The committee for UoA SEEN came together in 2025 as a consequence of the growing proliferation of antiscientific views in formal scientific societies, particularly denial of the sex binary. Specifically, the Presidents of three organismal-biology societies; the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), sent a letter to the US President claiming that sex wasn’t defined by gamete size but by a variety of different genetic and phenotypic measures, and so was not binary. This is scientific nonsense, and was robustly criticised by a variety of eminent biologists, culminating in an open letter challenging the authors. Jerry Coyne was one of the leaders of this rebuttal and posted about it several times on his blog. Richard Dawkins also wrote about it, decrying the antiscientific and unrepresentative nature of the letter. Prof Coyne sums up the problems with the letter so:
“Implicitly claiming that its sentiments were endorsed by the 3500 members of the societies, the declaration also claimed that there is a scientific consensus on the definition of sex, and that is that sex is NOT binary but rather some unspecified but multivariate combination of different traits, a definition that makes sex a continuum or spectrum—and in all species!”
The conversation amongst biologists on Twitter led to a campaign to gather signatures on the rebuttal, led by Prof Luana Maroja and including several biologists from across UoA. This included UoA SEEN founders Nick Matzke and Chris Pook.
Coincidentally, another controversy around the reality of sex emerged at UoA at around the same time. Professor (now Dame) Elizabeth Rata had been ordered by the University’s central Equity Office and her Head of School to amend her teaching material which stated that sex was binary. According to them this was factually incorrect. They instructed Prof Rata to include the following statement in her teaching:
“It is a scientific fact that human biological sex is not binary. The biological sex of some people
is neither female nor male.”
The Equity Office justifies its demand by stating that:
“The university has a moral obligation to provide
accurate information to the affected students, in line with our values of excellence and integrity.”
Prof Rata made a formal complaint to HR on the grounds that the Equity Office was interfering with her academic freedom. She insisted that the matter be made entirely public, which allows us to share her letter of complaint here:
Prof Rata’s complaint was supported by a letter from a group of biologists and other scholars with relevant disciplinary expertise which presented the scientific basis for the sex binary. They were:
- Nick Matzke, Senior Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences
- Kendall Clements, Professor, School of Biological Sciences
- Tony Hickey, Professor, School of Biological Sciences
- Anthony Poole, Professor, School of Biological Sciences
- Russell Gray, Professor, School of Psychology
- Garth Cooper, Professor, School of Biological Sciences
- Peter Hunter, Distinguished Professor, Auckland Bioengineering Institute
- David Cumin, Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine
In response to this support for Prof Rata’s position the Equity Office issued a letter making a formal apology to Prof Rata:
The letter of apology stated:
“[T]he Equity Office unreservedly apologises for providing advice that led to interference in your academic practices.”
The letter went on to state that:
“This letter will provide assurance that the Equity Office will not knowingly make any further inaccurate statements concerning scientific matters, and that any further complaints about scientific matters that come to the Equity Office will be referred to disciplinary experts.”
The Equity Office also wrote a response to the scientists who wrote the letter in support of Prof Rata’s position.
As a result of this episode we decided that the university would benefit from the establishment of a network of staff and students committed to the recognition of the existence of the sex binary, it’s importance to the rights of women, same-sex attracted people and children, and resistance to attempts to erase or diminish that importance in university policy and practice. You can read more about us here:
And you can read our founding statement:
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