Learning from a skid | The Press

While the arbitration between Verushka Lieutenant-Duval and the University of Ottawa is underway, we now understand that it should not be called the Lieutenant-Duval affair, but rather the Jacques Frémont affair.

Professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval did everything that needed to be done: caution, trauma-warning (twice), nuance, delicacy, pedagogy, well-mastered analysis grid. You could tell she was playing by campus rules. Yet she’s been through hell for saying a word once. Why ?

Because the University of Ottawa panicked. While the professor wanted to advance her students’ thinking on delicate subjects that were part of her course plan, the University of Ottawa and its rector, Jacques Frémont, decided to protect their image, to position themselves ideologically disregard for facts and certain fundamental principles.

If there’s one book you should read to better understand the cowardice that an organization caught in turmoil can exhibit, it’s Manhandled freedoms.

Written by a group of professors from the University of Ottawa who had supported Professor Lieutenant-Duval at their own risk and peril, the book describes and analyzes this spectacular slippage from the inside.

The book was not written by ideologues, but by rigorous teachers, overwhelmed by the violence of what they experienced. The book wants to do useful work. It was written primarily in the hope of making people understand what threatens the very mission of our universities: to advance knowledge and, more broadly, what threatens our ability to settle our differences.

It contains an interview with the principal concerned, a section comprising fairly factual testimonies from professors who also directly experienced the events, another on analyzes of the causes of the slippage and a final section on proposals for the future. In short, a book written by researchers, by pedagogues, by people who want to advance their society through the strength of their intellectual contribution.

I’ll give you an interesting learning example. Researchers insist on the difference between the mention of a word and its use. We can mention a word, as did M.^me Lieutenant Duval. She was trying to illustrate that the meaning of a highly loaded word can change over time. The word “queer”, for example, was an insult that has now become a marker of identity (this change is called subversive resignification).

Mention an offensive word to explain it is not equivalent to utilize the word, therefore, is not to insult. M^me Lieutenant-Duval mentioned one word and his world came crashing down. There was a great educational opportunity for the University. She didn’t take it.

The book contains strong evidence that the University of Ottawa, its principal rector, has panicked. Outside the rule of law, outside procedural fairness, no verification of the facts, no investigation, but rather immediate sanctions: suspension, public condemnation by the rector. It’s quite terrifying.

I would say that is even more terrifying than the attitude of the students. Radical militancy has always been part of universities, usually for our greater good, the established order must always be challenged. But when the rule of law gives way to arbitrariness, everything becomes dangerous.

If read Manhandled freedoms don’t interest you, go see the movie The revision, by Catherine Therrien. The attitude of the University of Ottawa is very similar to that of the leaders of the fictitious CEGEP found there: total lack of courage, no desire to get to the bottom of things, priority to the image.

The case is interesting because such slippage can happen everywhere and not only as a result of the use of a word, but, for example, of a misinterpreted behavior or gesture.

If the Romans, 2000 years ago, already applied the principle audi alteram partem, hear the other side before condemning it, we should be able to do so in all circumstances. The rule of law must always take precedence over the uninformed and immediate moral judgments of a leader like Rector Frémont. At the request of the University, the former judge Bastarache filed, eight months ago now, a report which proposes new processes. These have not yet been implemented.

This affair has been wrongly called the Lieutenant-Duval affair. It is rather the Jacques Frémont affair. It was he who did not do his job as a manager, to ensure that the principles of natural justice were respected, nor even his job as a university leader, to ensure that the University, “the main repository of knowledge” , can freely fulfill its mission of “conservation, criticism, development and transmission of knowledge and culture”¹.

1. This definition is taken from the report of the Chief Scientist of Quebec, The Quebec university of the future2021.