April 2013
April 11, 2013
Dr.
Daniel Woolf
Principal and Vice-Chancellor
Queen’s University
Dr.
Alan Harrison
Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic)
Queen’s University
Mr.
Doug Johnson
President, Alma Mater Society
Queen’s University
Dear Principal Woolf, Provost Harrison, and President Johnson:
Re: Removal of Free Speech Wall
I
am writing to you as president of the Society of Academic Freedom and
Scholarship. We are a national organization of
professors, students, and interested others who are dedicated to academic
freedom, free speech, and reasoned debate on university campuses. You can learn
more about our organization atwww.safs.ca.
We
are concerned about the removal on two separate occasions by Queen’s University
personnel of a Free Speech Wall erected by a student group called, Queen’s
Students for Liberty. Their purpose was to invite Queen’s students to freely
express their opinions on the wall, as part of a wider campaign to increase
awareness of free speech rights in Canada.
The
reason cited for removing the wall was that some of the opinions expressed were
offensive and said to be racial slurs. We understand the university’s concern
with becoming a forum for vulgarity and offensive comments that might denigrate
or marginalize some students. But this concern must be weighed against other
interests of the university. The purpose of the university is not to shield
students from a sometimes unpleasant world. Or to send the message that adult
students are not mature enough or capable enough to deal with offensive material
by ignoring it or responding to it in other ways, but, instead, must be
protected by authorities who act to silence the “offenders.”
A
more important purpose of the university is to nourish an intellectual community
to learn to respond to such claims with a skeptical view initially and then to
gather evidence and use logic to come to their own conclusions on the issue. In
short, it would have been much better to let students deal with offensive
material by responding with their own comments on the wall, or by writing an
op-ed or a letter to the editor in the student paper, or through discussions
with other students than to remove the wall on their behalf and without
negotiation.
There is a positive role too for the administration in this case. The university
principal could have issued a statement explaining why he wasn’t ordering the
removal of the wall. In that statement he could have reiterated the importance
of reasoned debate and free expression to the mission of the university and also
demonstrated faith in his student body to work through the unpalatable comments
in a peaceful and productive way. He could have said that it is preferable to
answer bad speech with better speech, rather than to censor. He could have led
with a positive example of why we have universities instead of elevating
authority and force over public debate.
In
future, we hope that the Queen’s University administration will try to negotiate
with students regulations involving the time, manner, and place of free speech
walls rather than denying them a place on campus or removing them at the first
untoward word or phrase that might appear.
In
our view, Queen’s has been given an opportunity to help teach Canadians about
the importance of free debate and the dangers of censorship. It has failed to do
so this time. In the future, we hope Queen’s will do better.
Sincerely,
Clive Seligman, President
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