Posted at 12:00 p.m.
The University of Ottawa unveiled its detailed plan last week to implement the recommendations made by the committee chaired by Justice Bastarache. This committee was created in the wake of two highly publicized controversies two years ago: the sanctions taken by the university against one of its professors, for the use of a word deemed inappropriate in class, and the incendiary remarks made by another professor with regard to Francophones.
The Bastarache report contained seven recommendations which invited the institution to define the concepts of academic freedom and freedom of expression as well as its own rights and obligations concerning them, to reaffirm the need to protect academic freedom, in addition to creating a committee to receive teachers’ complaints and concerns and to establish an action plan to combat racism and discrimination that does not lead to teachers’ self-censorship.
For the past few years, the University of Ottawa has made a public commitment to combat systemic racism in academia while reaffirming its commitment to academic freedom. The recommendations of the Bastarache committee therefore offered him avenues to explore in order to achieve these two objectives. However, the task is not easy.
As many have pointed out, the achievement of these two objectives can quickly lead to a fight between them and not to a harmonious coexistence.
How to prevent, for example, the use of words deemed offensive by some while advocating the freedom to use these words precisely in an academic context?
The Bastarache report invited the university to reflect on these issues and to propose solutions, no doubt original, which could both protect academic freedom and fight racism and discrimination. However, this must be done through separate policies, because these are different issues. We must above all avoid subordinating one of these questions to the other. Unfortunately, the university failed miserably in this exercise. By presenting a statement “on freedom of expression in the university context” (a title which suggests that academic freedom is only freedom of expression exercised on campuses, which is incorrect), she has in fact established a hierarchy between academic freedom and his own vision of the fight against racism which favors the latter to the detriment of the former, which constitutes a false opposition.
This subordination of academic freedom is clearly manifested in the following passage of the statement: “no word, concept, idea, work or image shall be excluded [sic] a priori in a context of teaching and research within the limits imposed by law”. The use of the term “a priori” subtly suggests that if there is no “a priori” censorship, there may well be “a posteriori” consequences. Indeed, this statement tells us that we must pursue “fundamental objectives of reparation, reconciliation, integration and inclusion”, that the fundamental mission of the university “is to create an inclusive environment” in which It is important to take into account “the place”, “the context”, “the speakers”, “the audience” and “the existing power relations and inequalities within the University”. Many teachers will grasp the implicit message and modify their behavior accordingly. We are far from the recommendations of the Bastarache report, particularly with regard to its concerns about the self-censorship of teachers.
As can be seen, the new uOttawa statement insidiously weakens academic freedom, subordinating it to a supposedly untested “anti-racist” agenda.
Could such a situation occur in Quebec?
The new Academic Freedom in Academia Act which was adopted last June forces all Quebec universities to adopt a policy that focuses exclusively on academic freedom. The Law also offers a precise definition of academic freedom: the “right of every person to exercise freely and without doctrinal, ideological or moral constraint, such as institutional censorship, an activity by which he contributes to the accomplishment of the mission of ‘an educational institution’ (s. 3). Each institution must also set up a monitoring committee and appoint a person in charge who will oversee the implementation of the policy. Finally, the Minister of Higher Education has the power to modify the policies of institutions if they are deemed not to comply with the Act. This blocks the possibility of trying to manipulate academic freedom by subordinating it to other considerations such as issues relating to EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion).
In short, the vague and confusing statement adopted by the University of Ottawa could not have been adopted in Quebec, which seems to have learned other, more cautious lessons from the crises that shook our university.