Academic Freedom Under Attack

[GDR]

NATIONAL POST

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Academic freedom is under attack

Barbara Kay

National Post

January 12, 2005

Canadian students in the arts and social science departments of our universities are being recruited to the hyperorthodoxies of multiculturalism, feminism, Marxism, postmodernism and bio-politics. Proponents of these ideologies prefer social engineering and the subversion of Western values to the advancement of learning and respect for Western achievements. Furthermore, today's welfare campus fosters a culture of comfort/grievance for women, aboriginals, other visibly distinct races and all sexual orientations: for everyone, that is, except Americans, Israel-sympathizers and heterosexual men of European descent.

Last month I posed a series of questions about ideological harassment in academia. I asked students if it is still possible to get a classic, broadening education in public universities today. The vast majority of the 100-odd respondents to my unscientific poll say no. More than 90% agree that campus political correctness generates a frosty anti-intellectual climate hostile to academic freedom.

Out of 500,000 university students in Canada, 100 responses is a picayune representation. Yet every anecdote reflects an opinion or behaviour exposed to a classroom of between 20 and 300 students. Multiply that figure by every class the same instructor offers per semester, and then factor in a lifetime of teaching. Consider how many students are actually affected when an individual student reports that:

- Comparative Politics teachers wouldn't admit The Economist (in one case) or Fraser Institute reports (in another) as source material because of their "right wing, biased writers";

- An International Relations professor pronounced political realism as a method of inquiry "dead" and inadmissible in argumentation;

- Political Science students taught by a feminist were not permitted to use statistics to bolster an argument because "mathematics is a male construct for a male-dominated world";

- A professor in a course on terrorism said: "No educated person can support Israel ... educated people don't have those kinds of views."

- A feminist teacher in a school of nursing insisted that her male students participate in a "Montreal Massacre" commemoration. When one refused (on the grounds that he is no more responsible for Marc LePine's sins than his teacher is for Karla Homolka's), he was made to submit to corrective counselling.

My poll tells me that students are no longer offered "the best which has been thought and said in the world," the traditional mantra of humanities professors. Left-wing ideologies have turned all but the hard sciences into hustings for the social empowerment of collectivities rather than groves of academic freedom, where individual students are owed -- with scholars hired on merit to teach -- a liberal education.

I didn't hear only from students. Ideological harassment is a two-way street. Several academics wrote with harrowing tales of university careers derailed or ended by well-coached (and anonymous) student grievance collectors, and some even by their colleagues and/or university administrators. Graham L. Smith, a geography professor at the University of Western Ontario, won an award for excellence in undergrad teaching, yet, "I have had my course grades changed arbitrarily, been accused of being a fascist and been told I am brain-washing students, all because I present a dynamic perspective that challenges the hegemony of the present paradigm.

The "present paradigm" is bound to blunt the ambitions of any young academic striving to meet a traditional ideal of ideological neutrality. Last semester a McGill student took "Canadian-American Relations since 1939." Her instructor, a PhD candidate, was "the most gifted teacher I've encountered at McGill ... I haven't the faintest idea where he stands politically.... and that's exactly how it should be.... he received outstanding evaluations." She goes on to say that he was replaced this semester by a "more qualified" teacher who said all Canadian-American relations since 1939 would be viewed "through a gay/lesbian/transsexual lens" and that they would devote part of the course to "lesbians who are claiming refugee status in Canada after Bush's re-election." How long will it be before the "gifted" teacher gives up, and abandons -- or is pushed -- from academic life?

Parents of students wrote to remind me that indoctrination begins well ahead of university, citing instances of secondary school aggression their children are ill-equipped to resist. In one case, a mother of a Grade 12 student sent me a copy of a simplistic questionnaire her son's class was made to fill out to assess their respective stances on social issues: "ased on the answers to 10 or 12 questions [they] were categorized as to their political sympathies. [My son] was humiliated when the teacher publicly labelled him a Nazi for having a conservative viewpoint."

In a recent Post column, Susan Martinuk quoted Abraham Lincoln: "The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of governance in the next." Not a comforting thought in the age of political correctness, but my job isn't to comfort. I will be returning to this subject in future columns.

[Kip Powick]

Canadian students in the arts and social science departments of our universities are being recruited to the hyperorthodoxies of multiculturalism, feminism, Marxism, postmodernism and bio-politics. Proponents of these ideologies prefer social engineering and the subversion of Western values to the advancement of learning and respect for Western achievements

Being a simple fellow and after trying to find a couple of words in my dictionary, my only comment would be...

