August 11, 2022
STEM students measure racism in academia
Māori and Pacifika students postgraduates studying STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – feel under-served, under-valued and excluded.
They’re some of the findings of a study of the experiences of 43 past and present postgraduate STEM students published in the latest Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Principal investigator Tara McAllistair from Te Pūnaha Matatini, the Centre of Research Excellence for complex systems hosted by the University of Auckland, says the students encountered significant cultural incompetence from academics including a lack of understanding of basic tikanga, no effort to pronounce te reo Māori correctly and people’s identities being questioned.
“There were comments like ‘Oh, but you’re not really Māori are you,’ or ‘you don’t act Māori so you should consider yourself white, so there was this potent erasure of people’s identities,” she says.
Tara McAllistair says the New Zealand university system doesn’t value what Māori lecturers may bring, and overseas lecturers aren’t taught the basic concepts around te ao Māori.