Is political correctness killing our university campuses?
Last week two leading Canadian scholars told a gathering of academics in Vancouver that steering clear of confrontation and trying to find consensus isn't challenging important issues.
"If it does not happen here, where will it happen?" said University of British Columbia president Stephen Toope.
"I think in Canada we are a bit too polite," observed Prof. Toope, a Harvard graduate who studied law at McGill before going to Cambridge for graduate studies. "We are a little afraid of controversy."
His concerns were shared by McGill professor and medical ethicist Margaret Somerville, who warned that the free exchange of ideas on Canadian campuses is being threatened by the growing power of "political correctness."
Prof. Somerville, who has taken firm stands on contentious topics such as same-sex marriage and reproductive technology, says too often her critics respond to her views, not with respectful discussion, but with extreme labels designed to shut down debate. The result, she said, is a clear message to others that such opinions are not welcome on campus. It's a tactic, she said, that threatens a central role of university campuses.
Prof. Toope challenged Canadian scholars to have open conversations. He said if academics from different disciplines are going to work together to address the fundamental challenges of this generation, they need to be willing to engage with those who have different perspectives, not just tolerate them or take part in what he called "dialogues of the deaf."
What do you think? Is free discussion being crippled by political correctness? Or is the search for open dialogue an excuse for intolerance?
Prof. Toope joined us online Monday to discuss these issues. Your questions and his answers appear at the bottom of this page.
Prof. Stephen J. Toope is the 12th President and Vice Chancellor or the University of British Columbia.
An international human rights legal scholar, Prof. Toope previously served as founding President of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and as Dean of the McGill Faculty of Law. He is a graduate of Cambridge (PhD), McGill (LLB, BCL) and Harvard (AB).
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Elizabeth Church: Hello Dr. Toope and thank you for joining us today. I wanted to begin today's discussion by asking what prompted you to stress the need for more meaningful debate on campuses in your address to academics visiting UBC last week? Is this a topic you have been thinking about for some time or was there an event that made you decide to tackle the issue?
Dr. Toope: Hello, Elizabeth. I have been thinking about the role of universities as sites for value contestation since my graduate student days in England. I found that English academics seemed more comfortable with real debate than many Canadians. It was OK to question another professor or student forcefully, but then to go out to the pub as friends. I sense that too often in Canada, we treat hard questions as "aggressive" or "unfriendly. " But if universities are not places where we can really challenge each other, where will it happen? And in a world as complex as ours, no-one has all the right answers or the right approaches. We need to be open to respectful challenge and engagement. In fact, it is a compliment to treat someone's ideas as worthy of push back!
