On Wednesday, Quebec’s Minister of Higher Education, Danielle McCann, tabled Bill 32, a document that addresses academic freedoms in university environments. If passed, it would allow the use of any word so long as it is said in an educational context.
Along with the removal of any in-class trigger warnings, the new bill would require universities to also take on an “academic freedom” policy and designate a special council responsible for carrying it out.
- You might also like:
- "We weren't joking": Twitter is actually working on an edit feature
- Amazon under fire for plans to block words like "union" from employee app
Within the opening paragraphs of the bill, academic freedom is defined as “the right of every person to engage freely and without doctrinal, ideological or moral constraint in an activity through which the person contributes, in their field of activity, to carrying out the mission of such an educational institution.”
“Classrooms are not safe spaces; they are spaces for debate,” McCann said in a press conference, adding that “censorship has no place” in academia.
Many are drawing connections between Bill 32 and a University of Ottawa professor who was suspended last year for using the N-word in one of his lectures. Part-time professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval had used the word to explain how some communities reclaim derogatory terms.
When the incident came to light, Premier François Legault and Liberal opposition leader Dominique Anglade agreed that the institution should have defended the professor since the word was used in an academic context.
Under the tabled bill, someone in the same situation as Lieutenant-Duval would not be suspended.
The University of Ottawa’s incident was not an isolated one, though. Academic institutions across Canada in cities like Toronto, London, Vancouver, and Montreal have all had controversial cases of slurs being used as a means of education — all of which have turned up the heat on an ongoing national debate about what can and cannot be said in classrooms.