ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS
UNDER ATTACK
Barbara Kay
Canadian students in the arts and social science departments of our
universities are being recruited to the hyperorthodoxies of
multiculturalism,
feminism, Marxism, postmodernism and bio-politics. Proponents of these
ideologies prefer social engineering and the subversion of Western
values to
the advancement of learning and respect for Western achievements.
Furthermore,
today's welfare campus fosters a culture
of
comfort/grievance for women, aboriginals, other visibly distinct races
and all
sexual orientations: for everyone, that is,
except Americans, Israel-sympathizers
and heterosexual men of European descent.
Last month I posed a series of questions about ideological harassment
in
academia. I asked students if it is still possible to get a classic,
broadening
education in public universities today. The vast majority of the
100-odd
respondents to my unscientific poll say no. More than 90% agree that
campus
political correctness generates a frosty anti-intellectual climate
hostile to
academic freedom.
Out of 500,000 university students in Canada, 100 responses is a picayune representation.
Yet
every anecdote reflects an opinion or behaviour exposed to a classroom
of
between 20 and 300 students. Multiply that figure by every class the
same
instructor offers per semester, and then factor in a lifetime of
teaching.
Consider
how many students are actually affected when an individual student
reports
that:
- Comparative Politics teachers wouldn't admit The Economist (in one
case) or
Fraser Institute reports (in another) as source material because of
their
"right wing, biased writers";
- An International Relations professor
pronounced political realism as a method
of inquiry "dead" and inadmissible in argumentation;
-
Political Science students taught by a feminist were not permitted to
use
statistics to bolster an argument because "mathematics is a male
construct
for a male-dominated world";
-
A professor in
a course on terrorism said:
"No
educated
person can support Israel ... educated people
don't
have those kinds of views."
-
A feminist teacher in a school of nursing insisted that her male
students
participate in a "Montreal Massacre" commemoration.
When one refused
(on the grounds that he is no more responsible for Marc LePine's sins
than his
teacher is for Karla Homolka's), he was made to submit to corrective
counselling.
My poll tells me that students are no
longer offered "the best which has
been thought and said in the world," the traditional mantra of
humanities
professors. Left-wing ideologies have turned all but the hard sciences
into
hustings for the social empowerment of collectivities rather than
groves of
academic freedom, where individual students are owed -- with scholars
hired on
merit to teach -- a liberal education.
I
didn't hear only from students. Ideological harassment is a two-way
street.
Several academics wrote with harrowing tales of university careers
derailed or
ended by well-coached (and anonymous) student grievance collectors, and
some
even by their colleagues and/or university administrators. Graham L.
Smith, a
geography professor at the University of Western Ontario, won an award
for
excellence in undergrad teaching, yet, "I have had my course grades
changed arbitrarily, been accused of being a fascist and been told I am
brain-washing students, all because I present a dynamic perspective
that
challenges the hegemony of the present paradigm."
The "present paradigm" is bound to blunt
the ambitions of any young
academic striving to meet a traditional ideal of ideological
neutrality. Last
semester a McGill student took "Canadian-American Relations since
1939." Her instructor, a PhD candidate, was "the most gifted teacher
I've encountered at McGill ... I haven't the faintest idea where he
stands
politically.... and that's exactly how it should be.... he received
outstanding
evaluations." She goes on to say that he was replaced this semester by
a
"more qualified" teacher who said all Canadian-American relations
since 1939 would be viewed "through a gay/lesbian/transsexual lens"
and that they would devote part of the course to "lesbians who are
claiming refugee status in Canada after Bush's re-election." How long will it
be
before the "gifted" teacher gives up, and abandons -- or is pushed --
from academic life?
Parents of students wrote to remind me
that indoctrination begins well ahead of
university, citing instances of secondary school aggression their
children are
ill-equipped to resist. In one case, a mother of a Grade 12 student
sent me a
copy of a simplistic questionnaire her son's class was made to fill out
to
assess their respective stances on social issues: "[B]ased on the
answers
to 10 or 12 questions [they] were categorized as to their political
sympathies.
[My son] was humiliated when the teacher publicly labelled him a Nazi
for
having a conservative viewpoint."
In a recent Post column, Susan Martinuk quoted Abraham Lincoln: "The
philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy
of
governance in the next." Not a comforting thought in the age of
political
correctness, but my job isn't to comfort. I will be returning to this
subject
in future columns.
National Post, Wednesday, January 12, 2005.
Newsletter, April 2005-Text