Noah D. Arney

Tag: politics

  • What is Political?

    I’m trying to use this blog more as a way to think through things that I disagree with. It’s not good to have an immediate knee jerk reaction to something and to leave it there. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I had just stayed with my assumptions of the past. So, similar to how I treated McKinnon a few weeks back today I’m going to try to actively and intentionally engage with something that based on the news articles, I will probably disagree with. But maybe I won’t. I may be wrong.

    Today I’m reading through the petition to the BC Supreme Court by Andrew Irvine (Professor), Nathan Cockram (Recent PhD Student), Brad Epperly (Associate Professor), Christopher Kam (Professor), and Michael Treschow (Associate Professor). They have submitted a request for judicial review about their institution, the University of British Columbia.

    To be clear, I write this as someone who is supportive of institutional neutrality and how it supports free expression. So I am coming into this as the type of person this should be persuasive to.

    First, since I hate it when people don’t include the original, here is the petition.

    Petition-VLC-S-S-252602-filed-7Apr2025Download

    The background required for their argument in the petition is that under the University Act in BC, which all public universities are under to one level or another, “66 (1)A university must be non-sectarian and non-political in principle.”

    Now the reason I say one level or another is that this is in Part 12, in the subheading “Theological colleges” because the purpose of section 66 is actually about exemptions to (1) which allows a university to have a theological college affiliated with them. If it does so, then despite what (1) says, a theological college may:

    (a)make provisions it considers proper in regard to religious instruction and religious worship for its own students, and

    (b)require religious observance as part of its discipline.

    This section does not apply to all public universities, specifically the two universities with their own acts, Royal Roads University and Thompson Rivers University. Neither of these universities includes section 66 in their Act specifically or through reference. More on that shortly.

    Orders Sought

    The specifics requested in the petition are to prohibit UBC from:

    1. “engaging in political activity within the meaning of s.66”
    2. “declaring or acknowledging that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land”
      • As done by administrators, Senates, and Board
    3. “requiring or encouraging other persons to declare or acknowledge that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land”
      • As done by administrators, Senates, and Board
    4. “making statements or declarations of support or condemnation of Israel or Palestine”
      • As done by Okanagan Senate and Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies
    5. “stating opinions on the absolute or relative morality, lawfulness or political justification of violence in Israel or Palestine”
      • As done by Okanagan Senate and Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies
    6. “requiring expressions of agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, equity and inclusion doctrines, or any other political beliefs, as a condition of applying for UBC faculty positions and/or as a condition of appointment as UBC faculty”
      • As done by the administrators in charge of hiring and academic departments

    There are several additional things that are essentially to tell UBC to issue retractions or take things down from their website. Next up is a request that the court determine who does and does not speak for “UBC”.

    • Those who are the “university” when they speak would be all administrators, the Board of Governors, all Board committees, the Senates of Vancouver and Okanagan, their committees, all “UBC faculties, schools, departments, institutes, centres, programs and other academic and administrative units” and all those with “governance or administrative roles and capacities”
    • Those who are NOT the “university” when they speak are “professors, instructors, lecturers, scholars, researchers, artists, performers, librarians, archivists, curators, students, and other members of Convocation not holding an administrative or governance position”

    Why are they petitioning?

    The key thing they are trying to do explicitly here is assert that “Section 66 of the University Act is an express and specific statutory provision intended to preserve and uphold academic freedom….” I will leave to the side the concern that the petitioners are saying that the section that does not apply to two of the public research universities in the province is the one that is about academic freedom seems concerning to me.

    The petitioners are asking for this because they say UBC has done the following:

    a. UBC has declared and/or acknowledged, orally and in writing, electronically on its website and in print media, that UBC is on unceded indigenous land;

    b. UBC has required and/or encouraged persons within its sphere of influence, including professors and students, to declare or acknowledge that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land;

    c. UBC has issued and publicized declaratory statements condemning violence in Israel or Palestine and has issued and publicized opinions on the morality, lawfulness or justification of violence in Israel or Palestine; and

    d. UBC has imposed and/or approved application processes for hiring faculty members and criteria for hiring or appointing faculty members that require applicants to express agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines (“DEI” or “EDI”)

    The Key Arguments

    1. Someone who speaks for the University declaring that UBC is on unceded land is a political statement
    2. Someone who speaks for the University condemning violence committed by a state or organization, calling the actions of another country genocide, and condemning the actions of another organization as discriminatory, are all political statements
    3. UBC requiring an EDI statement from potential applicants in a hiring process, or a department stating that they wish to hire people who agree with a “commitment to… equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice” are political actions, and may rise to the level of requiring “specific political beliefs as a condition of employment.”

    The petitioners say that these actions of the university create an environment where individual members of the institution are pressured to agree with the perspective of the institution. So the first question to be asked is what definition should there be for “political”?

    What is Political?

    The petitioners say that the meaning of “non-political” must be the “reader’s first impression meaning”. Which seems strange when there is a counter example already given in the Act. Section 66 (1) is given so that section 66 (4) has something to be the exception to. The exception then is:

    (a)make provisions it considers proper in regard to religious instruction and religious worship for its own students, and

    (b)require religious observance as part of its discipline.

