As evidenced globally, starting from the Trump ecosystem in the US, the far-right infrastructure threatening academic freedom is mainstreamed into political and media systems. This mainstreaming process lies at the core of the threat that democracies are witnessing globally.
The onslaught on the academe and on Universities we are witnessing in the US has mobilized a global phenomenon of attack on Universities.
Bullying, Intimidation and Threats
Here in Aotearoa, the interplays of white supremacy and Zionism, mainstreamed into the discursive spaces of power, forms the core of the persistent threat to academic freedom.
This evening, in response to a post I made about the intersections of white supremacy and Zionism, the underlying white supremacist infrastructure of contemporary Zionism, being carried out in the form of a genocide, an X account @hamishpricenz tweeted,
"It is incredible that a tenured university professor is able to post such hateful venom. Turns out he's not an international relations professor at all. He's a professor of communications, in an area of study so obtuse it makes your eyes bleed."
Note here the construction of a critical analysis of the interplays of Zionism and white supremacy as "hateful venom."
Note further that Mr. Price finds it "incredible" that "I am able to post." In other words, my tenure as an academic should translate into me not being able to express a theoretically informed knowledge claim about the interplays of Zionism and white supremacy.
There are plenty of arguments that both theoretically and empirically document the linkage, including my original tweet posting a disinformation-based narrative crafted by the Zionist Dane Giraud (of the Free Speech Union fame who wanted to get me fired from Massey for expressing solidarity with the decolonizing struggles of Palestinians) that offered the warrant for the comparison. But I am going to save that for another blog post. In the rest of this article, I will analyse Mr. Hamish Price's thinking process.
In response to his post, I wrote "...It is incredible that Mr. Price thinks I shouldn't be "able to post" on white supremacy and Zionism as a "tenured professor.""
Mr. Price responded, "...I am surprised that your vice chancellor allows you to post such a vile-filled venom. That has nothing to do with academic freedom and everything to do with the reputation of your university."
Note here Mr. Price's notion of what tenured academics must be allowed by the Vice Chancellor to express. In his totalitarian dystopia, the Vice Chancellor and their team must monitor the social media posts of academics to police our thoughts. Replete with teams of reputation managers, surveillance analytics, and authoritarian leaders, Mr. Price's seductive vision of the authoritarian university is where reputation trumps all else. It is the ultimate fantasy of extremist neoliberals, paradoxically organized around freedom and liberty, and driven by the incessant desire to turn modern Universities into thoughtless breeding grounds for robots that can be hired by the increasingly entrenched private capital.
The reputation university
Note further the trope of "everything to do with the reputation of your University."
"Reputation" is brought in as the instrument that legitimizes repression of academic thought, as an all encompassing feature.
Consider the emphasis here, "everything," implying statutory protections for academic freedom assured by the Education Act must be relegated to the background while employment manuals and social media diktats can be imposed by the University on academics to police thought.
This is the very Trumpian nightmare that we are witnessing across US states, with a far-right structure in power deploying the tropes around civility, racism and reputation to fundamentally gut Universities of their intellectual core.
Academics are expendable to the extent our thoughts/critiques/expressions bring the University into disrepute. This extreme neoliberal vision of the University constructs the University as an empty signifier, a brand continually needing to be managed by social media managers and repressive bureaucrats chasing reputation.
Reputation in this sense of course, is subjective, determined by those in power, and is entrenched in dominant social, political, and economic structures. Those in power determine reputation, setting the rules of the game. Much like the GOP officials, Hamish Price would like the University's Vice Chancellor to use reputation to bring into line critical thought and critical academics, especially thought that critiques entrenched power and says that unsayable (what one is able to say is decided by Mr Price and his ilk).
What the discursive trope around reputation as everything makes visible is the fundamental threat to academic freedom that emerges from the reputation economy. Those with power, and in this case, aligned with the settler colonial Zionist project, can stigmatize and label critical academic voices as bullies, uncivilised, terrorists, racists, venomous and so on, and build campaigns around these labels seeking to get academics fired. Labelling academics as bullies while bullying them and threatening to get them fired is the essence of this far-right ecosystem.
Communicative inversion and taxpayer funds
The suggestion that my critique of the white supremacist nature of Zionism brings disrepute to the University is a communicative inversion, one that inverts the materiality of Zionist violence to legitimize the repression and silencing of academic thought critiquing the violence. This warped logic deploys the trope of antisemitism willy nilly to silence the critique of Israel and its ongoing genocide (in the midst of the global rise of antisemitism, emergent from far-right groups).
Moreover, the call to reputation management can be mobilized to silence academic thought, especially thought that advocates for social justice and is critical of the power of settler colonial violence.
Mr. Price then goes on to instruct me that he as a taxpayer pays my salary, as if suggesting that I am therefore enslaved to his diktats for my thoughts and expressions.
Under this far-right construction of the University, taxpayers can determine what must be taught, what must be researched, and what must be thought within the premises of the University and outside it. Mr. Price owns my thoughts shared on social media because he pays my salary. This is the neoliberal version of the totalitarian thought police.
Far right extremists, as we are witnessing in the U.S., are organizing globally to undo Universities and dismantle them, deciding the faculty to be fired and areas to be removed, because these faculty and areas supposedly bring the university into disrepute based on the topsy turvy construction of reputation.
In the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, these far-right actors directly threaten/violate the Education Act that safeguards the role of academics to serve as critics and conscience of society.
Hamish Price then goes on to further delineate the taxpayer logic, delineating the thought process of this far-right ecosystem.
Note here the implicit threat that is reiterated about me getting fired from the University. As he carries out this direct form of bullying and intimidation, the X handle goes onto state that "Free speech is fine, but your VC is also free to sack you if your unhinged lunacy brings your university into disrepute."
The communicative inversion of the analysis of the convergence between Zionism and white supremacy amidst a genocide, on the day that the film "Gaza: Doctors Under Attack" documenting Israeli terror is released, framing the analysis as "unhinged lunacy" serves as the basis for the call to the VC to sack me for bringing the University into disrepute.
Now all of this would be fairly inconsequential far-right trolling if Mr. Hamish Price wasn't politically powerful, with strong historic links with the National Party, the Party currently in power in Aotearoa New Zealand. Mr. Price is a former political operative of the National Party (with direct involvement in the Ponsonby walkabout scandal, where a walkabout was manufactured as a political marketing tool), with links to the innermost circles of the Party and a track record of manufacturing lies, cyberbullying, harassment, and orchestrating "dirty politics."
That Mr. Hamish Price is emboldened to threaten my job, insinuating that he owns my thoughts and can gatekeep them as a taxpayer, is precisely an outcome of the global proliferation of the Trump rulebook.
Justice-based definition of academic freedom
Articulating clearly a justice-based framework that safeguards the public scholarship of academics and engagement of academics in the public sphere is critical.
Universities seeking to safeguard the role of academics as the critics and conscience of society must find robust grounds for safeguarding academic freedom against such threats, including developing strategies to counter the spurious claims to reputation management that are deployed to silence critical academic voices in the midst of an unfolding genocide.
Academics carrying out justice-based scholarship, speaking in solidarity with the oppressed, are carrying out our everyday work as critics and conscience of society. The Education Act places on us the responsibility to do so, of finding courage in the face of repression.
At the contemporary juncture of global geopolitics, fundamentally speaking out against the violence of Israeli settler colonialism is a critical task for academics and universities amidst one of the most grotesque forms of genocide in contemporary times.