By Lilian Obeng
Over the course summer, city council voted in favour of paying public tribute to Hamilton’s LGBTQ+ community. The intersections in front of city hall and McMaster University, Summers Lane at Main Street West and Sterling Street respectively, now don brightly coloured trans and pride flags.
The decision was met with praise across the board. McMaster University specifically seized on the opportunity to integrate the new crosswalks into their overall public-relations strategy — tweets, Facebook posts and even an Instagram post. A bright, simple and public display of support for a marginalized community, such as this, is unlikely to encounter many challenges. But as a queer student who has been on this campus for upwards of three years, these crosswalks are only a bleak reminder of the actual priorities of the university’s administration.
Symbolic gestures, such as these crosswalks, can be important political statements. Given the current political climate, I would be remiss if I did not highlight the need to remain firm and resolute in our solidarity with the marginalized. However, what purpose do rainbow crosswalks serve when the university fails to ensure the safety of its LGBTQ+ community?
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl_XGqvnAcL/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
This was best illustrated by Jordan Peterson’s visit to our campus, and the university’s dismal response to staff, student and faculty outcry. In March 2017, a McMaster Students Union ratified club invited Peterson to campus to speak on ‘political correctness.’ Needless to say, the visit was marred with controversy from its planning stages all the way through to Peterson’s arrival.
Peterson rose to prominence for refusing to use his trans students correct pronouns at the University of Toronto, citing the mere act of respecting students as compelled speech and infringing on his own rights. He has since gone on to accrue a host of misogynistic and racist views. Peterson’s bigoted diatribes have earned him legions of right-wing and white supremacist support as well as personal wealth.
Needless to say, all of this information was presented multiple times to multiple levels of the university. The President’s Advisory Council on Building and Inclusive Community brought students, staff and faculty together to lucidly explain the potential threat Peterson’s visit could pose to already vulnerable people. Our concern was met with silence, and in these times, silence is complicity.
Peterson supporters — supporters that had absolutely no affiliation with McMaster or the broader Hamilton community, physically assaulted student protesters. Members of PACBIC faced weeks of harassment both in-person and online from Peterson’s fans. The university has made little to no attempt to ameliorate this situation. The only action that has been taken were the creation of guidelines for event planners — guidelines that demonstrate that the university’s understanding of the free speech debate is informed entirely by right-wing propaganda and not the social realities that are present on our campus.
The fact remains that if our struggles cannot be moulded or integrated into the existing public relations strategy of the university, our legitimate concerns fall by the wayside. Our pointed policy solutions, our calm consultations, and even our protests are either tokenized, such as with these crosswalks, or minimized and placed aside. The LGBTQ+ community deserves more than this spectacle.
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By: Jordan Graber
At an institution such as McMaster University, the subject of free speech is not an easy discussion. After Jordan Peterson, a controversial psychology professor from the University of Toronto came to visit McMaster, this has sparked immense discussion amongst students, faculty and other sources in Hamilton.
It has been argued whether in this circumstance free speech had been impaired when Jordan Peterson was not able to deliver his lecture or was practiced freely by the students who felt his words were offensive and oppressive to certain communities.
Despite his outlook that this might do good for McMaster students, faculty and guests, much like creating a smoke-free campus, this is in no way a good idea. The effects this policy, which was created by a specific demographic group, will merely take away the ability to fight from marginalized groups and sway even more power from the right side of the political spectrum to the left.
Issues involving language towards the LGBTQ+ community is no light subject, considerably in modern society where the inclusion of these bodies is stamped in the media. Mr. Peterson’s refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns towards his co workers and students has placed him at the centre of debate over gender and free speech.
Protesting gives students power. It gives them the ability to participate in movements that are bigger than one person
With the implementation of this policy, the social inequalities and issues that so many different groups fight for will be protected. If there were to be future speeches or guest lecturers who were to speak against these groups and their beliefs, there would be no ability to fight back and defend their beliefs, which is a basic human right that should be fought for itself.
