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A protest at the University of California, Berkeley campus in 2017 (Photo: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)
A protest at the University of California, Berkeley campus in 2017 (Photo: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)

SocietyNovember 11, 2019

Nailing jelly to the wall? Universities, academic freedom and free speech

A protest at the University of California, Berkeley campus in 2017 (Photo: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)
A protest at the University of California, Berkeley campus in 2017 (Photo: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)

With the university campus rapidly becoming a space of conflict, is it possible to remain faithful to academic freedom while at the same time mitigating the most harmful effects of hate speech? Massey University provost Giselle Byrnes discusses.

Academic freedom and free speech have been much debated in New Zealand in recent months. Chief among the issues at play has been the status of academic freedom on university campuses and balancing this commitment with the reality of operating a 21st century university. In many respects, protecting academic freedom is, it might be argued, not too dissimilar to the historian’s quest for objectivity. Back in the late 1980s the American historian Peter Novick noted that, for historians at least, the pursuit of objectivity was rather like “nailing jelly to the wall”, a noble effort, but one fraught with challenges. I suggest that the need to balance a commitment to the honourable goals of protecting academic freedom and free speech alongside the issues of harm, wellbeing and safety, not to mention the challenges of hate speech, somehow makes academic freedom much less straightforward than it once might have been. 

The orthodox and rather sacred view of the modern university campus is that it is a place where, to paraphrase the University of California’s most famous president, Professor Clark Kerr, “students are made safe for ideas, not where ideas are made safe for students”. But this view of the role of the university and the site of the university campus is being openly attacked, in the name of free speech at all costs. It is, too, something of a paradox that at a time when universities are developing ‘digital campuses’ and enhancing the student experience by expanding online learning and teaching platforms, the physical campus is becoming a lightning rod for the expression of extreme views, often driven by groups external to a university. This is not to say that online discussion does not occur – it does, and it will continue – but the campus itself is rapidly becoming a space of conflict, tension and public notoriety. 

In recent months, there has been fierce public and media-fuelled debate about the role of universities in protecting and supporting the principles and practice of freedom of expression, free speech and academic freedom. This wider international context includes the desecration of historical statues on university campuses (the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign), the debate around ‘trigger warnings’ for students on US university campuses, the rise of the so-called ‘snowflake’ generation and the increasing call for universities be a part of and not sit apart from the communities in which they operate and the constituencies they serve. Universities around the world have, since the 1960s, been grappling with free speech and the expression of academic freedom. It would be fair to say, too, that social, political and economic movements – driven by rapidly changing student demographics – have increasingly challenged orthodox intellectual paradigms and the place of the university in matters of free speech has become sorely tested. 

New Zealand has not been immune from this either. Earlier this year, students at the University of Auckland were up in arms regarding an alleged white supremacist movement on campus. The university has been responding to the appearance of posters on campus advertising the existence of a white supremacist group and has refused to remove the posters as an expression of its support for free speech, but it has recognised the harm these posters have caused. Otago University’s Emeritus Professor Jim Flynn’s book on the topic has failed to keep its international publisher for fear of transgressing hate speech laws in Britain, and my own university has recently been challenged by the issues of free speech and freedom of expression on campus. The public and media gaze on these events has been intense.

The right to academic freedom is very clear in New Zealand where universities and their staff are mandated in their rights by the Education Act 1989. Under this legislation, universities and their academic staff have a right to fulfil the role as ‘critic and conscience’ of society. Academic freedom is defined in section 161 of the Act as “the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions”. While there is no strict consensus about what ‘conscience’ actually means – other than a nod perhaps to our Christian colonising origins and an appeal to a sense of overarching moral duty – the ‘critic’ role is one taken seriously by universities in ‘speaking truth to power’. Irrespective of where that power might now reside, universities jealously guard their independence and their role in speaking from an evidence-based position. After all, in our modern democratic nation-state, no other public institution has this role. 

Of course, you might say free speech – not just in mainstream media but also in online platforms and social media channels – saturates our modern world. As Douglas Murray rightly notes in his masterful book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, the line between public discourse and private thinking has now more or less dissolved; with the advent of social media, the space between what one wishes to say and what one should say are leading to a sort of self-censorship where everything is exposed. Murray also observes that nowadays, the issue is all about the speaker, not necessarily the speech itself. And in the dark recesses of the internet, speech of all varieties flourishes. Australian journalist Ginger Gorman has bravely detailed her own journeying into the world of online hate speech in search of journalistic truth. Her Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout is a chilling expose of this hate-filled world of social media.

