Erect More Platforms
From Buck-a-Beer to Buck-a-Thought
Recently the Ontario Conservatives came up with a good idea that would have looked much, much better if it had come from those on the other side of the aisle. It also would have perhaps been more palatable if it had arrived as a request rather than a mandate - a mandate that imposes a deadline (Jan.1, 2019) and includes a threat (decreased funding). By that date, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities will expect a free speech policy from every Ontario institution of higher education that receives funding from the government.
I think speeches should be free on campus. I think it is a good thing that administrators and academics will now have to spend some time clarifying a policy about the concept of free speech, even if they have less time to work on documents about disabilities, diversity and indigneity. I hope they end up agreeing with President Chakma who said “It is not our responsibility to shield students from obnoxious views,”
The deadline should not be a problem; there are many university policies from which to plagiarize. There also are many solutions to the two major problems 1) Campus Security(dealing with the 'Hecklers’ Veto') and 2) determining what constitutes 'Hate Speech’. The American solutions to campus disruptions are numerous and our laws and student conduct codes should suffice to cover many situations. 'Hate Speech' presents a particularly Canadian conundrum and one does not get much assistance from the Criminal Code or the Canadian Human Rights Act. It will be easier to figure out ways to accommodate controversial speakers than to determine if they are likely to say hateful things. (e.g, see a letter in the Gazette from a student: “Ann Coulter was an unacceptable figure to let onto our campus, not because of her political views, but because she has often publicly worked to incite hatred against minorities of colour, race, ethnic origin, religion and sexual orientation.”)
I will include a few sources below for those interested in this issue. I will also provide an article I wrote in 2011 about a free speech kerfuffle on the campus of the University of Western Ontario back in 1953. It shows that Hecklers’ Vetos were exercised even back then and that the problem of freedom of speech has persisted for a very long time. It will be good to have a solution provided.
More importantly it illustrates that the type of speaker determined to be eligible to speak freely changes over time. At Western in the early ‘50s conservative students didn’t want to listen to a radical talk about world peace and poverty. Some of the the radicals of yesteryear who were kept off campus are now the ones residing on it. Ideas not permitted on the platform in one decade are perched upon it in another. Speakers, formerly welcomed and cheered, apparently can have a past-due date (Germaine Greer) and as someone once said (I think, but I can’t find it) it is useful to remember that “Today’s underground is tomorrow’s vaudeville”.
Sources:
The remark from President Chakma is found in "Senate Faces a New PC Government in First Meeting," Martin Allen, The Gazette, Sept. 21, 2018. See also Mr. Martin's earlier piece: "Western Administration is Grappling With Uncertainty Amid a Mandate to Create a New Campus Speech Policy," Aug. 30, 2018. For the letters written about Coulter's appearance see the issues of The Gazette at the end of March, 2010. The specific quote is from a letter in the March 25th issue.
The diktat from the Ontario Government: "Ontario Protects Free Speech on Campus"
For an article critical of the new mandate see: "The Theatrics of the Ford Government Regarding Free Speech on Campus," Creso Sa, University Affairs, Sept. 6, 2018.
For a statement from the Council of Ontario Universities see: "Ontario Universities Share Goal of Protecting Free Speech on Campus, Will Work Closely With the Government," Aug. 30, 2018.
"FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities."
"First published in 2011, the annual Campus Freedom Index provides students, parents, politicians, university administrators, and the public with data about the state of free speech on 60 Canadian public universities."
The Red Dean
[This article appeared in Western News, Feb. 3, 2011 under “Nothing New in Quest for Free Speech,” p.5. It was in reaction to many of the free speech controversies at the time. A few bolded notes are inserted for clarification. I suggest you read at least the prescient comment by Hume Cronyn and the concluding paragraph.]
Dean of Canterbury Heckled Off London Stage by Western Students (1953)
There have been a number of incidents recently where an individual has been invited to a campus or community to deliver a lecture and either has been unable to speak or found it difficult to do so because of the presence of protesters. Just a few weeks ago a columnist for a major Canadian newspaper was not allowed to address an audience on a campus to which she had been invited to discuss her new book.* One can debate whether such incidents are increasing and how much the concept of ‘free speech’ is now threatened, or even to what degree it is actually an alien idea in Canada. Less debatable would be the assertion that in the past polite Canadians or Western students would never have denied someone their right to speak, or disrupted a talk, forcing the lecturer to flee. In London over 50 years ago there was just such an episode and it resembles in some ways the more recent ones in Waterloo and elsewhere in Canada. *[The columnist was Ms Blatchford and the book is Helpless : Caledonia's Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed all of Us.]