    If we work from the exception to the rule, it means that “non-sectarian and non-political” means the opposite of that:

    1. You may not mandate religious (or political) instruction for students
    2. You may not mandate religious worship (or political actions) by students
    3. you may not require religious (or political) observance as discipline (in the punishment sense)

    This is not about punishment, so we can ignore #3. But #1 and #2 are about mandating instruction and actions for students, which the petitioners do not seem to be alleging has happened.

    However, later on (s. 33) the petitioners state that the implication of section 66 is that it is to ensure that “the University and its administrative components are prohibited from undertaking political activities that are inconsistent with [academic freedom]”. They go on to say that political should be interpreted as part of freedom of expression under the charter

    2 Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

    (a) freedom of conscience and religion;

    (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

    (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

    (d) freedom of association.

    In that “non-political” means the institution may not compel or mandate any “thought, belief, opinion and expression”.

    The petitioners go on to say that a statement made by the institution that is “political” applies pressure to those who should have academic freedom to agree with a specific “thought, belief, opinion and expression” because it implies that those who do not agree are not welcome at UBC.

    The concern I have here is that the counter example given in the Act is about actions by the institution (requiring religious classes, requiring attendance at religious observances, and using religion based punishments), but the petition asks us to redefine political from political actions to “political statements” which is not supported by a reading of the Act.

    We’ll come back to the statements vs. actions later, but for now lets accept the petitioner’s redefinition to political statements. If we do so, then, while it makes sense not to have the University as a whole dictate the thoughts of an individual, we need to first look at who the petitioners are saying speak for the University.

    Who Speaks for the University?

    The first argument to look at is around who speaks on behalf of the University. It is easy to know who makes up the University as an institution, it’s in the Act:

    3 (2.1) … the University of British Columbia is composed of a chancellor, a convocation, a board, an Okanagan senate, a Vancouver senate, a council and faculties.

    But who speaks on behalf of the university? It cannot be everyone listed above because that includes a huge list of people including all faculty and all graduates. I am a graduate of UBC, and so am part of convocation, but by no means am I speaking on behalf of UBC when I say anything. Who speaks then? Well the Act does say:

    46.1 A university has the power and capacity of a natural person of full capacity.

    And when it exercises that power it does so by using the “corporate name and seal of the university” which are controlled by the Board. In fact we then see the following sections laying out who is in charge and could be conceivably making a political statement on behalf of the university:

    27 (1)The management, administration and control of the property, revenue, business and affairs of the university are vested in the board.

    59 (1)There must be a president of the university, who is to be the chief executive officer and must generally supervise and direct the academic work of the university.

    So then based on this it seems like the Board as a whole or the President may be the ones who speak on behalf of the university. UBC has a process for this to further restrict it beyond the assumption of Board and President to say that no, only the President may speak on behalf of the University:

    Speaking on Behalf of the University

    The President, or her/his designate, is the spokesperson for the University.

    The Chair of the Board only is the spokesperson for the Board and, in this connection, the Chair consults the President.

    The Chair will seek guidance from the Board of Governors, in consultation with the President, to determine the items which will be released publicly.

    Going back to the petition, it asks the court to designate the following as individuals and groups who speak on behalf of UBC:

    1. Chancellor
    2. President and Vice-Chancellor
    3. Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor
    4. Vice-Presidents
    5. UBC Board of Governors
    6. Board Committees
    7. Vancouver Senate
    8. Okanagan Senate
    9. Vancouver and Okanagan Senate Committees
    10. Faculties
    11. Schools
    12. Departments
    13. Institutes
    14. Centres
    15. Programs
    16. Academic Units
    17. Administrative Units
    18. Deans, Assistant Deans, Heads, Assistant Heads, and all other administrators – when speaking in their administrative roles and capacities

    Although it is clear that the President speaks on behalf of the University, and it makes sense that the Principal and VPs speaking could be construed as being endorsed by the President, anything beyond that is a lot. But the petitioners want to have the court determine that regardless of “official” statements, that any statements by these groups and individuals that is sectarian or political is against the Act.

    Collective vs. Individual Academic Freedom

    The biggest concern I see are the Academic Units listed. At UBC the Faculties (sometimes called Faculty Councils) are made up of the Dean of the Faculty, three ex officio members (who normally don’t attend), the faculty members and other teaching staff, and a few staff and students. But these are always primarily faculty members, meaning any decision by a UBC Faculty, such as the one identified in s.14 of the petition by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, was a decision made by the very “professors, instructors, lecturers, scholars” etc. that they are asking to be the ones who can speak to political matters. The petitioners are asking for the freedom of expression of a collective of individuals with Academic Freedom to be restricted so that the freedom of expression of any one individual with Academic Freedom is not limited.

    To combine this with the above definition they want for “political” it would mean that a UBC Faculty may not require or even request any individual to agree with a specific “thought, belief, opinion and expression” if there is any “controversial political debate” around it. The problem there is that taken to its logical conclusion this means that the Faculty of Science may not put out a statement stating that they affirm something which people may disagree with, such as evolution. This of course sounds ridiculous, as a Faculty is individual faculty members who have come to this decision together as a group based on what they think or believe and are individually protected to say it as they have Academic Freedom.

