Woke Universities in New Zealand
'Go woke, go broke' - another one bites the dust.
It is reported that New Zealand’s oldest University is to be re-branded with Maori names and images. The confusion runs so deep between the language and the institution’s woke PR dept it’s hard to decipher exactly what is going on. Here is an institution which (like all it’s competitors) is also suffering catastrophic collapse in student numbers as economic global recession hits and staff are made redundant.
In true NZ style, this media report makes a total hash of trying to combine two very different languages into the same sentence:
“As of March the 15th, 2023, The University of Otago, Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo, is kicking off a consultation to replace its generic “Te Whare Wānanga” name with a new symbolic Māori one. The word Otago is actually a two-century-old mispronunciation of Ōtākou, so it makes sense that the university’s proposed new ingoa Māori is “Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka”, a name that nods to the academic excellence of the university, and its place as a kainga for the mana whenua and manuhiri who study and teach there every year. Otago is also consulting to adopt a Māori tohu, meaning that its logo with the old-school blue-gold shield featuring the Latin phrase “sapere aude” (dare to know) will be used mainly for ceremonial purposes.”
Note I have bolded the delusional phrases for sarcasm. I deliberately changed the foreign words to italics (not in the original). How fascinating that the author of the report (which is actually just likely to be a copy-and-paste Media release from the University), thinks it’s acceptable to use Maori words mid-sentence without a parenthesis explanation, yet adds one for the Latin phrase. Why is this?
Can anyone let me know of any other societies where this is deemed normal and acceptable? It seems totally disrespectful to both languages to use combined words and phrases in this way. And apart from the ethics, it is extremely unhelpful and confusing for my ESOL students studying English, where the grammar rules between these languages are completely different.
Empty classrooms = no jobs.
These institutions’ enrolments have collapsed. Their most critical-thinking staff have been fired through illegal vaccine mandates or other workplace disputes. Their wokeness has alienated over half their potential genuine students.
Their only hope of a financially secure and sustainable future, is appealing to the few wealthy overseas students who still believe (or at least their parents do) in the ‘clean, green, 100% pure’ myth that is NZ. Who, incidentally are almost ALL from English-speaking countries. Even the Chinese wealthy aspire to speak ‘better’ English (and thereby get residency), by coming to study at NZ, definitely not Te Reo Maori.
In short, this further act of virtue-signaling from the University of Otago is utter commercial suicide, domestically and internationally, that will ensure the death of the already failed, fraudulent, corrupted, unsustainable institutions that will continue on their self-congratulatory delusion, until their last book is burned.
Thanks for this very informative article. The term 'woke' was first used by African Americans (a disputed term now BTW) in the USA in the 1930s, meaning being conscious of racial prejudice and discrimination, as in 'stay woke. ' It was used by musicians such as Lead Belly. I wish we could come up with a better word that describes state control of disputed language. It's a massive con that makes people think something is being done about discrimination.