The theme for this year’s Records and Archives Week (RAW) is `Scandalous: The evidential value of records and archives’. To mark the occasion, Special Collections has organised a display on the ground floor of the General Library. Scandal beneath the Clock Tower lets you scrutinise key archival evidence relating to two ‘scandalous’ incidents in the history of The University of Auckland: the ‘Beaglehole affair’ in 1932 and the ‘Godfrey case’ in 1966.
At the heart of both is the issue of academic freedom: the right of academic staff and students to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions without fear of interference from political or ecclesiastical authorities, or their own university’s administration.
In addition to items from Special Collections, our RAW display includes material from The University of Auckland’s own archives, which are held in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor. Thank you to Libby Nichol and Ariel Liu, of the Records Management Programme, for making this possible.
As usual, it was difficult to cover every aspect of the two incidents in the display so if you want to dig deeper, please visit Special Collections where you can examine the files from which we selected the display items and other related material.
Katherine Pawley, Special Collections.