Catholic Vancouver September 29, 2022
Lack of campus debate a ‘scandal,’ Catholic academic says at UBC talk
By Terry O'Neill
The lack of intellectual debate on university campuses is “a scandal” that threatens the very soul of universities, a Catholic academic told a UBC audience this week.
Robert P. George, a leading American academic and much-published author and lecturer, spoke at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, where he said the job of a university “is to turn the student into a truth seeker and lifelong learner.”
But instead, “the increasing politicization of the academy” means students are not being exposed to dissenting views that could point them to truth.
An international report on threats to academic freedom found in 2021 that 60 per cent of conservative academics working in Canadian universities said there is a hostile climate to their beliefs in their respective departments, compared to only nine per cent for liberal academics who felt this way about the climate for their beliefs.
The report was just one of many in recent years showing that not only has left-wing or “progressive” ideology hardened on most Western campuses, but also that this bias has led to intolerance of dissenting, conservative views – including religious ones.
George, a law professor at Princeton University known for his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion, said universities must reform themselves so that real debate is allowed to flourish. A diversity of views and openness to argument “is what immunizes academia against group think,” he said. “We must never suppose that our adversaries can never be right.”
The lecture, which attracted an audience of about 50, was organized by Brian Bird, a graduate of Archbishop Carney Regional Secondary School in Port Coquitlam and now an assistant professor at the law school.
Bird, whose written criticism of pandemic-inspired church closures appeared in The B.C. Catholic last year, said in an interview that it’s important for George’s message to be heard at UBC.
His comment was an elaboration on an essay he recently published on the subject. “When truth-seeking is sidelined at universities, it is easier to censor unpopular viewpoints and shut down good-faith, reasoned debate on controversial issues,” he wrote. “ ... To ignore the centrality of truth to the university is to open the door to ‘cancel culture’ on campus. This phenomenon, which has grown in strength in recent years, does not simply obstruct the pursuit of truth. It sabotages the mission of a university.”
In a written introduction to George’s lecture, Bird linked academic freedom to advances in the broader world. “It is awe-inspiring to consider the countless achievements for humanity that stem from research and study at universities,” he said.
“Even so, one of the greatest challenges that universities face today is confusion over their raison d’etre. Professor George, in this lecture, invites us to rediscover the truth-seeking mission of universities, and the conditions that make truth-seeking possible, and recommit ourselves to it.”
George, who has written books on subjects ranging from natural law and marriage to abortion and the dogmas of liberal secularism, is considered one of the leading conservative intellectuals in the United States.
He has also stirred controversy by sharing his thoughts on Twitter. Earlier this year he tweeted, “Being Woke means never knowing what you’ll be required to believe tomorrow,” reflecting his belief that “wokeness” is an ideology disconnected from the search for truth.
In essence, then, wokeness replaces reason with feelings, he suggested, and by so doing “become ideological dogmatists ... It’s a human-nature problem.”
The remedy, he said, is “to oppose and protest against any conscious discrimination” and to encourage students and academics to be self-critical. Universities should be places were “people know that they will have to defend their premises because they will be challenged.”
George said real diversity, including “intellectual diversity,” must be embraced on campus, not just the woke diversity of race and gender. Ultimately, students need to seek “truth, knowledge, and wisdom,” This, he said, will be “the cure for campus illiberalism.”