Amid this ‘public noise’ and alongside the trend towards enhanced student access and increasing expectations upon publicly funded universities to perform more like corporate entities with healthy balance sheets, universities have reaffirmed their core mandate and purpose: teaching, the dissemination and exchange of ideas, and freedom in conducting research publishing the results. Let’s be clear: universities fulfil a critical role in encouraging debate and discussion in society; they provide an environment where new ideas can be explored and challenged and where old ideas can be tested and even overturned. Universities prize new and independent thinking and value the expression of a range of views within the institution. This diversity of opinion, when based on evidence and sound research, is the basis upon which they state their claim to developing and extending scholarship and contributing to the advancement of knowledge. 

In post-March 15 New Zealand, academia is not the only domain where debates around the parameters of free speech and the definitions of hate speech are being tested. The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority is currently exploring if broadcasting standards need to be amended in the wake of the horrific Christchurch mosque attacks this year. Indeed, ‘Freedom in Broadcasting without Harm’ is the refreshed mission of our country’s most powerful media watchdog who are placing, in their own words, a ‘spotlight on harm’. It is worth noting that while the right to exercise the freedom of expression is enshrined in New Zealand law, the limits on expressing this are currently very few. The Bill of Rights Act recognizes the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind and in any form. The Human Rights Commission is committed to the freedom of expression and the right to human dignity, but it also recognises that most rights are not absolute and that rights come with responsibilities. 

Admittedly, New Zealand does have legislation which offers protection from hateful, threatening or offensive behaviours, such as the Sentencing Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act. The Human Rights Act also declares it unlawful to publish or distribute threatening, abusive or insulting words that are likely to excite hostility on the basis of colour, race or ethnicity. But there is an overwhelming public sentiment that these provisions do not go far enough. Since the Christchurch mosque attacks, the Human Rights Commission has asked the New Zealand Government to look at amending the laws to protect religious groups against hate speech. Justice Minister Andrew Little considers too that current laws dealing with hate speech are ‘woefully inadequate’ and he has asked his Ministry to work with the Human Rights Commission to examine whether New Zealand laws properly balance the issues of freedom of speech and hate speech. 

This is why Massey University has developed a new policy which sets out how we see free speech in our New Zealand context, framed by our governing legislation and informed by the historical, social and cultural milieu in which we now operate. Massey’s new policy amplifies and underscores the importance of academic freedom – on behalf of individuals and the institution itself – and in doing so, notes that with freedom comes responsibilities. In the current vacuum around the lack of legal definition of what constitutes hate speech, we consider that our staff and students deserve this clarification. 

Massey’s new policy supports and validates academic freedom while emphasising that with this freedom comes the responsibility to ensure that others are neither harmed nor hurt in the exercise of this privilege. Accordingly, the policy defines the core principles of these freedoms within the context of the academy in 21st century Aotearoa. It outlines the responsibilities of staff and students in exercising academic freedom. In other words, while the policy affirms the generally held international principles around the primacy of academic freedom, it acknowledges the limitations of exercising these freedoms in our local diverse postcolonial context. We take the view that the ability to speak freely on campus is a privilege and one that ought to be exercised with responsibility. 

Let me restate that central to the mission of a university is the commitment to academic freedom, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of expression. In the context of a democratic society, these values sit alongside our belief that scholarly exchanges should not silence, disparage, marginalise, stigmatise or incite hostility towards others, especially vulnerable groups and with particular attention to those who have been marginalised in the past. This involves weighing up the purpose of a university on the one hand – to allow the full and frank debate of ideas – while, on the other, to be mindful of the context in which we exist. As Sigal R. Ben-Porath argues in her book Free Speech on Campus, it is possible to remain faithful to academic freedom while at the same time mitigating the most harmful effects of hate speech.

In the immediate wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks in March this year, New Zealand Justice Minister Andrew Little noted in April that “freedom of speech can give force to new ideas, but also cause discomfort and offence. It is usually the first right to be lost under oppressive regimes, and among the first to be restored, at least in name, after revolutionary change.” Given the critical role universities play in nation-making and educating the citizenry, this is worth remembering.

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Erica Anderson, aka sputina, at Kawaiicon (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)
Erica Anderson, aka sputina, at Kawaiicon (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

SocietyNovember 11, 2019

From bogans to bubble tea: The Wellington hacker war that wasn’t

Erica Anderson, aka sputina, at Kawaiicon (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)
Erica Anderson, aka sputina, at Kawaiicon (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

What’s the once staunchly metal hacker convention Kiwicon doing swapping skulls for stuffed toys, and what’s the deal with the new con on the block? Alex Stronach reports. 

It starts with hackers, pyrotechnics, and an alpaca in a party hat.

No, wait, let’s rewind.

It’s June 2019, and every Kiwi pundit is grappling with a question they’re critically under-equipped to answer: just what is hacking? Did National hack the budget? Was Grant Robertson a liar when he claimed to have been hacked? The budget breach disappeared from the headlines without anybody ever answering those questions, but I wasn’t happy, so I kept asking. My questions took me to Kawaiicon, and Kawaiicon was a story of its own.

