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The Case of Defamation of University of Alberta
Lecturer Dougal MacDonald
The following article, "Threat to Academic Freedom," was written in
1953 by Charles Herbert Huestis, great grandfather of Dr. Dougal MacDonald, and reproduced by permission of the family. Various sympathizers of the claim that the famine in the Ukraine in 1932-33 was man-made by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin are demanding the dismissal of Dr. MacDonald who teaches at the University of Alberta. They claim that
even if his views
on the so-called Holodomor were not presented in his classroom, he is causing transgenerational trauma and his presence at the university poses a threat. This stand not only blatantly violates the need to make sure freedom of speech prevails in society, and especially in a university environment where inquiry and speech are critical to learning, but constitutes the promotion of an official ideology to which everyone must conform, under the hoax that there are no alternative facts. This is not in conformity with any notion of democracy of any kind. The real issue is to transcend the lowering of the level of political discourse which claims to defend rights by banning what the forces engaged in unleashing an anti-social offensive call hate speech. The battle is not only for democracy at this time when even the most basic democratic liberties are being taken away in the name of high ideals. The fight to use one's speech as an expression of one's conscience is also an integral part of the battle of democracy -- the battle whereby the people empower themselves by affirming their rights in a manner which enables them to hold those who act with impunity to account. The
right to use one's speech is a human right. Without it, one cannot deliberate on the direction of the economy and other crucial matters which affect people's lives and those of society itself such as matters pertaining to crime and punishment, war and peace, the role of ideologies and so on.
The article "Threat to Academic Freedom" was originally
published in the Toronto Star, September 3, 1953.
***
The wave of anti-communism that has been sweeping over the
United States is one of the most amazing social phenomena of modern times. The president [Dwight D. Eisenhower] said a short time ago that it was receding but it has grown in volume.
The New Republic the other day
had a cartoon of a
hooded, black draped figure labelled "Fear," wielding a whip under whose lash Uncle Sam grovels in terror. For some years the antics of [the] committee on Un-American Activities have been viewed with a certain amusement; but no longer so. Eminent scientists have been brought before it and asked questions which indicate the
ignorance of the inquisitioners. The atomic energy committee has been similarly lacking in intelligent inquiry. Leonard Engel, who writes occasionally in The Nation on the progress
of
science says, "In one case of which I know a respected engineer employed by an affiliate of a great university was ruled
ineligible for access to secret materials on the sole charge that he had supported Henry Wallace [of the Progressive Party] in the last election."
Now the inquisition is penetrating public schools and
universities. The Un-American Activities [committee] has demanded that all school books shall be submitted to them for search of subversive materials. According to the report of the scientists' committee on loyalty problems, security now affects half of all American scientists in fields like physics and a growing
proportion in other branches of science. It has now spread to the campus: several departments of the University of California, says Engel -- which also demands a loyalty oath -- make security clearances a requirement for everybody, regardless of the nature or sponsorship of his work.
The Cleveland, Ohio board of education has
recently demanded
an oath of loyalty from all its public school teachers, and the newspaper Plain Dealer printed a picture of the
oath-taking. C.W. Lawrence, breakfast commentator of the Plain Dealer, wrote to his editor: "It seems to me that picture is symbolic of what has been happening in our country in the
past few months -- a weakening of our national character, a deterioration of our national self-confidence, a loss of our sense of humour, as the result of a great unreasoning fear of a nation far weaker, both physically and ideologically than ours." Indeed, the Americans are aping the very conduct which they condemn in Russia. When the atomic bomb was exploded at Los Alamos, an eminent American said, "This is the end of democracy." He meant of course that militarization, secrecy and thought control would be extended so far that self-governing people would lose the power to shape their own lives.
A much-publicized incident of academic intolerance in
universities occurred in the University of Washington a short time ago. Professor Henry Steele Commager of the department of history of Columbia University, under the title of "Red Baiting in the Colleges," writes of this in the New Republic July
25. The Washington legislature had enacted that no salary should be paid to any state employee who was a member of an organization which "advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or violence" which is the formula used to
designate Communists since the Communist Party is as lawful in the States as the Republican or Democratic.
A combing of the faculty uncovered six members who could be
included in that formula, three of them alleged to be present, and three former, members of the party. The faculty committee was inclined to be lenient but not the president, R.B. Allen. His contention was that membership in the C.P. is in itself evidence of unfitness and incompetence, and that concealment of that membership makes the original offense doubly heinous. Professor Commager writes: "No instance has yet been produced where a Communist on a university faculty actually did harm to students or to scientific research. The assumption that a Communist will fatally mislead students is based on the quite unexplored
assumption that college students are nincompoops."
And this brings me to what started me writing this article.
Recently Professor George Hunter, head of the department of biochemistry of Alberta university, was summarily dismissed by the board of governors after 20 years of brilliant service. Dr. Hunter is not, I believe, a member of the Labour Progressive Party, but is deeply sympathetic with the Communist philosophy and headed up a peace council in Edmonton this year. The
president of the university gave a statement to the press in which he said Dr. Hunter's political views had been taken into consideration by the board. "His political views," said the president were not directly responsible for his dismissal. It was brought on by a culminating dissatisfaction over a period of years. But the board of governors had to take note of repeated complaints by students that Dr. Hunter was using his classroom to propagate his political views. In lieu of notice, Dr. Hunter was given several months' salary by the board."
Efforts to obtain from the chancellor and
president any
further information on the question have proved unavailing. Dr. Hunter, in a statement to the press, says that no reason was given by the board for his dismissal. As to the president's statement that he used his classroom to propagate his political views, he denies this categorically. He said to the press that at the close of his last lecture of the winter term on April 7, having ended his official lectures at 11:30 am, he used the following quarter hour in giving his views on contemporary world events. As a result some 17 students of his class of 257 signed a round-robin of protest and this was presented to the board. Such students are emotionally incapable of forming judgements on controversial questions and it is doubtful if they are
intellectually fitted for undergraduate studies.
Some years ago when a group of students at Toronto university
invited [General Secretary of the Communist Party] Tim Buck, protest was made to the president, Dr. Coy. In reply, he said that university students were supposed to be of adult intelligence and thus able to form their own judgements and they would not be prevented from hearing both sides of any question.
Up to the present, outside some sections of the press and
conspicuously, the province of Quebec and the leader of the Progressive Conservative party, Canada has been relatively free from anti-Communist hysteria. It is deplorable that it should break out in a university with the fine academic tradition established by H.M. Tory and R.C. Wallace, its first
presidents.
The editor at Saturday Night,
commenting on the
incident, wrote: "When the governing body of a university commits the grave actions of dismissing a university professor 53 years of age with 30 years of distinguished service in his science, it owes it to him and to the public and to the principles of
academic freedom to make the fullest and frankest statement of the grounds of its actions. This, as I have said above, the governors refuse to do."
(TML Weeky, December 14, 2019 - No. 31)
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