In regard to the article ‘University backs thesis on neo-Nazis’, while I replied to Mr Broun despite my original intention not to respond to the media regardless of the outcome of the University enquiry, I must commend him on his balanced article.

Regardless of personal issues, the media and the public should be concerned with the state of tertiary education when the Van Leeuwen thesis can be awarded 1st Class Honours.

It took the University enquiry nearly a year, not the originally intended 2 months, to go through the process. Vice Chancellor Crawford received the report five months ago and it was said by the University lawyers it would take him 2 weeks to respond. Why then did it take 5 months?

The outcome of the enquiry of nearly a year was a one page letter from Dr Crawford stating that the thesis was 'worthy' on the basis that 'two well qualified academics' had graded it.

No mention is made of the report itself and of its availability. Why not?

Not one of my questions covered in over 100 pages of documentation has been answered.

Now that the thesis has entered the corpus of scholarly knowledge students can write theses and papers citing Van Leeuwen as an authoritative source stating for e.g. that the Mormon Church did not allow Maori into the priesthood until 1978. Van Leeuwen's own cited reference for this is Embry, The Encyclopaedia of Mormonism entry "Blacks". I invite anyone to check this reference for themselves and find where Maori or more specifically "brown skinned men" are mentioned.

About a dozen publications attributed to me in the thesis are not mine, some of which I'd never heard of prior to reading the thesis, and some of which I have still not read. Gillian Spry, lawyer, responded to another complainant that his complaint in regard to a misattributed publication was 'trivial in comparison to the many misattributed articles' raised by me. How then did the enquiry address this, if at all?

Articles are wilfully misinterpreted. For e.g. Van Leeuwen claims that an article on eugenics refers to the 'dumbing down of civilisation through race mixing'. There is no such allusion anywhere in the article, and I invited the enquiry to look at this.

There are many claims that are not referenced at all. This is unacceptable for a scholarly paper at any level.

Other references are so vaguely cited that they are unacceptable from a scholarly level. For e.g. "ODF archives", "OSV archives", etc. Scholarly references require precision. This is a basis of scholarship.

One media article states that the enquiry was independent. This is not so. The enquiry was internal. Other similar enquiries have involved outside adjudicators. Not here, though.

My own background includes several doctorates in theology, and wide assessment by scholars across a multiplicity of disciplines. I know that even peer-reviewed papers must have exact precision of referencing before acceptance; that every statement must be referenced. I know from my own background that nothing about the Van Leeuwen thesis is acceptable on any level of legitimate scholarship.

This scandal involves at least 3 of New Zealand’s 8 Universities, if we include the two external examiners, so-called ‘eminent scholars’ who are presumably resident at two other Universities. Their identities are protected under the Privacy Act. They cannot therefore be held to account for their ineptitude. Furthermore, I was denied access to copies of the external examiners’ reports on the thesis, and after months of enquiry from both the Ombudsmen’s’ Office and the Privacy Commission will finally be given censored versions of the reports, but too late to use in my complaint.

This matter is far from finished, despite the words of Dr Crawford.