Notwithstanding the inevitable rhetoric about defending “free speech” on campus, it’s worth remembering that’s not the reason for Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides’ planned homework assignment for Alberta’s post-secondary institutions.
In a press release Friday allegedly about “strengthening free speech on campus,” Nicolaides claimed, incorrectly, “that it is abundantly clear that more needs to be done to ensure our institutions are adequately protecting free speech” and vowed therefore that “post-secondary institutions will have to report annually to government on their efforts to protect free speech on campus.”
You can’t do too much to protect free speech, I guess, although there’s precious little evidence that public Canadian universities and colleges are doing a particularly lousy job on that file, as Nicolaides’ press release implies. But either way, strangling post-secondary administrators in additional red tape isn’t likely to do much to help.
It is unlikely, however, that Nicolaides has any intention of protecting free speech on Alberta campuses. Rather, the goal of this new front in the neoliberal internationale’s ongoing War on Wokeness is to impose controls on campuses that suit the ideology of the UCP and the censorious prejudices of its extremist base.
The release, published in the midst of a controversy involving a planned lecture by an academic who denies established facts about Canada’s Indian Residential School system and interprets the goals of those dreadful institutions in a positive light, cites a study by a notorious right-wing think tank that purports to show significant numbers of university professors censor their true opinions on certain topics.
The release quotes Grande Prairie MLA Tracy Allard, Premier Danielle Smith’s soon-to-retire Parliamentary Secretary for civil liberties, whose job assignment was clearly to deceptively portray COVID-19 vaccine refuseniks as victims of an assault on civil rights.
It also quotes a couple of disgruntled right-wing professors who jointly authored a screed in the National Post about how mistreated conservatives are on campus nowadays.
Dr. Nicolaides (PhD, University of Cyprus, 2013) ended his release by praising the successful effort by the Kenney Government, in which he served in the same portfolio, to force all Alberta publicly supported post-secondary institutions to endorse the “Chicago Principles.”
There was one…
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