Professor raps UBC over free speech
Two of North America’s leading moral thinkers are defending a University of B.C. philosophy student who has provoked a far-reaching clash over free speech.
Noted UBC philosophy professor Paul Russell and well-known American psychologist Jonathan Haidt believe some UBC academics are over-reacting to student Franz Kurtzke’s August distribution of flyers on campus.
Kurtzke, a fourth-year philosophy student, sent out 1,000 emails and distributed 500 flyers in which he criticized social-justice advocates for being over-protective and silencing people who have unorthodox ideas.
Outbursts of anger, fear and denunciations flared in response.
“Shaking with rage. This is unacceptable,” one postdoctorate student wrote on Twitter.
“It is bad,” said a UBC literature professor.
Many accused Kurtzke of belonging to the radical “altright.”
Russell, who obtained a $12-million grant from the Swedish Research Council to study moral responsibility, did not appreciate that senior faculty on campus clamped down on an undergraduate raising “legitimate” issues.
Russell criticized an open message to faculty and students by UBC’s dean of arts, Gage Averill, in which the dean said it is understandable that some faculty and others feel “threatened” by the way Kurtzke’s flyer “targets specific groups of people.”
While Averill acknowledged that Kurtzke’s actions “fall within free expression,” the dean said: “Some colleagues have found the (student’s) messaging to be disturbing, evoking memories of campuses with blacklists and a climate of intimidation.”
But Russell told Averill in a letter, which was later made public, there is nothing “threatening” about Kurtzke’s flyer, maintaining the dean appears to have misinterpreted the undergrad’s intent.
Russell said the dean’s interpretation of Kurtzke’s flyer is “entirely wrong” in endorsing the view there was some menace in its invitation to people to tell appropriate campus administrators when they notice situations in which issues of “social justice” conflict with the search for “truth.”
“If there is any ‘intimidation’ going on here,” Russell said, “it is by senior faculty who are trying to silence and suppress undergraduate students who have legitimate and reasonable concerns about free-speech issues at UBC.”
Russell, an expert in the work of David Hume, said philosophers and others in the campus community are expected to raise difficult questions.
Many faculty, Russell said, are increasingly fearful of speaking out or offending other academics because “you can become ostracized and a lightning rod for hostility.”
Kurtzke’s flyers, which provided his name and email, recommended people read articles by the famous U.S. atheist and critic of political correctness Sam Harris, as well as by Haidt, a best-selling U.S. moral psychologist.
Among other things, Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, wrote an essay in The Atlantic magazine about the “coddling” of liberal American students, which was endorsed by former president Barack Obama.
Kurtzke’s flyer specifically recommended academics read the New York University professor’s essay “Why universities must choose one telos: Truth or social justice,” which argues the quest for truth should not be overridden by ideology.
In an email exchange with Postmedia, Haidt described Russell’s letter to the dean of arts as “brilliant.”
“In a time when so many schools are adopting ‘bias response teams’ that urge everyone to report any speech incident that they feel was offensive or insensitive,” Haidt said Russell’s letter “noted the irony of acting as though Franz’s invitation to report free speech violations was itself a kind of intimidation.”
Kurtzke told Postmedia that, despite the public conflict, he is receiving largely positive responses in private and has had civil communications with the dean of arts and other UBC administrators.
“I am not against social justice,” Kurtzke said.
“But I think the current form of the social-justice movement is problematic and unsustainable. It needs reform.”
Kurtzke also acknowledged he is willing to be identified as “someone who has been diagnosed on the autism spectrum.”
On that subject, Kurtzke cited University of New Mexico psychologist Geoffrey Miller on the need for people on campus to tolerate “neuro-diversity,” which relates to the free speech of people who may appear eccentric.
After UBC’s student newspaper published an article in August in which Kurtzke was widely criticized, the philosophy student distributed additional flyers inside campus residences, leading some to accuse him of “breaking and entering.”
But Russell said the vehement attacks against Kurtzke, whom Russell had never heard of until August, are “more troubling than his minor violation” of entering a university building without proper permission.
Russell urged scholars to be “measured” and “responsible” in denouncing people and ideas they find offensive or wrong-headed, especially when they come from undergraduates.
UBC’s dean of arts defended his public letter. Averill said some faculty and students believe Kurtzke presented a “physical threat” because he “singled out specific groups, such as ‘radical feminists’ and ‘social justice warriors,’ ” which the dean called “quite provocative labels.”
“Along with freedom of expression, we also take the safety — and concerns about safety — of the university community very seriously.”
Asked about Kurtzke’s flyer encouraging UBC to adopt the values of the so-called Chicago Statement, which protects free speech on campus, the dean said UBC’s principles are “quite compatible” with it.
Kurtzke also urged people to consider following the lead of a handful of UBC professors and joining the 800-member Heterodox Academy, a network of academics devoted to diversity of opinion and political expression in higher education, which they believe has become too orthodox.
UBC sociology professor Neil Guppy, who advises the administration on academic freedom, said he has had three or four “professional, cordial and engaging ” meetings with Kurtzke, referring to him as an “interesting character.”
Commenting on Russell’s admonition that faculty and others should be “measured” in making allegations because they might feel “threatened,” Guppy touched on the paradoxical way in which some people’s fight for their rights can easily lead to another person’s oppression.
Everyone, Guppy said, needs to “be vigilant that in protecting the freedom of some we are not, often unintentionally, constraining the freedom of others.”