"I hope she feels better now".

[Steam Driven]

"- Political Science students taught by a feminist were not permitted to use statistics to bolster an argument because "mathematics is a male construct for a male-dominated world""

You have GOT to be joking... Science is based on the fact that everything can be broken down to a mathematical equation, action Vs. reaction. Or is this just a "Male Construct" of one A. Einstein?

"- A professor in a course on terrorism said: "No educated person can support Israel ... educated people don't have those kinds of views."

What a load of garbage... An Educated person would be able to learn about both sides of the equation and make their own minds up. Is that not why we send people to University? To learn different opinions, to seek out an alternate viewpoint and then make an educated hypothesis?

"- A feminist teacher in a school of nursing insisted that her male students participate in a "Montreal Massacre" commemoration. When one refused (on the grounds that he is no more responsible for Marc LePine's sins than his teacher is for Karla Homolka's), he was made to submit to corrective counselling."

Corrective Counseling? For what? Voicing an opinion? For acting on one's convictions? For not cow towing to the Politically Correct and being lead like a sheep and agreeing that all men are BAD BAD BAD? Good on him for the Homolka reference.

What happened to the campuses where Students were encouraged to speak their mind and offer alternate viewpoints. To debate all things vigorously and propose a challenge to "traditional" thinking.

Offering narrow viewpoints, chastising students who dare offer up opinions that differ from that of the collective, these are all hallmarks of an educational system with serious problems. I fear for the the populace with leader's who emerge from such a "scripted" atmosphere...

[GreatSlave]

Read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living To Tell The Tale if you're interested in free thinkers. It's amazing what one can realize if you are just allowed to set your mind free... despite adversity and naysayers. (The Nobel Prize for Literature springs to mind.)

Kev

[Guest neo]

Marquez is one of my favorite authors, Kev. The opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude must be one of the great entrances to a novel:

"Years later, as he faced the firing squad, Aurelio Buendia remembered the day when his father first took him to see ice."

(That's from memory so it may not be spot on.)

As for the article posted above complaining about political correctness, radical feminists, left-wingers etc, taking over universities and corrupting young minds, I can only say, oh piffle. Harvard, U. of T., McGill, etc, etc, etc receive hundreds of millions of dollars of endowments from business. Do the politically correct, radical feminists and leftwingers match those funds? So who has the clout? Are you going to go to a business college, take your MBA and be inundated with leftwing feminism? I think not.

Professors of every political stripe teach at universities. Some professors teach from a neutral ideology and some teach courses based on particular points of view. If you prefer, take the course from a different professor. It ain't rocket science.

You cannot be for academic freedom and at the same time demand that professors teach a course from a particular slant or even from a neutral ideology. Ideally, you hope that your students will be exposed to a variety of views, and will then make up their own minds what's right for them. Demanding that professors teach in a neutral way is diametrically opposed to academic freedom and a futile effort to boot. You would simply replace "political correctness" with "neutral correctness." Either way, you stifle free thinking.

neo

[chockalicious]

Hi Neo

Intersting point you raise. However Canadian universities do not get the funding in the way that you are talking about like our counterparts in the U.S.

Also the funding that you are talking about is mainly aimed at business and science faculties, very rarely will you see a business endow a humanities faculty the same way he/she would a business school.

As a person with a liberal arts degree I can relate to what the original intent of the post was. I do not think that anyone is asking professors not to have an opinion, that would be kind of boring. It is when the professors personal political belief keep you from advancing academically or a student is not graded as high because they disagree that the situation becomes problematic.

Do the politically correct, radical feminists and leftwingers match those funds? So who has the clout? Are you going to go to a business college, take your MBA and be inundated with leftwing feminism? I think not.

Of course they do not match the funds but that does not mean they should run roughshod with their own agenda. After all as my mother used to say...2 wrongs do not make a right.

[Super 80]

I suppose I was fortunate as I really only encountered one of those characters, but was she ever terrible, she was a walking, talking, stereotype.

A semester of post-modernist gender based analysis of Canada in the world, this content had little to no relation to the couse as advertised. The people who went on to take the next course were screwed because the above instructor neglected damn near the entire offical course. After that though, I was so traumatized, I ran back to the geology department, breaking several land speed records in the process.