In addition to the exclusion of marginalized groups and lack of community discussion, the application of the anti-discrimination policy will promote those who sit at the right end of the political spectrum disempower those who sit at the left. This leaves the protestors. Citizens who often lean to the left end of the spectrum will be left with little advocacy when it comes time to implement this policy.
Without advocacy for social democracy and change, we are left with a significant barrier and inequality among political groups and followers. This could create a social divide amongst McMaster students and allow for events and speeches that discriminate against or offend different communities. Once again there are implications that this policy will divide the McMaster community, leaving many without a true voice.
Protesting gives students power. It gives them the ability to participate in movements that are bigger than one person. With the placement of a policy which restricts the boundaries of a true protest, the ability to spark change at McMaster may diminish. It would reduce advocacy for minority groups and the left hand political spectrum, as well as leaving students without a voice.
It is difficult to speak up and to fight, however when it is done it starts a trend that can create real change in a society or community. It gives people purpose and meaning in their lives which is important for the future leaders of this city and this world. People like Jordan Peterson have their rights to free speech but taking away those rights from a spectator creates contradiction.
McMaster is a place where change for the better should be encouraged, not lessened. Anti-disruption is, in theory, a good plan. It does not, however, teach the students of McMaster that their voices are heard and are important, which should be the sole purpose of an institution like this.
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On Feb. 15, the university released its first draft of guidelines highlighting McMaster’s commitment to freedom of expression and what it deems acceptable limits to protest. Campus activists are concerned that the guidelines unfairly constrain dissent and silence marginalized voices.
The guidelines were based on a report developed by the ad hoc committee on protest and freedom of expression. Members were selected by Patrick Deane in consultation with groups including the McMaster University Faculty Association, McMaster Students Union and Graduate Students Association.
McMaster announced their intent to consider issues of protest and freedom of expression on May 3, 2017, two months following the Jordan Peterson protests on campus.
The report outlines a number of recommendations for the university, such as the development of an online lecture series aimed at improving education about topics such as free speech and activism. The report recommends that the series be sponsored by the MacPherson Institute.
“I have found the MacPherson Institute useful, with getting help and expert knowledge about teaching, active learning and the like,” said Neil McLaughlin, a member of the committee. “I have improved my own teaching working with them, but there has not yet been a concerted effort to address directly some of the most controversial issues.”
“We are dealing with more issues than was the case in the past. We all have things to learn, and debate.”
Neil McLaughlin
Committee member
Ad hoc committee on protest and freedom of expression
The guidelines list examples of what the university would consider acceptable and unacceptable protest. Generally speaking, the guidelines list any sort of behaviour that would impede an event’s progression as unacceptable, such as blocking the audience’s view by standing or preventing the audience from paying attention to the speaker.
“I think universities across Canada, and certainly in the US, could benefit from more attention to the dynamics of dealing with highly controversial and politically contentious issues than we have given to the topic,” said McLaughlin.
“We are dealing with more issues than was the case in the past. We all have things to learn, and debate.”
In addition to articulating the university’s stance on freedom of expression and protest, the new freedom of expression guidelines stress the responsibility for event organizers to communicate and enforce them.
In particular, in the event that dissenters do not adhere to the guidelines, organizers or moderators are asked to first inform the individual or group that they are disrupting the event and will be asked to leave should they persist. If they continue to interfere, Security Services can take action.
Although it is stated in the guidelines that speaking events should only be cancelled in extreme cases, it remains unclear what constitutes an extreme case.
Campus activists are concerned that the guidelines will unfairly constrain protest and harm marginalized groups in the community.
According to one activist, who asked to be anonymous, the guidelines excessively infringe on the right to civil disobedience.
“As an organizer, this puts me both in a dangerous position and in a position that forces me to keep silent, narrowing what I can and cannot do or say,” said the activist, who argues that white supremacy and bigotry will persist in the face of a lack of accountability.
While the university believes the new guidelines will curtail disruption efforts, activists are encouraging students to reject them.
The university secretariat will receive feedback on the guidelines until March 30.
