Newsgroups: alt.censorship From: ag907@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Graham M. Stremes) Subject: FREEDOM IN ONTARIO Message-ID: Sender: news@freenet.carleton.ca Organization: The National Capital FreeNet, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 18:43:40 GMT Lines: 116 Readers I think you should all be made aware of attempts to curtail the freedoms which too many of us take for granted. I am therefore posting a recent column from the editorial page of the Ottawa Citizen. UNIVERSITIES KOWTOW TO BIG BROTHER --------------------------------------------------------- The Ontario government has banned free thought and expression at the very institutions devoted to such freedoms - our universities - and there has been no public outcry. It's hard to say which is more disturbing. The government's censorship decree, announced in October and effective this March, would not be out of place in a fascist state. But the silence of university presidents, governors and faculty is a complicity equally reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. You probably haven't heard anything about this. There wasn't any debate at Queen's Park because the ban was imposed by executive ukase, skirting the legislature. And there have been no stories or editorials in the Citizen after the initial announcement here in Ottawa by Education Minister Dave Cooke. The original news report last October spoke blandly of "policy guidelines to prevent harassment and discrimination at colleges and universities...on all grounds covered by the Ontario Human Rights Code." What the original report didn't make clear is that the Ontario government has actually laid down detailed rules for what may be said in a university classroom, for what books may be cited by professors, for what reading materials libraries may have on their shelves, for what art can be shown and taught. Nothing may now be spoken, read or displayed on a university campus in Ontario, for example, if it "creates a negative environment for individuals or groups" and is of a "significant nature. Equally verboten are "gestures, remarks, jokes, taunting, innuendo, display of offensive materials, offensive graffiti, threats, verbal or physical assault, imposition of academic penalties, hazing, stalking, shunning or exclusion." No discomfort, please The stated aim of the policy guidelines is to protect people from being made uncomfortable by any of the above actions if they are related to race, ancestry, place of origin, color, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, family status, the receipt of public assistance, record of provincial offenses or pardoned federal offenses. These are the prohibited grounds of discrimination in the human rights code. Obviously this means that a law professor couldn't distribute examples of Ernst Zundel's writings, that psychology professor couldn't discuss theories that IQ is genetically determined, that a religion professor couldn't critique the tenets of any specific religion, that a sociology professor couldn't report negative research about welfare scams, etc. Certain types of expression are being banned on the basis of content, because the ideas involved might cause some people discomfort. Universities, however, are about ideas, and little else. They are about causing people discomfort, about questioning assumptions. They are the very place where "ideas we hate" (a phrase from Oliver Wendell Holmes) should be not only protected, bu encouraged. You might think that university faculties would make a stink about such thought control. You would be incorrect. The cossetted and tenured ranks have been remarkably silent. An honorable exception is Trent University in Peterborough, where a faculty petition objects thusly to the ban: "We defend, therefore, the right to certain types of speech and academic expression which, in fact, we do not condone, and in some cases deplore. This includes the right to offend one another. It includes the right to express - and the right of access to intellectual materials which express - racially, ethnically, or sexually discriminatory ideas, opinions, or feelings, just as it includes the right to expressions that favor inequality of incomes or benefits. "It also includes the right to make others uncomfortable, to injure, by expression, anyone's self-esteem, and to create, by expression, atmospheres in which some may not feel welcome or accepted." A passionate voice, but a solitary one. --------------------------------------------------------------- The above is a transcript of a column in the Ottawa Citizen of Saturday, January 23, 1994 which was written by Peter Calamai, Editor of The Ottawa Citizen. The Ontario Government recently broke its own guidelines in at least two ways by discriminating against English-speaking, white males by excluding them from eligibility for government job openings. The government was forced to back down in that case, as it should be in the above regard as well. Graham --