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opinion BACK PA G E BY EZRA LEVANT Destroying the crucibles of free speech incorrectness — or that the response from the Queen's Journal, the student newspaper, was that this was "inadequate," "lack- luster," "has no backbone," and won't have "much impact?" King Solomon probably would have come up with a creative W solution perfect for these two duelling fools: he would have or- dered the peeping Toms dispatched to the Queen's Journal of- fices, to "facilitate" their news meetings and revise their stories and editorials. That's really what these "dialogue facilitators" are — not just snoops, but editors-in-chief correcting and re- vising every student's private conversations. Even a drearily, politically correct newspaper such as the Queen's Journal has plenty of room for improvement in this new world. The first thing to go, of course, has to be the newspaper's name. Patrick Deane, Queen's academic vice principal, is in charge of this squad of busybodies. That in itself is troubling. One would have hoped this would have been a crank idea from some ad hoc "committee for equality and respect" as it was called at my law school, or the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as it's called in Saudi Arabia. True academics believe in the uninhibited pursuit of truth, even if it is uncomfortable or disrespectful of some other value. Imagine if Deane's "dialogue facilitators" had been there to intervene 400 years ago when Gali- leo disrespectfully denied that the sun re- volved around the Earth. Actually, they were — but they were more honestly called the Inquisition, not "facilita- tors," an Orwellian perversion of a word if ever there was one. Regrettably, such censorship isn't limited to Queen's. The University of Calgary's admin- istration recently ordered a campus pro-life group not to set up a graphic display about abortion, claiming it could "trigger" violence. Though no violence was "triggered" over the past few years, the display has gone ahead. That's called prior restraint; it's called blaming the victim; it's called disrespecting the intelligence and self-control of students, apparently one pamphlet away from turning violent. 62 JANU AR Y 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com hich is worse: that Queen's University has deployed six student "dialogue facilitators" to eavesdrop on private conversations of other students, listening for political The university has threatened to charge any students who participate in the display with "trespass" — even though they are, of course, registered as students. The U of C is just as out of line as Queen's, but at least its approach of legal threats is more honest than the mealy mouthed euphemisms of Queen's. How did it happen that universities, once the crucible for free speech, have become some of the most censored real estate in our country, where students and professors alike are afraid to speak their minds? Universities have an obsession with diversity, keeping mea- sures of the race, sex, religion, and other personal attributes of their students and faculty. But diversity is lacking in the one area where it really matters: a diversity of opinion. Is there any killer of true inquiry that is more effective than groupthink? And is there any place of discourse more lopsided and careful than in a faculty lounge? An argument between two barroom Napoleons might not be as erudite, but it would be freer. My favourite professor at law school would only talk politics with me once all of the other students had left the room — he didn't have tenure yet, and he didn't want to be blackballed. Such philosophical atherosclerosis is increasingly common in many faculties and is hard-wired into the syllabus of any of the newfangled departments that have sprouted up in the past generation — gender studies, racial studies, pretty much anything with the word "studies" at the end of it. Political correctness isn't infecting those depart- ments, it's their central mission. Luckily, there are still some profes- sors who remember their sit-ins and teach-ins of the '60s were about freedom for everyone, not merely replacing a conservative dean with a dean from their side of the argument. Because that's what's happened. Fifty years ago, the criticism was that universi- ties were too one-sided and not "progressive" enough. That's untrue; even the most staid universities typically foster rad- ical ideas. But now that Patrick Deane is the one enforcing his own brand of ideological purity, is it any better that it's of the left, instead of the right? Ezra Levant is a Calgary lawyer. He can be reached at ezra@ezralevant.com ILLUSTRATION: SCOTT PAGE