POLITICAL
CORRECTNESS:DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONTLINES
GRAVITAS A Quarterly Journal of Current Affairs,
Autumn 1994, Vol. 1, No. 3
ICE
STATION ACADEME
by
John
J. Furedy
Is
an Iron Curtain of speech being erected in North American
universities?A personal perspective from the
University of Toronto.
When is education merely
indoctrination, and a University one in name only?I think
this occurs when conflicting ideas are not fully
considered because politics
have intruded in such a way as to prevent the attainment of an honest resolution to
important intellectual
problems.Political correctness (PC) has militated against the thorough airing of many ideas.Intellectual discourse has thereby
become the slave of
ideology.
My personal experience of a
politicized intellectual process began when, as a primary-school student in
Soviet-dominated Budapest
in the late 1940s,
my classmates and I were asked each morning by our teachers what our parents had
talked about at dinner the night before.Following this period of
"discussion", the teacher would then proceed to "educate" us about the evils of
American Capitalist Imperialism, and the glories of the Soviet Workers' Paradise.
During the same period, for
my older contemporaries in the universities, most of the social sciences
died on the vine in the
service of Marxist ideology.It was necessary that this should be so, as education then consisted of
promoting certain tenets, rather than examining alternative ideas.A few years before, of course, Hitler's Germany
had dismissed "Jewish" science, and thereby set back the development in that country not
only of science but also of such seminal applications as the development of
the atom bomb.My reason for bringing up the example of
Hitler is to emphasize that indoctrination in education is undesirable
no matter what the particular
doctrine that is being promoted.Once the
path of ideology is
chosen, the conflict of ideas is eliminated, and no genuine education is possible.That is why, whereas freedom of thought and speech is highly desirable in a
free society, it is an absolute necessity for the genuine academic
functioning of a university.
In sharp contrast to the
breath of freedom which has blown through the former Soviet empire in the last decade,
the atmosphere for the free exchange of conflicting ideas in our own
universities has become not merely chilly, but positively frigid.That frigidity derives from the arbitrariness of the powers now
wielded by those university authorities who are in the vanguard of PC.I will use my own
experience as a professor
in the University of Toronto
to illustrate this
point.
I want first, however, to
distinguish between chilliness and frigidity.Chilliness
occurs when students are made intellectually
uncomfortable by ideas that
are raised in university classes.In my early undergraduate years at SydneyUniversity in the late 1950s
I was a practising
Christian and a member of the Evangelical Union.There
I experienced such
intellectual discomforts in Modern History classes (where, for example, the
lecturer argued that the basis for the shift to Protestantism in the England of Henry
VIII was mainly political and not religious), in Philosophy classes
(where the theological "proofs" of God were refuted in logical terms), in
Psychology classes (where most of the faculty were avowed atheists),
and in arguments with members of the Libertarian Society which
was then a powerful intellectual
force on campus.However, I never
experienced any frigidity,
because it was clear that I was being evaluated in terms of my academic performance rather
than the extent to which my beliefs conformed to those of the instructors.In other words, although no one worried about the chilliness
of an atheist environment for a practising Christian, there was no
frigidity, no persecution because of those Christian ideas.
But it is important also to
stress that frigidity may result even if the persecution itself is relatively mild.If an `A' essay is given a
`B' solely because the
instructor does not agree with the views of the student, then I would argue that that is a
manifestation of a frigid atmosphere.Nevertheless,
the impact of this kind of petty academic persecution is obviously very limited.At the other end of the scale, suppose that I had been old
enough and eligible to attend a Hungarian university in the early 1950s.Had I transgressed the tenets of Marxism, I would have suffered a
great deal more than the mere loss of a few grade points.But
both examples constitute frigid, rather than only chilly, climates for higher education. Budapest
comes to North America
I would argue that the
academic environment today is frigid.The source of the freezing
temperatures is political correctness.PC
precludes intellectual
discourse because its principles are too vague, too unknown.This
lack of clarity naturally permits of arbitrary
behaviour (accusations,
bias in hearings, discipline) by the politically correct.And
such arbitrariness creates fear, which in
turn stifles debate.Not for nothing is the arbitrary exercise of power the very cornerstone of
totalitarian regimes.The shocking
thing is that the University
of Toronto has imported
this cornerstone.Moreover, it has begun to build upon it.
A fine example of precisely
this sort of frigidity, as applied to students, derives from the prestigious University
of Michigan.That
institution, by the way, is
considered to be at the cutting edge of the latest undergraduate educational
innovations.The case was
reported in the March, 1993
issue of Harper's.I begin with an extract from a term paper
written by a sophomore, Shawn Brown, for a
survey course in American
Politics: Another problem with sampling polls is that some
people desire their privacy and don't want
to be
bothered
by a pollster. Let's say Dave Stud is ;entertaining
three beautiful ladies in his penthouse
when
the phone rings.A pollster on the other
end
wants
to know if we should eliminate the capital ;gains
tax.Now, Dave is a knowledgeable
businessperson
who cares a lot about this issue.But
since
Dave is "tied up" at the moment, he tells the
pollster
to "bother" someone else.Now, this is ;perhaps
a ludicrous example, but there is simply a
segment
of the population who wish to be let alone.
