Mark Mercer (sergechestnut@gmail.com) is a professor of philosophy in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.
University of Lethbridge philosophy professor Paul Viminitz invited political scientist Frances Widdowson to speak to some of his students and to give a public talk. In class, Widdowson spoke about so-called “indigenous ways of knowing” and why universities’ insistence that they be respected are misguided. The title of her planned public talk was “How ‘Woke-ism’ […]
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You want your classroom and your campus each to be a place of open and free inquiry and, thereby, a place of open and free critical discussion. You also want each to be a place of civility and a place welcoming to all inquirers and to all their various points of view. There’s a lot […]
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To my students: University students should be free from threat of institutional censure to state any opinion they wish and to state their opinions using whatever language they wish. At our university, however, students do not enjoy this freedom of expression. Various documents at Saint Mary’s University constrain what students may say and how they […]
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The course outline or course syllabus is a teaching tool. Since it is a teaching tool, what it contains should be entirely up to the professor. Professors’ prerogatives with regard to their syllabi should be protected by academic freedom guarantees. Well, that’s in an ideal world. In the real world, in order to balance what […]
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In early October 2020, a visual arts professor at the University of Ottawa spoke to her students about the phenomenon of subversive resignification. She mentioned as an example the word “nigger.” (She also mentioned “queer.”) One of her students complained to the university. In response, the university put the class on hiatus for a couple […]
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On the one hand, universities should seek talent wherever it exists and without concern for credentials or professional values. On the other hand, the academic milieu is strange and difficult, and those brought into universities who have had little experience of it might well dislike it, and that could harm it. These two hands matter […]
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Professors, students, and all other members of an academic community should be free from sanction to say what they please. Freedom of expression should be guaranteed in official university documents, including, of course, collective agreements. Guarantees, though, are not worth much if the university’s culture is hostile to freedom of expression. One duty members of […]
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My university, Saint Mary’s in Halifax, Nova Scotia, makes a lot of noise about respect. We have a Safe and Respectful Saint Mary’s working group that issues reports and recommendations now and again, a Policy on Conflict Resolution that directs members of the university community to contribute to a respectful environment, and even a senate-approved […]
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How should academic administrators respond when offended students complain to them about their professors or courses? In late September, in her course Art and Gender, Verushka Lieutenant-Duval mentioned the word “nigger” as an example of a word used to denigrate a class of people that was then taken up by that same people. Dr. Lieutenant-Duval […]
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