Rethinking Teaching: Trigger Warnings (Part II)

Trigger warnings are warnings (alerts) given by faculty to students. They indicate that potentially disturbing material will be addressed in future lessons. They are easy to implement and don't take a great deal of time, but serve to create a higher level of transparency in teaching. In my last blog I argued that a standard critique of trigger warnings -- that they are, in effect, caving in to too-sensitive "snowflakes" -- missed the pedagogical mark and was, in fact, more a form of politics disconnected to teaching practices than anything else.

At this point, someone might say "Ok, sure, I can give a trigger warning. But, aren't they about so much more than that? Aren't they about letting students opt out of difficult subjects or about policing language or about alternative assignments?" This is a good question because it alerts us to the fact that there are implications to designing courses. Said differently, there are considerations that we need to build into what and how we teach. I will argue that it is easier to build these considerations in on the front end of course development than to try to gerry-rig something on the back end. 

Let me be clear about my point: I see nothing wrong with the range of instructional practices that follow from trigger warnings. Why? Because without them, the trigger warnings run the risk of becoming meaningless. They become simply words that one says. From a teaching perspective, this is the equivalent of saying something like "here is a problem and I want to alert you to it, but I will not do anything about it other than tell you that there is a problem." Let me be clear: I don't think warnings are meaningless. I think that they do help students get ready for difficult material. (Or, even for material that is not difficult. I often let students know in advance what they will be addressing in future lessons.) But, I also think we should take the next step and pro-actively consider the practices that can give meaning to trigger warnings.  

If you disagree with me (which is fair enough) let me begin with a question: what is wrong with this range of teaching practices (alternative assignments, changes in language use, etc.) associated with trigger warnings? When I talk to people who don't like them, they paint their adoption in stark terms. They suggest that there is something horribly wrong with a student missing a class or completing an alternative assignment or with some modifications to the language we use and within which we teach. I think we need to ask: is there something horribly wrong with this? What bad actually happens if students have, say, alternative assignments? Or, with faculty providing information on resources for students who need counselling? Or, with modifying our language? What bad actually happens in terms of teaching and learning? 

"What are you going to do next?" someone might now say "let students design the course?" 

Well ... no. I'll leave off student involvement in course design for another day because I think that  can be a good pedagogical tool, but let's take alternative assignments as an example that can illustrate the broader trends. The point of alternative assignments is not to let students do whatever they want but, in fact, precisely the opposite. The instructor is still designing the assignment. It is just that students are given a range of different assignments that allow them slightly different pathways through course material. I think most instructors run into problems with this because the request for alternative assignments seems to "pop up" and so they are caught off guard in the middle of a course. 

But we shouldn't be and this is an important point. The fact that there are deeply disturbing and traumatizing elements to, say, teaching about residential schools should not shock anyone who is actually teaching about them. If you are teaching about Indigenous issues are not aware of, say, intergenerational trauma, you need to pause and reconstruct your course materials. If you are teaching novels with graphic descriptions of violence or racism or works that might, say, present LGBTQi+ as "perverts," you should be aware, from the beginning of your course, that there will be students who find this material troubling and disturbing and that it will affect students differently depending on their lived experiences. Instead of asking "why should I have to design alternative assignments?" the more pressing question should be "why did I not think of this before I began teaching this subject?" 

This is a mea culpa. I'm not looking to fault anyone here but I am looking to provide what strikes me as sound teaching advise: begin from the beginning. If you are teaching in subject areas that you know involve difficult and disturbing materials, build that consideration into your course design. This allows the instructor to retain control over assignment design (if this is a matter of concern to you) while simultaneously building a more inclusive pedagogy that addresses the diversity of our student bodies. Said differently, alternative assignments are ways of meeting students where they are, of teaching them difficult subjects, and working with them in a way that builds a strong pedagogical relationship that is, after all, what we are all about? 

I won't belabour my the other points (although I might return to them in future blogs) because you can see where I am going. My interest lies in pedagogies that promote learning and judged in that way, I think we can accept and design alternative assignments, encourage guidelines on the use of language, include information on counselling, provide alternative resources to address a subject matter, and a range of other practices that give substance to the trigger warning. 

Here are a few practical steps we can take.

• Provide students with diverse trigger warnings. Particularly now, as we make use of different "delivery" modes for teaching, we are becoming more attuned to the fact that using a range of media can help teaching. Trigger warnings can be included on a syllabus, a web page, a recorded lecture, a voiced-over powerpoints. This provides multiple access points for students to the warning. 
• With your course materials provide a list or resources (in effect contact information) for students who may have trouble with material. Don't try to solve problems of trauma yourself. Direct students to the resources on you campus or in your community. 
• You likely should, btw, check into these resources in advance yourself. Give a quick call to your universities counselling services to ask what resources they provide. 
• Provide a mechanism for students to raise their concerns with you. It could be a meeting, a virtual interchange, or e-mail but provide some dedicated space for students to indicate their potential problems.
• If your course addresses disturbing subject or language, address that as a pedagogical matter early in the course (perhaps even, say, second or third day). You can do this in the abstract. For instance, I ask students to think about how they feel about having me, a white Settler Canadian, teach about Indigenous issues: do they see any potential pitfalls?  Would they recommend any particular strategies to address those?
• Build in diverse voices where you can. Guest speakers, videos, artwork, discussions, poetry, painting, and the like all provide mechanisms through which students can gain by listening to different voices. 
• Build alternative assignments in advance. Just as an example, a student who cannot write a short paper on residential schools might be asked to read look at other issues (say, compensation, land use, environmental protection, artwork). They key is that this is ready to go. 

One of the interesting things about this level of pedagogy is that I find it often helps me think more clearly about what it is that I want students to learn and why. And, no good assignment need go unused. If there is no need for an alternative assignment, you can use it in the course the next time you teach. 

What if a student indicates to you that they need to miss a class or not address a subject? This is trickier because your plan for a course might rest on a certain progression through material. I do understand that and I have never actually encountered this situation or, if I have, the students involved did not feel comfortable enough to discuss the matter with me (which is completely fair) and simply absented themselves from the class. 

My recommendation, then, comes from a place of theory as opposed to practice and someone might correct me.  If a student indicate this to you, I'd suggest that you acknowledge the legitimacy of their concerns and indicate that you respect them. I'd suggest as well, that you explain the importance of the unit, or lecture, or text within the framework of the course without going into details.  IOW, give the students the most information that you can about course development. Then, with the student, suggest a different approach to the material or other material. For example, one might exempt a student from, say, reading a certain poem but a different poem (perhaps with a written response) would be useful. A student might miss a lecture but you might be able to point them to a video or a on-line source. 

Both of these approaches require that as instructors we think about our goals: what is it that I am trying to accomplish with this lecture, the reading of this poem, this assignment, etc.? If we make that the first step, I am convinced that adaptions are possible, ethical, and do not disrupt teaching. 

The Crisis of the Humanities (III): Am I a Better Person?

Are the humanities in crisis? And, if so, what can -- or, should -- be done about it? I have to admit that I don't really know the answer to either question. Instead, I've been trying to address some of the internal self-criticism generated by the humanities themselves. In particular, I tried to argue that supposed defenders of the humanities who assert limited "my way or the highway" definitions of the humanities as the practice of pure contemplation and who poo-poo the digital humanities and other skill-based pro-humanities arguments are off track. They are, in fact, making claims based on their own limited and, often, unsupported views about what they happen to think is best, rather than what is actually going on in the humanities. Their view, I have implied, has some measure of irresponsibility to it because: (a) they ignore legitimate merits of a humanities based education, (b) to argue that they should be paid to contemplate with the taxpayers who fund their contemplating having no say at all. Worse, yet, (c) these supposed defenders of the humanities are contributing to the very crisis of the humanities that they decry. They are, to be sure, not the only factor involved but the tendency of the humanities to attack itself does not help its cause.

In this blog I want to begin to address another line of argument raised by Stanley Fish: there is nothing inherent to a humanities based education that makes one a better person. This is part of Fish's general rejection of arguments put forward in support of humanities education. Fish argues that any self improvement that occurs in the humanities not the result of design but incidental to the general process of education itself. Hence, he contends, any arguments that the humanities might make for support based on the idea that they help people develop as people (what we might call self-actualize) is misplaced and non-operative from the get go. Let's begin this discussion by thinking about the overall merits of education and what we might mean by being a "better" person. In the next blog, I'll try to continue this discussion and move to a social level.

I think Fish is wrong but he raises a good point. There are merits to education, regardless of what form and focus that education takes. Here, I am using the word "education" to refer to a series of processes that involve both the accumulation of knowledge, information literacy skills, critical analytic skills, self reflection, and the like. In other words, I am differentiating education from propaganda. I've blogged on this before and so will not repeat arguments I have already made. Just assume the difference.

What the studies we have show us is that education --formal, informal -- at higher levels has a range of benefits: it seems to improve voter turnout, civic activism and volunteering, for instance. Higher education also seems to lower crime rates and improve life-long earning potential. And, it does seem to make people happier. Now this is not perfect. You will notice the word "seem" in this discussion. The interpretation of the data requires more nuance than I can (and will) devote to it hear and, to be sure, there are problems. For instance, gender is an important factor contributing to earning potential as well. But, the point is this: the data that we have points in one direction: more education is better than less education.

