News Room is a regular discussion column which will cover different topics each issue. The column is a transcript of a debate or discussion conducted between two participants over the net. Each "debate" will usually have a moderator, to help keep the discussion flowing, raise some points that seem important, and generally keep things orderly and interesting.
One of the big advantages of the electronic media is supposed to be ease of participation. We hope we can stimulate you to take part in our forum, to follow it up, comment on it, suggest subjects we should cover (or participate in a debate, volunteers are always welcome). Readers are also encouraged to e-mail votes for the debator they agree with.
Much has been made of the "filters" which select what does and doesn't tend make it into print in the big newspapers and magazines, the Internet has helped to provide one shortcut around some of those filters. The News Room is our own contribution to promoting the uncensored discussion of ideas between the writers and by people like you. So tell us what you think.
---
Taylor (moderator): There has been a fair bit of coverage here in North America of disputes in the area of Academic Freedom ranging from visiting speakers being shouted down by students (with the willing support of some staff), to published opinions which have got students and professors alike into hot water. So should we limit what represents "acceptable" opinion, or are universities and colleges places where it should be possible and acceptable to express any opinion without restraint? If there are to be limits on the permissible -- what should they be and how should they be defined ? What do our two panelists think?
Gribble: My views on the subject of academic freedom are well expressed by part of a recent statement issued by the American Association of University Professors, entitled "On Freedom of Expression and Campus Speech Codes":
"Freedom of thought and expression is essential to any institution of higher learning. Universities and colleges exist not only to transmit existing knowledge. Equally, they interpret, explore, and expand that knowledge by testing the old and proposing the new.
This mission guides learning outside the classroom quite as much as in class, and often inspires vigorous debate on those social, economic, and political issues that arouse the strongest passions. In the process, views will be expressed that may seem to many wrong, distasteful, or offensive. Such is the nature of freedom to sift and winnow ideas.
On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed."
Gould: This debate isn't about "political correctness." I don't advocate the prohibition of "unpopular" ideas. Rather, Paul correctly identifies the issue when he speaks about the proper role of universities. Our difference, however, is that Paul believes every individual should have the right to say, and continue to preach, whatever she or he desires. I would draw the line differently.
Universities are about knowledge, about acquiring it, questioning it, and understanding it. While ideas are always open to expansion and modification, there are some facts we know to be true. The Holocaust happened. The Pope does not control the minds of every Catholic. Asians do not have a mass conspiracy to take over the world. In other settings, we might ignore these ravings of intolerant and ignorant souls. In the university setting, we cannot.
This is not to say that the university should prohibit all members of its community from expressing these views in every forum. Staff may be prejudiced -- perhaps even faculty or students. But when a faculty member sets foot into the classroom and puts forth these views in the spirit of "knowledge," when he/she advances known untruths as "facts," the university has a duty to step in and stop the perversion of knowledge. The situation is no different than if a political science professor taught that Thomas Jefferson were still President. Knowledge may be variable, but there are some facts that we can cling to as true.
The issue, then, is not whether someone's feelings are hurt by free speech. (The world is offensive at times.) Rather, the question is whether universities will have the courage to step in when vicious untruths are passed off in the classroom as knowledge.
Taylor: So where is the line between the prevention of plain lies in the classroom and academic works, and the suppression of academic free speech ? Can we really accept the right of teachers to misinform (that is to lie) to those they are responsible for educating ? and how do we deal with the much more fuzzy cases (in their times Darwin and Gallileo "lied"). Paul, how do you reconcile the conflict of freedom and responsibility in this context, do you think it is possible to permit complete academic freedom of opinion and simultaneously prevent academic misrepresentation of facts and ideas ? and Jon maybe you could explain how you would want to define "acceptable" and "unacceptable" - after all many of today's truths have been considered unacceptable or wrong in the past.
Gribble: A university education is very different from an elementary school education. In elementary school we trust teachers to teach our children facts about the world: how to do long division; who the first prime minister of Canada was; how a plant converts light into energy. In a university environment, the role of the professor is as a facilitator rather than a teacher. The role of the university student is not as a passive note-taker but rather as an active seeker of information.
Many people (especially students) assume that they are at university to be taught truths about the world. They walk into a lecture hall and look at their professor, thinking, "Okay, now teach me." Almost nothing presented at the university level is fact. Everything from theories of chemical bonding to theories of the causes of the first world war involve interpretation. The role of the professor is to facilitate an environment in which a breadth of interpretations, mainstream and otherwise, are available to the student interested in exploring them. To a large extent the student is responsible for his/her own education. The student who walks away from a lecture on the industrial revolution believing that to be the only interpretation, or the student who walks away believing that they were only given the opportunity to be exposed to one viewpoint, is not living up to his or her responsibility.
Gould: Paul is right that a university education is different than primary school, but I also suspect that he would be willing to redirect a grammar professor who taught that punctuation was no longer necessary. My point is simple: while knowledge changes, we as an academic community still set parameters as to what is in the realm of the true. If professors are expounding ideas, hateful ideas, that we believe to be untrue, we as a community have an obligation to prevent their instruction as truth in the classroom. Separating the true from the untrue is difficult, and we should always err on the side of caution and breadth, but it is process that we already undertake in others areas and we ought to extend it to hateful speech.
Even apart from this point, we ought to restrict speech when the speaker's intention is to harm. Extend assault and battery laws to speech. If a speaker utters hateful speech with the intent to harm another, restrict him. Note here that I would draw the line based on the speaker's intent, not whether the listener finds offense. Freedom of speech doesn't prohibit offensiveness, simply intended harm.
The obvious objection is that it's difficult to discern a speaker's intent. True. But, again, we face these problems in other areas of the law where intent must be measured, and we ought to be able to do it in the context of speech.
Taylor: So both Paul and Jon seem to agree that some level of disagreement is just in the nature of a University education. One seems to be maintaining that whilst academic freedom is desirable, free speech does not override the necessity to enforce some level of commitment to honesty and ability to deal with malice and deliberate hate promotion. On the other hand we have the view that the necessity for free debate puts anything and everything on the table.
I have a point or two I'd like to raise here, purely my own opinions following on the points of view expressed above. Because this is the end of a rather short exchange of views I want to add my two cents worth and hopefully promote some reader input. A big advantage of electronic publishing is supposed to be the ease of feedback so I hope we will get some comments, input, etc. on this. First off I want to say that I accept without reservation that the conflict (deep and perhaps permanently irreconcilable differences of opinion and moral conviction) of ideas and viewpoints is necessary to any worthwhile system of higher education. If a person can't see another side to a controversy or at least appreciate the fabric of views which are directly opposed to his or her own then their time at university has in many respects been wasted. However, whilst I don't dispute the right of Professors and academics (or anyone else for that matter) to express views which I find personally distasteful or offensive, I do expect responsible behaviour from everyone. Academics whether in a University or a Primary school have, along with their right and duty to contest philosophies and encourage independent thought, a responsibility to society. If an academic proclaims that we should sterilise the poor, nuke Cuba or Haiti, their position as a doctor, scientist, historian, economist, etc. can give credibility to the suggestion. They can claim that there is a concomitant responsibility to the public good (far more than the average Joe).
Being an academic does not put anyone above responsibility for their actions and words. I have trouble accepting the academic community as somehow divorced from the rest of the world. I wish it were so but it isn't and in my opinion that is the reality we have to deal with. In fact that is what makes the problem such a complex one. If education were truly separate from life we could pigeonhole disagreements and forget about them. In the real world they can touch on the fears, prejudices, opinions and lives of real people who have to deal with real consequences. For me the problem isn't so much the concept of academic freedom per se, but exactly how great a freedom we can allow before we have to delineate the corresponding responsibilities to the rest of the world and give them priority.
"Education," as someone once said, "is the ability to listen to practically anything without losing either ones temper or self confidence." If education has a real central value - it is to teach us to deal with deep, fundamental, and directly contradictory opinions and desires without coming to blows and resorting to personal insult and the suppression of what we don't like to hear.
