But when there are values so firmly and so consistently held  by genuinely conflicting interests that the conflict cannot be resolved by logical analysis and factual investigation, then the role of reason in that human affair seems at an end…And at the very end, if the end is reached, moral problems become problems of power, and in the last resort, if the last resort is reached, the final form of power is coercion…In the end, if the end comes, we just have to beat those who disagree over the head; let us hope the end comes seldom. In the meantime, being as reasonable as we are able to be, we all ought to argue.

1. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination

My final prayer: Oh my body, make of me always a man who questions!

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, neither are you here to live up to mine.

Peter Tosh, I am that I am

Academic Freedom and the Debate about Debate

I have launched my podcast Nullius In Verba. It has been a long time in coming. I would be lying if I said it was not, in part, motivated by my disgust with academia at present. The CoVID-19(84) live Milgram drill and the near total collapse of academic freedom, unless in the death sciences, is utterly spectacular. August Comte would be proud of his intellectual progeny. Indeed, we are in the early stages of global totalitarianism, which will only proceed if we let it. We academics have a vital role to play in exposing this trend and we must have the courage of our convictions to defend freedom of inquiry. If sunlight is the best disinfectant, academic freedom, and freedom of speech more generally, is the best safeguard against totalitarianism.

Academic freedom is the lifeblood of the university. Without it, doctrine and dogma take its place as knowledge workers regurgitate and train the young into the death of the mind. It is precisely to prevent the death of a ‘civilization’ that academics retaliated against the dogma of the Church and threw their weight behind the monarchy at first, and, then the liberal State. The price, or reward, necessary to maintain a social balance of power that favoured the liberal State was tenure. One cannot have one without the other. One cannot explore ideas and possibilities unless the restraints of political authority are held in check by tenure, the assessment by one’s peers, which is the guarantor of academic freedom. Indeed, so sacred is tenure to academic freedom, that its granting, withholding, and, in what is supposed occur only under the rarest of circumstances, its withdrawal and excommunication from the Republic of Letters.

On this matter, the University of Waterloo’s Policy 77 is elegant:

Universities exist to develop society’s intellectual resources and to preserve its intellectual traditions. Their primary functions are to preserve, evaluate, develop, and transmit knowledge, intellectual skills and culture. The modern university is expected to provide intellectual leadership to society, to contribute in a major way to the coordination of knowledge and the development of artistic, philosophical, scientific, and technological ideas, and to provide a fertile intellectual environment in which new knowledge and ideas can evolve. To achieve these goals, faculty members must be effective and committed teachers and scholars, constantly striving to expand and communicate their knowledge, ideas and understanding for the benefit of society.[1]

I am utterly dismayed that some of the staunchest opponents to the principal standards which safeguards their vocation –academic freedom and tenure – are academics themselves. For some it is animus, a canalization of neurotic impulses in which deep felt emotions are given free reign over reason and rationality. These are the type who rather burn the house down rather than let a hated idea drawn from the ether be uttered in speech or set down in writing. For others, it is indifference brought on by the flaccidness of a privileged existence. For others I suspect it is cowardice arising from the fear of standing out from the herd of academic bovines. And finally, for others yet, academic freedom and tenure are to be restrained because ‘propriety’ demands the threat of denunciation and ceremonies of ritual degradation rigorously enforce compliance demanded by a moral community heavily invested in ‘virtue signaling’.

I hold academic freedom and tenure dearly. The former is an extension of my pre-political right as a man, which is to say to speak, and, always to speak what I believe to be true. I may be wrong, but I reserve the right to be wrong in my pursuit of truth. And moreover, to maintain wrong-headed thinking contrary to facts and reason is not only bad faith, it is a moral and spiritual injury to myself. I have worked hard for the latter. The odds were stacked against me. An immigrant kid from Jamaica, put back a grade within a week of emigration from 2 to 1. And graduating from grade 8 I would have been sent to a vocational high school had my mother not intervened. Because of my blackness I was told I was stupid and I, in turn, acted the fool. Were it not for a foundation laid by Black teachers at various heritage programs in Toronto and an interest in books and ideas, I would have been among the gifted Black men languishing in prison, working dead-end jobs or dead. But here I am. The descendant of enslaved Africans. It is for this reason that I stood to be the representative face of the Brock University Faculty Associations (BUFA) campaign for academic freedom.

It is because my ancestors were gagged, masked and their mouths smashed for daring to talk back to their ‘masters’ that I will not now be silent. I said as much in defence of my colleague Tomáš Hudlický who was shabbily treated by the chemistry journal that withdrew his article and the Brock University administration who censured him for his wrong-speak against the cult of EDI, which is vouchsafed by the academic mob. Now it is my turn. Zionists at Brock University and elsewhere howl for my blood far daring to speak out against the Jewish Holocaust of Gazans as a blot on the memory of the Jewish dead. The more charitable in their majesty would be gratified if were to languish in prison, or, beg bread in the streets and sleep in a cardboard box under bridges.

And now that I have worked with select colleagues to establish, with the permission of his wife, The Tomáš Hudlický Memorial Lecture for Academic Freedom, and, to have as the first speaker Dr. Frances Widdowson on October 29th, I am being condescended to as naïve in my commitment to academic freedom. I am also being subjected to emotional extortion because my actions are deemed to be hurting the feelings of some colleagues. As I defended Tomas’s right of academic freedom, so do I equally defend Frances’s. I will defend the right to academic freedom, too, of those who wish that I endorse the suppression of the speech of another. I only ask those colleagues to consider that the pendulum opinion swings; and those in administration will benefit whatever the direction the pendulum swings.

So, whether I agree with anyone or not, I do not feel a need to confess or justify myself. I do not owe anyone that courtesy. I need state only that the life of the mind is for the living. Those who want mental death, the option is theirs. I will not join in self-stultification. I will, therefore, learn from any and all, even those with whom I may have fundamental disagreements.  

It is with this conviction, sustained by Alvin Gouldner’s injunction that we stand on values rather than choose sides, that I launch the Nullius In Verba podcast. My goal is to test ideas, to listen and to learn from academics and other intellectuals about how ideas get put together, where they fall apart and what is the value, ultimately, of the university. I start with my colleague Dr. Kevin Gosine, to be followed in a few days time by my conversation with Dr. Frances Widdowson. Others to follow include Dr. Phoebe Sanchez and Dr. Michael Neumann and I hope many more.

On no ones word!

[1] Brock University’s legalistic Freedom of Expression Policy pales in comparison to the lofty expression of ideals found in the Waterloo statement:

This Policy applies to the exercise of freedom of expression which is the fundamental freedom to express thoughts, ideas, opinions, or beliefs, subject to reasonable limits within the law and as necessary for the proper operation of the University. A full definition of freedom of expression is included in the Definitions section below.

Nevertheless, the proof of a policy is not in the words chosen, but in the conviction to defend the right of academic freedom, however it is named. Thus, the irony should not be lost on anyone that the University of Waterloo violated the Nuremburg-based Tri-Council Policy on Research Ethics, Ontario’s law of medical consent and basic principles of contract law to coerce faculty, staff and students to submit to invasive testing and a gene-based ‘medical’ therapeutic. On this point, see this 2021 statement from members of the Waterloo community:

Open letter to UW officials: Repeal the COVID vaccination and testing mandates