SOCIETY FOR ACADEMIC
FREEDOM AND SCHOLARSHIP (SAFS)
Open
Letter
February 13, 2006
Dr. Wade Maclauchlan
President, University of Prince Edward Island
Charlottetown, PEI
C1A 4P3
Dear President MacLauchlan:
I am writing to you as president of
the Society for Academic Freedom
and
Scholarship. We are a national organization of university faculty
members and
interested others who are dedicated to the defence of academic freedom
and
reasoned debate. For further information, please visit our website at
www.safs.ca.
We are writing to strongly protest
the actions of the UPEI
administration in
seizing copies of the student newspaper, The
Cadre (issue dated February 8),
and preventing their
distribution. UPEI's public statement of February 8 that
censorship of The Cadre can be justified "on
grounds that publication of the caricatures represents a reckless
invitation to
public disorder and humiliation" is contrary to the duty of all
university
presidents to maintain their campuses as places where debate of
controversial issues
may take place. Fear of possible ‘mob action’ must not be allowed
to
dictate to UPEI or any other Canadian university what ideas its
students and
faculty may express, disseminate and debate. By censoring this
debate at
your campus rather than taking the necessary steps to provide
appropriate
security to allow debate to happen, you have encouraged the view that
the
threat of violence, real or imagined, is an effective way to challenge
ideas
with which one disagrees.
The decision as to what is to be
included in a newspaper
must be made by the editorial board, based on their understanding of
the
newsworthiness of the story. Those who disagree with the
newspaper's
coverage or viewpoint can register their opposition through writing
letters to
the editor, demonstrating, or simply by refusing to read the paper or
to advertise
in it. Disagreeable speech should be countered by opposing arguments.
Censorship
is not an acceptable response to the expression of contrary opinions,
and
especially not on a university campus. Sending the campus police
to
confiscate copies of the student newspaper is an overreaction and a
victory for
potential censors who seem to have intimidated the administration of
UPEI.
UPEI has given the impression that
vigorous debate is to be
avoided whenever offence may be taken, or at the very least that
such
debate is to occur only on terms decided by the university
administration. Surely,
this is not the image of UPEI that you want to promote.
We call on you to reverse your
decision and to let The
Cadre do its job.
Sincerely,
Clive Seligman
President
CC:
Ray Keating,
Editor, The Cadre
Published in the National Post, February 16, 2006,
p.A20, and The Cadre,
February 22, 2006, p.14.
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