n this situation report, we discuss ways to address current promotional processes that discriminate against Māori and Pacific academics in New Zealand universities. This report follows on from a paper that we published in 2020 showing that Māori and Pacific academics, compared with non-Māori non-Pacific male academics, were significantly less likely to be promoted to the professoriate (associate professor, professor) and earn less, over a 15-year period. These gaps are not explained by research performance (measured by Performance Based Research Fund scores), age or field (e.g., science).

This article has been inspired by “Why Isn’t My Professor Māori?” (McAllister et al., 2019), an article which appeared in this journal and addressed the under-representation of, and inequities facing, Māori academic staff in universities in Aotearoa New Zealand. I present some personal reflections and raise some questions with regard to academics with Māori heritage but who struggle to identify as Māori. I also describe some of the discomfort of being in the “middle ground” of cultural identity and how this has come about, and argue that we need to engage with such troubled identities and histories if we are to decolonise ourselves and our universities.     

This article provides insights into the ethnicity of academics employed by Aotearoa New Zealand’s eight universities, with a particular focus on Māori academics. We show that, despite values espoused by universities in terms of diversity and within their equity policies regarding Māori staff, there has been no progress in increasing the Māori academic workforce. Māori academics were severely under-represented at universities between 2012 and 2017, comprising approximately 5% of the total academic workforce.

This paper examines the ethnicity of academic scholars employed by New Zealand’s eight universities, with a particular focus on Pasifika academics. The paper discusses how, despite national and university policies to see education serve Pasifika peoples better, there has been no change in the numbers of Pasifika academics employed by the universities between 2012 and 2017, and notes that Pasifika who are in the academy are continually employed in the lower, less secure levels of the academy.