SOCIETY FOR ACADEMIC
FREEDOM AND SCHOLARSHIP (SAFS)
OPEN
LETTER
February
13, 2006
Dr. Terrence Murphy
Vice-President, Academic and Research
Saint Mary’s University
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3H 3C3
Dear Vice-President Murphy:
I am writing to you as president of the Society for Academic
Freedom and Scholarship. We are a national organization of university
faculty
members and interested others who are dedicated to the defence of
academic
freedom and reasoned debate. For further information, please visit
our
website at www.safs.ca.
We are writing to strongly protest your order to Professor
Peter March to remove the controversial material placed on his office
door. In
your memorandum of 9 February to the Saint Mary’s University community,
you
offered as justification for your action that you “thought their public
display
without context was a matter of concern. Given the strong, and in
several cases
violent, responses to the cartoons in
many parts of the world, there was a reasonable apprehension of risk to
the
safety of members of the campus community.”
By censoring debate at your campus in this way, rather than
taking the necessary steps to provide appropriate security to allow
debate to
happen, you have encouraged the view that the threat of violence, real
or
imagined, is an effective way to challenge ideas with which one
disagrees.
Violence is not an acceptable response in debate. Those
threatening violence are the ones who must be restrained, not the
individual
whose speech allegedly may provoke violence.
Should Saint Mary’s University wish to remain a place of open
debate, it
is important that the university show that it is willing to provide the
appropriate security rather than opting for censorship.
Although we are pleased that you and the Saint Mary’s
University administration recognized
Professor
March’s academic right to discuss and show the controversial cartoons
in his
current class on Critical Thinking, we
are puzzled by the inconsistency in your administration’s treatment of
the academic
freedom issue in the two instances.
By seeking to find a middle ground between academic freedom
and public safety, we believe you have compromised both.
We urge your administration to reconsider the decision to
regulate and censor the free expression of ideas on the Saint Mary’s
campus.
Those of us who work in universities have a special obligation to
maintain the
Academy as a marketplace of ideas, a
place
where unfettered debate can take place both inside and outside the
classroom.
Sincerely,
Clive Seligman
President
CC: Professor Peter March, Department of Philosophy
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