Come.  Let us speak together, honestly, about Loi 32, An Act Respecting Academic Freedom in the University Sector in Quebec.  Because it sets a new standard both in government interference in universities and in all-around sheer holy-crap-this-is-what-public-policy-is being-reduced to.

If you read the law itself – and please do so, it’s short and only takes a minute or so –  you’ll see that for the most part it is pretty bland.  The meat of it, in articles 4 and 5, says that every university should devise and publish its own definition of academic freedom and appoint a council to oversee the implementation of this policy (receive/resolve complaints, etc), and should appoint someone to be responsible for promoting academic freedom and being accountable for the policy.  On its own, this is defensible, even laudable.  Indeed, most universities have at least some kind of definition in their collective agreements, so this part of it is not a burden, in theory.

But then you look at article 3, which is where the government explains what it means by academic freedom, and your heart starts to sink.  Here’s what it says:

“The right to university academic freedom is the right of every person to engage freely and without doctrinal, ideological or moral constraint in an activity through which the person contributes, in their field of activity, to carrying out the mission of an educational institution.

The right includes the freedom

(1) to teach;

(2) to conduct research and disseminate the results;

(3) to critique society, institutions, doctrines, dogmas and opinions; and

(4) to freely take part in the activities of professional organizations or university organizations.

It must be exercised in accordance with the standards of ethics and of scientific rigour generally recognized by the university sector and taking into account the rights of the other members of the university community.”

I am not sure who wrote this.  Perhaps someone who has heard of universities but never attended one.   It’s outlandish for a couple of obvious reasons.  Firstly, the idea that academic freedom is a right of every person is ridiculous.  It applies to academics, not the rest of the university.  Secondly, a right to engage without moral restraint sounds, well, terrifying.  I don’t know if this is just a bad translation, but doing anything pedagogical without moral constraint sounds to me like a bad idea.

Also missing from this godawful definition of academic freedom is any reference to professional competency.  According to the idea of academic freedom promoted here, all that matters really is that someone believes they are right doctrinally, ideologically, or whatever: provided this condition is met, they are free to teach.  Creationism, alchemy, leeches: all of this would be protected under such a definition of academic freedom.  Now, all this is theoretically constrained by a subsequent paragraph stating that academic freedom must be exercised “in accordance with the standards of ethics and scientific rigour generally recognized by the university sector”. If you’re one of the laws’ defenders, this is your “get-out-of-jail-free” card – look, see, professional standards!  But the fact that the law fairly clearly stipulates that you can teach whatever you want, subject to some ill-defined (at least legislatively) norms of competence rather than the other way around is telling.

But I haven’t got to the really fun part yet, which is Article 6, Para 1: “The Minister may, if the Minister considers it necessary for protecting university academic freedom, order an educational institution to include in its policy any element indicated by the Minister.”  Or, in other words: screw your definitions and committees, the Minister gets to decide what is and is not academic freedom and will overrule you on a whim.

(Recall that the current minister, Danielle McCann, was in her previous position oversaw the deaths of thousands of Quebecers in long-term care homes in the first wave of the COVID pandemic.)

If this all seems bizarre and incomprehensible, it’s worth understanding that this academic freedom argument is actually a weird freedom of speech issue in disguise.  Indeed, if you look at the transcript of the press conference at which the law was unveiled, Minister McCann was much more preoccupied with concepts like “censure” and “being able to use any word at all” than she was about academic freedom.  Why is this?  Well, cast your mind back to late last year when there was a dispute about the use of the N-word in a classroom setting at the University of Ottawa.  Leaving aside the details of the case and how it was handled, its main political effect was to create a vast wave of indignation across a fairly wide spectrum of Quebec opinion – the same folks who can’t quite understand why a hijab ban constitutes systemic racism and get very upset at anyone who points it out to them.  Banning use the n-word?  Tyranny!  Which conceivably might be true if the N-word had some kind of inherent pedagogical value, but since it doesn’t we should all just recognize this argument for what it is: white folks not wanting to feel bad about systemic racism.  And that, of course, is what this bill is really meant to protect against.

Compounding all the hypocrisy of course is the fact that everybody – and I mean everybody – in Quebec understands perfectly well that this protection of “academic freedom” would never be extended to someone who criticized Quebec or Quebecers.  Protecting use of the N-word is one thing, but it’s impossible to imagine that the CAQ crowd feeling similarly about shielding someone using “frog/grenouille”, for instance (for avoidance of doubt, please do not use words like “frog/grenouille”).  Indeed, it’s worth recalling that the CAQ was in full agreement with the rest of bien-pensant Quebec with the campaign against Andrew Potter five years ago when the McGill professor has the temerity to criticize Quebec.  I suspect that in fact it is for precisely this reason – to perpetuate double standards where necessary – that the Minister has chosen to retain the power to capriciously over-rule institutions with respect to what academic freedom means.  Because God Forbid an institution come up with a policy that actually protects another Andrew Potter.

Anyways, the good news is that at least a few Quebec universities (not McGill, which almost never stands up to government directives) seem inclined to fight the government very strongly on this matter.  And despite the CAQ’s majority, a spirited-enough opposition might just see this one allowed to die on the order paper in the run-up to this fall’s provincial election. 

Let’s hope, anyway.