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The original image used online for this article was not the one used in print, and has been switched for consistency.
By: Alex Bak
A university is a place of academia and should serve to prioritize the enhancement of knowledge and provide opportunities for character growth.
Last year when University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson came to lecture on free speech and political correctness at McMaster, he was met with student protestors and was unable to deliver his complete lecture.
Seeing as he had to move the lecture outdoors and would abruptly interrupted, McMaster was met with a poor reputation in protecting free speech.
Freedom to speak one’s mind is an integral aspect to understanding complex issues by developing ideas on different perspectives.
McMaster’s forthcoming anti-disruption policy addresses the global criticisms that the university has had with censorship and the lack of protection for freedom of speech.
With outstanding rankings globally and nationally for academics, the dismissive “D” in protecting free speech that McMaster received needs to be addressed.
Seeing as he had to move the lecture outdoors and would abruptly interrupted, McMaster was met with a poor reputation in protecting free speech.
This policy will work to McMaster guests like Peterson to share their ideas and perspectives without being met with a bullhorn.
Though this may limit speech in one capacity or another, the policy will ultimately allow for a more respectful manner of speech and controlled discussion where one’s views can be shared in a more organized manner. The policy will protect free speech, not limit it.
The anti-disruption policy usually deals with anti-protesters and is often charged with increasing marginalization of minority groups and attenuating their voices.
McMaster’s forthcoming anti-disruption policy addresses the global criticisms that the university has had with censorship and the lack of protection for freedom of speech.
This topic brings out a very important and controversial debate on whether unregulated, resolute freedom to speak one’s mind is necessary for equality or if there needs to be a change to enable equity in speech.
Given the ethical framework that the policy will undergo in the development process, marginalized voices will still be heard just as equally as other voices deserve to be.
The policy will merely prevent students and others from blocking, obstructing, disrupting or interrupting speech at campus events.
According to Patrick Deane, the new policy will be tailored to engage “in developing guidelines around the limits to acceptable protest intended to assist event organizers and participants, as well as those seeking to engage in protest, rather than an anti-disruption policy”.
Although this sounds more like a political response than a forward answer, it sparked a thought that perhaps a policy built around set indices for the topics discussed by guest lecturers and protest governed with set parameters and recommendations may be the solution for the unique McMaster community.
An adoption of a policy that is balanced between assessing acceptable levels of protest and gauging the ethical values of the guest speaker can produce a healthy medium for learning; one in which neither of the groups are overly censored or their voices unheard.
The policy will enable for guests and groups to be respected and allow for diversity of opinion to be heard rather than shut out by the sound of protesting bullhorns.
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On Nov. 13, an article published in the Hamilton Spectator highlighted McMaster’s development of an anti-disruption policy aimed at barring students from disrupting future speakers on campus.
In his article for the Spectator, Andrew Dreschel praises McMaster president Patrick Deane’s prioritization of an anti-disruption policy and his commitment to free speech. He argues McMaster does not currently protect free speech sufficiently, citing low scores from organizations such as the Campus Freedom Index as evidence.
Deane, however, has expressed interest in clarifying the new guidelines being developed since the article’s release.
“The university is engaged in developing guidelines around the limits to acceptable protest intended to assist event organizers and participants, as well as those seeking to engage in protest, rather than an anti-disruption policy,” said Deane in an email interview.
The university’s efforts come in the wake of the disruption that Jordan Peterson experienced when he came to deliver a lecture at McMaster last March.
In particular, after being disrupted by student protestors, Peterson was forced to leave the room and complete his lecture outside.
Following the protest, both the Revolutionary Student Movement (Hamilton) and the McMaster Womanists put out statements on their social media stating they were verbally and physically accosted while protesting the event.
Deane wrote a letter that defended Peterson’s right to speak on campus, citing the university’s commitment to academic freedom.
According to Dreschel, Deane has already “established a committee of academics to talk about what the ethical frame for [the guidelines] should be.”
“Once complete, [the guidelines] will, of course, be made widely available to members of the McMaster community,” said Deane.
