Randal Marlin grew up in a starkly different world to the one we know today. Now, he’s an adjunct professor of philosophy at Carleton University. But as a student in the 1950s during the Cold War, he lived in times where suspicion and fear shaped the world.
“I remember when I was an undergraduate at Princeton . . . there was a huge controversy over free speech in relation to Communism,” Marlin said in an email.
For the most part, public fear of communism has since subsided. However, while ideas and prejudices ebb and flow with time, one thing that seems constant is a battle between people who want to be free to express their opinions, and whether society will allow them to speak freely.
The Jordan Peterson controversy
This past March, Queen’s University law faculty hosted a lecture on “Compelled Speech,” as part of its Liberty Lecture Series, featuring Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto (U of T) psychology professor. According to the law faculty’s website, the lecture series’ intent had been to “bring to the Queen’s University campus authorities on topics related to the law and politics of individual liberty.”
That speech was met with a large group of protesters, who attempted to disrupt the event by breaking the glass of the Great Hall, banging on the doors, threatening to burn the hall down with the visitors still inside, and with one of them having been found by the police with a garrotte.
Peterson had previously been to Ottawa in 2017 to speak at the National Gallery of Canada for a lecture on the psychology of creativity. The event had drawn a full house of 400 seats, as well as a crowd of around 100 protesters.
The U of T professor is best known for the protest against Bill C-16 which sought to include gender identity as a prohibited grounds of discrimination. He has also faced backlash for his views on feminism and women.
Peterson’s refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns, expressed through the protest at the U of T that went viral on YouTube, has earned him a wide following, but also generated controversy.
“His point was that words should be allowed to evolve as people adapt language to changing ideas,” said Marlin.
“Artificially imposing language from above is not likely to succeed in its aim, creating resentment and adding to power of government over the individual. Increasing such power encourages fascism.”
However, this characterization of the bill is false, according to Rebecca Bromwich, a law professor at Carleton and per diem crown attorney in Ottawa who worked on early iterations of the bill.
“Bill C-16 is really interesting in that it doesn’t really make a legal change, it makes a symbolic change. So the bluster around that is pretty misplaced, it’s pretty overstated because actually there is no change fundamentally to the law,” she said. “So, anyone who is making a lot of noise about Bill C-16 is not legally correct if they’re alleging that it is making changes.”
The protests Peterson has faced at several of his speaking engagements play into an overarching debate on university campuses across Canada about political correctness, social justice, and freedom of speech.
The Debate
Grace Macleod, a political science student at Queen’s University wrote an opinion article for the Queen’s Journal in which she expressed her concern with the faculty’s choice to invite Jordan Peterson to Queen’s.
“I would say obviously [Peterson is] not an unintelligent person, but I don’t think that he’s necessarily the most credible source when it comes to gender issues,” Macleod said in an email. “I think a lot of people use his academic background to justify and legitimize his opinions, no matter what they’re about.”
“I totally understand the argument from the other side—once universities start prohibiting certain speakers, then it can lead to a serious form of censorship,” Macleod said.
“But I think that we should focus more on the real-life consequences of hosting speakers who voice opinions that work to oppress certain groups,” she added.
Canada has laws against hate speech, which are a part of the Criminal Code, meant to prohibit hate propaganda, especially if it encourages violence. If a given speech does not explicitly encourage hate and violence, it enters a gray area. Regulating what people can say will inevitably infringe on people’s freedom of expression, but Canada’s Constitution says people can be prevented from broadcasting their views if doing so is a “reasonable limit prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
The difficulty is in trying to preserve a person’s freedom of expression while trying to find a balance in regulating and preventing giving a platform to harmful speech.
“Those bent on suppressing certain views should always consider whether the same arguments for suppression might not be used to suppress their own ideas,” Marlin said.
Michael Kennedy, director of communications and development with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said there is a clear definition of what hate speech is, and universities must follow it.
“There is nothing in the Criminal Code that says offensive speech is prohibited, so what we’re telling universities is, you have an obligation to respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (CCRF),” he said. “They don’t need to go define what free speech is themselves, because they are part of the country, and the CCRF already has done that.
So what should universities do?
The JCCF releases an annual report on freedom of speech on university campuses, called the Campus Freedom Index. The report rates universities on their commitment to protecting freedom of speech on university campuses, and Kennedy, co-author of the report, said universities don’t make freedom of speech enough of a priority.
“Universities have become increasingly PR-focused. They want to avoid bad PR at all costs, because it affects enrolment and money, so that’s why sometimes you see knee-jerk reactions to try and shut down a controversy as quickly as possible,” Kennedy said.
According to Kennedy, this is to the university’s own detriment and stops them from achieving what should be their mission of being a place for open debate.
“Universities must be sanctuaries for the free exchange of ideas, because if you can’t speak your mind freely on campus, where else can you do it?” he said. “It used to be the norm that if you had a controversial idea, you didn’t take it to church or to work, you took it to the university.”
In regards to the considerations that must be made by universities in inviting speakers, Bromwich said that universities should treat them as academic contributions, and consider them accordingly, similarly to peer review.
“If you’re making an argument that has merit then I think a person should be heard. But someone like Ann Coulter, someone like Jordan Peterson, if their arguments aren’t meritorious, if they can’t back things up, if they’re just wrong then why should they speak at a university?” she said. “I’m not saying they should be banned, I just think they should have to meet the onus that anyone should have to meet if they want to publish something.”
Matt Buffton, the executive director of the Institute for Liberal Studies, reiterated the importance of following the CCRF, allowing for potentially unpopular speech.
“I think it’s reasonable for the university to make a judgement regarding dangerous speakers, but that bar should be set very, very high. A speaker who is actually inciting violence would be dangerous. It would be appropriate to ban them,” Buffton said. “But a speaker who says things that some—perhaps many—people find offensive or hurtful is a different matter. I don’t think those speakers should be banned.”
Determining how much offensive speech is acceptable though, is a question that will weigh on universities every time they face a decision on whether to allow a speaker or not. But it is a question universities should put a lot of thought into considering, said Buffton.
“Administrations will be tempted to avoid controversy and err on the side of banning a controversial speaker. They will give a lot of scrutiny to unpopular views and much less to popular views. And of course, unpopular speech—right or wrong—is the only type of speech that needs protecting.”
