As of January 1, 2019 all colleges and universities must have a policy supporting free speech. Some are complaining but Lindsay Shepherd told me this policy is needed.
“I think the people who don’t see the problem, they’re just people who have tended to toe the line or have mainstream opinion,” Shepherd said.
When Jim I’m An Asshole Turk from Ryerson started his response about autonomy he should have been told to STFU halfway through his response.
Jim don’t get I-Ron-Y
he can have autonomy when he and the university he works for stops taking taxpayer money
University “autonomy” is simply another phrase for university unaccountability.
While I was a grad student, I noticed many academics think that they don’t have to answer to the public for whatever they do or say. They simply claim that “truth” and “knowledge” are unbiased, as well as the oft-used excuse, freedom of speech. Those of us on the outside, the great unwashed, had the duty to shut up and let them do whatever they like
I blame much of that attitude on tenure. Once that ticket to a guaranteed job for life is granted, it seems that all sense of responsibility goes out the window.
“University “autonomy” is simply another phrase for university unaccountability.”
This would make nice rolling tag on SDA, it is also 100% correct.
This will be a tough uphill climb as the Marxists now in control will fight this covertly as much as possible.
It would be a much easier fight if conservatives actually wanted to fight it. But we don’t. How many times on SDA have we heard that children are to be taught trades and the eggheads will stay red and are beyond redemption and apocalypse and we will control food supply and have the guns and know how to start fires, blah blah blah, you know how it goes from there.
Free speech. Critically examining ideas and assumptions that go into them. Scholarship and real, not political science?
In our statist infested universities, with lazy students thinking they’re “intellectuals?” C’mon, not in this century.
Time to revisit Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI).
“The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in many countries, the government’s role is ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP). The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and rarely seen outside specialized outlets, social media, and universities — most people have proper jobs and there are not many opening for the IYI.
Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry.”
The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When Plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”. What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools, and PhDs as these are needed in the club.”
The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.”
IYIs fail to distinguish between the letter and the spirit of things. They are so blinded by verbalistic notions such as science, education, democracy, racism, equality, evidence, rationality and similar buzzwords that they can be easily taken for a ride. They can thus cause monstrous iatrogenics[1] without even feeling a shade of a guilt, because they are convinced that they mean well and that they can be thus justified to ignore the deep effect on reality.”
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/09/16/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb/
Perfect,they crossed the line years ago.
Next test their free-speech rules and fire all from the schools that fail.
Pretty sad statement of academia when a government has to overrule authoritarian nit wits.
But it is Canada,where we are all so educated,smart even.
Credentialed to the vanishing point.
Shame Gilbert and Sullivan have gone out of fashion.
John, 2004 study by the UofT showed that 87% of NA unis, and their affiliate colleges, professors were lefties, need I go any father:-)))
Only 87%?
When the Premier of a Province has to demand that free speech be incorporated into the university culture, there is no university culture worth preserving. Defund all post secondary institutions over 5 years while offering a voucher system which will also be phased out over the same time frame and let the private market supply services accordingly. Libraries and online lecturers could replace liberal arts while privatized STEM education would find appropriate mixes of lecture, lab, tutorial, online and apprenticeship programs.
Exactly. Most of our universities today are the opposite of the liberal democratic principles they stood for for hundreds of years. They resemble more those of the former Soviet Union.
“All they said was the schools must adopt a policy in support of free speech, it was up to the schools to write it.”
And therein lies the problem. They’re free to decide what that policy will be. I don’t see anywhere where they can’t have a policy that only supports free speech as long as the administration likes it, and no other.
Props to Doug Ford. Are there any other politicians doing as much?
With possible risks, the policy should be no policy.
Once you define it, you are on slope down hill.
Let the referees refer.
There was a time that there were hardly any rules and people got along and lived their lives.
Those that got out of hand ended up ostracised or in prison.
Then the political ubermensch decided they know better. They would make rules as they go along and change the rules as it would suit them.
One set of rules for Harper, another set of rules altogether for Trudeau.
The only thing Harper did was go to a bloody hockey game.
Trudeau went on private holiday to a private island by a rich muslim that gets money from the Canadian government, paid for by the Canadian working people.
Eh?
The rules for speech are unfortunately about half way to abyss.
The next step is, how much would one spend in prison for speaking.
The man in charge of a university Center for Free Expression opposes a policy guranteeing “free expression”…now isn’t that a case of the kettle calling the pot black……ooops now I’m in trouble for calling something black. Ask if I care. If nothing else at least we have the first political leader in Canada openly admitting that our university system is corrupt & discriminatory.
I’m so grateful that I finished my university by the early ’70s . I look back fondly on the multi-viewpoint arguments groups of us had in the cafeteria. In the end we would agree to disagree and remain friends or at least on speaking terms, a practice that appears to not exist today.
I certainly agree with the idea of cutting all public funding to universities until they can prove that basic freedoms like speech and association are back and being practiced.
I’ll call Ford a free speech advocate when he destroys the Ontario HRC.