College’s odd reaction to a racist joke
When “f i restorm” and “c a mpus ” j oin f orces in a news headline these days, the article often struggles to cash the cheque. You know the drill: Professor wishes to express unpopular opinion, shrieking students demand he be exiled to Hans Island. So I was prepared to roll my eyes when clicking through to the news of an alleged racist incident at the University of Toronto last Tuesday.
Alas, this one’s a proper howler, and the facts are not in dispute. Hugh Segal, Master of Massey College, sat down to lunch at a table with Holocaust historian Michael Marrus, an emeritus professor at U of T who was awarded the Order of Canada in 2008, and three graduate students. “You know this is your master, eh?” Marrus said to a black student. “Do you feel the lash?”
Well, good l ord. That landed as well as you would expect: by Monday, Marrus had resigned (while complaining about a lack of due process and his apparently unsuccessful attempts to apologize to the student); Massey College had acceded to student demands for antiracism training; and Segal had pledged immediately to change his title from “master” to “head of college.”
It was an attempt at “jocul ar humour,” Marrus explained in a letter of apology to Segal — a very brave attempt, I will concede, if he intended to continue dining at Massey. But Marrus certainly shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction, as he’s no stranger to political correctness allegedly run amok.
“A female grad student in philosophy told me of a meeting she attended in which she opposed the principle of affirmative action,” he told the Toronto Star in his role on the U of T’s academic board, describing a frightening mood on campus. “She said she was intensely and bitterly attacked, made to feel like a Nazi in a synagogue.”
Marrus was speaking amidst a controversy over the hiring of anthropologist Jeanne Cannizzo at U of T, not long after she had curated an exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum that activists decried as racist. ( The ROM has since apologized for mounting it.) The protesters followed Cannizzo to U of T Scarborough, and eventually shouted her off campus.
“Sooner or l ater we’ l l have to discuss to what extent must one be black to teach black history,” Marrus warned the Star. “If so, it’s racial discrimination in reverse. It would be unconscionable for me to say a Chinese could not teach Shakespeare.”
That was in 1991. Some of his prophesy has come true. But, in 1991, in every year since and for many years previous, his little lunch joke would have been a spectacular conversation-stopper. He’s lucky he didn’t get a bowl of soup in his face. At his age, and since nobody seems to want him around anymore, calling it a day was probably the best move.
Massey’s reaction is somewhat more troubling, however. The issue of “master” on university campuses isn’t brand new: in recent years it has been a hot topic at several Ivy League institutions, among others, for its “connotations of slavery.” Harvard and Princeton dropped it a few years ago.
But that was part of an ongoing discussion conducted in a much clearer and more visceral historical context. In a perverse way, Massey’s abrupt abandonment of the “master” title almost seems to let Marrus off the hook — as if its presence on campus were something like an irregular stair or slippery flagstone, just waiting to trip up an elderly prof or inebriated student.
Master has all kinds of meanings, but the ones in play here are unambiguously distinct expressions of superiority: school master; slave master. Marrus made a positive decision to cross the streams in search of humour; it blew up in his face just as anyone would have predicted; and now it seems we’re taking it out on a perfectly innocent word.
Practically speaking, it’s tough to see what reprinting Segal’s business cards will accomplish. And in isolation, it’s really not a problem. “Head of college” is considerably more precise and descriptive than “master,” which will still have more than enough work to do in the English language ( although if mere “connotations” of slavery are the standard, then surely the Master’s degree can’t last).
In the grander scheme of things, however, we live at a time when modern universities struggle terribly with issues like academic freedom, freedom of speech and independent thought.
“Words and statements like these in no way reflect the position of Massey College as a whole,” Segal wrote in a statement; he pledged to ensure Massey is “a safe space for all our fellows.” Whatever he calls himself, that does not inspire confidence. Universities aren’t supposed to have “positions;” they’re supposed to be venues for free inquiry. And the notion of “safe spaces” has come to connote precisely the opposite. If this is the sort of road Massey College wants to head down, I’m afraid Mastergate might just be the beginning of its troubles.