In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Immanuel Can: This is super interesting.
Tom: Do tell …
IC: It’s a chart measuring what proportion of two-sided debate and its opposite, so‑called
“social justice” indoctrination, is being practiced at the various university
campuses in Ontario, Canada.
Escaping the Sausage Factory
Tom: I would reproduce that graphic here, but it belongs to the site owners at Campus Freedom Index, which is a side-project from the
Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. If you’re interested, their page looks perfectly safe to visit.
I see what you mean though, IC. For parents who love their children and don’t want to
send them to some sort of ideological sausage factory, comparing university
experiences seems a very useful idea.
IC: There is a rather frightening amount of “hot” color on the chart, I think you’ll agree.
Apparently it’s not equally bad in all faculties, and it’s better in some
universities in the States. And it’s worse in others. But if you’re considering
a university for somebody, I wouldn’t send my dog to Ottawa or Laurier.
Tom: Mine could probably teach them a trick or two.
Why Free Speech Matters
To be serious though, IC, you may be hitting on something important here. Let’s start
with this: why should “free speech” and “free thought” matter to Christians?
Doesn’t that sort of freedom allow for all kinds of dangerous ideas, like the
ones that are currently reshaping our society?
IC: Yes, it does. And it also allows the better ideas that refute them.
If you believe in free speech, then you have to know that free speech allows all kinds of ideas. So, the question then
is not “How can we prevent young people from encountering bad ideas” (as if
Christians could reorganize the world so that bad ideas just wouldn’t exist),
but rather “How can we best arrange the circumstances in which they encounter
them, so that the good ideas are also heard?”
That’s the reason for freedom of speech. If you don’t have it, then for sure the bad ideas
go unchallenged. The good ideas we don’t have to worry about —
they’re good.
Tom: Okay, that’s definitely a practical reason, assuming of course that
the counter-responses to the bad ideas actually get heard.
A Theological Basis for Freedom
But as Christians, do we have any theological basis for preferring a society that allows public discussion to one
that does not?
IC: You mean a reason like “the gospel”?
Tom: Sure, absolutely. The gospel provides a very sound reason to pray for the freedom to share what
we think. But do we have any philosophical basis for preferring individual
freedoms to other possibilities?
IC: Yes. And, in fact, these philosophical reasons are intimately tied
to the Christian ones, as it happens. John Locke, the great philosopher and
founder of the entire human rights tradition, gives these very specifically.
Tom: Yes, the “right of conscience” that belongs to all men and is derived from the fact that we are created beings rather than mere accidents of the cosmos, and so on. You’ve covered that in
another post, so we won’t get into it in detail. And so it’s no surprise to find that the
greatest enemies of the expression of individual conscience today are also
people who do not believe we are created beings. They cannot follow Locke’s
reasoning, and thus they are unwilling to grant their fellow men and women the
freedom to speak and act on the basis of what they believe.
Truth Suppression
IC: Yes. And paradoxically, as Locke saw, they take away other people’s
God-established right to speak, and do it in the name of “rights” they could
never possibly have if God hadn’t given any. So these people are being
illogical. They are also being very, very dangerous, because in condemning
freedom of speech they are opening the gate to others to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”. Additionally, they are creating the means of their own destruction; for when
their own speech becomes politically incorrect (as all tend to become,
eventually, as the world changes), the right to suppress free speech is the
bludgeon that will be used against them.
Tom: We’re already starting to see that. It’s not just conservatives and
“Nazis” running afoul of the SJWs; they devour their own at the drop of a hat.
Classical liberals are just as likely to irk them as anyone on the right, if
only because they show insufficient enthusiasm about the Progressive agenda. And
this is happening on campuses all over North America, as these graphs
demonstrate.
IC: Yes. Leftism is turning on the leftists. The devil eats all his own children.
Methodology and Metrics
Tom: So say you’re a parent trying to give your child advice about where
to go to get an education. This is a very handy tool.
The chart grades each university in Canada in four areas: university policies, university practices, student union policies,
and student union practices. The “methodology” page spells out clearly how they are doing the grading. An “A” under university
practices, for instance, reflects (i) a “clear and unequivocal commitment
to free speech on campus, set out in the university’s mission, statement on
academic freedom, or other policy documents,” (ii) an absence of “speech
codes”, (iii) no history of funding ideological advocacy groups, and (iv) an
anti-disruption policy that prevents groups like Antifa from coming on campus
to shout down or otherwise disrupt speakers.
Those are pretty clear metrics.
IC: Quite good. They don’t say anything about whether views have to be leftist, right-wing or
centrist, whether they have to be politically correct or controversial, or even
whether they are pro or anti-Christian, for that matter. Clearly, the creators
of this poll are looking purely at the question of whether or not the
opportunity for speech on campus is at least reasonably free for everyone. So
this isn’t a partisan index: it would serve anyone’s best interests.
Where to Go and Where Not to Go
Tom: So, for example, Laurentian University in Sudbury gets an “A” in policies, while University of
Ottawa gets an “F”. For a parent with a Christian child, that’s useful
information. Now of course the child is probably going to make the final
decision … but if they care about having the freedom to share what they
believe, they may be looking for this sort of information themselves.
IC: Yes, one would hope. What’s really good, though, is that the universities are being held to an
impartial metric that reveals how much they are determined to indoctrinate
students, and to what extent they actually practice the spirit of intellectual
freedom they claim to uphold. If you want to be indoctrinated, nobody
says you can’t; and now you know exactly where to go to get it done. If you
don’t, you know where to avoid. That’s good information for anyone.
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