    To save the core of the petitioner’s argument, then, I will need to remove any of the groups that are primarily made up of those with Academic Freedom then from the list, which would be the academic units, faculties, senates and senate committees. But next I will need to remove those who are explicitly prevented from speaking on behalf of the University, that would be the Board and their committees. The Chancellor’s power outside of their role on the Board is only the conferring of degrees and chairing Convocation, so they also must be removed. Finally, administrative units are made up of individuals and act on the behest of the head of the unit, so statements from them have only the power given to their head or the individuals and since this can’t be about the group they are removed.

    1. President and Vice-Chancellor
    2. Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor
    3. Vice-Presidents
    4. Deans, Assistant Deans, Heads, Assistant Heads, and all other administrators – when speaking in their administrative roles and capacities

    Remaining are the administrative employees. This means that the key arguments need to be rewritten, because #2 only had examples from Senate or a Faculty (both primarily made up of faculty members and therefore cannot be statements of the University).

    1. An administrator Someone who speaks for the University declaring that UBC is on unceded land is a political statement
    2. Someone who speaks for the University condemning violence committed by a state or organization, calling the actions of another country genocide, and condemning the actions of another organization as discriminatory, are all political statements
    3. UBC requiring an EDI statement from potential applicants in a hiring process, or a department stating that they wish to hire people who agree with a “commitment to… equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice” are political, and may rise to the level of requiring “specific political beliefs as a condition of employment.”

    What is unceded

    The petition states that calling the land UBC is on “unceded” is a “political statement” and asks us to define unceded as “the claim to Canadian sovereign territory is illegitimate or unethical or contrary to international law.”

    While I’m sure that there are some who would agree with that definition, it seems strange for the petitioners to state that is it’s “ordinary usage”. The OED defines it as:

    Of land, territory, etc.: belonging to Indigenous peoples; not ceded, given up, or handed over to a colonizing people, government, or nation.

    The ordinary usage in Canada since before Canada was a country for “unceded” is “not under treaty” in 1848 we see it used in a recommendation for the government to establish a national treaty in order to “extinguish the Indian claim to all the unceded Lands…” for the land not yet under treaty. UBC even has a page explaining this where they say “Unceded: refers to land that was not turned over to the Crown (government) by a treaty or other agreement.” Since this is a website by one of the VPs, someone the petitioners say speak for the University, then since UBC’s usage, the OED current definition, and the historical usage of the term all mean the same thing, we cannot accept the petitioners definition.

    The question for this now is “was the land UBC is on ever transferred under treaty to Britain, British Columbia, or Canada?”

    I am unable to find any record of a treaty transferring the land UBC is on from the Musqueam, Syilx, Squamish, or Tsleil-Waututh. So the phrase that is considered objectionable which is on the UBC website is a statement of fact:

    We acknowledge that UBC’s two main campuses are situated within the ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people, and in the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples.

    I assume that the petitioners don’t feel that a statement of fact is a political statement. If they do then we have a different discussion to have here. We then must remove the first argument entirely as it is a statement of fact rather than a political opinion.

    Remaining Concerns

    The remaining specific exercises of “statutory powers” that infringes on the “non-political” issue then are:

    a. UBC has declared and/or acknowledged, orally and in writing, electronically on its website and in print media, that UBC is on unceded indigenous land;

    b. UBC has required and/or encouraged persons within its sphere of influence, including professors and students, to declare or acknowledge that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land;

    c. UBC has issued and publicized declaratory statements condemning violence in Israel or Palestine and has issued and publicized opinions on the morality, lawfulness or justification of violence in Israel or Palestine; and

    d. UBC has imposed and/or approved application processes for hiring faculty members and criteria for hiring or appointing faculty members that require applicants to express agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines (“DEI” or “EDI”)

    EDI and Politics

    Moving to the section on “UBC Imposes Political EDI Criteria for Hiring Processes and Appointment Decisions” s.16-19. The sub argument here is:

    1. UBC requires applicants to submit an EDI statement and identify how they have, or plan to, advance EDI.
    2. Specific departments want to hire new faculty who “share a commitment” to EDI.
    3. EDI principles are “informed by critical race theory and include the belief that individuals, institutions and societies are inherently patriarchal, colonialist and racist”.

    I will make the assumption that the petitioners are not interested in requiring the University to ignore the BC Human Rights Code or the Canadian Employment Equity Act and what BC calls “Special Programs” and so I assume that what they mean by 1 is this guide by HR which has this to say about the EDID statements:

    Examine EDID statements for insights on a candidate’s reflections and capacity to create environments where all students and colleagues can learn and thrive. While the EDID statement will not receive its own rating, it will contribute to the general rating of the candidate with respect to their score on the evaluation criteria that relates to commitment to inclusive excellence and EDID competencies. The statement should not be used to exclude an applicant unless their commentary is openly and clearly in violation of UBC’s human rights commitments and policies and/or the specific job being advertised requires particular EDID competencies that are not being demonstrated in the candidate’s statement.