The next extract was
written in the margins of Brown's paper by Debbie Meizlish, a Teaching Assistant
in the course taught by professor Steven Rosenstone.The
chair of the political science department supported Meizlish's response; after
receiving the response, Brown dropped the course.As
one reads the following, it is important to put oneself in the student's shoes: You are right, This is ludicrous &inappropriate
&
OFFENSIVE.This is completely inappropriatefor a
serious
political sciencepaper.It completely ;violates
thestandard of non-sexist writing.
Professor
Rosenstone has encouraged me to interpret
this
comment as an example of sexual harassment and
to
take the appropriate formal steps.I have
chosen
not
to do so in this instance.However, any
future ;comments,
in a paper in a class, or in any dealings
w/me,
will be interpreted as sexual harassment and
formal
steps will be taken.Professor Rosenstone
is ;aware
of these comments--& is prepared to intervene.
You
are forewarned!
This extract hardly
requires further comment.It is an extreme
example of the PC
influence on vulnerable students.That
influence
can be important even in
less extreme cases, especially as many undergraduates, even before the advent of
PC, believed that the way to good grades was to feed back what the
professor had said.The notion that students with opinions that
differ from those of the professor can do well provided they justify those
opinions with rational arguments is an idea I have personally
found hard to sell to North American undergraduates.But with the arrival of PC on the campus scene, it is not hard to see that most
undergraduates will attempt to censor their own opinions to bring them in
line with "the standard of non-sexist writing".The
problem is, those "standards" have never been clearly enunciated.Arbitrariness by those in authority is the inexorable result.
A Committee is Born
In this atmosphere, faculty
and students are, even now, being charged with racist, sexist, heterosexist, and
classist "insensitivity".
Further, there are, at the
time of writing, moves afoot to impose restrictions on behaviour and speech
within the university that go
beyond civil and criminal
laws.Powerful committees have been established with mandates of an
almost infinite breadth and no
criteria to guide the
exercise of their power but their own discretion.The
final irony is that, while universities continue to
suffer from financial
constraints, the resources devoted to the goals of political correctness continue to be
increased.
One such group is a
41-person committee at the University
of Toronto, originally established to
determine whether there is anything in thecurriculum which might be
offensive to a member of a minority or disadvantaged group.In
its first (1991) incarnation, the committee was called the Presidential Advisory
Committee on Race Relations (PACRR).In
April, 1992, I wrote a letter to the campus paper (Bulletin, April 27) entitled
"Academic Freedom is at Risk".In that letter I attempted to describe
PACRR's mandate.Formulated by one
of the
committee's founders, sociology professor Jack Wayne, it was unclearly articulated.The lack of clarity was as frightening as it was obvious.When pressed for specifics at a meeting of the Academic Board, professor Wayne provided
a hypothetical example of offensive material:a
textbook in methodology in sociology which compares black with white households.I concluded that: PACRR's existence, its large membership, its broad
terms
of reference and (relative to these times of
financial
crisis) its generous budget of $100,000,
all
constitute evidence that PC is gathering strength
on
our campus.In such an environment,
organizations
like
the recently formed Society for Academic Freedom &&
Scholarship have a role to play in defending the
principle
(first defended by Socrates against the ;Atheniandemocracy's charge that he was `corrupting ;the
youth') that, especially in education, all
opinions
should be open to critical examination.
One might have thought that
PACRR was conceived as the result of an incident of racial discrimination.The fact is, however, that PACRR's formation was a direct result of
a PC assault on the academic freedom of a part-time faculty member, Jean
Cannizzo.Cannizzo was hired to teach an undergraduate course in
Anthropology at the Scarborough Campus of the University
of Toronto.So-called anti-racism activist groups disrupted her classes, not for what
she was teaching but on the grounds that as guest curator of the RoyalOntarioMuseum,
several months
earlier, she had designed an exhibit, Out of Africa,
of which some
people disapproved.Partly because she
received negligible support
from the administration (which, for example, made no attempt to control and punish the
disrupters), and partly because professionally isolated, the PC forces
succeeded in stopping the class.They
also produced a nervous breakdown in Cannizzo, who subsequently left the university
and, later, the country altogether.Rather than enquire into this
assault on the academic freedom of a vulnerable member of faculty, the
administration's response was to ask professors Jack Wayne and Miriam Rossi to
inquire into the state of racism on campus.The
Wayne-Rossi report cited no concrete examples of racism. Nevertheless, at its
recommendation the PACRR was born.
When originally conceived,
PACRR was to have consisted of only thirty-six members.But
at its birth, following the publication of a "Race Relations" report by a now
permanent Race Relations and Anti-Racism Officer (RRARO), the committee expanded
its membership to forty-one.This expansion found expression
in an extended name.(The committee added three words to it--
anti-racism initiatives--so that it became PACRRARI.)Five
sub-committees (one of which was in charge of curriculum) were established.And its budget demanded $250,00 for the next five years.
