The bill received significant backlash from the public, activists, lawyers and the Waitangi Tribunal.<\/p>\n
Parmar said she was sent Dunworth\u2019s comments by a student and spoke out about it on Facebook last week, quoting the professor as saying: \u201cThe Act Party has a red line saying that when we get into power we will get rid of this [Treaty] principles nonsense … cleanse the statute book of references to the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like David Seymour was genuinely, constitutionally curious, right? He just wanted to get M\u0101ori to go back inside their box.\u201d<\/p>\n
The university confirmed to the Herald that Dunworth made those comments, \u201cor comments close in nature\u201d, during a lecture for the LAW121G Law and Society course.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lecture covered the proposed Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill [Treaty Principles Bill], building on earlier material covered in the course on the Treaty itself and the courts\u2019 development of the principles of the Treaty,\u201d a university spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs a member of academic staff, professor Dunworth is protected by academic freedom, which in relation to teaching includes the freedom to state opinions on potentially controversial topics. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe exercise of academic freedom aligns with the university\u2019s role as critic and conscience of society expressed in the Education and Training Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Act MP and tertiary education spokesperson Dr Parmjeet Parmar. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Parmar told the Herald that her issue with what Dunworth said was about \u201cthe facts\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m standing up against the spread of disinformation from a partisan professor,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can debate or compete any ideas, that\u2019s totally fine. You could challenge any views, that\u2019s totally fine. You can discuss any controversial topics. But you should not be twisting or distorting any facts; that is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parmar said her party\u2019s goal was to \u201cclearly define\u201d the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, not to \u201ccleanse\u201d it.<\/p>\n
Asked about her accusations of \u201cbrainwashing\u201d, Parmar said students \u201cregard their professors as a credible source of information\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that scholarly and academic integrity is maintained by people who are in these positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked to respond to criticism from many of her followers that an Act MP was going against her party\u2019s purported support of free speech, Parmar said: \u201cWe definitely support free speech and academic freedom, but academic freedom does not mean freedom to misrepresent facts. That\u2019s the main problem here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parmar said \u201cit would be nice\u201d if Dunworth \u201cexplained herself\u201d. <\/p>\n
Dunworth declined to comment when contacted by the Herald. <\/p>\n
Many of Dunworth\u2019s former and current students have also come to her defence, with one saying on social media that she is \u201cfantastic and constantly encourages people to speak up and disagree with her\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe makes it really clear that she is going to add her own opinion into what she teaches, and that we should form our opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bill received significant backlash from the public, activists, lawyers and the Waitangi Tribunal. Parmar said she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[91332,1117,4619,74,51,34609,32319,118190,269674,24267,269675,6368,111,43,139,69,1118,269673,269672,269671,9979,3767,1528],"class_list":["post-549094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-academic","tag-accused","tag-act","tag-after","tag-auckland","tag-backed","tag-backs","tag-brainwashing","tag-criticisms","tag-freedom","tag-misinforming","tag-mp","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-parmars","tag-parmjeet","tag-professors","tag-right","tag-students","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}