WLU’s statement was the easy part. What follows is harder
The devil is in the details. Isn’t it always?
Yes, Wilfrid Laurier University’s task force deserves praise for coming up with a draft statement that’s strongly in favour of free expression, even if ideas “may be deemed difficult, controversial, extreme, or even wrong-headed.”
Comments are invited on the statement until mid-May, with an eye to having it approved by month’s end.
But then the real work begins. Making the statement is one thing. Ensuring that thousands of faculty, students and staff live by its principles is another thing altogether. It will require a culture shift for some parts of campus.
Two professors, who come from different points of view, have different and interesting ideas about how to make that happen.
Psychology professor Anne Wilson, a member of the task force, said the campus became polarized in an ugly way this past academic year, with extremes on the right and left “doing a lot of the loudest talking.”
She includes herself, a progressive, liberal-minded person, as one of many who allowed herself to become silenced by the polarization on campus in the wake of what the Lindsay Shepherd affair had exposed.
Shepherd is the teaching assistant who was bullied and reprimanded by two professors and a diversity and equity official after she showed first-year communication students part of a televised debate about whether people should be forced to use genderneutral pronouns such as “they” instead of “him” or “her.” She was told she had created a toxic environment in the class by neutrally showing both sides of the discussion.
Later, the university president apologized and said she had done nothing wrong.
“I watched people on the left attack Lindsay publicly ...(while) people on the right stand up and say she was a hero,” said Wilson. “What did I do? I stayed quiet.”
Wilson said it’s important, going forward, for everyone to “start calming down a little” and find a way to talk about ideas they disagree with.
Meanwhile, William McNally, a finance professor in the school of business and economics, said he and his colleagues were shocked by the situation revealed by Shepherd’s treatment.
“We’re just number-crunchers,” he said of his colleagues.
The “postmodern, neo-Marxist” world view of many colleagues in the humanities doesn’t resonate where he works, because “that tool box would never be useful for predicting or explaining global behaviour.”
McNally wanted to help, so he became a faculty member of a free-speech group on campus called Laurier Students for Open Inquiry, and helped them by booking rooms for speakers.
As a way of enabling free speech and freedom of thought on campus, he has suggested finding a way to measure the
diversity of viewpoints offered in classes. Are different points of view taught? Are they welcomed in class discussions?
There could be a website where students could rate the level of free speech in their classes, just as they can now rate their professors.
He also thinks that if booking unpopular speakers is going to create high security costs, that must be managed without unduly burdening a small group.
The scandal of the past year already has created negative responses from alumni, McNally said. He is concerned that the best and brightest high school students won’t come to Laurier to study if its intellectual reputation isn’t solid.
“If we don’t change what’s going on around here, there’s going to be trouble,” he said.