    The hiring process recommended by HR is that the minimum employment requirements are used first to screen candidates. Then a long list is created based on who the most qualified candidates are. The short list is developed by using various rubrics and guides including the above review of the EDID statement. The EDID statement is to be used only if it shows an opposition to Equity, Inclusion, or Diversity, and even the Faculties which use a rubric to assess the EDID statements allow the individual to use their own definition of Equity, Diversity, or Inclusion, rather than the petitioner’s claim that it must affirm “that individuals, institutions and societies are inherently patriarchal, colonialist and racist”.

    The closest the rubric gets to that claim is if the writer is “Unaware of (or does not understand) the particular challenges that individuals from HPSM groups face in academia, or feel any personal responsibility for helping to create an equitable and inclusive environment for all” or “Explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and “treat everyone the same.”” Of note, HPSM seems to have a definition in line with the BC Human Rights Code.

    Because the specific “fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines” that are in UBC’s documents are those aligned with both BC and Federal legislation on the matter I find it hard to see the concern here as requesting someone to align with legislation cannot be a prohibited political statement. That means sub-argument 3 has to be left. There may be more of a problem in the specifics for sub-arguments 1 and 2 rather than the general process though. For that we will focus on s.42 in the petition:

    Similarly, the EDI Hiring Requirements imposed by UBC effectively prohibit the appointment to faculty of any person, however qualified, who does not personally support and uphold EDI principles and values. A person, for example, who took the political position, on the basis of equality of opportunity, that all hiring of faculty should be done on the basis of merit, would be prevented from applying for a faculty position and prevented from being appointed as faculty. A critic of critical race theory, for example, would be ineligible for appointment as faculty and would be deterred from exercising their entitlement to apply for a position, in the case of the Petitioner Nathan Cockram, Dr. Cockram was effectively excluded from applying for or being appointed to otherwise open UBC faculty positions by the EDI Hiring Requirements.

    The core of this is that (in alignment with sub-argument 1) a person who disagrees with the use, at all, of EDID statements in hiring, and so refuses to submit one is excluded from being able to apply; and (in alignment with sub-argument 2) if they do submit one but it does not meet the expectations of the specific hiring committee they will not be hired.

    Here I agree with sub-argument 1. A persons refusal to submit a required piece of documentation because of a political position opposed to that type of document would be excluded from the job.

    Sub-argument 2 however is about the determination of the hiring committee. The guide for these documents is that the use of EDID statements isn’t until the long list has been created. And that long list is a list of all of those who meet the required qualifications, and are on the list of people who would be able to successfully do the job. That means that all candidates are already past the “merit” bar before any consideration of an EDID statement. Any use of the EDID statement beyond “do you disagree with the Human Rights Code” seems to be left up to the individuals on the hiring committee, and so that is not a political action by the university, but a decision of an individual or small group of individuals.

    So only sub-argument 1 remains, but with the caveat that “diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines” in this case means not to discriminate against disadvantaged individuals or groups under the BC Human Rights Code and to actively oppose discrimination of those disadvantaged individuals or groups.

    d. UBC has imposed and/or approved application processes for hiring faculty members and criteria for hiring or appointing faculty members that require applicants to express agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines (“DEI” or “EDI”)

    As previously stated, agreeing with legislation cannot be a prohibited political act. This means that what remains is a request for a judge to tell UBC what it may or may not request in their job applications.

    Conclusion

    I am not a lawyer (IANAL) and so I have no idea what will happen with this petition for judicial review. But I do a lot of deep reading on things so here’s my take:

    1. Trying to define section 66 as the one which protects Academic Freedom in BC is a mistake because it does not apply to two of the six research universities in the province.
    2. “Non-political in principle” does not mean “must refrain from all political speech”, it means must not enforce political actions beyond adherence to this and other legislation (so you can’t require people to be a member of the Liberal Party to have a job, but you can require them to not break the criminal code).
    3. Claiming your opponent is using one definition when they have been very clear they are using a different one (and your opponent’s is actually aligned with the dictionary definition) is not a great look from an academic.
    4. Acknowledging that “UBC is on unceded Indigenous land” is a historical fact under the specific definition of the words in that phrase.
    5. Asking a judge to restrict the free expression of a group of faculty is a bad look from a faculty member.
    6. It may be possible that some departmental hiring committees are going too far with how they use EDID statements, but it is also true that many of them have historically used other parts of the application package in a way that goes too far (the use of reference letters historically) so perhaps this is not the correct venue for asking for change.

    Too many of these claims lack merit, support, or are unconnected to what they claim to be about. That makes me worry that I’ve put too much thought into what is actually an attempt to “virtue signal” and is not an honest critique of UBC, but here we are.

  • Ohio Micromanages PSE

    Ready for a wild ride?

    https://legiscan.com/OH/text/SB83/id/2745695

    Legislation in Ohio has passed the house to micromanage the public post-secondary system. It now goes to the senate. It is being opposed by nearly every post-secondary association and freedom of speech association and is generally a contradictory mess. Don’t believe me? Well here’s the best (worst) bits:

    Every institution must change its mission statement to affirm that it is committed to tolerating differences in opinion, but they must also allow students to formally evaluate professors on their ideology and require departments to teach controversial topics (being those that are believed by a substantial number of Americans).

    I’m sure the faculty of science will enjoy needing to include a class about how the moon landing was faked and the earth is flat (both believed by 10% of the US).