This makes sense. If given the choice, would you rather be more educated or less educated? If you were making decisions for someone's life, would you help them get more education or less education? When we think about different countries and societies and places to live around the world, which do we think are better: those with higher levels of education or lower levels of education? In fact, levels of higher educational attainment are now often used as one of the features that differentiate cities. When we study universities to assess whether or not they are doing their job, one of the metrics we use is completion rates: what percent of students are actually getting the education for which they paid. Thus, while I know this issue is complicated, the general point is nonetheless true. Education has its merits and we can empirically demonstrate this.

What of the humanities? Can we demonstrate their merits? Sort of.  The answers are less clear when we start to break down different types of education because the studies don't usually do this. They usually look at educational attainment, rather than History or Philosophy graduates verses, say, Commerce or Psychology or Physics grads. Such data is available in different ways but the general studies -- say, of crime rates and educational attainment -- don't query whether or not a History grad is more likely to become a criminal than a Biology grad but whether or not a grad is more more likely to become a criminal than a non-grad. See what I mean?

But, this does not mean that we have no evidence and we cannot make some arguments. First, there is nothing in the evidence that shows that humanities graduates are dramatically worse off than other grads. There is, as far as I can tell, some earning differences but these don't strike me as too significant (and really merit a discussion of their own). And, there are interesting trends in the anecdotal evidence. It shows that a broad range of employers like humanities graduates and, in fact, find them preferable to grads in other disciplines. This does not make you a better person but it does suggest that there are merits to the humanities. I'm not at all certain that I would agree with Fish -- that these merits are incidental. Instead, I would put it differently: education is beneficial and the humanities provide education.

What about being a better person? This is an even more difficult issue to address because it forces us to venture into a subjective ground: what makes someone better? My intention is not to enter into this discussion but to suggest that we should accept some level of subjective perspective and to argue that self-actualization is one ground on which we might rest claims to "better." Why? Because self-actualization (becoming better at being yourself and meeting your own objectives) does not require me to impose my thinking about what is better on someone else. Said differently, better does not equal, for example, thinking like me or knowing more of what I know or reading the books I read or looking at movies the way I look at movies. Instead, it takes advantage of subjective perspectives to ask "does the humanities help people be better?" and leaves the definition of better up to them.

Why would anyone be concerned about being better? Or, at least someone might ask this. Is not the whole idea elitist? Who are you, Andrew Nurse, someone might ask, to tell me (say, a person reading this blog) that I need to be a better version of myself?

That is a good question. I am sure that there are bunch of people out there who are really just plain old happy with themselves. Good. I am not arguing that you should be unhappy with yourself. Indeed, I would likely resent it if someone came by -- particularly someone I did not know -- and told me that I should do something to improve myself.

And ... yet ... does not the idea of self-improvement haunt our society? Go into any Chapters outlet and you'll find an entire section of self-help books: habits of successful people, how to win friends and influence people, how to lose weight, the secret of happiness, but it does not end there. One can find books of remaking one's space, on succeeding in athletics or business or the best places to travel and nifty things to see. One of the odd things about supposedly elitist suggestions with regard to self improvement is that the suggestions for self improvement (being a better self) rarely come from people like me: academics. Academics talk about all kinds of things all the time. How to fix the democratic deficit (better public policy), policies that will address unemployment (better economy), ways to make molecules do nifty things (better, say, medicine), or how to use a telescope to see a star (better research). But, most of the suggestions for being better come not from academics but from mass media. Daytime TV is populated with shows that focus on this but so is speciality programming (one show I watched the other day showed car wreck of a bar transformed -- in a way that helped a community heal after a hurricane -- into a new and snazzy bar that remade self confidence and community).

Said differently, I am not actually claiming to tell anyone how they can be better. I'll ask some more pointed questions in my next blog, but those people suggesting that we can be better and they know the secret of how to do it are legion. They are just not, by and large, in the academy.

What is more important, however, is that no one seems to object to what these people are doing. Whereas some folks will get hot under the collar of an academic says something about self improvement, no one seems to mind at all that there are quite literally hundreds of books out there on the subject, motivational speakers that charge an arm and a leg to come to your company or school to talk about how we can all be better, tv shows that focus endlessly on the theme.

Why? Well, the issue is not better nor who says it. I'm not particularly interested in the disjuncture between something being bad *if I do it* and good if some guy on TV does it. I am interested in what all this tells us about culture and the thing it tells us is that people are interested in better. They may not be interested in what I have to say, and they don't have to be, but they are interested in finding ways to self-actualize: to meet their own objectives, to live a better and, I dare say, richer life. Our society watches these TV shows, buys these books, goes to the talk and pays a premium for the seminar to find out the secrets of life and the way to lead a better, more full-filling and deeper, more meaningful life.

It is not me, I hasten to add, saying that this is a good thing. It is ordinary people (ordinary Canadians) out there watching these shows, going to the talks, buying the books. For a variety reasons about which I am not going to write, there is a desire for something more. Once we establish that fact, then I think we can start to have a discussion of the role the humanities might play in it. That, at least, is the subject of my next blog.

The Practical Humanities Failure? The Critique of the Digital Humanities

In my previous post, I tried to argue that limited definitions of the humanities may make those who use who practice them feel good -- à la Stanley Fish, we can say "I engage in a life of pure contemplation" -- but that is a minimal, one-sided, and impoverished conception of what the humanities are and why they are important. My point here is specific: I am not trying to say that Stanley Fish is wrong when he asserts that contemplation (whatever this might mean in practice) is a key part of the humanities. I am trying to say that it is not the only part and, hence, Fish's contention that anything that diverges from pure contemplation is somehow debased relies on an artificial distinction that he himself has, in fact, created. Fish's conception of the humanities is, in other words, not inherent to the humanities themselves. Indeed, I tried to argue that Fish's conception of pure contemplation relies on the very skills -- the very practical values -- that he abhors. Feel free to disagree with me.

In this post, I want to turn away from the humanities in general to what is called the "digital humanities," which are a particularly target of Fish's vindictive. His argument is that the digital humanities are not, in fact, humanistic. And, that they really don't work. They are tools that are used -- to helps with analysis, at best -- but they cannot run by themselves. They require someone to analyse the patterns they discover or someone, in different words, to program the computer. For this reason, they fail.

My problem with this argument is this: who ever said that the digital humanities functioned as a form of AI? Fish is hunting a paper tiger because he is arguing that the digital humanities fail because they have not fulfilled a promise that they, in fact, never made. I don't work in the digital humanities myself -- although I have some ideas that I might start to implement sometime in the future -- but no one who I know ever argued that they living human beings were not part of the process of analysis. I edit a journal called Acadiensis and we have published a couple of pieces in the digital humanities in the past little while in which historians have used computer-assisted analytic tools (specifically with regard to social network analysis). These are good pieces but none of the historians who conducted this analysis ever said that a human being did not actually conduct the analysis. To argue that analysis still requires human thought is not a discover or a damning criticism. It is, in fact, to miss what the digital humanities are, in fact, all about.

There is a lot of this going around, at least in my neck of the woods. I've heard colleagues reject the digital humanities as little more than web page development, where a bunch of primary sources are posted. It does not, in their view, promote any useful skill. I don't believe that the digital humanities are necessarily the future of the humanities. There will always be scholars who reject the very idea of digital humanities and take a measure of pride in their rejection. They might even claim -- like Fish implies -- that they alone are staying true to the inherent and fundamental basis of the humanities.

I'm not at all certain that that perspective is correct. I want to contest it by making several points:

First, think about how much of our lives as scholars has changed in terms of how we conduct our work. I am writing this post, for instance, on computer. It will never see a hard copy.  It will never be written in cursive. I communicate with my students using various means, which include good old fashioned sitting down and talking, but I also semi-look after a Facebook page and I write a lot of emails. Colleagues text me. Acadiensis maintains a vibrant social media engagement connected to other social media institutions in our field. So, whether we like to admit it or not, shifting communications technologies have changed the way we work and how communicate to students, colleagues, and the broader public.

Second, digital humanities is not about simply creating web sites that archive or list primary documents or sources, but these are useful. The ability to access sources more easily should not be something that we shoot down. Indeed, judging from my own experiences (always a dangerous thing, I admit), many of my colleague and a great many of my students become frustrated when they cannot relatively easily access sources. It is a different technology but is this now part of what libraries and archives and museums were (and continue to be!) about. My town has a local library that is well used.  It does a bunch of things (including a children's summer programme), but one of the things that it does it make it easier for people to get hard covers of books that they otherwise would not have access to in Sackville. (Indeed, the digital world of new communications technologies is so prevalent that many people might not remember a day before Amazon and Indigo online sales. Some towns had a local bookstore. Some didn't.) While using the internet as an archival space is not the be-all-and-end-all of digital humanities (and, again, to the best of my knowledge no one ever actually said it was), there is nothing particularly wrong with this use.

