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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 15, No. 6. April 24, 1952
Dear Mr. Editor,—
One of your henchmen has persuaded me to write about your favourite theme of "academic objectivity," and this is the result I should in fact like to know much more clearly than I do at present what your own attitude to the question is and what you would like me and my kind to do about the matter; and in part payment in advance I shall tell you some of the things I am prepared to do and am not prepared to do. You have been trying to provoke me; you can't complain if I try to reciprocate.
It wasn't long after I arrived here last year that I discovered your anti-objectivity campaign in full swing. I confess it annoyed me a little, because what I call "academic objectivity" is something I believe in with some earnestness. You may not mean quite the same as I do by the phraser—few words are more desperately ambiguous than "objective"—but I should like to be sure, because I think that some of your remarks could be construed as a most insidious attack on what I (and, I am sure, most of my colleagues) regard as one of the most vital principles a university has to defend.