A teaching opportunity

The Andrew Potter case at McGill University is indicative of the pressure universities are feeling across the country to kowtow to political correctness. It results in the erosion of academic freedom and also an erosion of free thought — in the one place that these values should be sacrosanct.

Potter was the director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University in Montreal. He wrote a piece that appeared online for Maclean’s magazine. He suggested that 300 motorists being stranded overnight on a major Montreal highway following an epic snowstorm in mid-March demonstrated the cracks in the province’s civil society. He wrote that compared with the rest of the country, Quebec is an “almost pathologically alienated and low trust society.” His argument relied on statistics from Statistics Canada as well as his own personal anecdotes.

The response was quick. Two days later, Potter had resigned his position, but is staying on as an associate professor for the remainder of this contract with the university.

Quebec politicians condemned Potter’s opinions, including Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, who said it painted a “negative portrait” of the province “based on prejudices.” Maclean’s sources say “McGill endured such intense backlash over Potter’s Maclean’s piece that the university left him only two choices: resign or be fired. Sources also say that numerous high-profile figures have contacted McGill since Monday to express their personal displeasure with the column.”

So much for academic freedom. So much for free thought. So much for free speech.

This is the environment created when funding to universities either from private donors and parents or from the public purse becomes tenuous, and the chill created for academics diminishes us all.