In fact, one might go further, some of the larger projects (online exhibitions developed by archives, early Canadiana.org, the CBC's online archive, material made accessible via the NFB, along with a bunch of others), is really useful. A paper recently published in Acadiensis made really effective use of online genealogy sources. The author told me that he could not have written this paper -- at least in its current form -- without these sources.

This ability to store and access information is, then, not a bad thing. It is something we, as a society, have, in fact, been doing for a long time. It is one of the functions of libraries, archives, and museums, and is something that, as with those institutions, requires specialized skills. One does not just pop a bunch of stuff up on a web page and call it a day. There need to be standard approaches, for instance, to searching for materials.

Moreover, the skill needed for such things as a search (if it is not to become a completely over-the-top time consuming type of thing) is something that those of us who teaching in the humanities know about first hand because many of our students often do a pretty poor job of conducting online searches and so end up with weak sources and weaker papers than they could have otherwise written. Learning something about digital literacy does not replace other forms of literacy -- knowing about culture, history, information in general -- because it is consistent with it. It aids what we do and what we are asking our students to do.

This is my point: even in its most basic form -- providing access to information -- the digital humanities are useful, are consistent with what we generally do in the humanities, and can facilitate the very types of skills (assessing information) that is part of what we seek to do in our classes.

Third, this is important because we cannot stick our heads in the sand. Much of the information we access today as a society comes via new communications technologies: aka, the internet. Is the medium the message? I don't know and I don't tend to make that argument. Content, I usually argue, is important regardless of the medium in which it is conveyed. But, more and more of our content comes to use via the internet and so an ability to grasp what that is, search it, assess it, and engage it is important for our jobs. We can, and will, use more traditional technologies. I still go to historic sites and art galleries, libraries and archives and museums. I still read hard cover books. I don't see that changing and no one in the digital humanities is asking for that.

But, are we to ignore the fact that more and more of our journals are online? A good one here in New Brunswick (NB Studies) is online only and I've read about others contemplating going precisely in that direction as well. Conferences are streamed. I still want to be there in person but I do watch the streams (particularly archived versions when I can't make it.) Web archives are also being made accessible by a range of scholars. Should we ignore this information? Would you council a history student to ignore an accessible primary source? Would a student in literature be told to ignore a short story by an author who was central to their honours thesis? Would we suggest that one could study world music and ignore an easy way to hear what that music actually sounded like? And ... well ... you get the point.

Finally, digital humanities, I should say, are not a singular thing. I've focused on one particular type -- archiving -- because it struck me that much of the discussion I hear about it is misguided. Again: it is not the answer to the future of the humanities but it is not inconsistent with what we are doing in the humanities either. Other forms of digital humanities, as I've indicated above, use tools to help conduct analysis. These tools -- say, specific software packages or search analytics -- don't work by themselves. But, learning how to use them can help with the data we will have in our times, with data that is already being and has been digitized, it can help ask questions that we might otherwise ask of sources.

I read a piece a couple of years ago that made use of qualitative analysis software to assess the frequency with which certain key words were used in federal publications for newcomers who wanted to become citizens (or, more simply, in citizenship guides). To be sure, the analysis did not tell me anything that I did not already suspect, but it caught a few things -- say, inconsistencies in the use of certain words -- that I might otherwise have missed. The authors still had to do the analysis but the tools they used enriched and that has been my experience in history. Digital tools don't replace historical research but they can facilitate it. And, looked at in this light, the digital humanities are something other than a failure.

The Future of the Humanities, or why there is none is not really a good answer Stanley Fish

I just finished reading Stanley Fish's latest admonition in the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Stop Trying to Sell the Humanities, Arguments that they're useful are wrong, anti-humanistic, and sure to backfire." A friend sent it to me, not because he liked it but because we were exchanging links about the humanities and post-secondary education. Fish has always been a bit of an odd analytic bird but this piece is so far over the top that it goes no where. In it, Fish attempts to refute all current arguments about the practical utility of the humanities, singling out the digital humanities for special condemnation. He recognizes that the humanities are in the midst of something some people are calling a crisis and also that his own arguments against the humanities' usefulness leave it no place to stand. In fact, if the humanities were on trial, Fish, one of its better-known authorities, recognizes that he has just written a brief for the prosecution. Other than forcing students to take humanities courses, he writes, something that he implies will not go over well, he "can't think of a plan that would return the humanities to the prominence they once enjoyed. If my fellow humanists can come up with something, they should speak now, or they may be forever holding their peace whether they want to or not. If things proceed as they have been, in the end we'll all go the way of Stevens Point," where the humanities have been, more or less, axed.

This is an odd conclusion for someone to reach after they have concluded that they reject every argument that has been made in support of the humanities and the very oddness of it captures something of the dilemma in which the humanities now find themselves.  What is clear is that Fish thinks "selling" the humanities is just plain bad and that they need to be accepted on their own terms or, in his view, not at all. He has, in this sense, issued this statement: my way or the highway. I find it odd that he is surprised that some people have said "OK,  the highway" and quietly shown him the way to the road and helped hike his thumb in the air. Fish's answer -- that any concession to practicality compromises the fundamental and foundational principles of the humanities - is, in fact, wrong. There is, to be sure, something unseemly about grubbing for money, but explaining to people who fund universities (whether the state, private donors, or students through their tuition) why the humanities are good, and good for you, and can even help you get a job, is not a bad thing. And, to think that it is, is the worst type of ivory tower isolationism. It is, in fact, the definition of ivory tower, in its negative sense. It artificially limits a discussion of the humanities and post-secondary education, creating a binary opposition (this way or not at all), when it would be far more useful to wider ranging discussion.

Let me explain and offer part of a defence of the humanities, or at least part one of a defence. I'll leave the issue of the digital humanities off to another post since it seems to require a special topic.

First, Fish doesn't just set a high bar for the humanities in post-secondary education. He sets a near impossible one: "The question then is to what internal purpose should a university be true, a question that requires us to identify the university's core activity. Aristotle named it in the 10th book of his Nicomachean Ethics. It is contemplation. 'This activity would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating,' as opposed to 'practical activities' which are measured by their effects. Contemplation -- turning matters over and then turning them over again -- is 'superior in serious worth' because 'it aim[s] at no end beyond itself, and [has] a pleasure proper to itself.'"

You can see the problem immediately. Fish spends the rest of his editorial explaining why practical arguments in favour of the humanities don't work but he has, in fact, already cut the ground out from underneath practicality at the very beginning of his discussion. In fact, he could have ended his discussion at this point and we would have been none the worse for it because this captures the substance of his critique.

Yet, who is Fish to set this bar?  Does he actually think Aristotle was talking about the modern multiversity or even the modern liberal arts college? A reference to Aristotle is no guarantee that one is right and surely to contend that the joy of contemplation is the only acceptable argument one can make in defence of the humanities is to cut off debate precisely at the point that we should be having a debate. It is even odder noting the context in which Fish is writing. As countries build walls, engage in twitter diplomacy, treat "alternative facts" as if they were real, etc., surely arguing that anything but a self-absorbed contemplation is a not the provenance of the humanities seems a bit ... well ... not humanistic at all.  In fact, it seems a bit hedonistic.

I'm not saying that contemplation is bad or that contemplation by itself is hedonistic. What I am saying is that the idea that the humanities and the university have only one legitimate activity is (a) wrong, (b) disengaged from the problems of the world around us, and (c) anti-democratic because it limits debate shrinking the voices that can be heard as part of a conversation about post-secondary education.

In place of Fish's assertion that there is only one legitimate activity for the university and for the humanities, I would argue that there are, in fact, many. Historians, for instance, don't write about the rise of fascism purely for the joy of contemplating the rise of fascism. They write as part of an engaged effort to understand the character and dynamics of the past that led to genocide and war. OK, that is one example, someone might say, and an easy one. What others might you have? We study policy history to understand the character and operation of the state, how good ideas became bad policies, or the diverse ways in which public policy is made. We study the growth of the women's moment, as an example, to see how processes of democratization enriched society (and why some people resisted democratization). The TRC recommended the study of Indigenous history because they believed, and I think rightly, that the more Canadians know about First Peoples, the greater the chances for meaningful reconciliation are. We teach Indigenous novels, philosophers, poetry, for precisely these same reasons as well.

Ah, someone might say, those are all basically historical examples. What about other branches of the humanities? Well, yes, they are but  ... actually so were Fish's and so I chose to counter him on that ground. But, OK, let's broaden the framework of analysis. Do students study the languages just for the joy of contemplation or to communicate? Do they study musicology for themselves or is it also placed in the service of performance? Are ethics or -- in this day and age of LGBTQi+ issues -- the philosophy of the subject irrelevant? Do our courts, for example, make decisions with no regard for ethical considerations? Does the law, in other words, ignore ethics?

Here is my point, the university -- and the humanities -- have no one single core activity. I may have some I like more than others. I may have some I am more adept at than others but the fact that one brings concerns and desires other than pure contemplation to the table in one's teaching or learning or research or the diffusion of knowledge does not mean that one is abandoning the humanities. The opposite: one is illustrating their importance by saying that we believe a knowledge of history, philosophy, language, culture, etc., can help us make better decisions as a society, enhance the meaningfulness and beauty of artistic expression, reach decisions that are more fair.  The implications of Fish's argument is that we should surrender this ground because it is a subversion on our true purpose. I will confess, I am not so sure. I might feel that the exact opposite is true.

