The University of Waterloo’s New Woke President

In the mail:

24 September 2023

Dr. Vivek Goel, President (president@uwaterloo.ca)
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1

Dear President Goel:

We are writing as members of the Executive Committee of the Waterloo chapter of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, an organization of university faculty members and others dedicated to the defense of academic freedom and the merit principle in higher education. (For further information, see our website at https://www.watsafs.ca.)

On September 19, 2023 you emailed faculty and staff a letter titled “Standing in solidarity with Canada’s queer community”.

The letter is inappropriate for a university president: it is factually incorrect, it violates the principle of institutional neutrality, and it is uncivil. It will divide the university community and create a climate of self-censorship. We condemn it in the strongest possible terms.

The letter’s first sentence mis-represents the protest’s goal. Whether from ignorance or partisan demagoguery, neither reason reflects well on your office. A quick perusal of the protest’s twitter feed yields the following avowed goal: “Advocating children’s well-being by removing harmful curriculum and gender ideology from schools.” (See the @1millionMarch4C twitter account, Appendix 1.) You assert that the protest was anti-Trans and anti-2SLGBTQIA+. That framing is the narrative of public sector unions and activists who opposed the March. (See, for example, the OPSEU tweet in Appendix 2). Using the framing of one side makes your letter partisan.

Because the letter is partisan it violates the principle of institutional neutrality. Institutional neutrality is the idea that public institutions of education be non-partisan and take no specific stands on the issues of the day. Promoting one side of a contentious social conflict interferes with the academic freedom of students and faculty to pursue their own enquiry into the issue. The neutrality principle also respects the fact that public institutions are funded by taxpayers of diverse political views. We urge you to read the University of Chicago Kalven Report which explains the idea of institutional neutrality.

Not only is the letter partisan but it is uncivil. A truth-seeking university must encourage people to engage critically with ideas and proposals. As president of the University of Waterloo, your duty is to model civil discourse, to show students and all members of the community that scholars and intellectuals approach matters of controversy dispassionately and in good faith. Defaming those whose views differ from one’s own as bigots or hateful stifles discussion and demeans your office. Your actions cannot but weaken the public’s respect for the university.

Your email will divide the university community. How will faculty and staff who supported the protest react to your email? How can they feel included at the University of Waterloo? What about parents on campus who have legitimate anxieties about what is taught in schools, the books available in the library, or their right to know if their children are considering fundamental changes to their social identities and bodies?

The answer is that they will feel excluded. You have now branded them as deplorable bigots.

Your email further entrenches the climate of fear and self-censorship which has been growing for years at the University of Waterloo. We have been contacted by many UW professors who would speak out on this issue, but fear for their jobs. Though completely supportive of the content, none were willing to sign this letter. This is surely an indictment of UW governance and administration. A university campus that so constrains the freedom of action for members of the academic community cannot, with any credibility, claim to stand up for academic freedom, freedom of conscience and diversity of perspective.

We call on you to apologize to the university community, to publicly retract the letter and to make a public commitment to institutional neutrality.

We are also calling on the political parties to commit to punitive financial sanctions against universities that breach the principle of institutional neutrality and use tax-payer dollars to pursue openly ideological agendas.

Please be aware that we are posting this as an open letter on our website and will also post any formal reply.

Sincerely,

William McNally, Ph.D. School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University (wmcnally@wlu.ca)
Geoff Horsman, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Wilfrid Laurier University (ghorsman@wlu.ca)
Nikolai Kovalev, Ph.D. Department of Criminology, Wilfrid Laurier University (nkovalev@wlu.ca)
David Haskell, Ph.D. Digital Media and Journalism, Wilfrid Laurier University (dhaskell@wlu.ca)

https://www.watsafs.ca/
Twitter: @WatSAFS