Location: A simple man leading a complicated life....
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Teaching assistant who was sanctioned questions sincerity of Wilfrid Laurier University's apology
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Shepherd told CBC News she didn't see where the university had any other option but to apologize.
"This was their only option," she said, adding, "I didn't expect their apology to be sincere. I don't think that they are sincere."
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Shepherd said the issue is far from over considering Laurier is continuing with its third-party investigation into what happened and a task force to look into how the university can foster "important discussions in a thoughtful and determined way."
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The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship wrote a letter of support for Shepherd, saying it's not the university's job to shield students from certain views.
"The purpose of classroom discussion, though, is not to bring students into any particular set of beliefs or attitudes, but to help them to make up their own minds," the letter said. "Requiring teaching assistants to condemn views as problematic is in conflict with this purpose, as the teaching assistant would then be pressuring the students to reject certain views."
Can you imagine a University course on why abortion should be illegal?
Certain fields of university will always be the home of the liberal, just as areas of society, like religious institutions, will always be dominated by the conservatives. There's nothing wrong with that.
When a university - which in Canada is a public institution - begins to silence basic human rights, for no purpose other than to push the agenda of the professors, we have a problem.
Which is crazy because that is a totally and completely valid opinion. We have arbitrarily picked the moment a fetus emerges from vagina as its personhood. Why did we choose it? How much different is a fetus at 29 weeks v. a new born pre-me at 22 weeks?
The reality is we have looked at two competing values (a woman's right to her body) and that of a fetus and determined that the woman, a clearly living and breathing person has more rights....which I believe is the correct answer, but it's not unreasonable to think otherwise from a purely moral perspective.
That said the societal downside and costs associated with banning abortion are truly horrible.
Final Note: In case anyone is curious I'm 10000% pro choice.
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Which is crazy because that is a totally and completely valid opinion. We have arbitrarily picked the moment a fetus emerges from vagina as its personhood. Why did we choose it? How much different is a fetus at 29 weeks v. a new born pre-me at 22 weeks?
Then we have a countervailing sentiment growing in recent years that society should regard a miscarriage as the loss of a child. So whether I should regard the 12 week old fetus in another person's body as a cluster of cells that can be disposed of without remorse, or a child whose loss should be grieved over, depends entirely on how the person carrying the fetus regards it. Which I find tough to get my head around.
But to bring it back to freedom of speech on campus, it's hard to defend on principle the dramatically different treatment of students who protest against abortion and students who protest against patriarchal colonial privilege.
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Originally Posted by fotze
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Last edited by CliffFletcher; 11-23-2017 at 11:48 AM.
Which is crazy because that is a totally and completely valid opinion. We have arbitrarily picked the moment a fetus emerges from vagina as its personhood. Why did we choose it? How much different is a fetus at 29 weeks v. a new born pre-me at 22 weeks?
The reality is we have looked at two competing values (a woman's right to her body) and that of a fetus and determined that the woman, a clearly living and breathing person has more rights....which I believe is the correct answer, but it's not unreasonable to think otherwise from a purely moral perspective.
That said the societal downside and costs associated with banning abortion are truly horrible.
Final Note: In case anyone is curious I'm 10000% pro choice.
To be fair, the CMA won't allow a late term abortion, unless medically necessary. Late term is anything ranging from 20-24 weeks, depending on interpretation. So 24 weeks is the arbitrary point at which a fetus has rights, not the moment a baby leaves a vagina.
To be fair, the CMA won't allow a late term abortion, unless medically necessary. Late term is anything ranging from 20-24 weeks, depending on interpretation. So 24 weeks is the arbitrary point at which a fetus has rights, not the moment a baby leaves a vagina.
THOugh you could likely sue to force a doctor to perform an abortion or at a minimum if you found a doctor to perform that abortion and they were sanctioned they could sue and would likely win. A fetus inutero has no legal standing over the wome carrying it.
THOugh you could likely sue to force a doctor to perform an abortion or at a minimum if you found a doctor to perform that abortion and they were sanctioned they could sue and would likely win. A fetus inutero has no legal standing over the wome carrying it.
You can't legally force a doctor to do anything in Canada. There are however professional obligations to refer if there is a reasonable standard of care and/or concern for the safety of the mother (ie. seeking out a back alley abortion). In these late abortion situations you refer the patient onto a qualified physician who can help, which last I heard is a particular clinic in Colorado.
Found it odd that our resident free speech advocates weren't outraged over St. Paul's University refusing to show a pro-choice documentary, or is it only an outrage when "regressive leftists" are shouting mean things at people?
Found it odd that our resident free speech advocates weren't outraged over St. Paul's University refusing to show a pro-choice documentary, or is it only an outrage when "regressive leftists" are shouting mean things at people?
There is a difference between a private religious school and a totally public one. If you want total freedom of speech, you'd have to do away with the right to run religiously orientated schools all together. Then it becomes an issue of freedom to associate.
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THOugh you could likely sue to force a doctor to perform an abortion or at a minimum if you found a doctor to perform that abortion and they were sanctioned they could sue and would likely win. A fetus inutero has no legal standing over the wome carrying it.
