Revisiting free speech debate on campus
When I was an undergrad at the University of Western Ontario in 1989, geneticist and broadcaster David Suzuki debated professor of psychology Philippe Rushton. Rushton’s published research showed genetics plays a role in intelligence and, more controversially, that some people groups were born with greater general intelligence than others.
Certain groups on campus were outraged by Rushton’s findings and when none of the other psychology faculty at Western would take up the challenge, they petitioned Suzuki to step in and debate him.
Even though I personally witnessed the debate in Alumni Hall, there’s little I remember of either man’s presentation of facts on the issue. What I do remember is Suzuki’s repeated scolding of the university administration and certain media outlets for giving Rushton a forum at which he might speak. To great applause, Suzuki proclaimed, “I do not believe we should dignify this man and his ideas in public debate.”
Maybe because I was a philosophy major and had just read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty or some other such testament to free speech, I found Suzuki’s comments incredibly alarming . . . much more so than anything issuing from the mouth of Rushton. I am alarmed that today more people, including some university faculty and administrators, are beginning to fall in line with Suzuki’s thinking.
Currently, the administration at the University of Toronto is deciding how to deal with a controversial professor, Jordan Peterson. Via media interviews and self-produced YouTube videos, Peterson has gone public with his concern that ideology is trumping factual evidence in academia; he contends that when certain facts offend the sensibilities of historically marginalized groups, the facts are required to “change” or be suppressed.
While his observations and arguments about the state of university culture are numerous and nuanced, what has generated the most media attention, and the most outrage from some groups on his own campus, is his public declaration that he will not use genderless pronouns — such as “they” — if asked to do so by a student who does not identify as “he” or “she.”
Last Wednesday, the U of T students’ union sent an open letter to the administration demanding they wring an apology from Peterson and get him to remove his lectures from YouTube. Administrators were also told that in the future they must defend students against “prejudiced” comments from tenured professors.
It is my hope that U of T administration has the good sense to ignore these demands. Not because Peterson is right (I reserve judgment there), but because stifling free expression is wrong and it is heinously wrong when a university — a place supposedly dedicated to the free exchange of ideas — is the arbiter of that oppression.
Beyond the fact that freedom of expression is the key defence against totalitarianism, there is another reason U of T administrators should allow Peterson to continue unabated. Simply put, it is better for the students who are protesting.
University, at its best, tries to create opportunities to stretch students’ intellectual abilities. Here is such an opportunity and it has arisen organically. If Peterson is wrong, let these protesting students mount an intellectual offensive that is factually superior to his. It is intellectually lazy and worse, cowardly, to ask the administration to do their “homework” for them.
Rather than call for administration to deny Peterson his outlets for free speech, why don’t they ask the administration for a forum where they can present their own arguments?
From Suzuki’s call to ban ideas that offended him back in 1989 to the similar comments of U of T’s student leaders today, it may seem little has changed. But there have been some substantial legal changes since my days as an undergrad.
For instance, back then if what you said was supported by factual evidence you were safe from legal prosecution. As of 2013, our country’s Supreme Court has ruled that “truthful statements can be presented in a manner that would meet the definition of hate speech, and not all truthful statements must be free from restriction.”
In light of this and other rulings of lower courts, tribunals and councils, I wonder: Would the Suzuki-Rushton debate of my youth be allowed to take place at any university campus in Canada today?
How the academic leaders at the University of Toronto handle this situation with Peterson will give us a sense of which way the wind is blowing. There’s already a chill in the air.