Zionist Extremism and the Threat to Academic Freedom in Aotearoa New Zealand
In the landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand's higher education, the university is legally mandated to serve as the "critic and conscience" of society. This role is not merely a professional privilege; it is a democratic necessity. However, this mandate is increasingly under siege by external political actors who seek to weaponize inflammatory rhetoric to police the boundaries of scholarly inquiry. A recent public statement by David Cumin of the Israel Institute of New Zealand—calling me a "terror justifier" and demanding an apology for my appointment to the National Counter Extremism Research Centre—offers a visceral case study in what I consider to be the rise of Zionist extremism as a direct threat to academic freedom.
The Context: Why This Centre Exists and Why My Appointment Matters
To understand the nature of Cumin's attack, one must first understand the context in which the Centre for Countering Violent Extremism was created. The Centre was born out of the single most devastating act of terrorism in Aotearoa New Zealand's history: the March 15, 2019 Islamophobic extremist terror attack, in which a white supremacist gunman murdered 51 Muslims as they prayed at two mosques in Ōtautahi Christchurch. The attack was not an aberration; it was the lethal culmination of globally networked Islamophobic extremism, fuelled by the "great replacement" conspiracy theory and sustained by a transnational ecosystem of far-right hate.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry that followed was unequivocal: Aotearoa New Zealand's intelligence and security apparatus had catastrophically failed the Muslim community by fixating on the so-called "Islamist threat" while systematically ignoring the rising tide of white supremacist and Islamophobic extremism. The Centre was established as part of the government and public policy response to this failure—a response whose very foundation rests on the imperative to understand, name, and counter Islamophobic extremism.
This context is not incidental to my appointment. It is the rationale for it. My research and writing on Islamophobic extremism, far-right cultural nationalism, and the discursive production of anti-Muslim hate are directly relevant to the Centre's mandate. Through the Culture-Centered Approach (CCA), my scholarship traces how Islamophobic extremism is created and circulated through diverse discursive registers—from parliamentary debate and media commentary to online radicalisation pipelines and policy frameworks—and, critically, develops community-led strategies for resistance grounded in the voices and agency of those communities most targeted by such extremism.
The Work of Naming: White Supremacy, Hindutva, and Far-Right Zionism
Particularly salient here is the work of naming that sits at the heart of my scholarship. I do not study Islamophobia as an abstract phenomenon detached from the political projects that produce it. I specifically name the intersections of white supremacy, far-right Zionism, and Hindutva as cultural nationalist projects that thrive on and drive up Islamophobia—the fear of the Muslim. These are not parallel phenomena that happen to share a passing resemblance. They are structurally interconnected ideological formations, each invested in the construction of the Muslim as existential threat, each deploying the figure of the "Muslim terrorist" to justify regimes of surveillance, dispossession, and violence.
Central to this analysis is the role of far-right Zionism and Israeli state terror in constructing the threat of the Muslim Other. The Israeli security state has been a global laboratory for the production of Islamophobic frameworks: the technologies of occupation, the architectures of the security wall, the doctrines of pre-emptive strike, and the discursive machinery that renders an entire people as a "demographic threat" have been exported worldwide. The "great replacement" theory that animated the Christchurch gunman did not emerge in a vacuum; it draws from the same wellspring of civilisational paranoia that positions Muslim existence as an invasion, a framing that far-right Zionist discourse has done as much as any other political project to normalise.
I am one of very few public academic voices in Aotearoa New Zealand that explicitly names far-right Zionist extremism alongside Hindutva and white supremacy as co-constitutive drivers of Islamophobic violence. This is not a comfortable position. It is, however, a necessary one—particularly in a country whose national counter-extremism infrastructure was forged in the aftermath of Islamophobic mass murder.
