Academic Freedom

The Centre for Free Expression, along with its co-signers BCCLA, CAUT, CCLA, and PEN Canada, have written today to the CEOs of Zoom and YouTube to express deep concern with the companies’ censorship of an academic roundtable at an American university. This action points to the new threat to academic freedom when, because of the coronavirus, most classes and other educational activities of universities and colleges are only possible through platforms such as Zoom and YouTube. 

All eyes on the University of Alberta! Collegial governance is under attack there, along with the capacity of faculty to exercise their academic freedom rights. It is not clear whether the elected representatives of the General Faculties Council will have the meaningful opportunity to discuss and debate the restructuring process and proposed scenarios. If they cannot there may be serious consequences for the University of Alberta, and a harbinger of what may be facing the entire Canadian academy.

In a statement released today, the Centre for Free Expression calls on Zoom, YouTube, and all other online technology providers to cease being censors of discussions being held by universities, schools and libraries. 

On June 23, 2020, B’Nai Brith issued a press release and posted an online petition calling on York University President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda Lenton to bar Professor Faisal Bhabha from teaching any “human rights” course at Osgoode Hall Law School. More than six weeks later, the President has not provided an open or transparent response to B’Nai Brith’s widely publicized condemnation of Bhabha and petition to remove him from the classroom.  The professor

Something very wrong has happened at the University of Alberta. A professor has been fired from part of her academic job for views on sex and gender that break with current orthodoxy.