Re: Universities showing bit more humanity, by Eric Dowd, July 29

While Ontario’s universities may be showing more “humanity” — and how, really, does one measure this objectively! — they are crumbling in their core roles as centres for free and frank discussion, crucibles for honest and open debate, and bastions of free speech.

Our universities are, increasingly, temples of political correctness and shills for solicited millions with few, if any, questions asked. The University of Toronto (from where I hold B.Ed and a PhD) is continually seeking funds, and is not too, too fussy about who, or what, donates.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has an appalling human rights record, including killing hundreds of university age Chinese just over 20 years ago: many of these peaceful civil rights protesters were crushed into the pavement of Tiananmen Square by tanks, along with their sole means of transportation: bicycles. PRC refers to this vaguely as the “June 4th Incident.” There is a memorial Toronto — an actual flattened bicycle from the Square, to the brave souls, many of them young, hope-filled university students, who perished resisting oppression 1-5 June, 1989, Published statements in Beijing — on the grounds of the University of Toronto, ‘though it is almost entirely hidden (unless one is five feet from it) on the east-facing wall of the old University of Toronto observatory, St. George’s campus.

During the student protests in Tiananmen Square, one extremely brave 19-year-old Chinese university student stood defiantly in front of a column of four Chinese tanks, bringing them to a halt: he was later executed by the Communist government for his public act of incredible courage.

However, this moving, necessary memorial is essentially rendered invisible because of its out-of-sight placement deep in the bushes, fast against a secluded wall, and buried in dense vegetation including ivy, keeping it effectively from sight, one supposes so as not to offend any Chinese and/or potential PRC Chinese donors.

At the University of Ottawa this past March, Ann Coulter, a ludicrously opinionated American “talking head”/entertainer/ author/publicist/selfpromoter was scolded, chided, and cautioned by the ‘university’s’ Provost and Vice- President, Francois Houle to not speak freely, had her name blackened serially behind-thescenes by the Wizard of Oz-like University President Alan Rock, and was verbally trashed and ‘banned’ from the campus by the student council’s president, Seamus Wolfe.

Ms. Coulter was forced to flee quickly when she attempted to arrive on the University of Ottawa’s campus to give her maiden Canadian speech, forced away by something very close and akin to an unruly, fomented mob of hundreds of protesters who saw fit to dictate who might speak on a Ontario university campus, dictate what she might say, and dictate what they, a mob, would not have said.

Needless to say, such a brutal ‘reception’ has given this particular pundit grist for her next best-seller, ample joke material about Canada for her American tours, and made the rest of Coulter’s Canadian tour a grand sell-out, although they did have to find a bigger auditorium for her when she got to Calgary. Michael Coren has written elsewhere that the notion of free speech on Canadian university campuses, is now a “fairy story.”

If there is humanity on Ontario’s university campuses, free expression or academic freedom, it has had increasingly to go underground, such is the weight of political correctness now sitting, like a metaphorical continental glacier, upon these more and more fear-blighted, speech-corrected, institutionally biased, and commercialized campuses.

Speakers have to have approved opinions to speak on our campuses, to lecture there, and hold views that cannot be either in anyway offensive to any group — no matter how offensive, provocative, and toxic any of these organizations of people may in their turn, themselves, be — or, even, truthful or truth-seeking any more.

When Mr. Dowd speaks of “humanity” he must only be referring to what humans can buy with their money.

Today, our universities can be bought; and, certain opinions cannot be held or publicly voiced safely on more than a few Ontarian campuses, which have become politically correct glass houses and rather reminiscent of Alice’s adventures through the Looking-Glass and at the Queen of Hearts’ croquet party. Merely speak out or think to exercise one’s right to free expression: lose one’s head!

Rob. Bredin, Orangeville, ON