No. The courts basically deferred the issue to the CMA, which has it's own legal guidelines and regulations. As far as the CMA is concerned, as soon as a fetus becomes "viable", you have to treat it medically from the same perspective as a person. Doctors then have a duty to prioritize that person's health.
The only time you can get a late term abortion in Canada is in a situation where either the mother or child's life is at risk or in the case of a severe deformity. There are obviously going to be issues over what constitutes a severe enough deformity or enough of a life threat to necessitate a late term abortion, but it's far from a situation where a mother can just get one because she no longer wants a child.
You also cannot force a doctor to perform an abortion, at any stage. Doctors have the right to make objections to all abortions on moral/religious grounds:
A physician whose moral or religious
beliefs prevent him or her from
recommending or performing an abortion
should inform the patient of this so that
she may consult another physician.
No discrimination should be directed
against doctors who do not perform or
assist at induced abortions. Respect for the
right of personal decision in this area must
be stressed, particularly for doctors
training in obstetrics and gynecology, and
anesthesia.
No discrimination should be directed
against doctors who provide abortion
services.
Found it odd that our resident free speech advocates weren't outraged over St. Paul's University refusing to show a pro-choice documentary, or is it only an outrage when "regressive leftists" are shouting mean things at people?
University not allowing a nazi to speak = Boo! FREEDOM OF SPEECH SHOULD BE PROTECTED!
Catholic university not allowing a pro-choice movie to be played = Well you know, we have to respect the views of others and try not to upset them. They’re Religious after all!
Hilarious.
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Do you two really expect CliffFletcher or whomever to spend his day scouring for news across all Universities and constantly update this thread with them? Or was it a good opportunity to take a cheap drive-by. Kinda suspect it's the latter.
Also, to borrow a line from Lewis Black PepsiFree I think you have a severe case of Nazi tourettes.
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Do you two really expect CliffFletcher or whomever to spend his day scouring for news across all Universities and constantly update this thread with them? Or was it a good opportunity to take a cheap drive-by. Kinda suspect it's the latter.
Also, to borrow a line from Lewis Black PepsiFree I think you have a severe case of Nazi tourettes.
Cliff seems rather on the ball when it comes to free speech issues as he tends to bring them up in numerous debates across the board, so I'd be surprised if he hadn't seen this. I would suspect the reason this didn't register with him is because he expects this sort of thing out of religious institutions and he has higher standards for public universities but I'm not going to put words in the man's mouth.
Found it odd that our resident free speech advocates weren't outraged over St. Paul's University refusing to show a pro-choice documentary, or is it only an outrage when "regressive leftists" are shouting mean things at people?
No, it's equally opprobrious regardless of the perspective that people are being denied the opportunity to hear. I doubt you'll find a single one of the "resident free speech advocates" on here who will say otherwise. So that bit of "whataboutism" on your part fails rather spectacularly, and you should be doubly embarrassed at the attempt to cast the phrase "free speech advocate" in some sort of negative light.
That said, there is a difference between the case that forms the basis for this thread and the case in the article you cite, beyond one being a religious school and the other a major (sort of) public university. In many cases, schools will simply decide that an event is not for them at the outset, and refuse to offer a particular speaker a platform. Someone will propose an event, and the administration will say, "that's not for us". At some point, regardless of who the speaker is, you have to draw a line as to the school's right to deny them a venue. It can't be the case that anyone who wants to speak (or anyone who any student happens to want to hear from) gets free and unfettered access to a school auditorium. That's simply a matter of practical reality - a university is not in the business of providing soapboxes to all who might want them. In practice, I think those decisions are often made out of a sort of cowardly expedience, with the result that interesting and important voices are excluded because "it's not worth the trouble", or in this case, "it will reflect badly on us by association". That's an attitude that harms the discourse generally. But again, practically speaking, there's no obvious way around that problem.
It's quite a different thing to have someone who's been invited, granted an opportunity to speak, and then is punished because the content of that speech doesn't align with the values of the campus star chamber, resulting in some sort of Kafkaesque inquisition. In this case, it's a teacher being told that certain approved political doctrines may be imparted to students without batting an eye, while other doctrines are verboten, because the students aren't capable of critically analyzing for themselves what they should and should not believe... and administrators will decide which is which. That is a far more dangerous and chilling practice than simply refusing to give auditorium time to a viewpoint with which you disagree - again, regardless of the content of the viewpoint.
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No, it's equally opprobrious regardless of the perspective that people are being denied the opportunity to hear. I doubt you'll find a single one of the "resident free speech advocates" on here who will say otherwise. So that bit of "whataboutism" on your part fails rather spectacularly, and you should be doubly embarrassed at the attempt to cast the phrase "free speech advocate" in some sort of negative light.
I'm not really going to feel embarrassed or apologetic about the tone you chose to read the words in.
