Speech that is far from free
Laurier’s route to safety? Attack their wallets
In the space of mere weeks, Wilfrid Laurier University found a back door out of having to host a controversial speaker and thereby rendered toothless the “draft statement on freedom of expression” a university task force released on Monday.
In fairness, the draft statement is so filled with pro forma bows and nods to diversity, the marginalized and the “distress” that some individuals might feel if exposed to certain viewpoints, it is essentially meaningless anyway.
(This is undoubtedly despite the best efforts of the best of the task force members, who likely made the case again and again for an unequivocal statement.)
Laurier, you will recall, became infamous last year when two professors and a gender violence bureaucrat brought teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd in for a good old-fashioned brainwashing after she dared show a class an excerpt of a televised debate featuring the controversial University of Toronto psychologist (and now bestselling author) Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Alas for the gang of three, Shepherd audiotaped the hideousness, which revealed their breathtaking arrogance (she was accused of the equivalent of “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler” by not first denouncing Peterson), intimidation tactics and allround ghastly behaviour.
A subsequent independent investigator later fully vindicated Shepherd.
In the wake of all that, she formed a free-speech group called The Laurier Society for Open Inquiry.
One of the first events it planned was a speech by Faith Goldy, a controversial alt-right figure. Originally, the idea was that Goldy would debate a professor about her anti-immigration views, but every one Shepherd invited refused.
So the LSOI launched its Unpopular Opinions Speakers Series, with lots of time for a robust Q and A after Goldy spoke.
It was scheduled for March 20, but on the evening in question, there were tons of protesters and, as one of them later put it, the night ended with “a fire alarm being pulled.” (Note the lovely passive voice.) It was cancelled.
The LSOI, after some internal debate, decided to reschedule the event.
The LSOI sponsor, economics professor Will McNally, duly wrote the university on March 26 to book a room. The anticipated new date was April 30.
He was notified that a health and safety review would have to be done and that as the sponsor, “you will be responsible for any costs associated with the event and any liability.”
He replied with a firm hell no; the request escalated up the ladder, and after some hemming and hawing, Laurier said in essence, too bad, so sad, we’re out of time.
The point of her group, Shepherd said Thursday, is to hold events on campus, so they decided to look 10 minutes down the road to the University of Waterloo.
Here, as a non-UWaterloo group, it would be renting the room. Within a few days, organizers got an estimate of $1,400 for the room and another $1,400 or so for security. Shepherd figured they could swing that.
But Wednesday, she was told the cost would be a little more — 10 times as much, or $28,500.
In fairness, Nick Manning, the university’s associate VP of communications, told the National Post Thursday, the school had “made a perhaps too-rapid assessment on likely security costs,” and after consultation with the local police, realized Goldy was a big deal, and that protesters of all stripes were mobilizing against the event.
“We regret this,” Manning said. “It sucks. We mis-estimated … It’s a large amount of money. We understand that. But securing a campus like ours ...”
It means the event is once again cancelled. Shepherd is disappointed — “We thought UWaterloo would be better” — but chiefly in her own university, which, as she says, “is completely enabling protester behaviour, fostering it. … It’s proof that no-platforming (not even allowing controversial right-wing speakers a chance to speak) works.”
The extraordinary number of hoops Laurier required LSOI to jump through and the demand that the group must assume all liability, and to a lesser degree the price tag at UWaterloo, amounts to de facto censorship.
If free-speech groups want to bring in right-wing speakers, the left on campus will threaten such havoc that the event becomes either unmanageable or unaffordable.
It means the Laurier draft statement on free expression (only in name does it resemble the so-called “Statement on Principles of Free Expression” from the University of Chicago) is a perfect illustration of that university’s will to give air to all views.
The Laurier statement says the university “unequivocally embraces its institutional responsibility to ensure the free and open exchange of ideas in the spirit of intellectual and critical enquiry,” but then qualifies it to death.
Upholding free speech “requires that a range of perspectives and ideas have the opportunity to be articulated,” that the university acknowledges “that members of the community will sometimes struggle with these issues and will even voice dissent about the merit of particular speakers or subject matter” and ultimately comes up with this thing it calls “inclusive freedom.”
That, the statement says, “espouses a commitment to the robust protection of free expression and the assurance that all voices — including those who could be marginalized or excluded from full participation — have an opportunity to meaningfully engage in free expression, enquiry and learning.”
Or, you can just make it so damn difficult for some of those voices to even get a room that they give up.