All sides under fire

Re: Fresh blow to free speech; Laurier professor steps down from task force, Christie Blatchford; May 4

It’s shocking that anyone should think that what Frances Widdowson says is controversial enough to incite protesters. Reduced to basics, she says First Peoples should have equality of citizenship and opportunity with other Canadians.

That’s what Martin Luther King sought for African Americans. It’s what Chief Poundmaker said he thought he was getting when he affirmed Treaty Six in 1876. And it’s what Chief Dan George said he wanted for his people, in his 1967 Lament for Confederation speech.

First Peoples leaders and university people don’t speak for youth in Arctic and subarctic settlements having no economic reason to exist, or for marginalized urban Aboriginals. With the fur trade extinct, young people want the opportunity to become doctors and dentists, mining and aeronautical engineers, pilots and ship captains.

If that happened, Aboriginal leaders, university leeches and the entire Indigenous Affairs department would be out of jobs they seek to protect. The quest for nation-to-nation status in harmony with the mythical Garden of Eden replicates the model promoted by Hendrik Verwoerd, architect of apartheid in South Africa. Although I appreciate Christie Blatchford’s efforts to draw attention to attempts to suppress speech at Canadian universities, it is important to stress that freedom of expression is neither a right-wing or a left-wing cause. It is something that all people should be able to exercise regardless of their political views.

This right often is being infringed because of politically correct totalitarianism, which can be imposed by any ideology. The ideology that is dominating the academy is the politics of identity and entitlement. This often results in politically correct totalitarianism because it is maintained that the ideas of oppressed identities — usually relating to gender, race, and sexual orientation, but rarely economic class — should be “respected” so that these groups can increase their power in universities.

Ironically, I see myself as being on the Left; politically correct totalitarianism, however, is preventing Indigenous issues from being discussed using the framework of historical materialism (a socialist ideology). Frances Widdowson, Associate Professor, Mount Royal University, Calgary When I was on campus in the early 1980s, it was conservatives, religion and mainly traditional thinking that “monitored and meddled” with campus free speech and diversity of thought. It was largely an outside-in threat.

Gosh, we did a good job fighting it. Now, almost four decades later, the campus dynamics are completely reversed. The monitoring, meddling and tight control of speech and opinion stems from the inside out.

My personal “aha” moment on this was when I attended a campus talk a few years ago in Toronto. It was by a mildmannered professor and author of six books on the societal issues of boys suffering and how to bring insight, support and change.

I never heard a thing. The pushing, yelling, bullying and fire alarms had the event cancelled.

I put his book away and began re-reading Orwell.