The weight of inquiry: conflicting cultures in New Zealand's tertiary institutions

Abstract

Considerable problems have arisen in New Zealand universities as a consequence of the conflict between the statutory role of the university as the ‘critic and conscience of society’ and the dominant intellectual orthodoxy of cultural essentialism. A number of examples are used to show the extent to which culturalist ideological conformity compromises the scientific and critical analysis of social phenomena, thereby limiting the university's ability to serve as the critic and conscience of society. The New Zealand examples are located in the global context of culturalist orthodoxy. The writers claim that, as a consequence of the shift from class to identity politics that characterises multiculturalism, administrators and academics in a number of Western universities are now obliged to defer to politically powerful interest groups that derive their power to condemn from culturalist principles.