ACADEMIC FREEDOM PUT AT RISK
Victoria
Times Colonist,
10
July 1995,
p. A5 Repr. as “Academic
Black Eye”, Kitchener
Record,
12
July 1995,
p. A9
by Andrew
Irvine
“By identifying harassment and
discrimination
with that which simply causes offense we inevitably reduce what were
once
serious allegations to trivial matters of subjective preference.”
Two
weeks ago,
student admissions to the graduate programs in the Department of
Political
Science at the University of British
Columbia were
temporarily frozen. The basis of this action was a report written
by Joan McEwen charging the Department with widespread, systemic sexism
and
racism.
There
are many
disquieting aspects to this affair. Not the least of these is that
allegations
of discrimination and harassment are always serious, and that
professional
reputations and aspirations, of professors and students alike, hang in
the
balance.
But
equally disturbing
is the abandonment of due process on the part of the UBC
administration, and
the now common practice of identifying harassment and discrimination
with
virtually any comment or action which causes people to be offended. By
abandoning due process we begin the dangerous slide towards the view
that all
it takes to prove an offense is to make an allegation. And by confusing
allegation with evidence we abandon a cornerstone of natural justice.
By
identifying
harassment and discrimination with that which simply causes offense we
inevitably reduce what were once serious allegations to trivial matters
of
subjective preference. And by giving these preferences such prominence,
advocates of reform inevitably do their cause a significant disservice.
Thus, in
response to
the student who was offended by the professor who asked her what she
was going
do with her degree when she completed it, or to the incoming student
who was
offended by the professor who commented upon her age, the typical
person is
inclined to reply, “If that’s all there is to harassment, who cares?”
Devaluing
one’s political coinage in this way is never good strategy.
Also
disturbing is
that the UBC administration has taken unjustified punitive action
against an
entire Department—consisting of faculty and students alike—rather than
against
only those individuals whose alleged actions might require genuine
discipline.
Rather than attempting to determine individual culpability, the
administration
has been content to take the easy way out. In doing so it has
significantly and
unjustifiably harmed the reputation of, what was until recently, a
highly
respected Department.
But
perhaps the most
discouraging aspect of this entire episode is the chilling effect that
it is
bound to have on academic freedom all across Canada. By
identifying discrimination and harassment with comments or actions
which merely
cause subjective offense—rather than with comments and actions which
cause
significant differences in treatment, disadvantage or harm—the McEwen
report opens
the door to the worst kinds of disciplinary abuses.
Does the
mere fact
that someone is offended because only 20% of a Department’s faculty
consists of
women constitute a good reason for implementing a program of reverse
discrimination? Does the mere fact that someone is offended because a
professor
and a student, two consenting adults, might be having an affair,
constitute a
good reason for disciplinary action?
The 19th
century
philosopher and famous defender of liberty, John Stuart Mill, advocated
sufficient
tolerance in society for individuals to be able to practice what he
called
“experiments in living”, or what we today might call “alternative
life-styles”.
What this means in practice is that we often have to tolerate comments
and
actions which may offend, but that fail to cause harm.
In
contrast, if all
it takes for an individual professor or for an entire Department to be
found
guilty of harassment or discrimination is that some person or persons
be
offended, then freedom of speech is inevitably threatened. After all,
as the
McEwen report shows, almost any comment in any context might be viewed
by
someone to be offensive. And because offense is necessarily a
subjective
matter, there will be no end to the number of unjustified allegations
concerning
harassment and discrimination under such circumstances. Like issues of
taste
generally, the much discussed “ideally positive teaching environment”
is not a
matter appropriate for legislation.
Despite
this, it has
been this type of reasoning that infects the mind-set of many
university
harassment offices across the country. At a number of universities the
situation has degenerated to such an extent that professors often feel
that
they have much less academic freedom today than they once enjoyed. They
certainly
are able to exercise much less freedom of speech than the newspaper
columnists
and editorialists who now comment upon their plight, or than the
writers of a
typical episode of the television show Roseanne.
Thus the
issue of
which comments may or may not cause offense takes on major proportions
in the
minds of many university instructors.
For
someone such as
myself who stands up nine times a week to lecture to between 100 and
300
undergraduates, this issue becomes crucial. Of those several hundred
students,
how many might take offense at the fact that some article or book is
(or is
not) included on a required reading list? Of the many students whose
papers and
exams I grade, how many may become offended by the fact that I haven’t
taken
their views about abortion (either pro or con), or about Naziism
(either pro or
con), or about why the earth is flat (either pro or con) as seriously
as they
might have hoped?
This is not some idle concern. In a
philosophy course that discusses the merits of abortion on demand or
euthanasia
or religious fundamentalism, some people will inevitably take offense
at the
material under discussion, no matter how carefully or sensitively it is
presented. The same will be true in an English course where the reading
list
includes authors ranging from Margaret Atwood to Kurt Vonnegut. It will
also be
true in a psychology course that discusses differences between the
sexes. In
such courses, contrary opinions are not occasional occurrences, they
are the
norm and the fact that some people will find some remarks or writings
on such
topics offensive is inevitable. Trying to decide whether such offense
is
well-founded soon becomes a fool’s game.
The
effects of
identifying discrimination and harassment with actions or comments that
cause
subjective offense are thus perfectly predictable. Some university
instructors
will modify their course curricula to avoid possibly offensive topics.
Others
will simply stop teaching certain courses, opting instead for less
controversial subjects.
In the
end, it will
not simply be the professors and students who suffer from such
self-censoring,
but society as a whole.
Andrew
Irvine
teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University
of British
Columbia.
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