Newsletter

April 2007

Commentary At blogut.ca: Free Speech?

The
National Post recently published a letter from our very own Professor Emeritus
Phil Sullivan. Together with Clive Seligman from the Society for Academic
Freedom and Scholarship in London, Professor Sullivan cited the University in no
uncertain terms as "dropping the ball" when it comes to protecting your right to
freedom of expression. The online version of the letter can be found here.

Whether or not the University is bound by the Charter of Rights entails a whole
mess of jurisprudence that we won’t get into here. What is clear is that we are
a diverse, talented and driven university community – that we are, as the
University says, great minds for a great future. Surely the University of
Toronto, which houses some of the country’s finest scholars and advocates for
the protection of civil liberties, does not mean to deny us exposure to
conflicting views, the exchange of ideas, the unpopular dissent that is at the
heart of a free western democracy?

I
invite your comments about Prof. Sullivan’s letter, and especially welcome
comments as to whether you, as a U of T student, feel free to voice your beliefs
in our community without fear of reprisal.

1. JP Says: February 14^th, 2007

They’re talking about “forms of expression fall short of
the legal limits of hate speech, but nonetheless are harmful to identifiable
members of our community…” I think we could use a little context here, i.e.,
examples? I think U of T is pretty good in terms of free speech. At least, they
did pretty well in response to the criticism of this cartoon by The Strand. Read
their news release here.

2. P. A. Sullivan Says: February 21^st, 2007

To
the commentator requesting a “little context” I would reply that any one aware
of the history of assaults on free speech in the name of avoiding offense should
be deeply concerned about the introduction of such nebulous terms “harmful
speech.”

Our
original letter to the NP did, however, include a recent example which was the
proximate cause of our decision to write. This example, omitted from the
published version, stated as follows:

Almost one year ago,
in response to some flyers being posted on the campus that depicted one of the
Danish cartoons of Muhammad and some possibly offensive statements, the
administration ordered the campus police to take down the posters and forward
them to the police. According to the university’s president the “Toronto Police
advised U of T that these fliers did not constitute hate literature, but also
advised that the fliers were a ‘point of interest’ for them.”

3. JP Says: February 21^st, 2007

Thank you Prof. Sullivan for taking the time to comment on this.
Now I certainly see your cause for concern, and frankly, I share the same
concern.

4. P. A. Sullivan Says: February 22^nd, 2007

I
discuss these issues in an essay entitled:

“Are Postmodernist Universities and Scholarship Undermining Modern Democracy”,
in “Scientific values and Civic Virtues,” (Noretta Koertge, Editor, Oxford
University Press, 2005, pp. 172-190, 2006).

I
suggest that anyone aware of the issues I raise in that essay might have serious
concerns about certain developments at the University of Toronto. Perhaps the
most serious of these is that, despite a mania for planning in recent years,
there has been little attempt by Simcoe Hall to examine the corrosive
effects of mixing scholarship with advocacy in certain
disciplines, and the associated implications for censorship on contentious
topics such as the “Nature/Nurture” controversy.

The
censorship problem is nicely characterized by a US journalist. Cited by the free
speech advocate Nat Hentoff in his “Free Speech for Me but Not For Thee” (cited
in essay), this journalist commented on the pervasive tendency to censor in the
name of avoiding offense by observing: “Censorship is the strongest drive in
human nature; sex is a weak second.”

This quip is very perceptive. The urge to censor is just as strong today as it
was in the past. Only the topics that are considered taboo have changed.