January 2014
Just about everyone, including the Ottawa Citizen’s
editorial board, thinks that the York University incident in which a student
asked for special accommodation is properly understood as a conflict between
religious rights and our desire for a non-discriminatory society. Even the
professor of the course thinks of it that way, as do the university
administrators who ordered the professor to honour the student’s request.
But a conflict of rights is not how we should conceive the
case at all. We should think of it entirely in the context of university
education. The only question a professor should ever seek to answer when asked
to make a special accommodation is whether making that accommodation is
consistent with the educative goals of her course.
Media reports tell us that back in September, a student at
York asked his professor, Paul Grayson, to be exempted from a group project
because the group included women and working in physical proximity with women
was against his religion. Dr Grayson considered his student’s request and
denied it. The Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies,
though, has ordered Dr Grayson to accede to the request, arguing that failing to
do so violates the duty to accommodate religious belief.
That Dr Grayson himself thinks the matter has to do with a
conflict of rights or a conflict between a right and a social goal is clear from
the fact that he solicited opinions from religious authorities about the
request. He denied the request only after his authorities informed him that
neither Islam nor Orthodox Judaism prohibit men and women from working together
in person on scholarly projects.
Presumably, he would have granted the exemption had he
learned that working together was indeed prohibited. Or maybe he would have
denied it anyway, thinking that aiding sexism was worse in the case than making
it difficult for a person to practice his religion. Either way, Dr Grayson
thought himself engaged in a balancing act, seeking the proper path between two
competing ideals.
Finding a balance among rights or ideals might well be fine
when considering seating arrangements at a political event or dress codes for
police officers or school children. The request in this case, though, had to do
with an assignment in a university course.
Dr Grayson must have thought the group work had pedagogical
value or he would not have assigned it or graded it. If the assignment has
pedagogical value, then not completing it is to the detriment of the student’s
education. As well, making an exception for a student—that is, allowing that
student to skip a piece of work without his grade suffering—compromises the
integrity of the course. The B of a student not penalized for skipping an
assignment is not equivalent to the B of a student who has completed and,
thereby, learned from that assignment.
Dr Grayson need not have consulted either experts in religion
or his feelings about sexism, for both are irrelevant. All Dr Grayson should
have asked is whether the goals of his course would be served just as well by
exempting his student. If the integrity of his course would not be affected,
then the student can skip the assignment. Indeed, if Dr Grayson had discovered
that the integrity of his course would not be affected, he should have made the
assignment optional generally, if not dropped it.
The only judgement that should have come into play was Dr
Grayson’s own professional judgement as the teacher of his course.
Now one might object that since universities are public
institutions, they must honour public values as well as academic and educative
values, or, better, they should fashion their educative goals in light of public
values. Part of the public value of universities is that they train lawyers,
doctors, politicians, business people, journalists, and other elite workers.
It’s important that our elites mirror the diversity in our society. Thus,
universities should educate in a way that enables people of diverse religions
and cultures to take their place within the leading professions.
Universities that understood their social role well would
consciously design courses and programmes so that they do not refuse or alienate
people with minority religious or cultural commitments.
Well, the relationship between universities and
government has always been turbulent and marked by conflicting values and
goals. Universities committed to liberal education, to education as broadening
the mind and liberating the person from ignorance and conformity, must, though,
reject the call to make themselves trainers of the social elite and
credentializing agencies. They must keep central to everything they do their
commitment to learning and intellectual community for their own sake.
What about the duty to accommodate, one, apparently, written
into the Ontario Human Rights Code, as the Dean says he was told it is? The
answer in this particular case is that it should be up to the professor of that
course how to perform this duty. After all, the course is in service to the
teaching goals of the professor. Refusing a request that would compromise the
integrity of the course is not to fail in one’s duty, but dutifully to judge the
request unreasonable.
The larger answer to this problem is that human rights policy
is currently a contested area. As such, it’s open for universities and other
institutions to put their own values forward to mould policies so that they do
not compromise their mission. Universities have not been doing this,
unfortunately, as can be seen in their acceptance of the concept of hate speech
and their willingness to construct codes of behaviour inconsistent with civil
liberties.
To sum up: Reasonable accommodation in universities should
not be understood in terms of conflicts of rights or ideals, or between
individuals and groups. It should be understood entirely through the lens of
the values and mission of the university as a place of liberal education and
intellectual community.
Mark Mercer is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, at Saint Mary’s University, and also a member of the Board of Directors of SAFS.
Ottawa Citizen, January 10, 2014.
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