Much has been made in recent days of the “failure of universities” to defend academic freedom against galloping identitarianism. The adoption of a law, proposed by the Cloutier commission, would be the only way to get universities to resist this scourge which would henceforth spoil the climate of university campuses in Quebec.
At the risk of disappointing those who would like to bring universities to heel in defiance of the university autonomy that the Cloutier commission posits as a fundamental principle, the reality is more mixed. Campuses are not ablaze. And passing a law is not a panacea.
From February to May 2021, the University of Montreal conducted a vast process of consultation and collective and collegial reflection on freedom of expression in a university context. The work of this Mission on freedom of expression in a university context has enabled us to look globally at all manifestations of this freedom from the point of view of all members of the university community. At the end of this process, the university assembly unanimously adopted a statement of principles and specific recommendations to reaffirm, communicate and bring to life our community’s commitment to this fundamental value of university life. In particular, she agreed that “no word, no concept, no image, no work can be excluded a priori from debate and critical examination within the framework of university teaching and research”. In short, we have done our homework.
It emerges from this exercise that the debate on university freedoms is real. But it must be reduced to less spectacular and less unidirectional dimensions.
Starvation response rate
First of all, you have to put the numbers in perspective. A rate has been looping since the survey administered by the Cloutier commission was made public: 60% of faculty members claim to have “self-censored” in class. It would be more accurate to write that 60% of the 1079 respondents to the survey (sent to 33,516 faculty members) said so. This response rate of 3.2%, starving for a survey of this type, requires a great deal of caution in interpreting the results.
Above all, the consultations carried out at the University of Montreal show that the debate on university freedoms is experienced in a range of nuances and situations that are lacking in the Cloutier report. Teachers (lecturers, teaching assistants, career teachers) came to tell about difficult times, challenges by students, individually or collectively. In turn, students told of the attacks, expressed the anxieties of showing up physically in class and the relative relief provided by distance learning: online comments do not protect against attacks or arrests. Our consultations gathered testimonies deploring that the concrete issues of racism or sexism are not treated with the same diligence as those, often posed in the abstract, linked to university freedoms, particularly those of the teaching staff. They also made it possible to show that appeasements or solutions to the crisis were found “locally”, as close as possible to what was happening, taking into account the relationships of authority and the conflicts of interest at stake.
Safe space? The term seems to bother everyone, so let’s talk about a space of trust, placed under the responsibility and authority of the teacher, or even academic or administrative executives when it is relevant. However, the development of a critical relationship to knowledge cannot ignore the conditions for access to speech in the classroom, the right of all to debate, within the operating framework of an institution like the ours, with essential respect for scientific work methods. Freedom of expression in an academic context is anything but a one-way street.
Wider issues
Well beyond the classrooms, places of interactions often targeted to evoke freedom of expression in a university context, as well as the cornerstone of the Cloutier report and central point of attention of the media, university freedoms are also played out in departmental life, in relations between peers (students, teachers), in the pressure of certain groups outside universities on research and its dissemination, in comments made on social networks, in the scientific animation of life on the campus or during interviews given by researchers in the media or in scientific publications. The stakes are both broader and less contentious than what is being said today.
Questions about the limits of university freedom therefore exist at the University of Montreal, as in other Quebec universities. Will a law change this reality? No. Will it allow a management team to better support the people involved in these trials? No. Because that’s what it is ultimately about: how to help people – teachers or students – never to censor their expression while ensuring that an authentic dialogue remains open between them? It seems to us that the answer to this question lies much more in the ethical and educational register than in the legal register. In addition, would a law undermine the principle of university autonomy by imposing restrictive measures which would be at the very heart of university life? Certainly.