The Wellington hacker convention (formerly Kiwicon) is in its 12th year, and it’s one of the biggest information security events in the southern hemisphere. It attracts hackers of all stripes: offensive (“red”) teams, defensive (“blue”) teams, and folks who live somewhere in between (“purple teams”), and also brings in techie sorts from a dozen different fields outside of security. Tickets sell out in a matter of hours. Adam “metlstorm” Boileau had been running the event that entire time but this year handed the reins over to a younger hacker – Erica Anderson, aka sputina – to head the crew.

I’d been hearing about it for months, a sort of telephone game about something dramatic going on behind the scenes: the sudden name change, the new aesthetic, the sister convention Purplecon splitting off into a venue across town. I walked in expecting to find a war. Kiwicon is semi-infamous for its bogan aesthetic, outlaw attitude, and open bar at the afterparty. It’s a bearded guy in a black hoodie with a skull on it. It’s, well… metal.

Adam “metlstorm” Boileau (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

I’m not sure what I expected from metl; for him to speak in machine code, for him to be wearing six layers of black hoodies with different skulls on them, for my phone to spontaneously explode when I got too close. The man could be a T-1000 and still not live up to half the rumours. He wore camo pants and an M1 helmet with Born to #Shell printed on it, but he was jovial, animated, talkative. I asked him the question: what is hacking? He talked about playfulness, having fun, and how hacking was, at the end of the day, just using tech in ways it wasn’t meant to be used.

The conversation turned to the handover, and he talked about the younger hackers in a gentle, almost fatherly way. The convention had adopted a totally new look: vibrant colours, cartoon animals with big eyes, glitter all over the place, but it didn’t seem to bother him; he called it an extension of artists like Bowie who delighted in blurring lines — somewhere between creativity, self-expression and friendly trolling.

“We take not-taking-ourselves-seriously pretty seriously,” he said.

It’s hard to walk into the main stage at Kawaiicon and not be struck by its contradictions. Eight-bit versions of classic metal songs blast over the speakers. The massive screen is covered in cute cartoon animals. There’s a life-sized toy alpaca in a party hat. At the start of the first day, metlstorm comes onstage, and the animals disappear, replaced with a black skull filled with red worms, or maybe tentacles. Guitars blare, pyrotechnics go off, and metl announces that the ‘con’ (convention) will be business as usual.

It won’t be.

Metl’s signature skull-and-crossbones aesthetic has been a major part of the con since day 1, and there was consternation from some older hackers at the announcement: that sputina would make it cute and girly and nonthreatening. She took that idea and ran with it, renaming it Kawaiicon (from the Japanese “kawaii” for “cute”), putting cartoon and ASCII animals everywhere, adding as many bright colours as she could. Throughout the event, metl would take over the stage and announce that he’d defeated sput and brought back the skulls, only for her to reappear, chase him off, and bring back the animals.

One of the convention badges has a cute sheep with a pentagram carved into its forehead and black sludge leaking from its eyes. On stage on day 1, sput is wearing a shirt with a cartoon Baphomet on it.

Sput, Baphomet (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

Sput is, like almost everybody at the convention, a former alternative kid. She’s more punk than metal, but it still seems like much of the new aesthetic is a punchline to her. She thought it would be funny to put all the big bogan hackers in the cutest room she could, and things snowballed from there. It’s not clear how serious she’s being, but it’s not clear how serious anybody is being. There’s a refusal to be pinned down that seems common to everybody in the building. But, like many people I spoke to, she voiced sincere concern about information security being dark and unwelcoming, and that it needed to be less scary if they were going to bring new people in.

On the first day, Courtney Eckhardt, an incident response specialist, had given a talk on the mechanics of being good to each other; a guide not about being a better hacker, but being a kinder hacker. I thought about it as sput spoke about hacks being made worse because people were scared to come forward and honestly discuss what had happened; crucial details go unseen because somebody came forward late or not at all, letting attackers go longer undetected or deal more damage.

Partway through the second day, sput came onstage and announced she’d caught metl and subjected him to ‘cute re-education’. He came back out in a pink hoodie, with glitter in his beard, a stuffed alpaca and bandolier of bullets. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

metl following his ‘cute re-education’ (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

The good-natured battle for the soul of Kawaiicon symbolises a moment of flux: an entire industry trying to negotiate its identity in a time when their skills are needed more than ever. In June 2017, a virus called NotPetya (speculated to be a Russian cyberwarfare attack that spun wildly out of control) took down the entire Maersk company for 10 days. Maersk controls about 20% of global shipping; another week or two, and we could have seen food shortages. The spectre of NotPetya hung over the convention when metl said, “We’re having fun with it but it’s serious fucking business. We’re not going to know how bad it is until somebody decides to really fuck with us.”