In February, 1953 the Very Reverend, Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury was forced to leave hurriedly from London, just as did Christie Blatchford from Waterloo. One would have thought it likely that someone with such ecclesiastical credentials would not have been perceived as threatening as Blatchford. Nor might one have expected that the topic of the talk that was not delivered – ‘World Peace’- would be as provocative as, say the subject of ‘Islam’ as perceived by the Very Controversial Mark Steyn.* Admittedly, by this time the dean was well-known as the ‘Red Dean’ and it was, after all, during the Cold War. Apparently the climate for ideas was at least as chilly then as it is now. *Steyn was/is controversial and he spoke about Muslims at Centennial Hall after being refused a platform at the London Convention Centre. His appearance came after Ann Coulter spoke at Western and was critical of a Muslim student who questioned her.]
The speaker who was not allowed to speak, Dr. Johnson, was described later in his obituary in The Times as a “baffling, complex and controversial figure”, but he can be characterised more simply here, with little distortion, as a clergyman who was concerned about the plight of the poor, attracted to the idea of pacifism and, while not a member of the communist party, clearly a ‘fellow traveler’. He had encountered problems earlier when visiting Canada and had been barred for a time from entering the United States. The London Soviet Friendship Committee was responsible for his visit and no one in attendance would have been surprised that his talk was going to be as much ideological as religious.
Over 600 people paid 50 cents to hear what Dr. Johnson had to say, but “Drowned out by clanging cowbells, exploding paper bags and shouts the dean left the speaker’s rostrum at the Masonic Hall after repeated attempts to make himself heard”. Those bells and bags feature prominently in news accounts (the Associated Press picked up the story) and are exhibited in an article from the New York Times which carries the wonderful headline: “ ‘Red Dean’ Flees Din: Canadian Students Block Talk by Canterbury Cleric”. In addition, it is noted that: “The students, from the University of Western Ontario, broke up a meeting of the London Society of Friendship Committee by keeping up a continual din” and that “When Dr. Johnson, on a tour of eastern Canada, dashed out the rear entrance, students surrounded his car. The police cleared a path for the automobile.”
To be fair, in local accounts there is some disagreement about the composition of the audience and whether the protesters were simply students. In an article in the evening edition of the London Free Press (“Shouting Down of ‘Red Dean’ Stirs Controversy in London”) it is noted that “UWO students -jamming the first 15 rows and others scattered about the hall – refused to budge an inch”. Elsewhere it is reported that, while the President of the university “said he had been told by staff members who attended the meeting that UWO students were not among those who instigated the noise,” it was clear that “many of the spectators who made loud noises wore windbreakers and sweaters marked ‘Western’, and freely admitted they were students at the UWO.” Even if many were Western students, they were not all in opposed to the speech. One student was reported to have jumped on the stage in an attempt to get the audience to cooperate. Another in a letter to the Globe and Mail (“Placing the Blame in London”) indicated that “few if any of us had the intention of deliberately breaking up the meeting”. Still another, Paul D. Fleck, who was later to become Chairman of the UWO Department of English, wrote in Western’s Gazette “I have just come from the most disgusting exhibition of immaturity and downright discourtesy that I have ever seen”. It was also clear that some of the most strident boycotters were not students since the caption to one picture of the protest reads: “A member of the First Canadian Parachute Club, which branded the session as a communist meeting, has a heated argument with an unidentified attendant at Masonic Temple”.
The Free Press reported that “views were divergent today on the failure of Dr. Hewlett Johnson, ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury to make his scheduled ‘mission of peace’ speech”. Among them, the one held by Dr. E.G. Hall, president of the university was singularly unhelpful. He said, “My only comment on the affair” is that “If citizens of the community don’t like what a speaker is saying, they have a right to heckle haven’t they?” The fatuousness of that remark was matched by the facetiousness of an editorial by students in the Gazette who wondered if the president meant that there should be a ‘Fifth Freedom’, the ‘Freedom of Noise’, to be included along with others such as ‘Freedom of Speech’, ‘Freedom of Religion’, etc. A weightier response was offered by the Rev. George W. Goth of the Metropolitan United Church who attended the event: “It wasn’t the dean who was humiliated last night; it was a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon tradition of freedom and fair play.” “Mr. Goth said he will preach on the matter Sunday night using the title ‘Should We Have Listened to the ‘Red Dean’.”The attitude of the Free Press is discernible from the editorial headline “Reds Only Ones Pleased by Dean’s Reception.” There was also a cartoon by Ting (which obviously was not banned)* with an illustration of the ‘Red Dean” with a gigantic cork in his mouth. The caption: “A Smaller Cork Might Have Done Just as Well”. [This sarcastic aside was in reference to the fact that cartoons about some religious figures are acceptable; some are not. When the Yale University Press published a book about the Danish cartoons, they were afraid to actually include the cartoons - check for yourself - The Cartoons That Shook the World.]
