All Posts Tagged With: "free speech"

Whatever happened to debate?

Anjana Rao, left, Argir Argirov and Sarah Santhosh tried to start a Men's Issues group (Stine Danielle)

The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) takes issue with a men’s issues club. If it were not so serious, it would be laughable. An organization that collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in mandatory levies from Ryerson students is afraid of three students—two of them women—starting a men’s issues group.

Despite the constant rhetoric about diversity, equity and inclusion, the RSU cannot tolerate ideologies that run counter to its own. The irony of this patronizing attitude towards campus freedom is hard to miss. It’s as if the spirit of closed-minded religious dogma has jumped into bed with modern political correctness to prevent blasphemy against RSU ideological orthodoxy.

The principle is this: if you challenge official narrative, you don’t have the right to speak. But this is supposed to be a university—a place where we learn and debate in an open environment; where those we disagree with are challenged, not with censorship, but with other ideas. To agree to disagree and to respectfully debate—this is true tolerance.

Continue reading Ryerson Students’ Union blocks men’s issues group

Emma Teitel on the Janice Fiamengo affair

Janice Fiamengo (Josh Dehaas)

Read more from Emma Teitel on Macleans.ca.

Nothing says free speech like pulling the fire alarm. It was a quarter past seven last night when police emptied U of T’s George Ignatieff Theatre. Keynote speaker Dr. Janice Fiamengo, an English professor at the University of Ottawa, rolled her eyes and adjusted her blouse as the crowd poured out of the building and onto the sidewalk to mingle with the small throng of protesters—pretty girls with big placards and little patience. They wanted Dr. Fiamengo to take her message elsewhere. But firemen came and went, and the professor, once a radical feminist, proceeded to do what the University of Toronto Men’s Issues Awareness Society, and the Canadian Association for Equality invited her to do: denounce women’s studies.

The discipline has devolved into an “intellectually incoherent and dishonest” one, she argued, replacing a “callow set of slogans for real thought.” It’s man-hating, anti-Western, and fundamentally illiberal. “It champions a “kind of masculinity that isn’t very masculine at all,” and shuts down freedom of debate, hence the fire alarm.

This message was quite pleasing to the minority in the room—greying baby boomers of  the pro-Fiamengo, Men’s rights camp–and exceedingly distressing to the majority—by the looks of it, gender studies majors and people who would, if given the opportunity, personally execute Rob Ford.  It looked like a small contingent of CARP wandered, bemused, into a Bon Iver concert.

Appearances aside though, it was a meeting of truly lunatic minds.

Continue reading Why women’s studies needs an extreme makeover

The fire alarm went off, but free speech prevailed

A woman challenges Janice Fiamengo

I was expecting the police officers, the provocative placards, and the rent-a-protesters with neon hair and black face coverings.

I was also expecting the fire alarm to go off—and it did—five minutes after Janice Fiamengo’s lecture started in the nearly full George Ignatieff Theatre at the University of Toronto on Thursday evening.

After all, the last time a person spoke against academic feminism on campus, when Warren Farrell visited in November, approximately 100 protesters barred the doors. They wouldn’t try that again, but I figured they’d try to shut things down, and fire alarms can be effective if, during the confusion, enough people give up and leave.

What I wasn’t expecting was a full house 20 minutes later, after the fire department gave the all clear, or that the controversial University of Ottawa professor would make it all the way through her lecture What’s wrong with women’s studies? without an angry mob attempting to shout her down.

Don’t misunderstand me. They denounced her lecture vigorously, but not until the question and answer period after she spoke. During the lecture, most people were respectfully silent.

The general non-violence of the evening—save for the childish fire alarm routine—is a sign of progress. There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests. The academic’s voice remained strong. The University of Toronto’s Statement on Freedom of Speech and its Policy on the Disruption of Meetings, mentioned though not read by the moderator, served their purposes well.

So what exactly was so controversial? Few protesters ahead of the meeting could offer specific reasons, except that her talk was promoted by A Voice for Men, whose associates have said some hostile things to women. It’s true that Fiamengo dislikes most of today’s academic feminism, but I think the most offensive thing she said was that, when the Titanic sank, 75 per cent of women survived, but only 18 per cent of men did, because men are somehow naturally heroic.

The rest of the talk was a fairly common critique of feminism. She called it empty, incoherent and dishonest. She said its obsession with violence results in police charging men for assault, while absolving women. She denounced a family law system she says is biased against fathers. She said she is infuriated by “affirmative action where men are passed over time and time again.” She talked about the hypocrisy that women’s studies sees violence around every corner in Canada, but turns a blind eye to the deadly oppression of women and sexual minorities in the Islamic world. And so on.

