Against Zero Tolerance

Abstract

Is dead or just resting? Is Ontario Ministry of Education's ill - fated initiative to direct universities into rigid self - regulation and self - censorship merely a failed one - shot venture by a laughably arrogant and incapable one - term NDP government? Or is tip of an iceberg that may bring a new cultural ice age to expressive culture of universities and, more broadly, to cultural institutions of Ontario and Canada (including not only post - secondary education, but also arts, media, and whole system of information)? Is carelessness about expressive freedoms and due process (which characterizes caring agenda, to which governments are lately paying much lip service) merely an oversight? Or is instead censorious habit of a puritanical anglo establishment which is urgently trying to recycle ethnic parochialism in guise of multi - ethnic virtue, focussing obsessively on symbolic issues while letting globalizing political economy and decaying infrastructure slip through its fingers and out of its sights?The answer to these questions is it depends; depends on what comes next. The zero - tolerance initiative released by ministry on 7 October 1993 was defeated for all practical purposes in universities by March of 1994. Even ministry's friends, such as scandalously misguided Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations (OCUFA), have begun to condemn government (see 8 April 1994 resolution of OCUFA Board). The Canadian Association of University Teachers, representing nearly 30,000 faculty, has, after a long period of silence, also called on Ministry to withdraw its Framework, without planning to redraft or revise. The CAUT position is backed up by a devastatingly critical Reply to Ontario Government, drafted by standing committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. It shows in painstaking and irresistible detail extent to which Framework fails to square with academic freedom and free speech; moreover, documents ways in which threatens legal autonomy of universities, exceeds legal provisions of Ontario human Rights Code, and transgresses case law evolving under code. University administrations, one after another, have voiced their own, well - modulated misgivings.To be sure, all this followed a grassroots movement of faculty, which started at Trent University (with broad faculty endorsement of my public statement On Free Inquiry and Expression) and spread to Carleton, Ottawa, and other universities in Ontario, as well as persistent work of an alert and concerned press and broadcast media who blew whistle on little - publicized demand by Ministry that universities must bring their policies into line by I March 1994 with zero - tolerance framework adopted by Ontario government for application to all their employment, educational, or business dealings. Today, after letter of 9 February 1994 to universities from Minister Dave Cooke, which indicated start of a retreat by government, and following Deputy Minister Charles Pascal's letter of 25 April, which delayed any reporting requirements by at least a year, to June 1995, very few still defend Framework as a useful instrument.At same time, there is evidence that government was only responding to what academic activists had been demanding for nearly a decade through a variety of statements and submissions from OCUFA, CAUT, status of women committees, conferences on sexual harassment or the inclusive university, and an ever - expanding articulation of a concept of equity. Ironically, government's response, which acted as a lightning rod for resistance, was probably unnecessary, in as much as program of cultural - equity activism, not to mention economic - equity activism, has already been deeply implanted in universities in a series of policies and procedures that have been built up on zero - tolerance model: these include sweepingly excessive definitions, imposition of subjective and unscrutinized standards of wrong - doing, and reckless procedural harassment of individuals. …