With an irony that seems to have gone unnoticed and which was clearly not intentional one can also determine the attitude of another prominent Londoner on the subject. A report out of Toronto that was elsewhere in the Free Press on the same day bore the headline” “Loss of Freedom of Speech in the U.S. Fear of Hume Cronyn”. In an address to the Canadian Club he said “Today we are in danger of losing our prime freedom – freedom of speech.... It has got so that anyone who dares to have even mildly liberal views nowadays is the object of wild accusations, even those people who are miles away from being even parlor pinks. It is a frightening thing and I am disturbed to hear it is happening in Canada too”.
This episode demonstrates that the recent controversial cases are not new, although admittedly some things have changed. The protesting forces back then were from the ‘regressive right’ whereas now they are just as likely to be from the ‘progressive left’. The arguments over the concept of ‘free speech’ have grown more complex with the arrival of ‘offensive speech’ and ‘hate speech’. The threats may be perceived to be greater in that now those who object to what is said may target for reprisal the innocent as well as the guilty. Still, for the few of us who value free speech or for those of us who think, as a recent columnist in the London Free Press asserted, that Canadians are smart enough to hear divergent views, perhaps it is past time in our ‘free society’ to address the question of whether people really have the right to free expression.* Surely at a university which places a high value on the diversity of the student and faculty population there should be some tolerance for diversity in beliefs and some feeling that the academic freedom recently guaranteed to faculty be extended and expanded to visitors to campus. Provide security for those to those who come to hear a talk and do not simply capitulate to those who do not wish to listen. Offer counselling, if needed, for students and faculty whose feelings are hurt by what is said. Let the Coulters or clerics speak or clearly admit that you are unwilling to allow them to be invited. *[The columnist is Brian MacLeod. See: “Canadians Smart Enough to Hear Galloway, Coulter,”LFP, Nov. 25, 2010. Galloway is a former British Labour MP who is a critic of Israel and a Palestinian sympathizer. Although he had his problems with the Canada Border and Services Agency, he was welcomed on campuses.]
Post Script (the usual bonus bits for premium subscribers)
Book Discussions Can Be Dangerous
For a recent example of the problems speakers and universities can face see this article: “Wilfrid Laurier Professor Withdraws From Free Speech Task Force in Protest: Professor David Haskell Stepped Aside After Learning the University is Demanding $5,473 for Unspecified Security Costs for a Lindsay Shepherd-organized Event,” Christie Blatchford, May 3, 2018 National Post
It shows how one university deals with the issue of security costs (Charge the organizers. Columbia University just chose to cover the costs). It also provides a test case that the university could use once its new policy is in place to see if it works. Try inviting Professor Frances Widdowson to discuss her book and to address the question “Does University Indigenization Threaten Open Inquiry?” Or if it is decided to put an American in danger first, invite Charles Murray.
Under the Radar
If the University is lucky perhaps some potentially controversial events will go unnoticed. Apparently this one did. This is from a notice that is found in a spring 2011 issue of Western News: 9/11 TRUTHER BRINGS MESSAGE TO CAMPUS
“Niels Harrit, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, will offer a critique of the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Centres on Sept. 11, 2001, focusing on Building 7. Harrit published an article in 2009 about the discovery of nano-thermite, an incendiary and explosive, in the WTC dust. The free lecture takes place 7 p.m. today, March 3 in Social Science Centre, Room 2050. The lecture will be moderated by Dr. Paul McArthur, Western adjunct professor of family medicine.”
I was out of town at the time and only learned of the talk when I returned. As far as I can tell there was no mention at all of the event in the campus or local press. Perhaps believing that 9/11 was mainly fake news is not controversial. I tend to disagree, but am glad Mr. Harrit was allowed to give his talk. There is, by the way, a retired Western professor who also believes that 9/11 is a U.S. government conspiracy. See the book,Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History for details and his identity. To learn more about Mr Harrit see Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
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