She also praised a local Toronto feminist, Steph Guthrie, who was interviewed in Metro News about the upcoming talk. Guthrie told the paper that instead of trying to shut Fiamengo down like they did to Warren Farrell, Fiamengo’s detractors should go to the lecture, ask tough questions and debate.

And that’s what many of the would-be hecklers did. In order to stand up to that Q&A microphone and challenge her with dozens of balding men glaring and videotaping, they had to have at least listened to Fiamengo’s arguments well enough to come up with their own rebuttals. That left them scribbling down on notepads and keying into smartphones in eager anticipation while she spoke.

That’s not to say many minds were changed. Many asked questions that betrayed either their admiration or disgust for Fiamengo. In fact, some of them didn’t ask questions at all, and instead just ranted about personal grievances at the hands of those evil women or those evil men.

But there were interesting back-and-forths, including one between a self-identified McGill student who asked Fiamengo to explain why “only 25 per cent of parliament is female-identified.” (I wonder how she knows all 308 member of parliaments’ gender identities, but never mind.) “There’s a difference between equality of opportunity and equality of result,” Fiamengo replied.

Only one person really lost her temper, after making a thought-provoking query about the impact of Fiamengo’s assertion that “children need their fathers” on lesbian parents. Fiamengo responded by suggesting there’s research that children do better in two-parent households. She didn’t like the answer. “That’s heteronormative bullshit,” the woman screamed, before a dramatic exit.

I don’t know that Fiamengo made a sound academic case. What I do know is that she deserves respect for gathering evidence and calmly presenting it. She also offered advice all students should heed. “Educate yourselves so you can challenge [each other],” and, “do it will style, not hatred.”

She’s right on that. The freedom to debate unpopular ideas is something universities have a duty to protect. On Thursday night at the University of Toronto, that ideal was challenged but prevailed.

You won’t believe what they’re spending it on

JalilArfaoui/Flickr

It’s the time of year when most students in Canada ignore posters imploring them to vote for student government executives. Although student unions may seem irrelevant, they’re not. They collect millions of dollars each year in mandatory student fees and spend it, sometimes on things most students wouldn’t support—if only they knew.

Here are six stupid things Canadian student unions did with your money. If this doesn’t motivate you to research the candidates and vote in your campus elections, I don’t know what will.

1. Spent it on big parties you didn’t attend

Avicii, one of the top electronic acts in the world, doesn’t usually show up in places like Windsor, Ont. Snoop Dogg doesn’t often party in St. John’s, Nfld. It should be no surprise then that the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance lost about $40,000 on their show in September and that the Memorial University of Newfoundland Students’ Union lost $100,000 on Snoop. The Kwantlen Student Association may hold the record though. They lost $128,000 on Jay Sean. Jay… who?

Continue reading 6 stupid ways student unions used your money

On the Christian law school where gays need not apply

Carleton's Students for Liberty/Facebook

From Teitel Page on Macleans.ca.

Have you heard? Free speech is a thing of the past. And religious liberty is dying fast.

It began last week when Arun Smith, a seventh-year human rights student at Carleton University in Ottawa, tore down a “free speech wall” on campus because it featured socially conservative comments. The action inspired three National Post columns and an Ezra Levant exclusive lamenting the end of freedom of expression as we know it.

Elsewhere, on the religious liberty front, the Canadian Council of Law Deans wrote a letter of protest to Canada’s Federation of Law Societies about Trinity Western University. The Christian liberal arts school in British Columbia wants to open a law school that would require students to sign a Community Covenant Agreement that pledges “Healthy Sexuality.” The agreement has nothing to do with gonorrhea or how to avoid it: what’s to be avoided is love and sex between people of the same gender (which is, I guess, by Trinity Western’s standards, worse than gonorrhea). “Sexual intimacy,” says the covenant, “is reserved for marriage between one man and one woman.” In other words, gays need not apply.

Continue reading Free speech and unequal prejudice

What students are talking about today (January 14th)

Girl's Dunham (HBO/Instagram)

1. Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls won the Golden Globe for best TV comedy series last night right before the highly-anticipated premiere of the second season. I’d argue the opener was a bit of a letdown. Lead character Hannah (played by Dunham) has smartened up a bit by rejecting her mean sort-of-boyfriend in favour of new guy who presumably treats her better. If she gets too mature, that’s a problem as her Gen-Y cluelessness provided so much of the comic relief and provoked so many of the broader societal questions. Some of the other characters, including straight-laced Marnie, seem to also be changing in ways that make them less believeable. Interestingly, Dunham seems to have acknowledged those who accused Girls of being too white; her new fling is a black man.