    They must both “Prohibit political and ideological litmus tests in all hiring, promotion, and admissions decisions” while also requiring that promotion decisions are based at least partially on student’s evaluation of the professor’s ideology.

    They must both treat all equally while being prohibited to provide the support required for those who were treated unequally by other levels of education. Essentially a return to the 1970s era post-secondary access.

    And strangest of all they will be mandated to collect and report on all demographic data including race and sex, and report publicly on academic achievement by those disaggregated demographics while at the same time are prohibited to have any policies that use any of the collected data for improving results. If information is mandated to be collected but not used by one group, then you can guarantee that it will be used by those mandating it. And since those mandating it has no way of actually using that data to improve things then the only thing I can see is that it’s being collected not for improvement but for something else.

    Finally, it bans all sex segregated extracurricular activities and residence housing. Which seems strange considering other things the republicans have been complaining about the last few years.

    I’m more than a little concerned at the US trying to burn down its post-secondary system, and very worried that the same ideas will come up here (some already are).

  • When the opposing protest is the speech

    It was interesting to read this article in Inside Higher Ed today:

    Shouting Down Speakers Who Offend
    Over the course of a month, students on several college campuses shut down speakers they disagreed with. Why is it so hard to forge a consensus on what protecting free speech really means?

    https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/free-speech/2023/04/13/shouting-down-speakers-who-offend

    The article portrays using crowds and shouting down speakers vs providing a platform for a speaker some consider controversial portrayed as a left-right division of free speech. The specific example is the SUNY Albany students protesting Ian Haworth at a Turning Points USA student event. To me this all seems more in line with the American understanding of free speech that loud group free speech is an appropriate response to something that is harmful (side note, I’ve seen similar confusion a lot from US academics as they conflate academic freedom and free speech in odd ways, I don’t know if that’s the case here).

    We see this when groups try to shout down a right wing speaker, we see this when groups try to protest an abortion clinic, we see it when groups try to shut down drag story time at a library. In all cases those protesting see the thing they are protesting as being harmful and therefore the protest is a legitimate display of free speech. In two of the cases it’s a matter of free speech vs free speech. In all cases those on the other side of the political spectrum see it as too likely that the protesters will resort to violence (as has recently happened in some of the library protests) and therefore consider it illegitimate protest. But that’s not what this article is critiquing. It seems to be saying that controversial (non-illegal) hate speech at an event is an exercise of free speech, but shouting down the speaker is not. And that seems strange because of how the US views protest on public property.

    In the US most state universities would be considered public property, so the bar for stopping these protests is very high (similar to trying to stop them in libraries, though because they are protesting events targeted to children instead of to adults there may be nuance I’m missing), which means that shouting down a speaker as long as you don’t bar them from accessing the venue (they didn’t in the main case used here) and you don’t stop them from speaking (they could speak but it would be hard to be heard over the crowd) would be legal. Of course when the event was moved to a private area of campus that disallowed the protestors the laws would have changed.

    That leaves us with a question, because if we put two events up against each other we have left and right both protesting in public buildings to stop events they feel includes harmful speech. My basic understanding of US law is that the government isn’t supposed to shut down a speaker just because the hecklers *might* get violent in response, neither are they supposed to stop non-violent protestors in public spaces. However, at this point nearly everyone (though maybe not in a legal sense) has agreed that if the actions of the protestors include violence then that is a threat that prohibits the speech.

    Context is important

    This event didn’t happen in a vacuum. Although TPUSA is a big national organization it took about ten seconds to find that their last big event on campus brought in just under 30 students and no protestors, it was held in a closed room that wasn’t open to a public space. This second event then was in a larger room fitting over 100 people and directly connected to a public space, meaning two things: 1) they expected over three times the number of people from their prior event 2) they held this event specifically in a space that would be considered public property. Finally when they did move to a closed private space for the event, none of the media coverage or even their own comments, mention not fitting their attendees in, and all of the photos of the event show that the space was nearly entirely filled with protestors.

    The other thing to know is that the first event gathered no press at all, I didn’t even see something in the local paper. The second event had a week of national media coverage over it.

    Which implies to me that there was intent here. The meta speech of the event by the hosts *was* the protest. That is what publicized and amplified their speech, it’s what made people listen to them, see them, and pay attention to them. Thus there are three speech items at play, not two.

    • Group A held event (speech)
    • Group B peacefully protested event in a way that made the speech impossible to hear at the time (counter-speech)
    • Group A was able to have broader and louder speech because of the protest (counter-counter-speech)

    So if group A got what they wanted and intended out of the event then is this actually a crisis of free speech, or is it exactly how the US system of free speech operates? No one was directly violent, and the closest thing to violence reported is that someone destroyed a bible. Which brings me back to the beginning. How should universities respond to this?

    If the protest was prevented from happening not only would the speech of the protestors have been stopped by government actors, but the speech of the hosts would not have been as public as they wanted.

    I think I’ll end off here by bringing up the idea of violence. Violent acts change the equation, but legally violent implications without immediate action isn’t supposed to. However, in the US it is difficult because it is so easy for things to change from implication to action because of their lax firearms laws. At what point of the violent spectrum should we step in?

