Ford should back off funding-cut threat

There are reasons to applaud the Ontario government’s plan to protect free speech on provincial university and college campuses.

But when you look closely, there are also reasons for Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives to tread more lightly. Their threats of punitive action could needlessly turn post-secondary schools into adversaries not allies.

And that would be a shame, because the government’s intent is sound and most of this initiative is worthwhile.

Of the need to protect the open exchange of ideas that is so essential to true education in our institutions of higher learning, there should be no doubt.

There have been too many shameful, embarrassing incidents in recent years when free speech has been attacked or denied on Ontario campuses.

Guest speakers have been shut down by protesters mobbing the stage or some hothead pulling a fire alarm. Experts who have been invited to share their knowledge have cancelled because they had legitimate fears of encountering violent opponents.

Controversial students’ groups, such as ones that are pro-life, have been refused official recognition as campus clubs.

And in one of the most notorious cases, Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd was bullied by two professors who hadn’t a clue what academic freedom and free expression are all about. Her supposed crime? She showed her class a video clip from TV Ontario’s “The Agenda.”

Enforced silence makes a poor teacher. You need not think Ontario’s universities and colleges have slipped back into Dark Ages intolerance to agree there’s a significant problem and that our post-secondary schools need to do more to safeguard free speech.

The schools themselves have had limited success doing this. Far too many professors and students embrace the erroneous notion that free speech is tolerable only until it makes someone feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.

This misunderstanding has eroded a basic right essential not merely to academia but democracy and civil society.

Unless free speech includes the right to offend, it’s meaningless. And if it takes a little prodding from the province for post-secondary schools to realize this, so be it.

For the most part, the government’s demands are fair and workable.

By January 1, 2019, the schools must define free speech and agree they’re places for open discussion and free inquiry. They must commit to not shielding students from ideas some students find disagreeable or offensive. Hate speech will be forbidden.

Of course, members of a university or college would be free to criticize or contest views expressed on campus. But they would not be allowed to obstruct or interfere with the freedom of others to express their views.

So far, so good. Indeed the plan has already won support from many people in the post-secondary school community.

Yet one part of Ford’s plan is worrisome. The province is threatening to cut funding to schools that don’t do enough to protect free speech. Is this financial cudgel really necessary?

Is it really fair to punish a school because some students defy a policy? How much money could be lost — hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars? Do we want to damage a school’s ability to educate by reducing its resources?

There should be a better way to ensure the protection of free speech. A preferable alternative would be to simply require the schools to police any problems, judge complaints and impose consequences when free speech has been violated. Give the universities and colleges a chance.

The province is right to defend free speech. It should not have to attack the schools to do it.