September 2009
In view of the BC Supreme Court’s ruling on
the UBC Okanagan Student Union’s decision to deny club status to an
anti-abortion group, I do not comment on this particular case.
Nevertheless, as does the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s Abby
Deshman, I find the attitudes espoused by the Okanagan Student Union’s
Carolyn Cody to be deeply disturbing. In “Free Speech For Me But Not For
Thee” Nat Hentoff, citing examples of suppression of debate in US
universities,
quotes an editor of a prominent US newspaper as saying that the
strongest human instinct is the urge to censor, with sex a weak second.
Various actions by Canadian university
administrations and student unions provide text-book examples of this
dictum, with ideology or concern over giving offense overriding
legitimate academic debate.
As an example, somebody in our bloated
equity bureaucracy ordered the removal from our campus posters depicting
the notorious Danish Cartoons. This individual sent examples to the
Toronto Police, apparently deeming them hate literature. But the police
– not known for their advocacy of free speech – did not. Given that many
scholars have raised the need for a vigorous debate on the relationship
between Islam and modernity, it is shameful that a university would not
allow these posters to help prompt that debate. The presence of this
trend on Canadian campuses is the principal reason why I am a member of
the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship; this organization
seems to me to be the only one in Canada advocating unequivocally the
core values essential for the effective functioning of universities,
whose primary mission should be the search for truth through the
conflict of ideas
Among other things, Ms. Cody apparently thinks that adult persons should
be protected from viewing images that her particular group finds
disturbing. A case can be made that the public should be protected from
viewing disturbing images in certain contexts; for example, one might
ban provocative advertising on billboards directed towards motorways on
the grounds that it inappropriately distracts drivers, but in this case,
what is the rationale?
In this respect, given that humans
constantly elevate the customary into the axiomatic, provocative images
can be an essential tool in stimulating much needed debate. In the case
of abortion, involving – among other concerns – a difficult balance
between the competing rights of the mother and the developing fetus, I
suggest that most Canadians reject the extremes of both advocates’
camps, and are uncomfortable with the absence of any framework
regulating conditions
under which abortion may be permitted. Thus, as crude as the activists’
equating untrammeled abortion rights to genocide may seem to the
majority of thoughtful individuals, I suggest that the activists’
tactics are within the norm of spirited debate. Surely university
campuses should be places where such hard-hitting debate is encouraged
or even provoked?
Particularly distressing is Ms. Cody’s claim
that her students’ union has an “absolute say over what can and cannot
be said by” student groups operating under its aegis. Is not this
totalitarian assertion a quintessential example of Hentoff’s quote?
Given that students’ unions are supported by compulsorily extracted
fees, surely her union has to balance any legitimate concern over
content against its obligations to students, provided of course that
they meet basic operational criteria such as payment of student fees and
minimum group size?
Philip A. Sullivan,
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Institute for Aerospace
Studies, is a former member of the SAFS Board of Directors.
Posted on University Affairs, June
26, 2009.
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