Free speech and universities

Debate about free speech has heated up recently, not just in public news and entertainment media, but also on university campuses.

After simmering for decades, it boiled over with U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on American universities and the slaying of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk.

For example, last month a second Texas State University professor, Tom Alter, was fired for remarks he made at a Revolutionary Socialism Conference. Based on his area of expertise being the history of protest movements, capitalism, and labour, and assuming his academic freedom, he had raised the question, “Without organization, how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty, profit-driven, mad organization in the history of the world, that of the U.S. government?”

The university administration justified his dismissal for supposedly advocating violence, seemingly equating “organization” with violence, as well as for his hyperbolic depiction of the U.S. government. His termination was subsequently condemned by the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors.

University students also, in turn, increasingly suffer the trepidations of free-speech tensions. According to a survey published last month by the Fraser Institute, a conservative Canadian libertarian think tank, professors and classmates are seen as disproportionately politically left-leaning. Right-leaning students are then more hesitant to express their “honest and genuine” views for fear of receiving lower grades due to having the “wrong opinion.”

But of course, some opinions and ideas are more informed and consequently better than others. Higher education, indeed, all education, pursues and privileges actual factual truth, however achievable that may be in respective academic disciplines. The ultimate objective of university education is not diversity of thought, but rather accuracy of thought. Open and scholarly debate is the means, not the end.

Scholars themselves have diverse perspectives, even within academic disciplines, and yes, universities should be places where all ideas are welcomed and explored. But not all should be accepted as equally accurate portrayals of reality. The purpose of education is not merely to grant equal credibility to all opinions, but to acquire the cognitive resources and skills necessary to decipher the better explanations of reality.

Thankfully, the knowledge that education disseminates has progressed, and yes, some opinions have indeed been left behind. For example, it is no longer acceptable to opine that women should not attend university because they lack the intelligence and it is not their role to do so. Nevertheless, for another example, students remain free to insist that the Earth is flat, although doing so legitimately warrants a failing grade.

Alas, universities are now routinely castigated by the political right as bastions of leftist “woke,” — slang and slur for being awakened, and which ironically in return casts the political right as unawakened. Are they, by their own language, ideologically asleep, or perhaps in some state of false consciousness perceiving existence not in accord with reality?

Regardless, the calling of higher education is to enable all students to see the unseen, to see the strange in the familiar, and to question the answers given, say, by prevailing neoliberal ideology.

A few days before the recent National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, faculty at the University of Manitoba received an email notice from their administration about the potential uninvited visit to campus of a professor who had been terminated from a university in another province. This person was seeking an open forum to deny the genocidal nature of the residential school system.

The University of Manitoba’s response included the following: “The university will not block (this person) from attending campus. Their presence will be monitored to support the physical safety of everyone on campus, but not for the purposes of censoring discussion. The university remains steadfast in its commitment to support an inclusive, equitable, and safe campus environment. Universities still need to serve as spaces where diverse viewpoints, even those that are deeply opposed to our values, can be expressed.”

“The university’s role is not to shield individuals from diverse ideas and opinions, even those they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or deeply offensive. (We are) committed to supporting a safe campus environment while engaging with, rather than avoiding, challenging discourse. Concerns about respectful discourse can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas.”

That stance is exemplary of the respectful pursuit of truth beyond politics, not mere partisan opinions, by our public universities.

Dennis Hiebert teaches in the department of sociology and criminology at the University of Manitoba.