Newsletter

April 2009

Queen’s Cancels ‘Dialogue Facilitator’ Program

Joseph Brean

Calling it “incompatible with the atmosphere required for free speech,” Queen’s
University in Kingston, Ont., on Wednesday scrapped its controversial “dialogue
facilitator” program.

It
caused a scandal last year when it was revealed the six student “facilitators”
were mandated to intervene in private conversations to encourage discussion of
social justice issues and discourage offensive language.

In
a report to the administration, a panel of experts expressed “strong
reservations about unsolicited interventions into the lives of students” because
of the risk of “making students feel unsafe or under surveillance because of
their opinions.”

The
panel included Leora Jackson, the school’s rector, John Meisel, an emeritus
professor of political science, and Keith Norton, the former head of the Ontario
Human Rights Commission. They had “serious concerns” with how the program was
set up.

The
panel faulted Dean of Student Affairs Jason Laker for importing an American
model of diversity promotion, from the National Coalition Building Institute,
while failing to research any comparable programs at Canadian universities.

The
panel report also faults him for giving “no thought” to a communications
strategy to explain it, and for not involving anyone outside of the Student
Affairs office in the program’s design. The campus consultations his office did
do were “inadequate, ineffective and undertaken too late.” The review was
launched in response to “a tempest of negative, sometimes searing, comment in
the national press.” It did not find evidence of the worst fears expressed
in the media commentary, such as comparisons to the KGB. “In all of our
consultations, we found no evidence of snooping,” the report reads.

At
the peak of the controversy in November, Patrick Deane, vice-president
(academic), said the media “have not sought to ascertain the facts,” and that
the program “has a very simple goal: to foster amongst students, in their
ordinary interactions, a spirit of mutual respect and understanding.”

On
Wednesday, however, Mr. Deane accepted the recommendation to kill the program,
but noted that there had been no actual complaints about the facilitators.

“I
think the very public discussion around this was triggered, I suppose, by the
hot-button issue of freedom of speech, and my personal complaint, and I suppose
the university’s complaint during that process, was that the context for the
program needed to be more fully understood, and the whole question of the
likelihood of people feeling constrained in that way [by a dialogue
intervention] needed to be better understood before it was condemned,” Mr. Deane
said. “Had it been better communicated, people might not have been misled. You
can’t blame people for being led to conclusions if they’re not given sufficient
information.”

He
said Queen’s will continue to try to address the problems of racial and
religious intolerance.

The
six facilitators who were hired last year will serve out the remainder of this
academic year, “but should not engage in active dialogue intervention,” the
report reads.

National Post, February 11, 2009.