Freedom of speech is under the highest threat in the most critical place: university campuses.
According to a recent survey conducted by The College Fix of 1,000 Republican or Republican-leaning college students in the U.S., 71 per cent of respondents who identified as “strong-Republican” and 73 per cent who identified as “weak-Republican” said they felt the need to hide their views from their peers for fear of negative impact on their grades. Even 70 per cent of Republican-leaning individuals said the same.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. If anything, I’m more surprised the number isn’t higher. The fact is, oftentimes you can’t even be skeptical, let alone play devil’s advocate on many issues in university classrooms, without many of your peers and professors seeing you as a threat to their ideas or identity.
Trying to ‘poke holes,’ if you will, is an essential part of any dialogue so that reality doesn’t poke them for you. The only reason I can see an individual being mad at someone asking questions is if they don’t have answers. Which isn’t even a bad thing, that’s all part of learning.
This is known as the Socratic method—after Socrates, who taught Plato, founder of the Academy. Socratic method has also been championed by Karl Popper, one of the most influential and paradigm shifting philosophers of science to date.
The opposite of this concept is stonewalling, when an individual refuses to acknowledge your frame of thinking and often attacks you personally instead of the idea.
I see the issue—at least in part—as one of space. Certain spaces and professions tend towards partisanship for a variety of reasons. Military and ministerial services tend to be more right-leaning, while academia and media tend to lean more left.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In a way, it’s good to have the diversity, so everyone can find a community they feel welcome in.
What if you’re an LGBTQ member of the military, though? What if you just want to go to school to get an education without playing left-wing reindeer games? What if disability and mental illness has affected how, if, or when you can participate?
Diversity in space, as well as people, is a good thing. Diversity in natural environments yields greater ecosystem services, and yet there is hardly any life in frigid tundra or the mouth of a scalding caldera.
Warming up volcanoes won’t heat up the chilly polar regions. Not without scorching the grass and woodlands first. Therein lies the problem—freedom of speech maintains that diversity, but the heat is on.
Many individuals with strong partisanship don’t have a strong sense of individuality and tend to adhere to collective ideologies. One of the collectivists’ favourite ways to silence dissident views is with what’s known as dog-piling, or when a number of individuals, usually online, gang up on one person.
On campuses where there are many far-left individuals, dog-piling an individual is usually defended by, “Well that was your freedom of speech and this is mine,” as though attacking someone is an appropriate use of free speech.
Oftentimes, individuals are straight-out libellous and criminal in their speech. Calling a specific person racist, sexist, or homophobic is almost always considered slander in Canada, due to a 2011 Supreme Court of Canada decision in the landmark Bou Malhab v. Diffusion Métromédia CMR inc. case.
Make no mistake, everyone knows fully well that this is the worst way to change someone’s views, but that’s not the point. The point is to intimidate them so that they are too afraid to speak out, thereby maintaining authority.
With all that said, The College Fix is an American publication, and many Republican talking points are almost de facto not going to happen on university campuses for good reasons. The thing is, with most actual university students you can actually have those conversations in a civil manner and point out why.
Like most spaces, universities have biases too. But, this is only problematic when large collectives abuse the commons for political purposes.
This has become especially evident since Premier Doug Ford’s election in 2018, despite lack of support from university-affiliated groups and unions and continued derision. Now, student groups—including student media—are threatened by lack of funding.
While Ford’s leadership may have come with many less-than-desirable results for students, he always championed free speech on campuses in his campaign. This certainly contributed to his overwhelming popularity.
Diverse environments with variety in people, ideas, cultures, and genders is one of the best ways to find the truth and make discoveries. When everyone’s perspective is included (and challenged), we all see more clearly.
