Does President Naylor's March
Statement to the Governing Council Threaten Academic Freedom?
John Furedy
During
the last two decades, there have been two conflicting visions of a
university. One position is that the
university’s essential purpose is the search for truth through the
conflict of
ideas. This position entails that
academic freedom (of both student and faculty members of the academic
community) is the paramount value. The
other position is that comfort (of individuals or of various
collectivities)
should be the criterion of what can be thought and said (especially in
public), A common defense of this
culture-of-comfort position is that it averts violent and even
dangerous
behavior, and so contributes to making the campus “safe”.
Most
Canadian universities have conceded ground to the culture-of-comfort
position
by instituting what are essentially speech codes, although that term is
seldom
used. My university followed this trend
in the early nineties inasmuch as its code forbade not only offensive
behavior
but also offensive speech, and hence weakened, at least in principle,
the
academic freedom of its community. In
practice, however, the administration, for the last two decades, has
not
employed the speech code and has, in fact, protected academic freedom
against
the complaints of those who were offended by certain opinions.
The
most recent instance where the academic freedom and culture-of-comfort
principles have collided is the case of the Danish cartoons. I was encouraged that the Paul Gooch, the
President of Victoria University spoke clearly for academic freedom on
two
separate occasions. The first of these
defenses was his statement on the primacy of academic freedom
(Bulletin,
February 20). The second defense was his
reply to a forum piece (Beyond Posturing, Bulletin, March 6) that
argued for
limits on academic freedom on culture-of-comfort grounds.
In his reply, President Gooch rejected
comfort as the criterion of permissible speech (Civil Discourse
is Free
Discourse”, Bulletin, March 27).
A
cursory reading of President Naylor’s March Statement to the Governing
Council
(reported on in the March 27 Bulletin which also provides a reference
to the
full text of this statement) may suggest that this too is a defense of
academic
freedom, or, in terms of the statement, of the administration’s
determination
that “The University of Toronto will continue to uphold the principle
of free
expression”. However, there are aspects
of this statement that at least have the potential to ultimately harm
academic
freedom in our University. These aspects
need consideration because the statement is not just an opinion of an
administrator, but rather a formal statement to the Governing Council. As such it has precedent-setting status for
the way in which future incidents are handled in a way that ignores the
logical
distinction between acts or behavior that are clearly inappropriate,
and
opinion or speech that is appropriate (for the distinction between acts
and
opinion, see:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/Papers/af/Academic%20Freedom.doc.
The
aspects in the statement that I think are potentially threatening to
academic
freedom all arise from the treatment of
one of the four “incidents” that are said to have lead to the
“current
strain”. That incident is the
“distribution of flyers including one of the Danish cartoons and
statements
that have caused offense to Muslims”, to which the Anti-racism Office
is said
to have “responded fully and quickly” by “treating the flyers like
offensive
graffiti”, and calling the police. The justification given for this
“full and
quick” administrative action in the statement was that the
administration
wished to distinguish between (permissible) “provocatively reasonable”
and
(punishable) “unreasonably provocative” flyers and (presumably) other expressions
of opinion. The
administration
learned from the police that they did not consider the distribution to
contravene Canada’s hate laws, but the President’s statement
to the
reports that, nevertheless, the flyers
(and hence, presumably, the distributors) remain “points of interest”
to the
police.
I
suggest that in its treatment of this “flyers” incident, the
President’s
statement to the Governing Council undermines academic freedom not only
with
respect to its treatment of those who distributed the flyers, but also
those
others who, in the future, wish to express opinions that are offensive. In particular, there are the following six
aspects that particularly concern me:
1.
Treating the
flyer incident as if it were in the same class as the other three
incidents
(which all involved a varying degree of violence and criminality
perpetrated on
individuals, i.e., inappropriate acts) is to confuse offensive behavior
with
offensive speech.
2.
The
statement’s criterion for distinguishing between permissible and
forbidden
(“unacceptable on our campuses” is the way the statement puts it)
speech is
completely subjective. Individuals
in
the administration can decide what is “reasonable” and what is
“unreasonable”. It is these sorts of
subjective distinctions that allow authorities in a totalitarian regime
to act
in what is essentially a lawless manner, and to confuse acts or
behavior with
the expression of opinions.
3. Even the
statement’s own subjective distinction is not applicable to the flyers
incident. In elaborating what is meant
by “unreasonably provocative” the statement refers to “targeting
individuals
(my emphasis) on the basis of their identity”.
Individuals were certainly so targeted in the other three
incidents, but
in this one it was Muslims as a collectivity rather than an individual
that was
targeted. So the rationale for
“responding fully and quickly” to the flyers was, in my view,
conceptually
primitive, and unworthy of any university, let alone a great one.
4.
There is also
an aspect of arbitrariness involved in the administration’s treating
the flyers
“like graffiti”. What if some
“representatives” of people who are strongly opposed to homosexuality
(e.g.,
those Muslims who consider homosexuality, on religious grounds, to be a
mortal
sin) treated the positive space” signs like “offensive graffiti” and
removed
them?
5. In
addition to calling in the police, the administration also relied on
them to
determine whether the flyers “constituted hate literature”. This is disturbing for at least two
reasons. In the first place, the concept
of “hate literature” is based on assumptions which, at least in
Sharansky’s
free/fear distinction are part of a fear society, because “hate
literature”
involves no actual criminal acts. Surely
a university should err on the free rather than the fear end of this
continuum. Secondly, if the university
really wished to get advice on what is a complex and fine legal
distinction, it
should rely on expert (Canadian) legal opinion rather than that of the
police.
6.
Finally,
even after getting a police ruling that no “hate literature” was
involved, the
President goes on to report that his administration was informed that
the
flyers will remain “points of interest” to the police.
Why is this police opinion part of the
statement? Just what does it mean to declare those members of the
academic
community who posted those flyers (or even those who did not post them,
but approved
of the posting) to be “points of interest” to the police?
Is this like not being arrested for a thought
crime in a totalitarian regime, but nevertheless remaining a “point of
interest” to the rulers of that regime?
Will my university, in the future, treat those members of the
academic
community who express offensive opinions but who cannot be prosecuted
in terms
of Canada’s hate laws by referring them to the police, and publicizing
the fact
that, to the police, they remain “points of interest”?
Is this our Orwellian “golden future time”?
John Furedy is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Past President of SAFS.
SAFS Newsletter, #44, September 2006
Return
to Issues/Cases