Minister Judith Collins who visited my law & economics class last year has announced, "The focus of the Marsden [Research] Fund will shift to core science, with humanities & social sciences panels .. no longer supported". Collins says the shift is to better help subjects like chemistry & physics & "focus on research that helps lift economic growth" because “the Government has been clear in its mandate to rebuild our economy". She says the new focus is on "supporting research of economic, environmental or health benefit to NZ" & proposals should show they can "boost economic growth" with "real impact on our economy".
What's going on? The politics behind the announcement is that economics has been caught in a Coalition backlash against public money being used to support research topics that are left-leaning. ACT Science Spokesperson Parmjeet Parmar, who I've known for ages, said “the Marsden Fund's terms of reference have seen funding prioritized for spirituality, activism & identity politics over high-quality public good research that benefits NZ”. National Party aligned Kiwi Blog states, "Marsden Fund dewoked: this is a great & badly needed decision. I've [David Farrar] often covered how a growing proportion of Marsden Fund was going on identity politics research, wokeism & social sciences".
This Blog doesn't want to jump on partisan bandwagons - just make a few observations.
First, since the defunding of social sciences has now been linked at high political levels to "woke research", the Coalition is treading a perilous path in terms of undermining free speech. Is the intent to defund folks whose views one disagrees with? ACT's MP has made the link. Collins argument is that the decision was made due to her government's "mandate to rebuild our economy". Is it wise for the Coalition to argue that academic research - which should be a search for the truth - is tied to supporting a political platform of "rebuilding" the economy?
Second, Collins statement argues "core sciences" are key to the rebuild. But that line has little economic content. I run a large Maths Charity that's sought to strengthen maths education in NZ, way before it was a hot political topic. That being said, I'm not aware publicly funding "core sciences" research over other subjects has a positive impact on the economy. Its easy to argue our "core science" researchers, being such a small group, have done little to help NZ's tech progress. Since where does nearly every technology used here come from? The computers & mobiles we use? Our cars? Household gadgets? Its nearly all imported. Is that bad? When NZ was the world's 2nd richest nation, we sold nearly all our farm produce to the UK. With the huge receipt of funds, we bought technologies that had been invented overseas. Its called "international trade".
Maybe the best thing is for New Zealand to continue with agriculture and tourism as our two main exports, though get more into high value-added brands: cheeses, wines, honeys and high-end hotels for wealthy foreign tourists. They dont require much high-brow research in "core sciences". Aren't we best to leave that to MIT, Cal Tech & Silicon Valley? Musk is one of the world's richest folks. He's into science, but equal to him in wealth is France's Bernard Arnault, who owns Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey and is worth $US 240 billion. He's made it using France's reputation for culture & fashion. He sells to Silicon Valley types and buys their tech in exchange. What's wrong with that? Value-added doesn't have to come from tech.
Sources: