Political Correctness Run Amok at Queen's University?

The CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) has issued its report on the case of Michael Mason, an instructor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, who was prevented from teaching a course after apparently baseless complaints about the use of racist and sexist speech in his course, History 283.

The report strongly suggests that the complaints by certain students about his teaching were ridiculous and unfounded. Furthermore, it suggests that the complaints were badly mishandled by the administrators, including James Carson, chair of the Department of History, and Vice-Principal Daniel Bradshaw.

Professor Mason deserves a public apology and compensation from Queen's University.

George Jonas Is Very Confused

National Post columnist George Jonas is very confused.

He thinks free speech is "absolute", but then goes on to recite a list of familiar ways in which it can be and is restricted: defamation, fraud, etc.

The US, for example, doesn't have federal laws against "hate speech", but Canada does. So are we to conclude free speech in Canada is magically absolute, even though you can get away with saying something in the US that you could get convicted for in Canada?

He states, "I’ve always had an issue with expropriating public spaces for private or sectarian purposes" - yet all he needs to do is visit his local library, where private groups use public space all the time. Does he really want to end the local knitting club from using the library meeting room?

Jonas apparently seems not to understand that if the government grants permits to speak (say, at Queen's Park), then it can't restrict those permits on the basis of the kind of speech that will occur. Doing so is evidently a restriction on that "absolute" freedom of speech Jonas seems to cherish.

I sentence Jonas to reading Free Speech in an Open Society by Rodney Smolla.

Authoritarian High School Superintendent of the Month

North American high schools are not places where free speech and criticism of authority are welcomed. Instead of teaching lessons about free speech, free expression, the Bill of Rights, and the Charter of Rights, principals and superintendents routinely impose arbitrary rules and punishments.

This month's Authoritarian Creep award goes to South Shore Regional School Board Superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake from Nova Scotia, for suspending student William Swinimer for five days for wearing a shirt that said "Life is wasted without Jesus".

Swinimer's t-shirt expresses a moronic and wrong sentiment, and he sounds like the typical evangelical jerk who can't keep quiet about his own "good news". But when he says, "I believe this is worth standing up for — it’s not just standing up for religious rights, it’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion", he's absolutely right.

Superintendent Pynch-Worthylake could have turned this into a teaching moment. She could explain that in a multicultural society there will be people who assert that their religion is the only valid one, and that's the way life is. She could explain that the Charter guarantees "freedom of thought, opinion, and expression", and even though she disagrees with Swinimer's sentiment, she defends his right to express it in a non-disruptive way. Instead, she took the authoritarian route. Shame on her.