Continue reading HBO’s Girls, the plagiarism debate & free speech at U of T

University defends controversial campus conference

Photo by davehighbury on Flickr

This post first appeared on Michael Petrou’s The World Desk blog on Macleans.ca.

My article about a conference at Carleton University honouring Iran’s founding dictator Ayatollah Khomeini prompted a condemnatory letter from several prominent Iranian scholars to Carleton President Roseann O’Reilly Runte, as well as responsive missives from O’Reilly Runte and from John Osborne, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

I’ve reprinted the exchanges below. Tracking the dates and salutations, it looks possible that I’m missing one of the letters. If so, its absence here is unintentional. I have also deleted email addresses and phone numbers that appeared in the email address lines, and have added the full name of recipients where they were otherwise abbreviated. Everything else is posted here verbatim.

A good chunk of the debate centres on free speech. Osborne casts himself as a defender of the principle. “It is my duty as a scholar to vehemently oppose any attempts to restrict freedom of speech, and I shall do so until my dying breath,” he writes.

As it happens, I’m a free speech fundamentalist. If Carleton students want to hold a conference praising a murderous advocate of child rape, and if the university is content to host and promote the event, that’s their right. (Under Khomeini, Iran lowered the age when a girl could be “married” to nine; and the old man himself wrote that it was permissible to receive sexual pleasure from babies.)

Continue reading Carleton, Khomeini, and free speech

Let the kid wear his offensive Jesus shirt: Pettigrew

Photo by Roby Ferrari on Flickr

This week, Nova Scotia student William Swinimer was suspended from his high school in the town of Chester Basin for wearing a t-shirt that read, “Life is WASTED without Jesus.” While school officials say the shirt is inappropriate, Swinimer says he is merely standing up for his religious beliefs and exercising free expression.

School board superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake says the board is going to hire an expert to mediate the dispute.

Since I am already in Nova Scotia and am always right about everything, let me save the good people of Canada’s Ocean Playground some money by explaining what that exquisitely-named functionary should do.

Let the kid wear his shirt.

Continue reading Shirt storm brewing in Nova Scotia

Protesters expected

The University of Waterloo is once again preparing for protesters who might try to shut down a speech, reports The Waterloo Record. The university says it will protect 80-year-old Charles Rice with extra police when the Catholic professor emeritus gives the annual Pascal Lecture on Christianity next Tuesday on the topic of morality, enlightenment and The Natural Law. The former professor is opposed to same-sex marriages and abortion, which has caused some students to oppose the lecture. Protesters successfully shut down a talk by writer Christie Blatchford when she first tried to speak to an audience of 27 people at the university about her book on the Six Nations occupation of Caledonia in November 2010. Her rescheduled speech drew a crowd of 300.

Ruling will make students afraid to express views: defense

Photo by Wikimania2009 on Flickr

Ten American university students were sentenced on Friday to 56 hours of community service and three years of probation in a case that has spurred debate about freedom of speech on campus.

Ten of the “Irvine 11″ students were convicted of conspiring to disrupt and disrupting Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s speech, which he delivered at the University of California Irvine early last year. The court ruled that there is a difference between expressing one’s own opinions and preventing someone else from offering theirs.

The students, all members of the Muslim Student Union, disrupted Oren’s talk by repeatedly by yelling messages they had planned through e-mail exchanges, such as, “it’s a shame this university has sponsored a mass murderer like yourself.”

Prior to the trial, UC Irvine disciplined some of the students and suspended the Muslim Student Union for an academic quarter, which the dean of UC Irvine’s law school, Erwin Chemerinsky, believed was sufficient punishment. He called the decision to prosecute the students “harsh” and “a terrible mistake,” despite the fact that “there’s no free speech right to shut someone down.”

Last year, Canada experienced its share of free speech controversies on campus when both Ann Coulter and Christie Blatchford had events shut down because of protesters who had planned ahead of time to disrupt their speeches as a form of political protest.

Tony Rackauckas told the court that the Irvine 11 committed “censorship” and “organized thuggery.”

The defence lawyers, on the other hand, argued that the students were exercising their own rights to speak and that a criminal sentence amounts to “shutting down” their rights to free speech. Worse, they say, such harsh punishment will deter student activists from expressing their views on campus in the future. Reem Salahi, a lawyer for the defense, said they will appeal.