I got a C in the course, when in every other related course with different instructors I got an A or A-. Although I suspect my grade had more to do with being close friends with a girl who was an outspoken conservative or a "self-hating mysoginist, a quisling of male oppression" than anything else.

Their certainly out there, but I do think the problem is really exagerated, I really only encoutered one of them.

[Guest neo]

Super-80, I agree that if there is a problem the article exaggerated it. One might make just as strong complaint that the game is stacked heavily in favor of a conservative status quo.

Let professors believe what they want, let them have their leanings, but let them be honest about them. Expose students to the broadest possible range of ideas, and let them make up their own minds from there.

chockalicious, thanks for your rebuttal but I assure you, Canadian universities get funding from business and other non-governmental sources.

There was a foofarah a couple of years ago when a famous British psychiatrist was offered a job by the U. of T., only to have the offer rescinded a month or two later. The university denied any interference, but it turned out that the British researcher had found some serious problems with a medication made by Pfizer Pharma. Pfizer made big research grants to the U. of T. Famous British researcher went elsewhere.

Where was the article writer when that little event made all the news?

Best,

neo

[Super 80]

There is nothing wrong with having opinions, there isn't even a problem with sharing your opinions. I had an economics professor who nearly had a heart attack ranting and raving about price control, and he was probably one of the best professors I ever had.

I draw the line where personal opinion begins to detract from the course as a whole, this woman spent weeks ranting and raving about issues that had next to no relevence to the subject matter. What the hell does her personal opinions the treatment of homosexuals in the early 20th century have to with Canadian foreign policy? What does womens pay equity rulings have to do with Canada in the cold war?

But of the dozens of professors I had, only she stands out in my memory as being the stereotypical "liberal academic".

[Guest long keel]

Hi Neo,

I would suspsect that there is more to this than we would like to admit in Canada. The reality is that the average kid never makes it to Harvard, or Yale. University of Waterloo, Calgary, Winnipeg, McGill, are all more realistic places where our kids will end up going to school. I have a friend whose father who has taught law in three unverisities in Canada and has echoed the same concerns this article mentions.

Education in Canada is 80% or better supplemented by taxes. It sickens me to think that my hard earned tax dollars are used to help push a one sided opinion of how the world works be taught, rather than presenting the facts and having faith the students will find the right path.

As an aside in 1988/89 I was working on a political paper in my first year of post secondary studies at Mount Royal College. I wrote a paper on the little known Reform party who at the time had only one member elected to the House of Commons. In the paper I suggested that the party had the potential to sweep the west due to the perception that the PC's were governing to far to the centre, and pandering to Quebec. It was the only paper during that semester where I received less than 90%. In fact I received a 60% accessment despite the paper having no errors in grammer, spelling, and all quotes being referenced properly. Students who had D averages and wrote about the NDP or Marxism all received near perfect grades. Strange how one's politics could so quickly change one's grades.

I have no doubt about what we read in the Post article being true. Canada's univerisities at times are like little islands detached from the reality of the world they are supposed to prepare people for.

lk

[Steam Driven]

"Let professors believe what they want, let them have their leanings, but let them be honest about them. Expose students to the broadest possible range of ideas, and let them make up their own minds from there."

That is the crux of the problem. Having no more insight than what the article postulates, it would seem that the students are not being allowed to make up their own minds.

"- Political Science students taught by a feminist were not permitted to use statistics to bolster an argument because "mathematics is a male construct for a male-dominated world"

If one were allowed to challenge this statement argue the merits, it would be a learning experience for all. An exercise exposing both sides of an interesting point of view...

"- A professor in a course on terrorism said: "No educated person can support Israel ... educated people don't have those kinds of views."

Again, if a vigorous debate ensued after this statement, if the students then went out and researched the subject and came back with a opposing viewpoint, I would see the value in issuing such a flammable statement.

When teachers try to educate the value of questions they are recognizing the need for answers. There are lots of methods of teaching but still after centuries the question and answer method is still used with excellent results. This is the Socratic Method of Teaching.

When a child becomes old enough to form words and speak, he begins to ask questions and requires answers. As he grows he asks more and more questions and wants more and more answers and this is how he learns. He is stimulated by a teacher in this way. It is a process of learning and helps to improve the student mentally. When a teacher teaches he stimulates and direct the activity of the learner.

If by issuing blanket inflammatory statements the teacher is making the students seek answers, and welcomes the debate, that would be a worthwhile exercise.

Let's hope Barbara Kay is only getting the partial story from her "informal" survey...