Free Speech in Canada? Think Again

Here's a current event that has resounding and frightening implications for education and free speech in Canada: The University of Calgary has threatened to arrest, expel, suspend, and fine members of the university's pro-life club if they display graphic images in a (peaceful) anti-abortion protest scheduled to occur this week. Many people disagree on the issue of abortion and the validity of the students' display, but it seems to me that free speech is once again taking a beating on a university campus. Those in power appear to believe that free speech is a right only for those who agree with them. In other words, everyone's equal--but some are more equal than others.

How might we integrate such a current event into a Social Studies classroom? This is a hot-button topic, as anyone involved in the controversy is aware. If it were to arise in my own classroom, I would try to steer it away from the question of abortion and towards questions regarding free speech: Who sets the limits on free speech? The law, a Human Rights Tribunal, or a university? Those bodies might say very different things about what qualifies as "hate speech." What is our freedom of speech supposed to be used for? For subverting prevailing cultural norms, for troubling the hegemony, for "speaking truth to power"? We should ask our students (and ourselves) to look a little more closely at who holds the power nowadays--at what characterizes the prevailing ideologies--at where hegemony is inscribed. I suspect that such scrutiny, if applied to most Canadian institutions, will reveal that the reins of social control are no longer held by conservative "WASPs". Has there been genuine progress, or has one flawed group been replaced by another? This is a legitimate question to ask, especially in the context of a history/social studies class which examines the evolving power structures and ideologies of the state.