Remembering Harry Crowe

The report in last Tuesday’s Globe and Mail was chilling.  Not only did the federal government, in the person of the office of the Minister of State for Science and Technology, ask SSHRC to re-consider its decision to offer some funding to  an academic conference co-sponsored by Queen’s University and York University, it reportedly threatened to withhold support for any increases to SSHRC’s budget unless this review was undertaken.

 We hear a lot about the term “academic freedom”, although in my experience few have a precise understanding of what it means.  I hereby offer a definition taken directly from the CAUT website (and there is a more expansive policy statement posted there, for anyone who wishes to see more): Academic freedom is “the right to teach, learn, study and publish free of orthodoxy or threat of reprisal and discrimination. It includes the right to criticize the university and the right to participate in its governance.”  Academic freedom includes the right to hold and express unpopular or contrarian views – whether these be political, religious, or social.  And if we erode this freedom for any one faculty member, or for that matter for our students, we ultimately erode it for us all.  This principle lies at the heart of our enterprise, and has not been won without many casualties over the centuries.  In Canada we need only remember the case of Harry Crowe, among others.  

 At times, academic freedom means that our colleagues, and our students, can express views that we find hurtful, offensive, or simply wrong – and I think of people like Philip Rushton, or those supporting “creationism”, or those denying the reality of climate change.  I could go on and on.  South of the border, academic freedom became a significant issue in recent years when attempts were made to silence those who spoke out about American foreign policy, for example by opposing the invasion of Iraq.  And like any other freedom, it does come with some responsibility, for example a responsibility to be up to date in the discipline in question.  A scientist who maintains that the world is flat, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, may have a hard time convincing his or her colleagues that he or she is competent.

 In order to uphold the principle of non-interference by governments and other official bodies, SSHRC in its wisdom has established a very elaborate system of peer review for all of its grant competitions.  We may sometimes grumble about the results of those competitions, and no system is absolutely perfect, but the peer-review principle is ultimately the only guarantee of the independence of research funding from government ideologies and priorities, and thus it must be staunchly defended.  And by the way, SSHRC’s system is the envy of academics around the globe.  I hereby tip my hat to the Council’s president, Chad Gaffield, who staunchly refused to bow to pressure, and declined to request a second review of the conference in question.  Of course he is also, and must be, something of a politician as well, given that he has the responsibility for dealing with government on a more or less daily basis, and thus he also declined to make any of this nonsense public.  For that we can thank CAUT and the federal Access to Information legislation.

 And one final point: the principle of academic freedom is much too precious for its value to be devalued through misuse.  All too often I hear it applied in circumstances that are completely inappropriate, and often trivial.  Academic freedom is not the right to teach all of one’s classes on one single day of the week, or in a specific building at a specific time.  With regard to teaching, it is the freedom to select the material that we will teach, within the parameters of the course curriculum established by the University Senate and collegial decisions in our academic unit, and it is also the freedom to say what we will about that material.  In terms of research, it is the freedom to investigate whatever we consider interesting and appropriate, whether that be evolution, post-colonial theory, or the continuing conflict between Israel and Palestine.  And if a government, or a Board of Governors, or any other individual or group, doesn’t like that – then that’s just too bad.  This is what universities do, and therein lies part of the enormous value that they offer to society at large.

 I shall be keeping my eye on SSHRC’s budget allocations in the coming years.

Share this:

Tweet