Although we do not wish to offer formal evidence to the Commission, we, the members of the Victoria University College Free Discussions Club, do feel strongly that a subject should be brought before the Commission, which so far seems to have been ignored—a subject that we nevertheless feel is of the most supreme importance for any educational body, and completely so for a University—that is, the subject of academic freedom.

It is impossible to look round the world to-day and not realise that freedom of this type is everywhere suffering grave encroachments. Not only in Germany before the war, but in Great Britain during and even after the war, and for a long time past, and to an increasingly disastrous extent in the U.S.A., we have seen freedom of teaching and of study subject to the dictation of outside interests, whether political, economic, or religious. Not only abroad, but in New Zealand itself, there have not been unknown attempts to stifle opinion and even discussion which appeared to run counter to tenets generally held. This University College especially has suffered, not only from such attempts (happily largely unsuccessful) by outside bodies and the Press, but from official interference of a serious type. From what we know of conditions in New Zealand we do not think that these attempts have ceased—rather, owing to the general trend of thought in the world to-day, do we regard them as merely the forerunners of others, more prolonged and serious, in the future. Of all the attributes of a University, freedom, it seems to us, is of the most vital importance. If in any sense the University is to lead the community in thought or ideals, it is imperative that within its confines (as indeed without) there should be the utmost possible measure of liberty—liberty of association, of discussion, of teaching, of study. The only limit to this liberty that we can regard as valid is that of academic discipline. We are proud to think that from the beginning of history men and women in a fellowship of learning have found freedom when it has been otherwise denied to them; we should regard it as a calamity, if in a young country such as this that freedom should be allowed to perish. We do not ask for a foolish license (although we are convinced that any attempt to delimit the bounds of liberty and license can only end in disaster)—we do ask for freedom of the whole academic community from dictation from outside as to what shall be studied and how it shall be studied; we do ask, within the academic community, for freedom of the teacher to teach what seems to him true; we do ask for the freedom of students to discuss in clubs and societies or otherwise whatever subjects in any way appeal to them. The general principle (to quote Principal Ernest Barker, of King's College, London) is "Freedom, uncontrolled by any assumption of responsibility by the University . . . . My page 58 qualification of that principle is two-fold. In the first place, the freedom of the professor is subject to the discipline of the profession, which commands him to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. ... In the second place, the freedom of the professor, while it is not subject to the control of the institution to which he belongs, must at any rate be qualified by the duties inherent in his membership of that institution. If it gives him freedom, he must not give it obloquy in return." To students as well as to professors, these words we think apply equally; with the proviso that, unhappily, to be young is, under some circumstances, inevitably to incur obloquy. As students we plead both for the freedom of our teachers and for our own. Nothing, we feel convinced, will ever make up to a University itself, or to the larger community of which it is a part, for the loss by any means of that intellectual integrity, that complete liberty of the spirit which, as it is the most precious part of our inheritance, is the most hardly won—as it is the reward and crown of all knowledge, is its very basis and first condition.

We ask the Commission, therefore, whatever may be the outcome of its inquiries into technical matters of organisation and administration, in its report to emphasise the vital importance in the University of—

For the Victoria University College Free Discussions Club.