Reading the Attack for What It Is: Extremism
It is therefore entirely unsurprising that Zionist extremists would target my work. The logic is consistent: white supremacists target scholars who name white supremacy; Hindutva nationalists target scholars who name Hindutva; and Zionist extremists target scholars who name far-right Zionism. That Cumin and the Israel Institute of New Zealand seek to silence this analysis and delegitimise my appointment to a centre dedicated to countering the very forms of extremism my scholarship names must be read for what it is—not legitimate critique, not good-faith disagreement, but extremism performing its most characteristic function: the suppression of the knowledge that exposes it.
The Weaponisation of "Terror" Labels
When Cumin uses the label "terror justifier," he is not engaging in academic critique. He is engaging in securitisation. In my view, this is a calculated attempt to move my work—grounded in the Culture-Centered Approach and the study of structural inequalities—out of the realm of social science and into the crosshairs of national security.
As a scholar who has spent decades unpacking how power structures marginalise voices in the Global South, I see this tactic for what it is: an attempt to disqualify the subaltern perspective. By labelling the analysis of resistance and state-sanctioned violence as "justifying terror," extremists seek to create a "no-go zone" around the Palestinian struggle and its parallels with decolonisation globally. This is an extremist positioning because it demands the total erasure of any framework that challenges the status quo of military occupation and settler-colonialism.
The Strategy of Institutional Coercion
Cumin's demand that Professor Paul Spoonley, Professor Joanna Kidman, and their board engage in "self-reflection" and "apology" is a direct attempt at institutional bullying. It is my opinion that this rhetoric seeks to trigger a "chilling effect." The goal is clear: to make university leadership fear the reputational cost of defending scholars who engage in critical work.
In my view, this behaviour fits the definition of extremism because it refuses to coexist with dissenting academic views. Instead of submitting a rebuttal to my peer-reviewed chapters or debating me in a public forum, the strategy is to go over the scholar's head and demand their removal from the public square. When "enough is enough" becomes a call for censorship, the integrity of our national research centres is at stake.
Decolonisation and the Zionist Veto
My work focuses on decolonising academic and professional fields. This involves naming structures of colonialism and imperialism—a task that is inherently uncomfortable for those who benefit from or ideologically align with those structures.
I believe that the specific vitriol directed at me stems from the fact that the Culture-Centered Approach provides a vocabulary for the oppressed. When we discuss health as a human right or the material-discursive trajectories of pandemic responses, we inevitably touch upon the lives of those living under siege or occupation. To Cumin and the Israel Institute, the mere act of centering these voices is perceived as an act of "terror." In my opinion, this reflects a radicalised worldview that views any recognition of Palestinian humanity or indigenous sovereignty as an existential threat.
My Commitment to Resistance
As I have stated previously in my manifestos: I choose resistance. I choose courage. I choose solidarity.
Defending academic freedom in Aotearoa means defending our right to teach Treaty education and our right to critique global structures of power without fear of being labelled a criminal or a "justifier" of violence. I view Cumin's statement as a badge of the necessity of my work. If the work of CARE did not challenge the foundations of extremist ideologies, it would not be met with such desperate attempts at suppression.
Conclusion: The Line in the Sand
The university cannot be a place where lobby groups dictate the composition of committees or the content of curricula. If we allow Zionist extremism—or any other political extremism—to determine who is "fit" to research extremism, we have already lost the battle for institutional autonomy.
The Centre for Countering Violent Extremism was created because 51 Muslims were murdered by an Islamophobic extremist in Aotearoa New Zealand. It exists because the Royal Commission found that Islamophobic extremism had been ignored. My appointment exists because my scholarship names the very forces—white supremacy, Hindutva, and far-right Zionism—that produce the Islamophobia the Centre was created to counter. The demand to remove me from this work is not a call for accountability. It is a demand that the Centre betray its own founding mandate.
I will not be silenced by labels designed to incite fear. I will continue to decenter and dewesternise the structures of communication, and I will continue to stand in solidarity with those whose voices are systematically erased. The threat to New Zealand's academic landscape is not the critical scholar; it is the extremist who demands their silence.