Second, Fish is quick to dismiss other practical activities that are part of a good education in the humanities: writing (or, communication) and analysis. These are part of what he says is a "skills"-oriented justification for the humanities that is connected to market value, something he rejects. He accepts the idea that students in the humanities gain important skills, but calls the entire effort to explain these a PR "gambit" that is not "a serious effort at justification." Why? because the issue for the humanities, he says, is not about writing or analysis but writing about specific things (say, restoration poetry) and the same for analysis. Hence, the argument is, in his word, "strained." Even more troubling for Fish, this argument is part of a series of arguments that rest on exterior evaluation: they defend the humanities not on their own terms but by accepting someone else's logic and terms.

Hmmm ... I don't necessarily see why good communication and analysis is not part of the humanities' own terms. I've already said that I find Fish's singular justification so narrow that it verges on anti-democratic and ignores or misplaces the idea that there can be more than one legitimate reason to engage the humanities. Likewise, I think there can be a range of different subjects that interest students. Some will study restoration poetry; others the contemporary museum; others Indigenous literature, etc. But, good analysis and communications skills are not incidental to any of these subjects. Moreover, their sheer diversity and breadth require specific skills. For instance, they require that we be attuned to someone else's voice. Think about what they are trying to express or communicate, figure out how we can convey our thoughts effectively so that someone else will understand them, make one's case in a logical way, communicate to an audience that will not necessarily share one's perspective, and ... I could go on but you see the point. Communication, analysis, understanding context, logic of argument, etc., are not incidental the humanities. They are part and parcel of it. The fact that they also have a market logic -- that people in the labour market are interested in hiring people with these skills -- should not put us off.

In fact, I would go much further than Fish seems willing to go and argue that it is these very things that make Fish's conception of contemplation for its own sake possible. Even if one were only engaged in a self-oriented contemplative activity, would that be possible without understanding context? or without logic, or without attention to the voice of the other? I'd argue that without these things contemplation would, in fact, not really be contemplation but merely hazy passing thoughts that lacked form and rigour.

My point here, I want to say, is not really to go point-for-point against Fish. I am interested in his argument against the usefulness of the humanities in order make the argument that the humanities are useful, that they have more than one purpose, that there is nothing wrong with explaining their uses to prospective students or donors or the state, and that things that he dismisses (skills) are actually, in fact, preconditions of the very justification he seeks to maintain for the humanities.

I've run long and there is more to say but, for now, we can conclude on this point: the humanities may or may not be in crisis. I'd need to think about what that actually means before quickly accepting current discourses. What I would say, however, is that Fish illustrates a process by which the humanities become, in fact, their own worst enemy. By using surprisingly narrow definitions of what the humanities are, ignoring the multiple reasons people study and learn the humanities, rejecting out of hand practical uses (which exist in policy fields, communications, performance, etc.) as somehow market tainted and hence debased, proponents of the humanities -- such as Fish -- argue themselves into a corner. They make the argument for those who would cut the humanities and end up, interestingly, begging for someone to make a better argument. In the process, they ignore the very skills on which the humanities rely -- even on their own definition of them.

Marginalization and Free Speech: Steps Beyond a Toxic Environment

To recap: WLU dropped the ball on the free speech issue, even if we assume that the TA is guilty.  I mean not to single out WLU. I'm sure most institutions have similar problems, perhaps even my own, because we don't often think about procedures until we actually need them.

What about the people who have been affected by a toxic environment? What about those whose identities are denied by Transphobia? These are good questions. Surely, someone reading my blog might say that I have spilt a great deal of text laying out procedures to defend someone who I am assuming is guilty. I've explained why and why the rule of law, as it were, is so important to democracy, transparency, and, I'd argue, post-secondary education, among other things. Procedures are not add-ons. They are not things we should discover after the fact as a way of addressing issues that arise from situations such as what happened at WLU. If we only use these procedures after the fact to ensure that the alt.right were given their day in court but that was all ... then that would be a pretty poor use of procedures, even if it would, I am saying, still be a necessary one.

Those who ask: what about the other side? What about the LGBTQ community? Why are you not saying anything that protects them, affirms their identity, provides a positive learning environment for them? I think these are necessary questions and I think addressing these issues is necessary as well. If we simply stopped with procedures that protected those who discriminated but not those who suffered from discrimination (in my example, I assume the guilt of the individual involved), members of marginalized communities would have a very similar complaint and concern to the one I outlined in my last blog.

I want to belabour this point because I think that the response to this question has, in fact, been pretty poor. It amounts to various elements of one of the following:

• That's life, grow up. People these days are just too sensitive. Back in my day, no one took offense. 
• That is too bad but it is the price we pay for living in a free society. I don't agree with discourse that marginalizes someone but the fact is that we have to accept it or we don't have free speech.
• Good education will be disturbing because thinking is disturbing, challenging, it takes us to new places and by challenging our preconceptions necessarily makes us uncomfortable. 

None of these standard responses -- which, I freely concede could be said in a way that sounded more sophisticated -- really, in my view, is an effective response to why historically marginalized communities must accept continued marginalization so that I -- as mainstream a Canadian as you are going to get -- can enjoy free speech. Said differently, if we are going to protect speech, we also need to be well aware of the power relations and inequalities that can infuse that protection. To do otherwise would be naive and academic. If we pretend that conflicts over speech occur only in idealized situations where there are no victims, there is no marginalization, there is no violence against marginalized communities ... then, we are not really discussing a real issue, are we? We are making up a hypothetical situation and applying it to the real world *as if* that hypothetical situation were the real world and it just is not. I will, in fact, go so far as to argue that a failure to address real world issues is disingenuous and irresponsible. I think each of these positions are flawed and I'd like to take this blog to address them. 

The first point is simply empirically wrong. Back in the day, people did take offense to being called names, to being denied equality, to being subjected to marginalizing behaviour, to having the legitimacy of their identities denied. The difference was that they lacked the power to do anything about it. Thus, LGBTQ people did not walk about happy about the denial of their equality, the rejection of their voice, the contention that their identities were illegitimate. In often small but profound ways, in fact, they attempted to assert themselves into politics but it was dangerous. Violence was a normal part of their lives. They could not turn to authorities for help. And, they might even have been rejected by parents and loved ones if the truth about who they were came to be publicly known. The silence of the past is not indicative of acceptance. It is indicative of power inequalities that denied voice to the LGBTQ community. 

Regarding the second point, a fairer question to ask is this: who pays the price? If I (Andrew Nurse) pay the price for my (Andrew Nurse) own free speech that is one thing because that is fair. If I ask someone else to pay the price for my rights and benefits ... well ... that can be fair in some instances but it is not inherently fair. Imagine if I want to buy a car. I do and so I get to drive it. If, however, you (reader) are forced to buy a car with your money that I get to drive ... is that fair? One of the concerns I have about the whole "free speech" debate is that Canadian society seems to be asking marginalized groups (LGBTQ, Black Canadians, First Peoples) to pay the price for White Settler Canadians free speech. Put in this way, you can see the issue that I am having and why I think this idea is problematic.  It is made even more problematic because historically marginalized groups are being asked to pay the price for the free speech of historically non-marginalized groups. This is odd. We are asking someone else to have *their* identity denied or to be insulted with racialized epitaphs so that *I* can enjoy free speech.

Let me spin this point out one step further: you can actually see how upsetting this issue is when we see right-wing intellectuals complaining about what the so-called "radical left" teaches and researches and complains against tenure and research grants.  Many of my friends who are moderates or center-right in their politics complain vociferously when someone says Canada is illegitimate or that Canadians should be asking First Peoples for permission to live on Indigenous land. Why? Interestingly for reasons similar to the concerns expressed by LGBTQ activists regarding the incident at Wilfrid Laurier: it denies the legitimacy of their identity. Said in other words, many of those arguing that it is a drag but marginalized minorities just have to pay the price for the free speech others enjoy, actually become quite upset when they are asked to pay the price. At the most extreme, they then start to argue against tenure and that research grants be canceled. In the US, I gather, some political right-wingers have gone even further and setup web sites where one can report supposedly unfair treatment by leftists and radicals.

As to the third point: maybe. I will confess that I don't really understand this point. There are many things in the world I find disturbing: homelessness, global warming, violence against women are three. But, exactly why learning, say, that there is a solution to homelessness is disturbing is not at all clear to me. Moreover, as a faculty member of long-standing, I work to develop a positive educational environment as does just about every other instructor I know. So, exactly why we have to upset people to educate them is not clear. Yes, history is upsetting when we teach the holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda or Jim Crow. Hence, when I teach similar things -- say, about residential schools -- I work doubly hard to promote a positive environment: to telegraph my intentions, let students know in advance about the disturbing character of the lesson that is coming, to find good news stories to integrate into the lesson (say, stories of healing and recovery), to use appropriate artistic representations (say, from artists who were in the schools and which they have made available in the public sphere), to be available to talk to students after class (say, having a discussion sessions), to provide resources for those who might need them, and the like.

