers about their experience. This is disastrous for our university sector’s international reputation."

First, note that the substantive decline is NOT over a time period of five years, as Parmar claims (which would be from 2022 to 2026. For Massey, the 2022 and 2023 scores staid at 93.1 and 92.1 respectively, and the actual drop happened, as noted earlier from 2023 to 2024).

Parmar assigns the cause for the decline in the rankings as a result of the lack of international relevance and "continuing down an inward-looking, te Tiriti-centric path that wraps every student and lecturer in a thicket of matauranga Māori and a narrow view of New Zealand history."

Parmar's leap in logic from a short-term drop in a small window to claiming the international irrelevance of NZ universities to identifying Te Tiriti education as the cause in the decline in the number of international students (which again, is one part of the broader International Outlook item) has no sound empirical or rational basis. 

The claim that Matauranga Maori and Te Tiriti education led to the international irrelevance of New Zealand universities is a racist dogwhistle that certainly appeals to the voter base of ACT but has no basis in evidence.

History of Te Tiriti Education and what Matauranga Maori contributes

Te Tiriti education and the inclusion of Matauranga Maori in Aotearoa has had a long history in Aotearoa, one that certainly predates the 2023-2026 period. 

What however we do see in this period is the rise of racist far right discourse and attack on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), decolonization, and anti-racism in the US ecosystem and the import of this ideology into the racist ecostem of the far-right in Aotearoa (Hence, the interest of ACT and Parmar in Te Tiriti and Matauranga Maori during this timeframe). This is also a timeframe where we see the rise in anti-Maori rhetoric because racism is cheap political fodder.

Moreover, what is much more likely to have shaped the small drop ( as opposed to the claim of scores dropping "sharply by Parmar. Given her claim of a PhD in the Sciences, I am sure Dr. Parmar knows what p value is, what effect size is, and whether her claim of a "sharp drop" bears out against the observation by NZ universities that this is a 'blip' caused by COVID). During this period, building upto 2023, what we indeed did witness is a global pandemic, closure of borders, and significant delay in the issuance of visas to international students. The argument made by the leadership of NZ universities is much more plausible than the wild claims made by ACT and Parmar.

What's more, the rankings and profile of our Universities on various international metrics actually speaks to an opposite picture. These rankings demonstrate that our Universities have continued performing extremely well and grow in our excellence in spite of COVID and in spite of the systemic defunding of tertiary eductaion. It speaks to the excellence of our academics, our collaborations and our partnerships that Universities have continued to thrive in spite of the Coalition Government's defunding and attack on Higher Education.

The threat to the quality of Tertiary Education institutions comes from ACT, Parmar and the far right. Aotearoa New Zealand is reputed globally for its excellence in decolonizing methodologies, Te Tiriti education, and contributions to Indigenous knowledge. Names of academics such as Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Distinguished Professor Graham Hingagaroa Smith, Professor Tahu Kukutai, Dr. Leonie Pihama, Professor Waikaremoana Waitoki, Professor Joanna Kidman, Professor Mason Durie, Professor Rangi Matamua, Professor Margaret Mutu (and I am not listing here so many names) place Aotearoa New Zealand on the global map as a hub of innovation and excellence, offering powerful registers for theorizing and solving contemporary global challenges anchored in Matauranga Maori. Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith's "Decolonizing Methodologies" form the basis of global education on decolonization, the germinal text on learning on decolonizing across disciplines from the Humanites and Social Sciences to Art, Creative Expression to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).

These scholars, Matauranga Maori, and Te Tiriti are our sources of pride, joy, and international reputation. 

That ACT and Parmjeet Parmar turn these spaces of excellence as targets of their campaign speaks to the underlying racism and the actual threats to our international reputation that come from these political infrastructures that would sell racism to feed their electoral gains. It is critically important that the broader publics in Aotearoa New Zealand and the diverse ethnic communities in Aotearoa New Zealand (including Indian migrants) wake up to the underlying agenda served by such attacks and the threats they pose to the quality of our tertiary education over the long term.

Te Tiriti and Matauranga Maori offer us our sense of place in the world. They anchor us here and they give us the knowledge through which we engage the world. These are our taonga, our treasures, and let's continuing honouring them, rejecting the racist attacks that seek to take us backward and turn us into a photocopy of a declining American Empire.