Campus activists are concerned with the university’s anti-disruption efforts, arguing McMaster does not adequately protect marginalized groups on campus. All activists who spoke wished to remain anonymous out of fear of violence.
“Protest is the only way powerless people can give themselves a voice,” said one student activist. “Any university that tries to protect free speech by threatening marginalized students with punishment if they protest is a university where a single institutional perspective dominates,” they added.
The campus activist explained that the university’s commitment to free speech is eroded by the fact that it is endorsing a policy aimed at constraining activism.
Another campus activist believes that the policy will allow right-wing groups to evade accountability when inviting and condoning bigoted speakers in the future.
“It gives them a way to hold politically incorrect events without fear of being shut down,” she said. “When students spoke out about their concerns with having Peterson speak, the school actively ignored those concerns. The only way students were able to get their message across was through disrupting the event to protect the LGBTQ community on campus.”
The exact guidelines will likely be completed early 2018.
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By: Morgan Li
Recently, the Hamilton Spectator published an article announcing, in a sneering mix of opinion and loose fact, that McMaster is “developing an anti-disruption policy”. The decision appears to be prompted by the vicious right-wing backlash to Mac’s alleged failure to protect freedom of speech on campus, particularly in the wake of Jordan Peterson’s visit to campus last March.
In the article, Andrew Dreschel references a poor grade assigned to Mac’s practices and policies of “free speech” by a Campus Freedom Index. This index is compiled by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a purportedly “independent and nonpartisan” non-profit organization. Their website presents an attractive face, framing the group as being in defence of respectable concepts like freedom, equality and constitutional freedoms. However, upon even the slightest further glance, this crafted image of impartiality falls apart.
The JCCF was founded, and continues to be led by John Carpay, a failed right-wing politician affiliated with a number of conservative advocacy groups and think tanks. The cases it chooses to take on and defend under the guise of free speech show a clear partisan bias. Their latest legal challenge is against Alberta’s Bill 24, which would prohibit outing LGBTQ+ children in gay-straight alliances. Previous JCCF lawsuits have taken up the case of an anti-LGBTQ+ couple that was barred from adopting children, a marriage commissioner whose license was revoked for refusing to marry same-gender couples as well as various anti-abortion organizations that have faced opposition.
That it has also decided to take issue with student-led protest of Jordan Peterson, most known for his refusal to correctly gender non-binary transgender students, is unsurprising. The rallying cry for “freedom of speech” that the JCCF, as well as many of those it defends, is so fond of wielding is one that has long been used by the far-right to obscure their activities and ideological agenda.
An article in the Torontoist from July this year explains this in detail, grounding it in a fairly recent history of white nationalist organizing in Toronto. Writer O. Berkman provides a background on Paul Fromm, a well-known self-identified white nationalist, and his cohort. Then a young University of Toronto student in the middle of a growing anti-war movement, Fromm and his fellows’ political involvement had begun in the condemnation of so-called far-left extremism and “leftist troublemakers”.
Under the guise of concern over their “right to dissent”, he has voiced support of (in his own words) American Nazis, Holocaust deniers and other white supremacists for decades, eventually establishing the Canadian Association for Free Expression for that very reason. All of these are talking points that should sound familiar to anybody who has been engaged in today’s campus politics.
More recently, the emergence and activities of student groups like the Students Supporting Free Speech at the University of Toronto have followed a close enough course to elicit deep concern. While arguing for the right of free speech of Jordan Peterson, the Halifax Five and similar figures against an “intolerant left”, SSFS has managed a dubious feat of drawing Fromm himself to one of their events. That the invocation of constitutional freedoms is little more than a deflection becomes particularly apparent too when we ask who, faced with institutional censure, isn’t afforded these defences. In the United States, Johnny Eric Williams, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and George Ciccariello-Maher, to name only a few, have been subject to far more severe and immediate consequences than Jordan Peterson for little to no justifiable reason, and these often accompanied by threats of violence and murder.