For the last decade the University
of Toronto has had an
Academic Board
composed of about one hundred members elected from faculty, students, and administration.The Board is concerned with issues, and when the PACRRARI report was
presented to the Board, members had a number of reactions, as reported in the
Bulletin.The Dean of Arts and Science, by citing more than
40 courses, showed that the report's charge that the curriculum was "narrow and
exclusive" was factually inaccurate.I
suggested that the underlying agenda of the report was political rather than academic,
and that we had to decide whether "we view the university as a community of
scholars where the only source of discrimination is merit, or whether we
view the University as a community of many interest groups who
compete for limited resources and where considerations of merit simply
disappear".
The report convinced some
members however.A professor of philosophy
offered the tale of
a graduate student who recently abandoned her studies in philosophy at U of T.The black student in question left, the professor said, because the
"sea of white colleagues who surrounded her filled her with a sense of
despair about becoming a future member of the philosophical
community".
The Newspaper is a campus
weekly which is not supported by compulsory student fees, and which has been more
concerned with academic freedom than the Varsity.In
an account of the PACRRARI's post-report activities, a journalist reported that
"when asked, some members of the various...subcommittees...responsible
for coming up with these recommendations, did not know or did not
recall what the recommendations
meant", and that "[Kelvin] Andrews (the permanent RRARO, and head of PACRRARI) was
unable to answer any questions regarding the report before press time".Those who are sensitive to the super-bureaucratic modus
operandi of totalitarian systems will find this vagueness instructive.I attempted to spell out some of these implications in a letter
to The Newspaper entitled "Purity Platoon Worrisome".Faculty
who hold significant administrative power and responsibility are only part-time
teachers and researchers, I argued.They
are therefore less likely to feel PC pressures as greatly in the classroom as do
full-time professors, particularly those who are untenured.The latter need some assurance that they will not fall victim to arbitrariness at
PACRRARI's hands.
My most serious concern,
then, is that there are no readily ascertainable conditions that one can
clearly satisfy in order to be
safe from being charged by
an organization like U of T's Purity Platoon.Senior
faculty members tend to ignore the problems, perhaps partly because the victims of
the PC authorities tend to be more junior, often untenured faculty and
students, who make easier and more defenceless targets.But
in my view, senior faculty members have a responsibility to their colleagues - all
of them - and to the integrity
of higher education itself.Unless the
senior faculty stirs from
its apathy, it is my Cassandra-like prediction that, within a generation, the new Iron Curtain
will be firmly in place, and the link between universitiesand
the pursuit of free enquiry in North America will be tenuous as that between
the former German Democratic Republic and democracy. Zero
Tolerance: The Fog Thickens
I had reached this
conclusion by the spring of 1993.Since
then Ontario
has shown itself to be in the vanguard of the PC movement.
Evidence of its leadership
may be found in the infamous Zero Tolerance Framework (ZTF) that the NDP government
issued to institutions of higher education in early 1994.The wording of this document was totalitarian and inimical to
free speech.Almost all academic organizations, condemned it (YorkUniversity's Faculty
Association being
one exception--they produced a document that approved ZTF).However, most critics questioned only the
wording, and not the basic underlying principle, which I, in my
letter to the Ontario Minister of Education protesting ZTF, characterized as
an attempt "to impose a speech code on institutes of higher
education".
The general academic
reaction to ZTF was reflected in the University of Toronto's
discussion of it at a spring, 1994 meeting of the
Academic Board.Professor Graham, on behalf of the UTFA,
expressed strong
opposition to some of the wording in the framework.He did not,
however, attack the principle of generating any sort of speech codes in the university.In contrast, I suggested to the Board that the notion of any sort of speech
code was inappropriate for a university.I
therefore opposed the "milder" speech code which the Academic Board subsequently
approved.
Although the University
of Toronto's speech code is
not as stringent as
the ZTF, its wording is unclear as to what exactly is prohibited.Is the assertion culpable, for example,
which claims that, on average, homosexual couples are not as effective
parents as heterosexual couples?Is
that assertion culpable even it were made, say by a professor of sociology in a
class where it was relevant both to the course and to the professor's discipline?The University of Toronto's current solution to such
problems is to indicate to the faculty that one of the Equity Advisory Officers
(including, of course, Mr. Andrews and his Purity Platoon, which now has a
total budget for officers and offices of about $1.5 million per annum)
"are well positioned to provide ... advice" to faculty on such
matters.Iderive
little comfort from
the potential for arbitrariness inherentin
such misplaced
confidence.Indeed, it is my contention
that the `golden futuretime'
of Orwell's Animal Farm, and its velvet totalitarianism, is even now being ushered in --
whether wittingly or not is a moot point -- by Ontario's university equity
officers.
_____________________________________________ John J. Furedy is a professor
Psychology at the University of Toronto, and former President of Society for
Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS).This
article is an adaptation and extension of a paper originally given at a conference
on "The University in Jeopardy" on March 12, 1993, in Toronto.