April 2011
Police arrest a Carleton University student who was staging an anti-abortion protest.
This Thursday March 10, a controversial pro-life
exhibit will test UBC’s commitment to free speech and to the rule of law.
Students with the campus club Lifeline will set up the “Genocide Awareness
Project” display, using large colour photos to compare abortion to various
historical genocides. In the past decade, UBC has imposed restrictions on
Lifeline’s speech, such as limits on the number and size of signs, and limits on
the number of times per year that Lifeline can exercise its free speech rights.
Other campus protests about George W. Bush, the 2010 Olympics, Michael Ignatieff,
homelessness, and animal rights have not faced restrictions like these.
Unfair as this discrimination has been, being singled
out for censorship is not Lifeline’s biggest concern. Far worse has been UBC’s
choice to condone mob obstruction of Lifeline’s display.
For example, when Lifeline set up its display on
campus in 2010, opponents covered the display with large cloths and banners,
impeded pedestrian traffic, and made it impossible for Lifeline to engage other
students in discussion. A shocking video shows police cheerfully informing
Lifeline’s opponents that theycouldcontinue to engage in this physical
obstruction and suppress Lifeline’s speech.
Lifeline is entirely supportive of the rights of
counter-demonstrators to share their competing views in the public square. In
this regard, there is a huge difference between expressing your own view and
preventing someone else from expressing hers. If a large crowd of people opposed
to Islam gathered right next to a UBC Muslim Students Association display,
loudly chanted anti-Islamic slogans, covered the display with large cloths, and
made it impossible for Muslims to engage passersby in dialogue, would UBC
condone the behaviour of the loud mob? I suspect that UBC would force the mob
to choose a different time, or a different location, or a less noisy method, or
all three. At the very least, UBC would create and enforce a “buffer zone”
between the Muslims and their opponents, such that the Muslims could continue to
engage students in dialogue.
In a 2008 Globe and Mail interview, UBC
President Dr. Stephen Toope lamented that “in Canada we have seen many examples
of students trying to shut down speakers with whom they disagree.” Dr. Toope
asserted that “the role of the university is to encourage tough questioning, and
clear expressions of disagreement, but not the "silencing" of alternative views.
Universities are sites for the contestation of values, not places where everyone
has to agree. That means that speakers we don’t like, or even respect, should be
allowed to put forward their views … [which can] then be challenged and argued
over.”
Dr. Toope understands that free speech – and the
benefits which free expression confers on society, democracy and the pursuit of
truth – can only exist when law and order prevail. Free speech cannot benefit
taxpayer-funded universities when authorities allow the mob to use physical
obstruction to silence unpopular views.
Every noble principle is rendered worthless when mob
rule replaces the rule of law. For example, in 1957 the first nine Black
students tried to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, which had
recently been desegregated by court order. The court order proved to be
worthless when Arkansas National Guardsmen, along with police, stood by while a
white mob pelted the black students with stones, assaulted them, and threatened
their lives. It was not until the federal government stepped in with appropriate
security measures – and upheld the rule of law – that the principle of racial
equality became meaningful.
UBC’s past decisions to condone mob rule on campus
contradict its own statement on academic freedom, which declares that students
and members of the public have the freedom “to teach and to learn unhindered by
external or non-academic constraints, and to engage in full and unrestricted
consideration of any opinion.” UBC claims that this freedom of expression
extends not only to “ideas that are safe and accepted,” but also to “ideas which
may be unpopular or even abhorrent.” Any suppression of academic freedom, says
UBC, “would prevent the University from carrying out its primary functions:
instruction and the pursuit of knowledge.”
UBC claims that it will not tolerate “behaviour
that obstructs free and full discussion of ideas.” This commitment to
free speech isn’t worth anything when UBC allows people to use obstruction to
silence unpopular minority opinion on campus. Dr. Toope and UBC’s statement on
academic freedom have it right. All that needs to happen on March 10 is for UBC
to render these noble principles meaningful by taking action in accordance with
its own principles.
Lawyer John Carpay acts for the UBC Lifeline club,
and for students at other universities, in defence of campus free speech rights.
Vancouver Sun, March 9, 2011.
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