I will likely now jinx myself, but in the twenty years I have been teaching about residential schools, I have not had a single complaint. I am sure students were upset. I was. Who could not be? But, no one has been upset to the point of complaining about me. No one said that I created a toxic environment. And, I think that says something ... not about me but about students. It says students are willing to accept upsetting learning if there is a point to that learning and that point is clear. In other words: if the instructor has done their job. And, this seems to me to be something different from saying "let's debate the legitimacy of someone else's identity" or "let's get a bunch of straight people together to determine whether gay people are equal."

The difference might be subtle but it is important. One can create an education that challenges students and one should, but that is different from upholding marginalization or legitimizing violence.  It is one thing to teach a difficult subject matter (wars, violence, etc.) but another thing to teach in a disturbing way, particularly as there are steps one can take (other than not teaching material) to address the matters one might want to address.

Finally, in this regard, one might ask a foundational question: what is the aim of teaching and how is it best accomplished. If one's aim is encourage, say, "critical thought," (which is a pretty standard aim), then the question one has to answer is: how is this best accomplished. Is it best accomplished in a positive and supportive learning environment or in one strewn with controversy, with upset, and disturbed students? I don't know about you folks, but I am actually at my lowest in terms of learning potential when I am frustrated and angry or when I feel marginalized.

To conclude: more needs to be said. What I have tried to do here is to contest three standard arguments used for upsetting/disturbing students that are often connected to pro-free speech arguments. I find they have few merits and many problems. They ask others, as it were, to pay our bills; they don't provide an environment conducive to critical thought, and they tend to replicate problems rather than providing solutions.

Where Rights Collide? State Support of Religious Education

If there is no attack on religion in New Brunswick and if the "free tuition" problem confronted by Crandall University is -- at least in good measure -- a problem of its own making, can Crandall still make a claim that the policy should apply to its students? In other words, even if the analysis of where the problem comes from is wrong, could the proposed solution -- to extend the policy to Crandall students -- be correct? There are those who will immediately say "yes" and those who will immediately say "no." The "no" side argues that the state should not be in the business of funding religious education, particularly if it is is exclusionary and discriminatory. If Crandall (or, any other institution) wants to offer courses, that is its business, but the state should not support institutions that deny the basic rights enshrined in the Canadian constitution. Those who say "yes" are equally vehement. Crandall offers an educational choice. Why should the state impose its values (the merits of at least some of which they question and suggest might not be as widely held as some people think) on particular institutions? Does it not impose a religious means test on the institutions of our society (those who don't conform to particular state-sanctioned views, don't get funded) and contravene freedom of conscience?

What I want to suggest is that both views have merits and don't. The issue is more complex than quick answers and the quick answers that the proponents of either side offer miss important issues that should be considered. My goal in this blog is to address these issues. I don't think that by so doing I will actually bring clarity to this matter. In fact, I might confuse it more. But, confusing it more might be what is actually needed. What are the complications?

First, the distinction -- as I tried to indicate in a previous post -- between Crandall and other institutions is not as great as one might think. For one reason or another, both the proponents and opponents of Crandall paint it as different, out of step with the rest of the province in terms of post-secondary education. I cannot speak to how different subjects are taught at Crandall but in terms of its relationship with the state, the distinctions are often more matters of degree than kind. Crandall, for instance, can and has benefited from state grants. It does not obtain regular operating financing from the state -- which, again, is its choice -- but over the years its obtained grants in lieu of taxes from the municipal government and infrastructure grants from the federal government. There may be others but those are the two that I am aware of. Its students can also take advantage of tax credits in the same manner as students at any other university, there is a process to transfer credits, its BEd students become teachers in the province so there don't seem to be any problems with certification at the provincial level, and its benefactors can also take advantage of tax credits as Crandall is a registered charitable institution. This, too, of course, is similar to so-called "public institutions."

If we put all this together, in other words, the sharp distinctions that paint Crandall as unique in *not* benefiting from state programmes needs to be qualified. I am not saying Crandall gets as much money as Mount A but that is not, of course, the point (since as I keep saying, Crandall has chosen to define itself differently). What I am saying is this: the idea that it derives no benefits from the state (or, is even under attack by the state) is inaccurate. One can make of this what one will, but the distinction seems to me to be more one of degree than kind, at least in this regard. And, this could be interpreted as support for either those in favour of extending "free tuition" to Crandall students or not. One could argue (a) Crandall already derives benefits from the state and so it is now asking for more -- to be treated the same as Mount
A, say, without wanting to be the same. One might continue to say that no one is saying that these benefits should change but this is the line that is in place and if people at Crandall want to change this line, they are welcome to but that involves a different relationship with the state. Conversely, (b) one could argue that since there is already a practice of state support for Crandall, why would one choose now to impose an artificial limit on that support that penalizes students for the choices that they make when we do not know why they the chose to attend Crandall. To continue: extending free tuition does not give the stamp of approval to Crandall but instead supports students who may or may not have other post-secondary educational options or who may even argue against Crandall's exclusionary policies? Is it fair to harm them particularly when the state has a history of supporting Crandall?

Second, the issue of equality under the law is clearly one that is important. I gather that some folks who support Crandall are considering suing the provincial on the grounds that its new "free tuition" policy is discriminatory in that it precisely limits its provenance to those who attend secularized institutions. This is is not a slam dunk argument, as I've now said many times, because the folks who run Crandall have chosen -- for their own reasons -- to, in some ways, be different. Hence, the issue is not necessarily state policy. But, the Canadian constitution does not simply guarantee equality before the law; it also guarantees equal benefit of the law.

This is an important concept. What does it mean? This: the law cannot actively discriminate or perpetuate discrimination by maintaining policy that produces material harm to identifiable groups of people. As an example, consider one of the original defenses of the old Marriage Act that discriminated against gays and lesbians. One of the defenses of this act was that it did not, in fact, discriminate. Gays and Lesbians were free to marry if they so chose. They just had to marry someone of the opposite sex ... like everyone else! I kid you not. People actually made this argument.

This is where the idea of equal benefit of the law comes in. In this case, the operation of the law worked in a way that discriminated against a specific and definable group of people. They were not deriving the same benefit of the law as were straight people. In fact, the law stopped them from deriving the same benefit. Hence, the issue is not just "does this law treat everyone the same?" but does it discriminate against a specific group of people that we can identify.

In some ways, the "free tuition" law does. It the example I've been pursuing across a number of blogs, it discriminates against poorer students who attend Crandall. Is that sufficient to make the law unconstitutional?

The short answer is this: I don't know. In my view, the law -- as I have said -- does not threaten freedom of conscience. It does not impose any restrictions on Crandall in terms of what it can teach. It does not limit the voices of people at Crandall in terms of their ability to make their case. It does not close down any churches or websites or stop any sermons. I don't see a law suit, therefore, that is launched on the basis that the "free tuition" programme contravenes freedom of religion as likely to succeed. The principle of equal benefit of the law is more problematic, however, and I think there might, in fact, be a case here.

Why do I say that? Well, for the reasons that I've just outlined. We may have problems with some of Crandall's policies and regulations. I do. I've said before I find them scripturally problematic and I am not at all convinced that the types of prohibitions maintained by institutions like Crandall do anything to advance Christianity. At best, they set up parallel institutions that interact poorly with the rest of society. But, even while I have objections to what Crandall does, I find it more difficult to extend -- as I was suggesting above -- that criticism to the students who attend that institution simply because I don't know their views.

At this point in the discussion, someone usually rightly asks "should taxpayers' dollars go to support institutions with which they have problems?" I've tried to explain before that that question is not as simple to answer as it seems. After all, I am required to pay my taxes (and rightly) whether or not I agree with the policies of the state ... and a great deal of the time I don't. So, the issue it seems to me is not like or dislike the policies. The issue is whether or not the state has fulfilled its obligations to equal benefit of the law through its other policies of which Crandall students can take advantage.

At this point, I should also say that I am, partly, confused by this vehemence with which some people put this issue, on either side. I do understand that LGBTQ Canadians have suffered -- and continue to suffer -- a great deal of abuse, violence, and discrimination. They do not feel that institutions that support discrimination should be funded and they have a case. This is something I don't think the people who run Crandall fully realize or have considered as fully and deeply and as sympathetically as they should. We are not dealing with people who are challenges to your religious views in the LGBTQ community, but people who are challenging the old line "God has said that this is a sin, abomination, etc." We have very long history in Canada of using God to justify this-worldly prejudices and I personally believe that this one should be challenged as well. If we look back into Canadian history, we discover that people believed God wanted residential schools or supported racism or opposed admitting Jewish refugees or sanctioned violence against women. Said differently, there are many things that Canadians have believed in the past for which we can find very little scriptural evidence and discrimination against LGBTQ people is exactly the same.

What confuses me about this issue is many things. I'm confused that it has become an issue. I don't understand why some Christians feel that they are under attack when they are so manifestly not (and, if anyone has lived in a place where their religion is actually under attack, they would know the difference between that and modern NB). I don't understand why some Christians have made sexuality "the hill do die on." I've said this before but my "hill to die on" is love God and your neighbour. Likewise, I don't quite get the pursuit of Crandall by its opponents, excepting those people who fall into the category that I just noted in my previous paragraph. Crandall is a small institution with less than 800 students. We are not talking about UoT or UNB or even Mount A.