    • Violent potential (where this protest was)
    • Violent implication
    • Violent possibility
    • Violent threat (where most of the anti-drag protests are)
    • Violent past actions
    • Violent preparation
    • Violent action

    I think that’s a much more important discussion for us to have, and one that completely sidesteps any discussion of academic freedom but instead focuses on when we should shut competing speech down.

    Post event story changes

    In the immediate reporting by one of the hosts it’s clear that the event moved and proceeded. In the post event reporting it was said (by the same person) that the event had to be canceled. In addition, no one claimed the bible, which makes me unclear whether it was a protestor bringing it to destroy it, or a protestor taking it from an attendee and destroying it. Since grabbing a bible out of someone’s hand would clearly be something that would be reported in the media since it fits a certain narrative of the event I’m suspicious. Mostly it lends credence to the idea that the counter-counter-speech wasn’t only a benefit for Group A, but was in fact the point of the event.

  • Grade Inflation And Bullshit

    Adapted from a twitter thread.

    Remember back at the end of September when it came out that a university professor Chris Healy was part of the pro-fascism deadly protest in Charlottesville five years ago? Well, it’s important to connect the dots sometimes because he’s also the person who collected data on grade inflation that has been used for the last decade and a half to complain about modern universities. And data collection is fine, but he also put a spin on that data which has impacted how it’s been used. Biases and perceptions are important and concept that you can fully remove your biases from your interpretation of data is probably a fools errand. Well, turns out his biases may have impacted his analyzing of the data.

    If you haven’t seen it before, “grade inflation” is used as an attack on under-represented minority students in university by many groups (looking at you Fox News), but turns out it really happened because rich white parents wanted it for their kids. No seriously, he doesn’t interpret it that way, but Chris Healy’s own data shows it.

    There’s 2 issues that show up in the data: the SATs and the difference between Private and Public universities and student results.

    First the SATs. Now, there are a lot of problems with SATs, and I’m sure the decision in the 60s to make it harder (and thus showing a drop in SAT scores over the next decade) had nothing to do with more Black students applying to universities /s/. But that’s not what I’m talking about today.

    Healy assumes that SAT should directly predict GPA. But those who study education know that the ways to game the SATs are many and varied, and usually used for those trying to get into either elite private universities or into elite STEM PSIs, aka the schools he identifies as having GPAs lower than what the SAT should predict. Meanwhile students less likely to game the SATs tend to be in the schools he identifies as having a higher GPA than the SAT would predict. The takeaway should be that the SAT doesn’t predict success (and that rich parents generally pay for more SAT prep than poor parents), his takeaway is that public flagship universities are inflating grades more. Except his earlier finding in his data is that public flagships inflated grades substantially less than the private equivalents.

    So the second problem, public vs private university comparison. What his data seems to show is in the 1950s private universities started inflating grades (I’m sure this has nothing to do with how private universities became the bastion of segregation for a decade as wealthy whites sent their kids to them). Then when the last of the Ivy League universities kinda desegregated, the public universities started increasing grades to keep up with the substantial grade inflation that had ALREADY HAPPENED in the private universities.

    Yep, the grades were the same until private universities decided to inflate grades, a decade later the public universities played catchup, but they never actually caught up to the inflation of private universities, because the inflation slowed drastically in the mid 70s as both private (.4 GPA increase) and public (.2 GPA increase) flattened out. It remained that way for the next two decades in public university while private continued to creep up. Then the public universities began to increase again. The end result being private universities were 0.7 above their 1950s average GPA and public universities were 0.4 above. And remember in 1950 public and private had the same GPA average.

    TL:DR what it shows is private universities having massive grade inflation, and public ones following suit a decade later to try to keep up.

    So though the stick of “grade inflation” is used to complain about lowered standards because of historically excluded students, it’s actually happening because legacy rich white students didn’t like that black students or poor students were getting the same grades as them.

    I’m 0% surprised by that, it’s exactly how the US higher education system works, and how they like it to work. It’s another case of privilege laundering.

  • Alberta’s Draft Curriculum Is Built on Sandy Ground

    A former twitter thread

    In June 2021 Calgary Herald published an opinion piece by Dr. Martin Mrazik. It had a lot of issues, but most importantly it tipped the hand about how shaky the foundation of Alberta’s now introduced new curriculum was.

    “The capacity to critically think emerges from a solid foundation of well-sequenced factual background knowledge.”

    https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-albertas-draft-curriculum-provides-strong-base-for-critical-thinking

    That’s… not true. Dr. Mrazik is making two of statements in that single sentence:

    1) critical thinking is a result of background knowledge

    2) specifically well-sequenced knowledge (and in context he means chronologically sequenced)

    The capacity to critically think is aided by background knowledge, but it doesn’t emerge from it. If critical thinking emerged from content knowledge then the banking/blank slate method of education would always lead to critical thinking. We have over a century showing that isn’t true.

    What is true is that critical thinking is improved by and relies on background knowledge, which is wildly different from emerges from.

    Generally speaking, chronological sequencing makes it so that in the early grades students are taught an uncritical version of the content because the critical assessment of it is beyond their current abilities.

    Chronological sequencing is one way to teach, and this curriculum is very interested in that. However, concept based sequencing is another way, and one that is more supported by constructivist and humanist educational theories.

