![]() The grafting of the customer service model onto academia is part of the reason that so many professors and ideologically heterodox students have been publicly shamed in the past ten years. The claim that academic freedom must be set apart from freedom of expression because universities are like fast food joints is one of the most preposterous claims I have seen in years. It’s telling that Dea chooses to reduce the role of the professor to that of a fast-food employee. But your hypothetical Wendy’s boss would be within her rights to fire you for doing so.) If you’re hired to work at a Wendy’s, you can’t just tell customers that they’d be better served eating at a McDonald’s. Semley cites the recent work of Professor Dea: Dea compares teaching on campus to working at a fast-food joint. Semley leans heavily on recent work from a University of Waterloo philosophy professor named Shannon Dea, who tells him, “There’s a cultural perception that the university in particular has a mission to foster freedom of expression … I think that this is based on a partial understanding.” Semley spends a great deal of space trying to establish the idea that academic freedom should be separated from the principle of freedom of expression. (Ford’s legislation states that Ontario universities must “implement and comply with a free speech policy that meets a minimum standard prescribed by the government.”) Semley warns that "many students roused by the intoxicating energy of campus politics are drawn to this all-perspectives-are-valid view of the university." For some reason, Semley doesn't spend much time focusing on how Shepherd and Peterson both came perilously close to losing everything for presenting and expressing unpopular points of view. ![]() He connects the Peterson and Shepherd cases to recent policies that Ontario Premier Doug Ford and US President Donald Trump have enacted in order to protect free speech on campus. In an envy-soaked rant published elsewhere, Semley has described Peterson (whose books actually sell) as “a sallow man, slumped at a desk in his Native American-inspired attic longhouse, angrily Googling ‘bikini’ first thing in the morning.” Semley also has used middle-school taunts such as “stupidfest” to describe Shepherd. Jordan Peterson, and tells us that “freedom of speech does not excuse crummy job performance”-the (completely unsupported) implication being that these two mavericks aren’t just wrong, but also incompetent. Semley then goes on to offer obligatory lazy drive-bys on Lindsay Shepherd and Dr. ![]() In the other are white, male, heterosexual conservatives, railing against the political correctness and social-justice warriors (sjws), barely able to eke out their favourite John Stuart Mill quote about liberty and freedom before they’re drowned out by, well, the wail of a fire alarm. He discusses Kant (pointing out that he was a misogynist and racist, of course), the Enlightenment, Vietnam, Mario Savio, Berkeley and the free speech movement, the culture wars 1.0, and he finally brings us to the modern day where he paints a deliberately crude picture of the current censorship crisis as a battle between safe spacers and free speechers: In one corner are the queer, transgender, Indigenous, black-clad progressives, pulling fire alarms to break up controversial campus activities and labelling anyone with whom they disagree a neo-Nazi. Therefore, Semley takes us on a brief tour through the history of free speech on campus. Now, Semley has penned a Walrus essay called “ Are University Campuses Where Free Speech Goes to Die?” In it, he claims that the free speech crisis on university campuses “may be tempest-in-teapot stuff” but it has the potential to "shape the broader intellectual, social, and political discourse, for better and worse." If, say, calling out fashionable gibberish about biological sex being a mere “construct” makes you a “hater,” then bring on the hate. As anyone on social media can attest, we’re constantly deluged by politically correct nonsense that cries out for debunking. If we’re constantly leaned on by the gentle pressure to nod and smile and agree upon the ever-expanding constellations of cultural consumption and appreciation, then disagreeability, scowling, and shaking one’s head feels urgent, and even necessary.Ī book in praise of “hate” is a tough sell, but the message quoted above isn’t wrong. In a 2018 book called Hater: On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability, Canadian writer John Semley offers what he describes as: A somewhat smugly contrarian premise: that hating is good.
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