The question in every 2013 InfoSec article about bedroom hackers going mainstream was, “Can the punk kids work office jobs?” It was the wrong question: punk kids have been working office jobs since before punk was even a thing. The real question is: “Can the punk kids save the world?” Can they save each other? Maybe that’s where this new kindness is coming from. Nobody ever said it explicitly, but it came out sideways, in quiet moments and morbid jokes, and the stats back it up: the rate of depression and burnout among hackers is high. The pay is good but the stress is immense, and few people outside the industry understand how bad things are. It could be personal myth-making, but there’s a tangible feel that they’re the last line of defence against some great enemy that even they don’t know the name of. Injecting some softness and humour into that doesn’t just seem practical, it seems almost medicinal.

I asked sput the same question as everybody else: what is hacking? “To be a hacker,” she said, “you need to be curious and solve problems and do cool shit.” It seems like sometimes that means writing code to crack into a system and sometimes that means, well… knitting. A surprising number of hackers are into hobbies like crochet that need strong problem-solving skills to make something beautiful with ungainly tools.

Crocheted convention badges at Purplecon (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

Which brings us at last to Purplecon. It’s on the Wednesday, at Pipitea Marae down the road. Purplecon started in the Kiwicon spare room in 2018, but this year they had an entire venue to themselves and took the increased space as an opportunity to decorate. A sign on the wall tells me to drink water, and another tells me I look cute. The convention badges are knitted purple stars, done by organiser Jeremy Stott’s mum. One of the core organisers is Alex “mangopdf” Hope, a softly spoken Australian hacker with a shock of dyed blue-and-pink hair. Purplecon was envisaged as an event for “blue teams” (defensive hackers) and developers. Alex intentionally chose an aesthetic as far away from the traditional skull and crossbones as possible: pastels, lavender, a dedicated bubble tea station. The Kiwicon organisers had purchased the ‘Kawaiicon’ domain years ago for a laugh, and had occasionally joked about running a cute year: the Purplecon organisers clearly thought the idea was a good one.

Purplecon organisers: Ryan Kurte, Grace Nolan, Alex Hope and Jeremy Stott (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

Alex compared the traditional hacker aesthetic to markings on a wasp: “danger, stay away” – and that’s a problem when security matters more than ever, and infosec needs to be a bigger tent. Despite the lure of good money, information security isn’t an industry many people get into on purpose. There’s little formal training; more often than not, people fall into it by accident. It’s hard to recruit for, and doubly so when the industry’s favourite aesthetic is so daunting.

There was no tension between the conventions. Most of the Purplecon organisers were at Kawaiicon, manning tables or helping out behind the scenes; it felt less like a split than an organic growth in a different direction. The Purplecon website even made a joke about it.

The Purplecon manifesto claims “everybody’s rebelling the same way”, but they’re still rebelling. I asked a few different attendees at each con whether they thought hacking was inherently rebellious, and they looked at me like I’d asked if water was inherently wet. Of course they’re rebelling, even at the defence event with the bubble tea table.

There’s a nail painting station at Purplecon, and the bottles have a prominent 420 on the cap. “It’s a coincidence,” said Alex, “that’s just the colour [code].” I had the same feeling I’d later get with metl and sput: like I was – in the nicest way possible – being fucked with, just a little. The nail table had the weed number displayed prominently: a little tongue poking out at anybody who might want to take things too seriously. The same ethos as Kawaiicon, coming from a different direction.

I asked Alex the question: what is hacking?

“Everybody hacks something,” they said, “just not always with a computer.”

The knitted Purplecon stars were one of the least unusual things about the event. Knitting is perhaps the one thing I saw universally taken seriously, and I got given a few different reasons: it’s creative; knitting patterns are like a form of code, where the knitter is a computer; it’s taking simple tools and doing something unexpected. You can do a lot with knitting needles: you can knit, sure, but you can also write code into a scarf to slip it past the Nazis. Hacking isn’t an aesthetic or an event; it’s a mindset, a process, a very specific sort of curiosity.

How do you hack something? According to Alex, “you probably already have”.

Purplecon organiser Alex Hope (Photo: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner via Flickr)

On Thursday at Kawaiicon, a speaker tried to walk off stage after their talk without waiting for the pyrotechnics. Sput came out and had them take a bow while sparks rained down. The same pyrotechnics metlstorm had opened with went off after every talk, and blasted for a full 20 seconds to close the event. It was, to quote one attendee, “metal as fuck”. It was as far from the quiet marae of Purplecon as it can be, but it’s the same faces, the same minds, the same curiosity. I’d expected to find a war, but instead I found something that – in the nicest way possible – is fucking with you, just a little.

I asked sput whether the cute animals would be back in 2020. She laughed. “Anybody who mentions next year gets banned,” she said.

I don’t know how serious she was being.

I didn’t bring it up again.

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