    The problem isn’t a new one from Dr. Mrazik. He said something very similar in May 2021 in the Edmonton Journal (side note: it was very telling that Dr. Mrazik was basically the only academic supporting this curriculum).

    I spend so much time working with people who follow constructivist, humanist, transformative, and Indigenous education paradigms that I sometimes forget that there’s still a strong group of cognitivists out there.

    Dr. Mrazik is a clinical neuropsychologist whose research is primarily into concussions and psychometrics. That’s where these editorials are coming from. From that perspective I understand what he’s trying to say. That having a “knowledge-rich curriculum” is important.

    However, he seems to be ignoring, or perhaps critiquing (he mentions but doesn’t enumerate what he calls “controversial pedagogy and questionable teaching practices”) the theories that have come from the constructivist thread of theories, such as experiential learning theories.

    There are many ways of looking at critical thinking. The one he’s approaching it from is the idea that you ensure a person has a store of knowledge and then you can teach them how to apply it and assess it critically. So first knowledge, then critical thinking.

    One that’s more informed by constructivists would say that if you learn something that is relevant to your experiences you are able to apply critical thinking to it now. That instead of a house where knowledge is the foundation, it’s a tree where knowledge is the leaves.

    Yes that means that you start with less of a knowledge store, but it means that from the beginning you train in critical thinking and apply critical thinking to all of the knowledge you gain.

    Here’s where it matters. If you apply critical thinking from the beginning you train that as a skill. If you try to add it at the end, you might learn it well, but much of your knowledge store was never thought of critically.

    And Dr. Mrazik is right, if you approach it from a cognitivist or perhaps even cognitive-structural development perspective this curriculum design makes sense. But it’s what Dewey would call education that is training for the future rather than present.

    Rogers would critique whether it actually allows the development of the self-concept or would produce incongruence. Freire would be the strongest critique calling this “banking style” education.

    Basically, we’ve spent the last several decades moving away from cognitivism in k-12 education because it doesn’t produce adaptable thinkers, it produces testable thinkers. So of course a cognitivist scholar of psychometrics will think this is a good curriculum.

    But, what is needed for the future is adaptability, and this curriculum doesn’t lead to that.

  • Thoughts on “The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be”

    A former twitter thread

    This is thoughts inspired by a book review of The Real World of College: What higher education is and what it can be, so take from that what you will.

    I empathize with what they’re talking about, and I have to assume that the book itself talks about this, but the shift isn’t a natural result of PSI’s movement. It’s a shift pushed by external factors.

    PSE has a few different stakeholder groups. Faculty and Staff, Parents and Students, Government and Board, Alumni and Community, and finally Industry and Professions.

    As the authors point out, the Faculty and Staff are pushing for transformational, so lets look elsewhere.

    Parents and Students overwhelmingly see PSE as a path to career. And they’re not wrong, it’s a well worn career trajectory that allows for a lot of variation. But in general they see transformational as being a good thing too as long as it helps career. So look outside the class.

    Industry and Professions maybe were a push toward transactional 20+ years ago, but now, because the advisors there tend to be the People Who Do The Thing in their areas, they love the transformational aspect of PSE and the transferable skills that come with it.

    I hear that in the US Alumni and Community have power over PSIs, maybe that’s good. It tends to be a slightly conservative hold trying to keep the institution looking like it always has. It’s not so much a push to something as an attempt to maintain a status quo.

    The Board and Government I think is where this shift happens. Through budget control, mandates, policy/guidance documents, hiring and tenure control, and control of the executive they have a massive amount of power.

    When power is used to meet government needs of increased employable people in certain areas to either build that area or decrease the cost of labour in that area (or unfortunately in service of an ideological goal) then it tends to be a strong push toward transactional PSE.

    How is that stopped? Well, in a democracy the government and the boards they appoint are supposed to be a reflection of the majority. So the way to change it is to be as public about the transformative nature of PSE as possible, and to be accessible in that.

    It’s not helpful if we talk about PSE as a transformative opportunity in a way that people don’t understand. It leads them to thinking that by transformative we mean something opposite to the ability to have a career at the end, or that it’s just academic jargon.

    We need to talk about how important a well rounded education with classes in many disciplines is, and how it leads to creative people who can think critically, can communicate with a wide variety of others, and are effective collaborators.

    We must push back against people seeing breadth requirements as being underwater basket weaving. Change the narrative about WHY we want students to take classes that aren’t about specific technical skills.

    Because if we change the narrative then politicians get more pushback from constituents when they call for removing discussion of race as something that impacts people. It would mean talking heads get seen as being silly when they complain about the worthlessness of college.

    Staff and Faculty are already on board. Students and Parents hear the narrative beyond the PSI, but are willing to go for transformational education if it also can be applied practically. Industry and Professions are already agreeing with us.

    Alumni and Community, except when they’re harnessed by politicians to score political points, are just a force for the status quo. The only stakeholders who seem to oppose transformative and favour transactional are politicians, so we need to change the narrative.

    We change the narrative by making transformational learning something that people understand. PSE tends to speak in technical terms to others who use those same technical terms. How do we explain it to those who don’t know those technical terms? That’s the way forward.

