McMaster ahead of Ford’s free speech edict
University created policy in wake of Jordan Peterson incident at Mac in 2017
Premier Doug Ford’s edict that taxpayer-funded colleges and universities must quickly develop a free speech policy or face funding cuts might have caught some of Ontario’s post-secondary schools flat-footed, but not McMaster University.
McMaster spent a good part of the past year developing freedom of expression and anti-disruption guidelines to safeguard free speech on its campus. The final draft was released in June. Whether or not it meets the Ford government’s expectations remains to be seen.
“We’re hopeful that they meet the needs of the direction the province has given us but we’re waiting to learn more,” said Gord Arbeau, McMaster’s director of communications.
Arbeau expects to receive more background and directions from the province in the next few weeks. If Mac’s ground rules meet the requirements, Hamilton’s university will be home-free. If not, revisions obviously will be required. For its part, Mohawk College doesn’t have a free speech policy in place but plans to work with Ontario’s 23 other colleges to establish one that meets the provincial directive and Jan. 1, 2019, deadline, according to Jay Robb, Mohawk’s director of communications.
‘We’ve never had the similar challenges and issues that they would have had at McMaster,” said Robb.
It was, in fact, those and similar challenges faced by other universities that sparked McMaster president Patrick Deane to formally address the need to strike a balance between protecting the right to open discussion on contentious issues and the right to protest. If there was a triggering incident at Mac, it was the 2017 disruption of a speech by Jordan Peterson, the controversial University of Toronto psychology professor. An unruly group of protesters used horns, cowbells and obscenities in an attempt to prevent Peterson from speaking about, ironically enough, freedom of speech and the conforming pressures of political correctness.
Deane aimed to produce straightforward guidelines on how to deal with future attempts to shout down controversial opinions that don’t violate the law, a problem sweeping North American campuses as an offshoot of our so-called culture wars and a growing intolerance toward unpopular or challenging opinions that some deem hurtful and offensive.
The Ford government is insisting that universities and colleges must meet a minimum standard which includes, among other things, stating they are places for open discussion and free inquiry, that they have no responsibility to shield students from ideas or opinions they disagree with or find offensive, and that they incorporate principles based on the University of Chicago’s Statement on Principles of Free Expression. The last condition could be a little problematic for Mac. The University of Chicago’s principles state faculty and students are free to criticize, contest and condemn views expressed on campus but forbids them from obstructing, disrupting or otherwise interfering with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loath.
McMaster’s anti-disruption guidelines, however, uses some softer language. It prohibits noise which “substantially interferes” with a speaker and states that signs or activity likely to block the view of anyone in the audience “should” be confined to the back of the room. Regardless, Mac has proactively taken a position to make sure it remains a stronghold for free speech. According to the Campus Freedom Index, an annual list compiled by the nonprofit Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, few of Ontario’s 20 universities can say the same thing.
In the 2017 listing assessing the free speech climate on campuses, 10 universities were given a D grade, six were given a C, two received a B, one received an F (University of Ottawa), and one earned an A (Laurentian University). McMaster received a D, but that was before it established its anti-disruption policy.
Those tepid grades should be food for thought, even for those who can’t resist sneering at the Ford government’s defence of free speech while setting up a snitch line for teachers who don’t follow the 2015 sex-ed curriculum.