Free, open debate at universities is critical
It’s gratifying to see Simon Fraser University president Andrew Petter defending the right of an anti-vaccination group to host a conference at the university next week. Let us say, at the start, that we disagree completely with the anti-immunization crowd and its misguided views that vaccinations cause significant harm. The evidence is overwhelming that those shots save lives. Just ask your grandparents.
But efforts by a group of rational, supposedly academically minded doctors and medical researchers opposing the group’s right to meet at SFU is disturbing. It’s part of an unfortunate anti-intellectual trend at universities and in society in general to declare that there is only one acceptable view on various subjects. Global warming is just one topic where there are prominent academics raising important questions that defy the accepted wisdom who are being shouted down by the mob of orthodoxy.
Scientists, in particular, should know better. History is rife with examples of scientific “certainties” that later proved false: the flat Earth, the natural superiority of whites and the safety of thalidomide being just a few. Open debate killed all those silly notions.
While the views of the largely lefty, anti-vaccine crowd are one thing, one wonders if SFU and other universities are equally brave in defending others with more conservative, minority opinions on subjects such as global warming, abortion or the death penalty.
In a country that claims to support free speech, intellectual bullying must be fought, one of the most odious being shameful attempts to ban people from meeting to debate issues.