Former prime minister Jacinda Ardern will take a role teaching empathetic leadership, social cohesion and civic trust at the University of Sydney, despite her Covid policies causing deep divisions in New Zealand.
The university has appointed Ardern as a Professor of Practice, where she will deliver guest lectures, run masterclasses and mentor students.
Voices for Freedom and RCR co-founder Alia Bland’s open letter criticising Jacinda Ardern’s appointment has attracted almost 600,000 views in its first 21 hours, with major international accounts sharing it.
Bland said her organisation received up to 1,000 emails a day during the Covid response from people facing job losses, financial hardship and family breakdowns. She argued vaccine mandates and restrictions divided New Zealand and damaged trust in its public institutions.
“I have no objection to universities studying Ardern’s leadership. In fact, I would encourage it!” Bland wrote, suggesting students could get a lesson in what not to do.
Bland objected to celebrating Ardern as a leader in empathy without acknowledging the human cost critics attributed to her government’s pandemic policies. “Her government deliberately created a two-class society. Ardern herself acknowledged that publicly,” she said.
Destiny Church Bishop Brian Tamaki joined the many voices online criticising the appointment. “Now she’s teaching social cohesion? You can’t make this stuff up!… To many Kiwis, Jacinda Ardern is the most hated PM in NZ history,” Tamaki said.
Read Alia Bland’s open letter on RCR.
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Birds of a feather flock together. A flocking flock of gibberring galahs. Don’t even think about coming back to NZ, thingee.
If what happened to Kiwi’s during COVID wasn’t so tragic and sad, this would be downright funny. As its stands, I find to deeply distasteful and offensive. Doesn’t say much about Australia either. Mind you free speech and privacy on line there are all but dead and there’s surveillance camera’s on street corners. So maybe it does make sense, after all.