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SAFE SPACES, FREE SPEECH, AND THE FIGHT FOR UNWELCOME IDEAS
The Varsity, The University of Toronto's Student Newspaper, Canada
March 9 2015
Intellectual diversity is stifled on campus
By Will Hall
In the preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell takes aim at a form of
censorship that is not institutionalized, but rather self-imposed.
"The sinister fact about literary censorship in England," he says,
"is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and
inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban."
Typically when Orwell's name is brought up in discussion about
censorship and free speech, it is not in reference to this piece,
but instead to 1984, with its Big Brother and Ministry of Truth.
This shouldn't be that surprising, as the preface was initially only
published in a Ukrainian translation meant for counter-revolutionaries
fleeing Stalin and was not rediscovered in the English-speaking world
for many years. It is a shame, though, as this work raises important
questions pertinent to contemporary debates about intellectual
diversity and free speech on university campuses -- U of T included
-- that may otherwise be glossed over. Namely, what more insidious
forms can censorship take, and what is our duty to ideas we find
reprehensible?
These questions are important to ask because, in terms of traditional
censorship, we are largely not at risk here at U of T. Formal bans on
thought and expression in the style of 1984 are rightfully abhorred
and thus a non-issue. In its 2014 Campus Freedom Index, an annual
report intended to "measure the state of free speech at Canada's
universities," the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms awarded
the University of Toronto an "A" for official policies protecting
freedom of expression.
Weighing into this assessment was a policy drafted by the Governing
Council propounding that rights of freedom of speech and academic
freedom "are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply
disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished
beliefs of society at large and of the university itself."
Institutionally then, free speech is safe; however, we should ask,
as Orwell reminds us to, what these guarantees are worth if we are
already policing ourselves? What good is the protection of disturbing
questions when no one is asking them? Recent events on campus suggest
a troubling trend in which concerns like these are ignored in order
to maintain the comfort of an unchallenged consensus.
An event that illustrates a laudable example of free speech and
disturbing evidence for the opposite trend took place on February
27, when the St. George campus hosted a lecture entitled "WWI 100th
Anniversary: Human Suffering in Eastern Anatolia." The event featured
two speakers, University of Louisville professor Justin McCarthy and
lawyer Bruce Fein. Many, including the Armenian Youth Federation
of Canada (AYF) and U of T's Armenian Students Association (ASA),
hold these speakers to be deniers of the Armenian genocide. The
Armenian Weekly reports that: "Protesters allowed the speakers to
deliver their opening remarks. However, when it became apparent that
the speakers would deny and misconstrue the facts of the Armenian
Genocide, the group stood up and turned their backs to the podium as
a silent protest against genocide denial."
This was an act of protest entirely permissible under the university's
guidelines for what constitutes disruption of an event, and was
commendable in that it clearly expressed that the protesters found
the contents of the speech loathsome, without unduly interfering with
or silencing the speakers.
In contrast, events surrounding the lecture demonstrated a concerning
desire among many to ban the lecture outright -- a refusal to allow
the expression of an unwelcome idea on a university campus. Preceding
the lecture, a petition was circulated on the AYF website demanding
that the university not allow the lecture to take place. Similarly,
a statement by the ASA following the lecture stressed that the
"University of Toronto should not provide podiums to those who are
looking to legitimize their denial of the first genocide of the
20th century."
However one feels about the contents of the lecture, these strategies
should be disconcerting. The motion to ban the expression of an idea
on campus sets a dangerous precedent and effectively says that you
are comfortable offloading your critical judgment to someone else. To
consider some idea, even the most hateful, entirely forbidden from
expression is, as Orwell warns, simply "to exchange one orthodoxy
for another." The enemy is not the pernicious idea, but rather, as
he puts it, "the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the
record that is being played at the moment."
What follows from this is that the expression of truly unpopular
ideas is in most need of institutional protection, liable as it is
to self-imposed censure. It is not through edict that ideas become
anathema to thinking people. Rather, as John Stuart Mill put it
in On Liberty, "If it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly
discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth." In
the same respect, controversy surrounding the Armenian genocide is not
resolved by stifling even the most odious of speakers, especially on a
university campus. George Orwell ended his preface to Animal Farm with
a quote from philosopher and dissident Rosa Luxemburg, which behooves
reflection in a discussion of free expression: "Freedom for the other
fellow." While freedom of expression includes the freedom to speak,
the freedom to write, and the freedom to protest that which you find
abhorrent, it must necessarily also include the freedom to offend,
and the freedom to be wrong.