I began this series of blogs - -which, someone might say "mercifully" -- I now end by saying that if Crandall did not exist, its opponents and its proponents would need to create it.  That might have been an overstatement. The reason this issue -- free tuition for Crandall students -- is important is because it touches fundamental issues in Canadian society that end up not being about education. The key issue, from what I can tell, really is this: is the freedom of religion also the freedom to discriminate? And, if so, how far does that right go? In the US, some people have tried to argue that it extends into society, to the point where I can deny service someone by virtue of their sexual orientation if I deem it offends my religious values.

I don't think we are talking about that in Canada but that is the issue: is the freedom of religion, the freedom to discriminate. As as Christian, I don't think it is. In fact, I am horrified that Christianity is associated with bigotry. I work hard to be open and to be caring and to promote inclusiveness because I think those are the things that are more important to Christianity. I'd be worried, I think, about a society that made that equation (freedom is the freedom to discriminate) easily. It would not be the type of society or the type of religion that is true to my heart and my conception of Canada.

The Netherworld of Public Universities: Free Tuition Redux

One of the arguments made against the free tuition programme in NB is that it does not include "private institutions." It includes only, say, its opponents "public institutions," like Mount Allison University, where I work. There are actually reasons for this. They might not be good reasons but there are reasons and those reasons do not include, as some of the policy's opponents suggest, an attack on religion. In my last post, I tried to address this issue with regard to Crandall University. I argued that Crandall was, in fact, the "author of its own misfortune" in this regard. One need not and one should not slag Crandall, insult its students or its faculty or even its mission. These are choices that the folks who run, work at, and attend Crandall have made and we don't have to like them to be polite.

It might however be a different matter to talk about "public" and "private" institutions because the language does not exactly fit the NB post-secondary educational system. This language of "public" and "private" is, from what I can tell, a language imported from the US where there is a distinction between private institutions and state-run university systems (like the University of California system, as an example).  I'm not at all certain that this language applies easily to Canada, although there might be examples of instances where it does. It does not fit the other universities in NB well at all and its use, particularly by those defending Crandall and its desire to obtain "free tuition" for its students, clouds the issue.

The truth of the matter is that so-called "public institutions" like Mount Allison University exist in a sort of netherworld between the state and private institutions. Crandall, as I noted in my last blog, is a "private institution" for its own reasons. It adopted this approach precisely to avoid the influence of the state on it. (That was, of course, their choice and they did nothing wrong in making it. My question is simply this: after making it, do they have to live with the implications of their own choices?) But, does this make Mount Allison, say as an example, a public institution?

In one sense, yes. Mount Allison is bound by the state.  The provincial government, for instance, can tell us how much we charge for tuition (in practice this takes the form of telling us how much we can increase tuition each year -- 2% this year; 0% last year).  While it does not do this -- and is bound by the law of contract (which all parties prefer) -- it can legislate my salary, that of administrators. We are certified by the MPHEC, which tells us what programmes we can offer and whether or not those programmes are up to snuff. Should they want, the provincial government can also tell us how to teach (specifying say, "deliverables" in terms of learning outcomes or something like that). Our budget is, likewise, dependent on the state and we are bound, as a result of this, by the Charter, the Citizenship Act, and human rights legislation. As a public institution, in this sense, we cannot set limits on who we hire (something the folks at Crandall want to do) in terms of diversity. I don't want to make this point too strongly. The hand of the state rests lightly on Mount Allison University. It is there and it imposes obligations (most of which I have no problems with) but it is not a heavy burden.

It differs from private institutions in a number of respects, most which I addressed in my last blog. One key respect, however, is that Mount Allison is not -- and cannot  be -- a for profit institution. It runs a balanced budget but it cannot run a profit. This is what makes it different from most private post-secondary educational programmes. They are in the for profit business. NBCC, of course, is also a state-run not-for-profit enterprise. Other institutions, however, are. They are in the educational game to educate but also to make money. Crandall is different. It is not a money making institution. It might make money. I don't know: I tried to find its budget online and couldn't, which doesn't say much since I won't claim to be good at searching. My point, of course, is that Crandall is private not because it wants to make money but because it allows it to avoid the obligations that affect Mount Allison and other universities (UNB, UdM, etc.) in NB. Is this category appropriate? Likely not and I'd suggest that it likely should be changed. But, it is the category that Crandall chose for itself.

Mount Allison, however, is also a private institution. The state regulates Mount A but does not own it, as it were. It contributes significantly to its budget but it does not provide its entire budget. Mount Allison has its own governors (Regents) who approve its budget and make financial policy. Its president goes to the legislature (actually, I think, a legislative committee) and answers questions about it, but its budget is determined by the Board of Regents, as opposed to the government. Its academic programmes are approved and certified by the MPHEC and the province can tell us what to do, but the University Senate approves individual courses, changes to majors or minors, and the like. There is, in other words, a substantial degree of self-regulation that goes on (in my gig we call this collegial government)-- including that done through MASU (the student union whereby students regulate themselves) -- and that makes Mount A something of a private institution as well.

For those who know it, Mount Allison's history is that it developed as a Methodist and then United Church institution, becoming increasingly connected to  the state for budget support after WW II. At the same time, it was involved in a process of slow secularization, as a result of a variety of factors. As an institution, Mount Allison confers its own degrees, makes its own decisions about building priorities, and sets its own agenda regarding its self-regulation and administration, among other things. This process of self-regulation does not always flow smoothly as those who witnessed or were part of the strike a couple of years ago know, but that is how it operates on a day to day basis.

This is important because some people -- particularly the belated and odd right wing proponents of free speech -- seem to feel that universities are the equivalent of the state and thus they can just go in book a room and give a public lecture that says whatever anyone happens to want to say. Universities are not branches of the state the way, say, the public schools are or community colleges or even public parks. They are also private institutions and, as a result, have the right to regulate who can rent rooms or speak on campus. Said differently, Mount A is not an open space -- akin to a town square -- and does retain autonomy and independence from the state.

Mount Allison is, thus, neither a branch of the state (in the manner of the public school system) nor fully independent of it. It is neither public nor private, retaining elements of each and existing in between ideal types. This is important because the state does not consult Mount A with regard to policy (because it is independent) even while it regulates Mount A (because it is not independent).  This situation seems contradictory and it may be. It is, however, to suggest that the stark distinction some people want to create between public and private universities in NB does not exist. The distinction is the product of choices different institutions have made and the degree to which they are willing to accept regulation.  This last point may be, in fact, the key difference between, say, Crandall and Mount A and that, it seems to me, is something different than saying one is public and one is private.

The same thing, btw, applies to Crandall. Its web site, for instance, tells students and potential benefactors about the tax implications of their tuition or gifts and that they can qualify for public bursaries and the like. I will confess that I am not familiar with these things because this is not something with which I have much interaction but I think you can see my point. Crandall is also dependent on the state for things like tax breaks for its students and benefactors or public bursaries in the same way that Mount A is.

Said differently, the supports of "free tuition" for Crandall are missing a significant point when they define Crandall as a private institution and fail to note the character and nature of what that means: it does not cut Crandall off from the state-sponsored economic benefits. It cuts them off from this one -- the low income free tuition policy -- but not others. Hence, the distinction that they are making between public and private as if it were black and white fails to acknowledge the gray quality of the distinction they are drawing. Crandall is not being treated markedly different from other institutions excepting to the degree that it has asked to be treated differently. Once we understand the netherworld of so-called "public" universities and the degree to which the state already supports "private" universities, the concerns being raised by those who claim that this policy is an attack on religion become even more difficult to understand.

The Implications of Our Choices: Free Tuition and Religious Education

Free tuition -- whatever that precisely means -- has become oddly controversial in New Brunswick. In previous blogs, I tried to address some of the controversies but I tended to focus on those who opposed free tuition in order to make the case that education was good and that improving access to it carried with it a series of positive effects for the wider society. I also tried to argue that using the educational system and guaranteeing access to it (allowing one meets certain standards) regardless of incomes is neither a new nor a radical idea. It is generally consistent with the mainstream of post-WW II equality ideals that have animated the Canadian polity and that are, in my view, widely supported by the vast majority of the Canadian electorate. In fact, they are so widely supported that I suspect that the vast majority of Canadians would be surprised that anyone would question that idea that expanding access to education is a good thing.

More recent controversies are not in the public eye as much but are interesting to note because they raise interesting questions about the scope of state support for post-secondary education. Here in NB there are several small Christian universities. The only one of any size -- and, hence, the one around which controversy swirls -- is Crandall, a "private" Baptist university in Moncton, NB. Crandall is one of those institutions that, if it did not exist, someone would have to invent it. Both its opponents and proponents seem to desperately need it. Its opponents -- and I've addressed some matters relating to Crandall in the past -- see it as a discriminatory institution that is duplicitous (at best) in the perpetuation of homophobia. It is discriminatory - in that it maintains a faith test - that eliminates non-practicing Christians or people from other religious groups (say, Muslims or Jews) - as well as member of the LGBTQ  communities and -- potentially -- those of us who support them -- from employment or education.