Politically motivated campaigns across the country now target progressive campus organizations, such as the Ontario Public Interest Research Group and other PIRGs, or McGill’s Daily Publications Society, for defunding. Rather than emerging to decry these, the groups that supposedly exist to innocuously protect freedom of expression are comfortably silent or, at times, even participate in these attacks.
Only in the last few weeks, University of Toronto faculty have expressed alarm over Jordan Peterson’s professed intentions to create a website to identify and advocate for the removal of university courses that he finds politically objectionable. By no coincidence, these are largely, in his own words, “women’s studies, and all the ethnic studies and racial studies”— fields of study that centre marginalized populations often left out of more mainstream curricula.
Similarly, it should be noted who it is to most vocally speak out against the right-wing campus demagogues that operate under the pretence of respectability — students who are more often than not racialized, transgender, women, queer and/or holding other marginalized identities.
The eagerness with which the McMaster administration now concedes to what are barely veiled right-wing demands is unacceptable, all the while it comes as utterly predictable.
Through these “anti-disruption” guidelines, Mac continues to demonstrate how the university remains a colonial institution that, complicit in transantagonism and white supremacy, will always capitulate to the far-right. Institutional condemnation of the “rowdy” students who stand against Peterson and his ilk, long now known to be responsible for harassment and violence towards activists, can and should be understood as a direct attack on trans, racialized and other marginalized students on campus. Make no mistake: no part of this debacle has ever truly been about free speech, and it is a victory to the far right when we accept any attempt to frame it that way.
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By: Pavle Arezina
I attended a talk from psychology professor Jordan Peterson on March 17, 2017 at McMaster. What I and others saw and experienced was shameful. It was a failure on the university security for doing nothing, a failure as a student body for not being able to listen to an opposing opinion without spouting vitriol and a failure on McMaster for condoning this behaviour.
Have we, as a respected university, come to a point where opinions deemed invasive to someone’s safe space must be stamped out immediately? This crusade led by the select few to destroy the ability to speak freely about certain topics that offend them is a dangerous trend that needs to be addressed at McMaster.
At the event, I saw more people convert to Peterson’s view on topics he has discussed because of the unethical behaviour shown by the protestors. There were many who only wanted to have an honest debate about the pros and cons of Jordan Peterson’s stance on Bill C-16 and other issues.
Through the barrage of hate sent by these vocal protestors, Peterson calmly spoke to the majority who strained to hear the message he was stating. Even more impressive was that he tried to start a dialogue with the protestors at the beginning of the lecture, despite the fact that the three professors planned for the panel dropped out due to pressure from this minority. The drone of slurs he received made it clear that he would be getting nowhere.
Protesting had the opposite effect of what they are trying to achieve. You think being screamed at and equated to a worthless human being will make me consider your opinion more valid than a person who is offering open discussion?
Where was the campus security to remove these people? The amount of people in the room alone should have caused them to eject anyone not in a seat due to the fire hazard. They did not want to appear discriminatory against a certain subset of people. They did not want to remove people who are clearly disrupting the event, clearly getting into Peterson’s face and presenting a safety hazard.
It seemed as though McMaster was scared of damaging their reputation, and was willing to risk the safety of their students instead of attempting to remove the protestors.
It is clear that there is a majority of students who wish to educate themselves and learn more on topics that interest them. The more open we are to considering ideas that are different, discussing the merits of them and debating in a civil manner, the better off as a university we are.
We have sacrificed our ability to critically think about issues in the name of not offending every group on campus.
As a society, imposing views on a group of people is never an answer to any issue we face. Instead, we should collectively come to a solution that addresses the issues we all face. Our neighbours to the south represent what can happen when you demonize a set of people on their beliefs instead of engaging in healthy debates.
I am not saying to approve anything anyone wants to preach about. People who incite violence towards groups or doesn’t follow the rules set forth by the university should clearly be denied access to a platform. We should not get rid of events and clubs that support and provide a place of safety for those marginalized.
All we can do is take a long hard look at the state of free speech at our campus and ask whether more can be done to protect it.
