Vice Chancellor Dawn Freshwater Resigns from Auckland University
We Are The University
Wed Jun 11 2025 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Professor Dawn Freshwater has announced that she will step down as Vice-Chancellor in early 2026, we acknowledge her service during unprecedented times in Aotearoa. While We Are The University has strongly disagreed with key consolidation and cost-saving measures under her leadership – measures which externalised costs onto students and staff – we recognise she too faced immense political pressures. We particularly value her work defending the place of matauranga Māori in the university against attacks both within and external to the university, and wish her well in future endeavours.
While the exact nature of Dawn’s departure is unclear, it is welcomed by students and staff alike. And while the murmurers of no-confidence will be ecstatic, the causes of student and staff dissatisfaction are structural and remain deeply entrenched. Notably the senior leadership team’s the dictatorial style and the devaluing of student and staff perspectives during her tenure has led to a number of rebuttals against key decisions her team have championed, including the centralisation and downscaling of student support services, mergers of faculties, both academic and support staff cuts, a fast-track approach to academic concerns such as the cutting of courses, as well as the disregard of due process and engagement with the Academic Senate.
The roots of these concerns are structural:
Funding Pressures & Narrow Agendas: Our student association and the wider university remain financially dependent on those they are supposed to hold accountable. Government funding is tied to increasingly narrow, commercially-driven metrics. This coalition government’s policies force a market-driven calculus onto the university, starving it of adequate public funding and imposing a regressive ideological agenda that privileges certain fields while devaluing others core to university functions.
Erosion of Core Purpose: Pressure to conform to short-term economic imperatives detaches the university from its critical role as the "critic and conscience of society," hindering its full potential and forcing it to prioritise compliance with this ideological framework over its core mission.
Systemic Design Flaws: Our problems are structural. The university operates within a framework designed to optimise and reward certain outcomes (financial efficiency, narrow market responsiveness) while foreclosing others (deep public service, critical scholarship, holistic wellbeing, diverse knowledge systems). This framework is not fixed or inevitable.
We do not need just a new Vice-Chancellor; we need a fundamental change in the values and attitudes governing the University of Auckland. To realise its full potential for staff, students, and Aotearoa as a whole, the University Council must prioritise leadership that is truly representative, empowering, and a fierce defender of the institution’s core values of education, research, and service to the community. Our university’s leadership must set a new precedent. Conditions at the University of Auckland impact workers and students across Aotearoa. We owe it to all to fight for transformative change here.
Therefore, future leadership must prioritise:
Partnership & Shared Vision: Recognising students and staff as central allies in enhancing the university, not costs to be managed.
Holistic Value Beyond Commerce: Amplifying the true impact of all education and research in Aotearoa – arts, humanities, social sciences, sciences alike – measured by societal wellbeing, cultural enrichment, and public good, not just narrow commercial returns or government mandates.
Advocacy & Public Awareness: Increasing public understanding of the university's diverse value and actively advocating against government policies that harm students, staff, and the sector, clearly articulating the link between a strong, publicly-funded university and Aotearoa's holistic wellbeing.
Equity & Diversity: Strengthening genuine commitments to equity, diversity, inclusion, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Aotearoa-Centred Mission: Deeply aligning the university’s labour and priorities with the needs, peoples, places, and diverse knowledge systems of Aotearoa, ensuring research and teaching serve our communities.
Holistic Support: Supporting students and staff holistically – recognising the interplay between wellbeing, work, study, and life trajectories within this institution.
The appointment of a new Vice-Chancellor is a critical juncture. We call on the University of Auckland Council to seize this moment to boldly champion leadership committed to transforming the values, structures, and purpose of our university for the benefit of all.
We Are The University