Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 1. 1969.
Ideology break advocated
Ideology break advocated
New Zealand universities must choose a public course and, if necessary, refuse to serve the prevailing ideology of their society, Mr Chris Wainwright, said at Congress.
He called the "preferential neutralism" by which universities refrained from criticism a "hypocritical device" supporting the present social powers.
"It is not a violation of a university that some part of its actions serve society, but the university must determine through its own critical agency that the society it serves is a place in which the spirit of man can be nutured and advanced," he said.
"Today, the university is required to condemn the Government for its collusion with the Unisted States in its war against the people of South Vietnam."
Mr Wainwright said that universities had come increasingly to serve technology, and this led to the rise of insular specialists.
"The university comes increasingly to be populated by scholar-researchers who more closely resemble idiot-savants than men of wisdom."
The effect of this division to stifle social consciousness and the need for radical change.