Will Hall is a third-year student at Trinity College studying political
science and American studies.
http://thevarsity.ca/2015/03/09/safe-spaces-free-speech-and-the-fight-for-unwelcome-ideas/
The Varsity, The University of Toronto's Student Newspaper, Canada
March 9 2015
Intellectual diversity is stifled on campus
By Will Hall
In the preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell takes aim at a form of
censorship that is not institutionalized, but rather self-imposed.
"The sinister fact about literary censorship in England," he says,
"is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and
inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban."
Typically when Orwell's name is brought up in discussion about
censorship and free speech, it is not in reference to this piece,
but instead to 1984, with its Big Brother and Ministry of Truth.
This shouldn't be that surprising, as the preface was initially only
published in a Ukrainian translation meant for counter-revolutionaries
fleeing Stalin and was not rediscovered in the English-speaking world
for many years. It is a shame, though, as this work raises important
questions pertinent to contemporary debates about intellectual
diversity and free speech on university campuses -- U of T included
-- that may otherwise be glossed over. Namely, what more insidious
forms can censorship take, and what is our duty to ideas we find
reprehensible?
These questions are important to ask because, in terms of traditional
censorship, we are largely not at risk here at U of T. Formal bans on
thought and expression in the style of 1984 are rightfully abhorred
and thus a non-issue. In its 2014 Campus Freedom Index, an annual
report intended to "measure the state of free speech at Canada's
universities," the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms awarded
the University of Toronto an "A" for official policies protecting
freedom of expression.
Weighing into this assessment was a policy drafted by the Governing
Council propounding that rights of freedom of speech and academic
freedom "are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply
disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished
beliefs of society at large and of the university itself."
Institutionally then, free speech is safe; however, we should ask,
as Orwell reminds us to, what these guarantees are worth if we are
already policing ourselves? What good is the protection of disturbing
questions when no one is asking them? Recent events on campus suggest
a troubling trend in which concerns like these are ignored in order
to maintain the comfort of an unchallenged consensus.
An event that illustrates a laudable example of free speech and
disturbing evidence for the opposite trend took place on February
27, when the St. George campus hosted a lecture entitled "WWI 100th
Anniversary: Human Suffering in Eastern Anatolia." The event featured
two speakers, University of Louisville professor Justin McCarthy and
lawyer Bruce Fein. Many, including the Armenian Youth Federation
of Canada (AYF) and U of T's Armenian Students Association (ASA),
hold these speakers to be deniers of the Armenian genocide. The
Armenian Weekly reports that: "Protesters allowed the speakers to
deliver their opening remarks. However, when it became apparent that
the speakers would deny and misconstrue the facts of the Armenian
Genocide, the group stood up and turned their backs to the podium as
a silent protest against genocide denial."
This was an act of protest entirely permissible under the university's
guidelines for what constitutes disruption of an event, and was
commendable in that it clearly expressed that the protesters found
the contents of the speech loathsome, without unduly interfering with
or silencing the speakers.
In contrast, events surrounding the lecture demonstrated a concerning
desire among many to ban the lecture outright -- a refusal to allow
the expression of an unwelcome idea on a university campus. Preceding
the lecture, a petition was circulated on the AYF website demanding
that the university not allow the lecture to take place. Similarly,
a statement by the ASA following the lecture stressed that the
"University of Toronto should not provide podiums to those who are
looking to legitimize their denial of the first genocide of the
20th century."
However one feels about the contents of the lecture, these strategies
should be disconcerting. The motion to ban the expression of an idea
on campus sets a dangerous precedent and effectively says that you
are comfortable offloading your critical judgment to someone else. To
consider some idea, even the most hateful, entirely forbidden from
expression is, as Orwell warns, simply "to exchange one orthodoxy
for another." The enemy is not the pernicious idea, but rather, as
he puts it, "the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the
record that is being played at the moment."
What follows from this is that the expression of truly unpopular
ideas is in most need of institutional protection, liable as it is
to self-imposed censure. It is not through edict that ideas become
anathema to thinking people. Rather, as John Stuart Mill put it
in On Liberty, "If it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly
discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth." In
the same respect, controversy surrounding the Armenian genocide is not
resolved by stifling even the most odious of speakers, especially on a
university campus. George Orwell ended his preface to Animal Farm with
a quote from philosopher and dissident Rosa Luxemburg, which behooves
reflection in a discussion of free expression: "Freedom for the other
fellow." While freedom of expression includes the freedom to speak,
the freedom to write, and the freedom to protest that which you find
abhorrent, it must necessarily also include the freedom to offend,
and the freedom to be wrong.
Will Hall is a third-year student at Trinity College studying political
science and American studies.
http://thevarsity.ca/2015/03/09/safe-spaces-free-speech-and-the-fight-for-unwelcome-ideas/