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That said, there is a difference between the case that forms the basis for this thread and the case in the article you cite, beyond one being a religious school and the other a major (sort of) public university. In many cases, schools will simply decide that an event is not for them at the outset, and refuse to offer a particular speaker a platform. Someone will propose an event, and the administration will say, "that's not for us". At some point, regardless of who the speaker is, you have to draw a line as to the school's right to deny them a venue. It can't be the case that anyone who wants to speak (or anyone who any student happens to want to hear from) gets free and unfettered access to a school auditorium. That's simply a matter of practical reality - a university is not in the business of providing soapboxes to all who might want them. In practice, I think those decisions are often made out of a sort of cowardly expedience, with the result that interesting and important voices are excluded because "it's not worth the trouble", or in this case, "it will reflect badly on us by association". That's an attitude that harms the discourse generally. But again, practically speaking, there's no obvious way around that problem.
I think we're generally in agreement on this, and I've been pretty consistent with my stance that universities shouldn't required to give a platform to anyone who requests one, but I've gotten pushback on here and other places for that suggestion.
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It's quite a different thing to have someone who's been invited, granted an opportunity to speak, and then is punished because the content of that speech doesn't align with the values of the campus star chamber, resulting in some sort of Kafkaesque inquisition. In this case, it's a teacher being told that certain approved political doctrines may be imparted to students without batting an eye, while other doctrines are verboten, because the students aren't capable of critically analyzing for themselves what they should and should not believe... and administrators will decide which is which. That is a far more dangerous and chilling practice than simply refusing to give auditorium time to a viewpoint with which you disagree - again, regardless of the content of the viewpoint.
Yeah this one I'll take the blame for as I wasn't trying to make a direct comparison to the Laurier case. I just didn't want to create a new thread for the topic and thought I could slide it in here, but didn't do a good job of making that clear in my OP.
University not allowing a nazi to speak = Boo! FREEDOM OF SPEECH SHOULD BE PROTECTED!
Catholic university not allowing a pro-choice movie to be played = Well you know, we have to respect the views of others and try not to upset them. They’re Religious after all!
University not allowing a nazi to speak = Boo! FREEDOM OF SPEECH SHOULD BE PROTECTED!
Catholic university not allowing a pro-choice movie to be played = Well you know, we have to respect the views of others and try not to upset them. They’re Religious after all!
Hilarious.
By forcing all religious institutions to have to allow all speakers to speak, you would be effectively banning religion and the freedom to associate. Freedom of Religion and Association are fundamental freedoms in democracy - just as Freedom of Speech is.
Laurier is a fully public school. They are held to a different standard. They were not only banning certain people from speaking but also attacking the content of their speech.
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I'm not really going to feel embarrassed or apologetic about the tone you chose to read the words in
I thought your tone was pretty clear given that it appeared you were suggesting certain people were hypocrites, but if you're saying you didn't mean it that way I'm happy to take you at your word.
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I think we're generally in agreement on this, and I've been pretty consistent with my stance that universities shouldn't required to give a platform to anyone who requests one, but I've gotten pushback on here and other places for that suggestion.
As for this point about de-platforming, I think it's a bit more nuanced than you're suggesting. If there's a bona fide club that wants to have a discussion about a particular issue that's important to them - for example, if there's a pro-life group on campus that wants to invite a pro-life speaker to talk about medical ethics - that isn't something that a campus should stand in the way of for reasons of political ideology or concerns about protests that are likely to result. On the other hand, if the campus conservative alliance or whatever they call themselves want to invite Richard Spencer to give a talk, not because they subscribe to his views or think they're important, but simply to try to get a rise out of the campus generally, that's not particularly productive.
Basically, there are two questions.
First, should the University be compelled to give a venue to this person? The answer to that is generally "no", unless the person has already been scheduled to speak as a result of a normal process for scheduling talks, at which point cancellation is usually a cowardly response to ideological backlash that simply empowers a heckler's veto.
Second, regardless of what they're compelled to do or not and simply from the perspective of how they should be conducting their affairs, should a University be denying speakers a platform on ideological grounds or worries about backlash from self-appointed arbiters of what topics can and can't be discussed publicly? Again, the answer to that is generally "no", provided that there's a clear, honest desire on behalf of some students to hear the perspective in question and that some defensible basis can be expressed for it. That is to say, there's little reason to want to hear from the head of the Flat Earth Society or a Grand Wizard of the KKK, but there clearly is good cause to allow a Charles Murray talk or a Ben Shapiro event, despite the objections from many that will inevitably result. Unfortunately, I think that most of the people making these decisions about where that line is drawn are among the worst people for the job.
Either way, obviously this Laurier case doesn't fall into that more difficult gray area.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
I thought your tone was pretty clear given that it appeared you were suggesting certain people were hypocrites, but if you're saying you didn't mean it that way I'm happy to take you at your word.
Yeah it was definitely meant in more of a ball-busting tone than accusing anyone of being a hypocrite.
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* The St. Paul's thing didn't come across any of my regular news sources (G&M, CBC, the Guardian) that I check on a daily basis. I'm old-school - I don't use a social media feed or other 'push' format of news delivery. But thanks for bringing it to my attention.
* I disapprove of the stance of the school. However, I recognize religious schools do their own thing, and are allowed to do their own thing by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
* It isn't as big a deal to me personally as suppression of free speech in public universities, because I don't expect my kids will be going to St. Paul's, and I doubt the graduates of that school will have much influence on Canadian media, culture, or public policy going forward.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
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