It proponents, of course, have a different view. They tend to argue that Crandall provides educational choice and that the state should not censor or limit educational choice. As I've tried to indicate before in this blog, I am not in favour of a religious means test as a condition of state support for such things as grants. I would not necessarily consider myself a proponent of Crandall University -- in fact, I've argued against their faith test and its theology in the past -- but I do feel that having the state impose religiously-based conditions for is support (that is, in the case of Crandall that it needs to support a specific religious point of view with regard to equality for gays and lesbians) is problematic and a matter of concern. I've also tried to argue that there might be far more ground than we generally believe to accommodate different religious views within the mainstream of Canadian institutions without, in any way, harming those institutions or lessening our commitments to equality (be it religious or with regard to LGBTQ).

This kind of discussion has been raised again regarding NB policies for free tuition because Crandall -- as a private institution -- is disqualified.  The free tuition programme is intended to support so-called "public" post-secondary institutions (NBCC, Mt A, etc.). Hence, students at Crandall, because it is a private institution, do not qualify for the low-income free tuition programme.  Crandall proponents -- including one of its administrators -- have expressed concern about this and tend to argue that this see this as discrimination. Crandall's students, they argue, should not be excluded from this programme simply because they are attending a Christian university. The Crandall spokespeople whose comments I have read have, in fact, approached this issue in a measured and balanced way.  They are, in my view, involved in a bit of spin but the comments that I have read have been measured, logical and reasoned.

Not so, some of Crandall's other supporters who have used much more extreme language. They have mocked the current government (particularly but not exclusively its decision to create a Ministry of Celtic Affairs), accused it of lying about tax policy, and suggested that this free tuition policy amounts to an attack on religious freedom. They have organized a petition, brought it to Baptist churches to sign, and suggested that further attacks on religious might be forthcoming. Indeed, political pressure needs to be brought to bear on this government -- one chap at my church said that we need to show the government that "Christian votes count" -- potentially to the point of campaigning against the government so as to have it defeated.

This is a different question and begs important questions that I write about here because, I think, they go to heart of key issues in contemporary Canadian public life. These include (but are not limited to):

• Should the state fund institutions that do practice discrimination if that discrimination is deeply believed, say for religious reasons? 
• Is religion -- and particularly Christianity -- under attack? 
• Should the state modify its position with regard to religion, say removing the tax free status of religious institutions? 
• Should private institutions be included in free tuition programmes? 

I can't -- and likely shouldn't! -- answer all these questions today but I really do want to address one. It is this: religion is *not* under attack in New Brunswick today. The failure of the current government in NB to *not* include Crandall in its "free tuition" programme has nothing to do with religion. In my next blog, I'll try to address the question of whether or not it should have included Crandall, a question that, I want to argue, is far trickier than either the proponents or opponents of Crandall seem to believe or want to concede. 

There could be any number of reasons for excluding private institutions from this legislation. The most obvious one is that the taxpayers of NB are going to put some cash on the line and it is very difficult to regular private institutions (I'll leave the merits of this to one side). It is far easier to regulate "public" institutions like Mount A. Although it *does not* do this, because Mount A is a semi-public institution, the government can relatively easily regulate it. If it wanted -- and it does not want -- it could legislate my pay, change the way in which Mount A is administered, tell us (and it does do this) what we can charge students for tuition. It could, if it wanted, even insist that we meet certain standards say regarding pedagogical objectives. Mount Allison (the institution at which I work and so I use it as a handy example) is, moreover, bound by the specific requirements of the Charter. I personally do not consider these a burden (and you'll see why I make this point in a minute) but they do require that we conform to equality and human rights legislation. Unlike Crandall, for instance, we cannot specify a faith test for employment or enrollment. Said differently, the more extreme Crandall proponents make it seem like institutions like Mount A have all the benefits that have been denied to Crandall by virtue of their status as "public institutions" but this is not actually the case. There are, in fact, a series of obligations -- to conform to the Charter (which, again, I support) -- and to accept state regulation from which Crandall is exempt.

And Crandall is exempt from these obligations by virtue of its own design. The government did not choose to make Crandall a "private" institution. Crandall did. And, it did this to precisely to avoid the obligations under which Mount A operates. In other words, and more specifically, it did not want to be committed to the equality provisions of the Charter. There are, no doubt, other reasons as well but for one reason or another, the LGBTQ issue has come to the fore in recent years. Crandall also looks to impose (and I don't think this imposition is, in fact, a heavy burden for its students or staff but it is an imposition) specific moral standards and modes of living  as well as promoting certain beliefs to be held in common. This, too, is something that Mount Allison (as an example) is simply not allowed to do. Thus, while I do not consider a commitment to equality, say, to be a burden, the folks at Crandall did and they defined themselves as a private institution precisely to avoid this burden. 

Fair enough. I'm not at all certain I agree, but at the time these decisions were made and when they were revisited (as I am sure they periodically are), Crandall was operating within the framework of post-secondary educational law in NB and within the framework of the federal Constitution. We may not like the decisions that the folks who run and support Crandall made but ... that was their decision to make and they did not step outside the law or the Constitution to do it. 

The question of whether or not a self-defined private institution that has made that decision -- to be "private" as opposed to "public" --  in order to avoid Constitutional and legal obligations imposed by the state should have the benefit of state support is a different matter. And this -- not the question of religious free or religion being under attack -- is the question that is actually at issue. To the best of my knowledge, no serious person, institution or government official questions freedom of conscience in Canada (including NB). I have never heard any serious person question it and where I have heard religious freedom questioned (from people who are best considered unusual or extremist) it has been regarding non-Christians groups, particularly but not exclusively Muslims. 

Said differently, the question that the proponents of Crandall would have us ask -- should we have freedom of religion? -- is not actually the question that is at issue. The issue is *not* the right of Crandall to exist; it is not the right of students to attend Crandall; or even the right of students graduating from Crandall with their BEds, say, to be certified as teaches. The question is actually this: can Crandall live with the implications of its own choices? 

There is more to this and I'll get to that in a while, but when asked in this way, we have a different question. After all, as I said, no one opposes religious freedom. But, whether or not a religious institution that does not have to conform to post-secondary obligations imposed on other institutions should also be allowed to take part in programmes designed for those institutions ... is a different question. Said differently, and perhaps far too simply, should Crandall have its cake and eat it too? 

Asked in this -- what I would argue is a more accurate -- way, the extremism of some of Crandall's supporters becomes difficult to stomach. It becomes, at best, misinformation that is produced by fuzzy thinking that clouds (as opposed to clarifies) an important issue that New Brunswick should be discussing. 

I'll break off here because this blog is already too long but I suspect my point is now clear: we need to discuss the issue of "free tuition" accurately if we are going to advance this policy. 

The (Sad) Politics of Free Tuition

I'll stop after this one and move on to another subject. I promise. I've written a number of blogs that try to make an argument about "free tuition" in NB in three parts:

1. Its hard to argue against education so those who oppose free tuition, don't. Instead, they use vague, imprecise arguments that raise questions about free tuition without coming out and saying they oppose it. This way they oppose it ... without sounding like idiots.

2. Education is good. It has a lot of benefits that include safer communities, greater civic engagement, and higher lifetime earnings.

3. Free education for poorer Canadians is ethically sound and, in fact, a continuation of a broader commitment to equality of opportunity.

Now, I am not arguing that this specific policy is a good policy. Like many people, I guess, I'll need more time to assess its specifics and need to see how the debate turns out and what amendments are made to it. My point is that free tuition is not just a "nice" thing the government can do for poorer New Brunswickers. It has the weight of evidence behind it. In fact, even if we were't interested in being nice -- if we were crassly self-interested -- we'd have to concede that there are appreciable merits behind "free tuition."

So ... who actually opposes it? That is, in part, not clear. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation opposes it because it involves government spending but ... the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is hardly a neutral body. Its a neo-liberal lobby group that is self-appointment (they actually aren't a federation of taxpayers; its just a name. If you doubt me ... did you ever get invited to a meeting or was your view of their policy ever solicited?). In other words, its not a group whose views should be seen as studied or considered. It begins from a particular perspective and simply articulates that perspective, rather than reviewing evidence and subjecting that evidence to critical thought. Thus, the first group that opposes free tuition are neo-liberals, or, more specifically, their mouth pieces. That might have been expected.

It might be easy to dismiss neo-liberal discourse as a been-there-done-that type of thing (neo-liberalism, of course, is not new. It dates as a discourse perhaps to the 1960s and was implemented in Canada in the mid-1980s. In fact, other than the brief Martin government -- which arguably didn't know what it was doing -- all Canadian governments since 1984 have been one-stripe or another of neo-liberalism. Hence, if you think "gee, these people have some new and fresh ideas ... you might want to brush up on history since their ideas are -- far from being new -- a generation or more old). But, what interests me about it, is the number of people I run into who are willing to at least play around with the idea. In my line of work, I meet people who periodically say things like "Mount A would be better off if it were private because then we could charge 15K+$ in tuition." Now, this is, of course, both true and crap. Mount A could, theoretically, charge whatever it wanted for tuition. The question is: would people pay? I've blogged on this before, but the assumption that Mount A's student body will remain constant if it increases tuition is a pretty shaky assumption.

