The monoversity

Further to this post of Damian's, a summary of this column by the Globe's Margaret Wente (full text not online).

Our universities are supposed to be bastions of free thinking and reasoned debate. But, these days, nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes, it seems they'll celebrate every kind of diversity except diversity of opinion. That kind of diversity must be stamped out. And dissent from the prevailing ideology will be interpreted as hate speech.

So it is in the Margaret Somerville affair..

Dr. Somerville's job is to provoke thought. Presumably, that's why Toronto's Ryerson University decided to give her an honorary degree. Ryerson used to be just a college but eager to let everyone know it's playing in the big leagues. Perhaps that explains why many of its students and faculty are determined to be as dogmatic and obnoxious as the ones at the University of Toronto. They've tried to block the degree. They say Dr. Somerville is guilty of homophobia and hate speech...

Dr. Somerville is opposed to gay marriage. She arrived at this position because she thinks that having same-sex parents isn't all that great for kids. She thinks kids do best with two parents, one of each gender, to whom they're biologically related. All other arrangements in her view are second-best...

Sadly, nuance doesn't count in the culture wars. You're either with us or against us, and there's no tolerance for anything in between...

Ryerson should have told the protesters to get a grip. Instead, it wavered and waffled and utterly embarrassed itself. Eventually, it decided to go ahead -- but only after the people in charge of honorary degrees said they never would have picked her if they'd been aware of her shocking views...

...Not for nothing have modern universities been called islands of repression in a sea of freedom. If you're really interested in diversity, you'll have to look somewhere else.

Dr. Dawg, meanwhile, has an outraged sniff of homophobia at Carleton's granting an honourary degree to the good Rabbi Reuven Bulka, a true pillar of the Ottawa community.

Mark C.

Damian adds: as with most Globe and Mail articles, you can read the whole thing if you type the entire headline into Google News.

Posted by markc at June 17, 2006 11:30 AM