  • Transformation in Religious Display

    I recently went down to the San Juan Islands in Washington State. It’s a route I’ve been taking for about 30 years, and I remember the view from the Aerostar window and how it has evolved since the early 90s.

    Because I drove that route at least 3 times a year as a kid and at least twice a year as an adult I got very good at using the buildings as my guide post, noticing changes and the steady growth in the northern part of Whatcom.

    Well, moving to a different Province and then a pandemic changes things and it’s been about five years since my last trip down.

    For many years along the road I take there was a small chapel, just big enough a couple people. A place for you to pull off the road and have a moment of prayer. A couple years ago the chapel disappeared. Things like that happen when you only see a snapshot of the road once or twice a year.

    Further down the road there were several other churches, one I always noticed because they always had a big sign talking about how Jesus loved you and you were welcome at their church.

    This year things were different.

    Where the chapel had been was a large anti-abortion sign making some misleading statements and with the implication that 1) late term abortions were the most common (as opposed to less than 2%) and 2) they were some sort of intentional evil (rather than something that almost only happens if the life of the mother is in danger).

    Where the church with the welcoming sign had been there was still a building, but there was no longer a sign welcoming you, telling you that Jesus loves you, or even telling you the churches name. Instead a new sign was there urging you to defund Planned Parenthood.

    As I reflected on these changes it made me realize that this is what has happened in the US over the last 30 years. The Christian faith and prayer replaced with misinformation in support of their culture wars and political statements. White American Evangelicals replaced Christ, first with celebrity preachers, then with political influence, and now with explicit power over others. Maybe that was always the goal, and I was too young to understand it, maybe it’s a shift.

    What I know is that where a roadside chapel stood, now stands a sign with a lie on it, and where a church welcomed you, they’re now telling you to lobby the government.

  • Automation and Career Development

    This was originally a twitter thread

    I’m seeing a lot of people talking about how people should go into HS only jobs or trades instead of university. Lets put aside that the unemployment rate for trades is often worse than jobs that require a university degree, instead I’ll tell you a story about the economy.

    I grew up in BC. And the alternative to university that was pushed when I was in high school was either the family farm (I lived in a farming community) or the lumber industry. FYI, this is a #CareerDevelopment story.

    It was the 90s and the lumber industry was strong. If you weren’t from a farming family the non-university jobs talked about were forestry/lumber, construction, plumber/electrician, and first responders. In the mill towns it was pretty much just forestry/lumber.

    The forestry and lumber industry was very people intensive. People to cut trees, people to plant trees, people to move logs, people to run the mills, people to support all of those industries, people to work in secondary industries (wood product manufacturing).

    So it’s the 90s and there’s about 100,000 jobs in the industry. They’re good jobs, well paid jobs. Most of them require no post-secondary or maybe a certificate.

    When I moved to Calgary five years ago the way people talked about the oil sands was exactly the way people talked about the lumber industry in BC when I was a kid.

    Now, I say that there were good jobs, and there were, but the number of jobs wasn’t really going up. And this doesn’t get noticed in the short term, but what it means is that the industry isn’t growing, which means the future won’t be bright for people trying to get in.

    Oh, productivity kept going up, the money the industry brought into the province kept going up, but employment was stagnant. That was never mentioned to teens looking to what their future could be though.

    So, what happened to that industry? Well, the 2000s happened. And at the end of it the industry had shrunk 50%. The 2000s were filled with talk about how we needed to “retrain” forestry and lumber workers.

    Magic bullet after magic bullet was proposed. The government started talking up trades, while ignoring the increasing trades unemployment rate. The jobs that had lower unemployment? Work that required a bachelors degree.

    FYI, here’s the Forestry & Lumber industry over 20 years. Yeah, it was bad.

    I talked in depth about the so-called Trades shortages about five years ago. TL:DR the only trades that have lower unemployment than bachelors degree requiring jobs are the ones that required two years of post-secondary apprenticeship program.

    That’s an important point a lot of people forget. Trades school in Canada is run through the same post-secondary system as Bachelors. The programs are generally 1/2 the length, but that’s it. So when I talk about post-secondary I mean Certs, Diplomas, Trades, and Degrees.

    What’s the point of this story?

    1. jobs that don’t require post-secondary are being automated
    2. once a resource extraction industry automates they never bring the jobs back
    3. people with post-secondary have an easier time changing industries when jobs disappear

    So, if you want to tell someone not to go to get a Bachelors degree, you’re still probably going to be telling them to go to post-secondary. That’s the way of the world now.

    As I look back on the people who talked up forestry when I was a kid I notice something. Most of them were let go when the mill automated or they changed industries in their late 40s. Some of them went to post-secondary then to retrain/reskill, and that’s a good thing.

    But here’s where it comes to Alberta. The same automation warning signs are there for the oil & gas industry. I had a student who I worked with a few years ago. He’d spent 15 years in the oil sands and decided to change jobs. Why? Because he saw the signs. He knew that his job was going to be automated in the next five years, so he decided to train now for the IT job that was going to replace 10 people who were doing what he was doing before.

    And that’s where we get back to #CareerDevelopment. Students need to learn not what the past industries were, but what industries are growing and flourishing. That is going to require post-secondary, of some kind.