(In point of fact, it flies in the face of capitalist economics because capitalist economics suggest that price influences demand and so I find it odd that the very people who claim to support capitalism proceed as if they market did not matter in the case of tuition at Mount A. I've blogged on this before, however, and so I won't continue.)

Neo-liberals used to try to make a series of arguments to support their opposition to state involvement in the economy (with things like "free tuition").  They used to say that cutting taxes will improve income, make the economy more efficient, lower unemployment, etc., etc. As time has gone by and those things have not happened -- again, its not new or untried, its been around for a generation -- these arguments have tended to drop away. Neo-liberals still make them but we all know that a 1% cut in the HST ain't gonna make any difference to anyone's income. As these arguments ring hollow, they have been replaced by another set of arguments which run something like this: its simply good for people to be paid less and for poorer people to have to scrimp and safe to stay in place socio-economically. Exactly why is it good? Well, supposedly, it does something for morality. It teaches people something that will equip them well for life (even if we cannot quite specify what that is or what benefits derive from it).  Said differently, there is here a principled opposition to such things as free tuition but its not at all clear what that principle is based on.

More troubling are some other views I read in CBC news comments as I tried to track down reasons why anyone would think increased accessibility to education was bad. Most of these views actually ignored the question of increased accessibility to education entirely and argued against "free tuition" on other grounds. I might say that these critics said something like "a free tuition policy is not about education" but they didn't actually even say that. Instead, they just ignored the subject and argued other points, including:

1. It is not fair to the middle class (perhaps, but that is an argument to modify the policy; not ditch it).

2. It is a conspiracy of francophones (I won't even say anything because a denial of conspiracy theories, of course, could simply be taken as evidence that I am part of the conspiracy)

3. It should be extended to private institutions (see point 1 ... although I am not 100% certain I agree here, I'd need to think about it)

4. Its good for people to not have money because if they get an education for free, they will not appreciate it.

Point 4 merits just a bit of attention. I say just a bit because the point is silly and contradicted every day in the public school system. The idea behind point 4 is that if you get something for nothing, there is no incentive to work ... but education is *not* overtime pay. The incentive is one's life. I've already commented on the grounds for assessing success or failure of this policy and tried to argue that success is *not* having everyone in university. Students work hard or not because they find education meaningful or they have specific objectives they want to accomplish or they simply take pride in their work, or they want to compete effectively in the job market, among a host of other reasons. My daughter, for instance, does not work less hard because she goes to high school for free. So, to say this -- people have to pay or they won't work hard -- is an odd logic because it seems to assume that there is no payoff to education and ... well ... I guess I simply don't know what to say to that that I have not already said (I should note that there will still be costs to be born by students, too, but we can leave that off and focus on what education is about).

To sum all this up: the arguments against "free tuition" are an odd mishmash of arguments that don't really have much going for them. Regardless of your particular view on "free tuition," I think you'd have to conclude that these arguments against it don't make a lot of sense and are speculative or are actually arguing for an extension of the program; not its elimination (if we followed the logic of the people articulating them).

The final word on free tuition, I think, will be this: the devil will be the details. I think this discussion is a step in the right direction because it is the first innovative idea we've had with regard to post-secondary education in a very long time.

Education ... What's it good for ...?

In my last post, I tried to argue that education was a good thing. Indeed, it is almost silly that I have to make that argument. It would have seemed bizarre to previous generations of Canadians who went to remarkable length to increase the level of formal education in our society. Previous generations of Canadians made it illegal to *not* education children. They introduced minimum working ages to ensure that kids were in school, they built a massive public educational system and then equally massive postsecondary university and college systems. They subsidized tuition through tax dollars, developed life-long education models, introduced senior colleges, promoted training programs at work, organized correspondence courses and now online courses and frontier colleges and after school homework programs. They expanded the range of subjects taught in schools; introduced immersion, and a host of other things. Those taking their stand against increased access to postsecondary education are, then, taking their stand against the weight of tradition and force of Canadian history. And, this is something we all, I suspect, know. As I said, have you ever seen a parent who has said "Yes, keep my son or daughter uneducated?" Was this, in fact, not one of the arguments against the Taliban ... their refusal to allow education to girls?

There is another argument that we can make in favour of increased access to postsecondary education as well: it is democratic and helps promote equality. Let me lay out the basis of this argument.

Canada is a liberal-democratic society. This doesn't mean liberal as in the Liberal party but liberal in terms of its commitment to individualism. Like many things over the course of Canadian history, that commitment to individualism has been honoured in the breach and we should not ignore that. We should not pretend that Canada was (or, is) a better country than it was (or, is). Individualism, historically, excluded all kinds of people on the basis of skin colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, social class. But, what we could say is that this is a goal and this is a standard against which we evaluate ourselves. For instance, we become upset with sexism -- say, someone who decides they won't hire women for a job -- because it violates our sense of individualism. We think that the best person should be hired for the job and that gender is -- most of the time -- irrelevant to qualifications. Individualism, in this way, serves as a marker against which we can assess decisions.

The Canadian belief in (or, ideal of) individuals is not, however, naive and its not revolutionary. Its not naive in the sense that most people recognize that we live in a society of manifest and real inequality. We live in a society where there are, for instance, significant distinctions in wealth, material  circumstances, access to leisure pursuits, etc. Some children grow up on Cote de neiges; some grow up on impoverished northern reserves; some in the south end of Halifax.

What does this have to do with education? Liberal Canadians (again, small-l) looked on education as the great -- and non-revolutionary tool -- to address social problems. Education, said differently, is the great leveller. It is what allows for equality of the opportunity.  I won't say I necessarily subscribe to all of this way of looking at things but let me lay this argument out for you.  Its runs like this: if individualism means anything in Canada it does not mean what former Prime Minister Trudeau called equality of circumstances. Liberal Canadians accepted economic, social, political, etc., inequalities because, so this theory runs, they are based on natural differences between people. Those differences might in desire (one's wish to do something); they might be in ability (one's ability to do something better than someone else). And, on this level of natural differences, liberals do not believe that there should be much state interference. Again, as Pierre Trudeau among others have said, it is not the state's business to tell people what choices to make with their lives.

This is, however, different from allowing unequal competition based on things other than ability, desire or hard work. If one child, for example, had an advantage over another for reasons other than abilities, etc., that is not, Trudeau and others have argued, true individualism. The wealth of parents is one of those things that can (and, I'd likely argue does) provide an unequal and unfair advantage to some versus others. To continue this example: if one child -- by virtue of his parents wealth -- gets a manifestly better education than another child, then we don't really have individualism because this allows the wealthy child to occupy a more competitive position in the job market. When this happens we have a replication of social class, rather than a competition of individuals where the best qualified person gets the job.

In the Canadian liberal mindset, then, inequality is acceptable when based on certain things (desire, work, etc.) but not when it is based on others (replication of wealth). Why? Because the wealthy child who benefits from their parents wealth has actually done nothing to earn that privileged position themselves. They have obtain an advantage in the labour market, not by dint of their hard work, skill, intelligence, determination, etc., that is: something based on their character, but simply by virtue of the fact that their parents had money.  If this were the case, a liberal might say, we don't actually know whether that rich kid was actually the best candidate for the job. And, if we start hiring people who are not the best for the job then companies and society suffer as well. We know only that he or she benefitted from their parents abilities, skills, etc.; and not whether they have those skills, abilities, etc., themselves. What we know is that that rich child won the genetic lottery and that is all. It is ethical -- is it fair -- that the child should benefit because they happened to get lucky and -- through no fault or action of their own -- were born into a rich family? Should we hire people on this basis? Is that good for employers? Is it good for society?

Increasing access to higher education (again, done as best as we can on the basis of choice, without telling someone what to do) is the way inequalities of condition (the genetic lottery) can be addressed to without levelling society. Instead of lowering everyone to the same social condition, Canadian liberals let equality go but try to raise each cohort of children to roughly the same competitive level through education. It is not 100% equal. Children born in wealthy families still have advantages others cannot afford (private lessons, tutors, trips, and the like) but as long as the same basic level of education is accessible, then, we can have about as good an equality of opportunity as is possible without crossing that line and starting to tell people what to do with their or their children's lives.

Education is, thus, an essential tool through which Canada has tried to realize individualism. All the caveats apply: it does not work perfectly. It  does not create perfect equality. It is focused on individualism rather than equality, etc., and all those are true. The issue, however, with regard to  free tuition, as I said before, is not its perfection. It is whether or not it advances certain objectives.

What all this is designed to say, then, is that there is an ethics to "free tuition." "Free tuition" might be about helping people. It might be about being nice to poorer Canadians. It might be about challenging the dynamics of social class. Or, it might be about a dozen other things. But, at its heart it is about a Canadian conception of individualism organized around the idea of equality of opportunity (which is not equality of condition or perfect equality). In addition to the social benefits that accrue to a better educated society that I mentioned in my previous blog, access to post-secondary education is about a society that is committed to individualism putting their money where their mouth is.

Because, after all, if one claims to believe in individualism and equality of opportunity but does nothing to create an individualistic society in which there is equality of opportunity, then, well ... one does not really believe in those things, does one?