Re: Why SFU Should Have a Policy of Political Neutrality

Arguments in support of political neutrality at universities have appeared over the last four days in:

1) The NYT

2) WAPO

3) The Atlantic

4) Farid Zakaria made an eloquent plea for the same in the leader for his GPS podcast on Sunday

Members of this discussion group have helpfully supplied links to (1), (2) and (3), while (4) is easily accessible.

It would be good if SFU seized the initiative in Canada by formally adopting a policy of political neutrality. In addition to the powerful considerations described in (1) -- (4), reasons include the following,

A. This bold display of intellectual leadership would burnish SFU's reputation on the Canadian scene: far more than the current practice of saying nothing while also remaining mute about the administration's reasons for silence.

B. It would disarm the argument that acts of omission -- not condemning crimes against humanity on a selective basis -- express support for those crimes.

I recognize that declaring a policy of institutional political neutrality may seem heartless and pitiless at a time when civilians continue to undergo tremendous suffering in the Israel/Gaza war. But it is at times when emotions runs hottest that we must reach for clear principles to guide us as an institution.

Best,

Sam

Sam Black

Assoc. Prof. Philosophy, SFU

This note is not AI-generated.

I respectfully acknowledge that SFU is on the unceded ancestral and traditional territories of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Nations.

For those who don't have a subscription to the Atlantic and have used up their quota of free articles at the publisher's site... here's a link to the article Eric mentioned (via our Factiva database):

>>> Universities Shouldn’t Be Ideological Churches

Best,

Mark

From: Eric Gedajlovic (He/Him) <erg@sfu.ca>
Sent: November 15, 2023 9:55:40 AM
To: Sam Black; academic-discussion; academic-freedom@sfu.ca
Subject: Re: Why SFU Should Have a Policy of Political Neutrality

This is an Interesting and important discussion imo. Thanks to Sam for starting it. Here is a piece from the Atlantic that provides some additional food for thought.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/university-statements-political-issues-abortion-princeton/674390/

From: Sam Black <samuel_black@sfu.ca>
Sent: November 8, 2023 10:16:30 AM
To: academic-discussion; academic-freedom@sfu.ca
Subject: Why SFU Should Have a Policy of Political Neutrality

Hi All,

Apologies in advance for the length of this post. But the urgency of the topic seems to call for an extended treatment.

As everyone knows university Presidents have recently come under great pressure to issue public statements condemning Hamas or the Israeli government. I sincerely hope SFU’s administration – from the President on down to any administrator acting in their official capacity – will resist that pressure. They should stick to a policy of political neutrality. The same applies to all employees of the Faculty Union. What University and Faculty Union officials say as private citizens or as researchers, in forums which have no connection with their administrative office, is mostly their own business. The views they express in their official capacity are, however, another matter.

There are many reasons for maintaining a policy of strict political neutrality. Here I’ll mention just one. The world is full of awful political regimes. But if University or Faculty Union officials feel it is their obligation to call out crimes against humanity, then they must not discriminate between crimes for extraneous reasons. They must be prepared to investigate and to act on all credible allegations made by their constituents of crimes against humanity. They will also need to staff offices with qualified personnel to adjudicate those allegations in a responsible way. This will be an expensive undertaking in a school with a comparatively modest budget. Is this a path SFU wants to go down? Where might it lead?

Anyone’s list of regimes, which have perpetrated massive and widespread crimes against humanity, must surely include the current Chinese government. The Uyghur population in Xinjiang Province comprises approximately 10 million Muslims. Since 2017 about one million Uyghurs have been arbitrarily detained in “reeducation” camps. There are additionally credible reports of the widespread rape of Uyghur women by Chinese officials (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071), involuntary sterilization, intense surveillance and gross violations of privacy, the total extinction of religious freedom for Muslims, torture, and allegations of extensive slave labor among the Uyghur population. Both Amnesty International (https://xinjiang.amnesty.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ASA_17_4137-2021_Full_report_ENG.pdf) and Human Rights Watch (https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/14/china-xinjiang-official-figures-reveal-higher-prisoner-count) accuse the Chinese government of committing crimes against humanity under international law. The Trump and Biden administrations have each asserted that the Chinese government is engaged in genocide (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/trump-china-xinjiang.html). The staggering human scale of these ongoing violations is almost impossible to grasp. And there is no end in sight. (For chilling interviews with Uyghur women who have been sexually assaulted with impunity by members of the Chinese government’s security apparatus see, Geoffrey Cain, The Perfect Police State, (2021), esp. ch. 1.)

To date, University administrators and Faculty Union officials have mostly failed to condemn the Chinese government for the massive crimes against humanity (or genocide) it is committing. I follow over a dozen Uyghur rights groups and advocates on Twitter. I have yet to find a link to a statement by a concerned university President or Faculty Union calling out the Chinese government. No doubt impolitic remarks of that kind would be a bad business for schools grown addicted to the premium fees paid by Chinese nationals. Perhaps that is also why costly calls for total disinvestment in China (which Uyghur leaders have demanded) have gone nowhere. But make no mistake. Material considerations of that sort must not be allowed to impede the application of a policy which enjoins University and Faculty Union officials to express their condemnation of crimes against humanity. Office holders don’t get to play favorites once they are in the business of calling out rogue actors; only the magnitude of the crime must determine their response.

To be clear, I believe it is badly misguided for SFU and Faculty Union administrators to implement a policy which permits or requires them to express their condemnation of crimes against humanity. I favor a policy of political neutrality. But if a policy of political partisanship is the rule, then the rules must be implemented in an evenhanded way. Office holders owe it the academic community, which they represent, to avoid making ad hoc distinctions. The Chinese government’s brutalization of its Muslim Uyghur population is just one example of ongoing genocide. The Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine is more brutal still. The very recent ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijan state is another. If political neutrality is not in the cards at SFU, then I’m certain faculty members will nominate many additional candidates. Sadly, they are plentiful enough.

Best,

Sam

Sam Black

Assoc. Prof. Philosophy, SFU

This note is not AI-generated.