Who needs words to prove a theory, when your opponents' actions already prove it? That happened at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta on Feb.2nd, when hundreds of students shouted down speaker Frances Widdowson. She had warned us that mob-mentality was threatening the free exchange of ideas -- and the mob obliged by proving her point.
The mob came out in force to "amplify black, trans and indigenous voices" when Professor Widdowson tried to deliver a talk at an institution supposedly meant to be a forum for talk.
"Racism is not free speech," screeched the mob. But if it thinks the opposite -- that free speech is racist -- we are in trouble. Free speech is the underpinning of democracy, which is measured, as one author has put it, not by the number of citizens who vote but by the number who feel free to say what they think in public.*
Professor Widdowson's topic was "How Woke-ism Threatens Academic Freedom". By saying what she thinks about that, Professor Widdowson was simply doing her job. As an academic in a university she is supposed to offer alternative thinking -- alternative, that is, to mob-thought, herd-thought and ideological hypnosis. Most politicians merely repeat back at the electorate what the electorate has shouted to them, because they want to be re-elected. Most professors also toe the correctness line, as they too want to keep their jobs.
We need universities, though, to play their role as arenas for free expression of ideas (to embody universality).
If the arena is taken over by the herd, the Professor Widdowsons of the world are driven into media outlets where their views are already accepted. In other words they're only allowed to talk to their followers, and the famous "bi-polarity" we are said to be living with only deepens.
Professor Widdowson had already been censored and de-platformed at a different university for suggesting there are various ways of judging Canada's variety of residential schools. (In a variety run by different agencies and individuals with multiple objectives over more than a century, maybe some students did learn to read, write and do arithmetic -- as intended?)
The two sides on that inflamed debate will never listen to each other in the community at large if they can't even do so at a university.
(The same shouting-down technique was used by trans activists at McGill University on January 10th of this year: https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/shutdown-of-talk-at-mcgill-threatens-freedom-of-expression-in-canada-jamie-sarkonak-for-inside-policy/)
* Ramaswamy, V. Woke, Inc. Center Street, 2021
