COOPER: Hurt feelings, harassment... the modern prof just can't take a joke

A graduate of York University in Downsview, ON, Frances Widdowson joined Mount Royal University (MRU) in 2008. She was awarded tenure in 2011 and fired a decade later.Firing a tenured professor is not easy. The usual grounds are serious academic misconduct, chiefly plagiarism, and moral turpitude, a quaint Victorian term that refers, more or less, to having sexual relations with students.David Philip Jones, who investigated Widdowson’s firing and acted as the arbitrator between her and MRU said, with some understatement, that “she has controversial views on a number of topics.” However, he went on, “there has never been a complaint about the quality or ethics of her scholarship.” She has, in other words never been accused of academic misconduct. Indeed, “the university has supported and recognized her scholarly activities.” That leaves moral turpitude. Or rather, an expanded view of moral turpitude since no one has accused her of sexual impropriety either.Instead, MRU accused Widdowson of “harassment.” The administration then conducted several investigations and found that she had indeed “harassed” her colleagues by means of tweets they didn’t like.That is, evidence of harassment is to be found in hurt feelings. Evidently, Widdowson’s colleagues are so fragile that her tweets, so to speak, made them cry. This is evidence of moral turpitude... She is a meanie.There was, therefore, no issue of academic freedom involved or of colleagues refusing to tolerate her “controversial views.” But what were those views?In 2020 Widdowson suggested there were educational benefits for those who attended Indian Residential Schools. We now know how dangerous such views are.Bill C-413, a private member’s bill introduced by NDP MP Leah Gazan would criminalize public statements regarding Indian Residential Schools that might be interpreted as “denialism.” The term refers, in this instance, to views that cast doubt on the proposition that these schools were agents of cultural genocide.Moreover, any inconvenient facts would also serve as evidence of “denialism.” They would include any positive statements from former school residents that they learned something useful. But as Mark Milke pointed out in the National Post a couple of days ago (Oct.3, 2024), that would mean silencing the voices of First Nations persons who refused to condemn the residential school system and all its works. It would also prohibit acknowledging that residential schools also taught non-First Nations children, now known as “settlers.”Widdowson also said “hyperbolically” that the Black Lives Matter movement “destroyed” MRU and she raised uncomfortable (to whom?) questions about “trans” persons.Turning now to the arbitration, there were eight procedural issues to which Widdowson objected. These dealt with the way the complaints against her were handled by the administration. All were dismissed.A substantive objection, that she was suspended and then dismissed for hurting her colleagues’ feelings, Jones said, was “not an appropriate penalty.” A “letter of reprimand” would have sufficed.That sort of looked like vindication, but it did not mean that she would be rehired because, as Jones observed, her employment by MRU would be compromised by her “ongoing hostility” towards the administration and towards her colleagues. Her return, Jones said, would be “disruptive,” not least of all because she denied her tweets constituted harassment.Just to be clear: differences of opinion between Widdowson and the administration and her colleagues were OK. That was covered by academic freedom and freedom of expression. Indeed, the MRU administration has explicitly confirmed that they “foster” free speech and “strive” to be a model for allowing opposing points of view to coexist.But when Widdowson’s opinions caused hurt feelings, that was harassment, and “Mount Royal employees have a right to work in an environment that is respectful and free from harassment.” The administration ensured a harassment-free environment, Widdowson responded, by “spending hundreds of thousands of dollars policing Twitter and at the same time raising tuition and cutting back on program delivery.” Mentioning such unpleasant facts presumably would constitute harassment of the administration.Jones then said that, if Widdowson could not be rehired because of the “disruption” that would follow, she should receive monetary compensation instead. The amount is to be settled later this month. Let’s hope it is a big one.But none of the above considerations really account for what went on in the Frances Widdowson case.So, let’s start with some additional basic facts. Frances Widdowson, as so many York graduates, is a classical Marxist. Such persons are not to be confused with activist or even cultural Marxists who think that history has an apocalyptic structure that culminates sooner or later (let’s hope sooner!) in The Revolution that changes everything.Rather classical Marxists believe that economic realities are the most basic forces in society and that they lead to other cultural changes, which they call “superstructure.”Back in 2020 when Widdowson criticized Black Lives Matter and the Indian Residential Schools, she told CBC: “I was generally criticizing ‘woke’ ideas.” More specifically, “identity politics that has become totalitarian … is imposing itself on the university and preventing people from openly discussing ideas.” She said she was aware that “things were being pretty poisoned … but I thought Mount Royal still was a university that valued intellectual exchanges.”The real conflict here was between classical Marxism still open to intellectual exchanges, and wokeism that was not.Here we must consider the fundamentally conflicting assumptions of classical Marxists such as Widdowson, and woke administrators, faculty, and students such as apparently run MRU.To simplify but not distort, classical Marxists reject identity politics in favour of a fundamental truth, that economic relations are the basis and everything else is derivative. Woke practitioners of identity politics say all such so-called truths are conventions or “constructions.” All that matters is how somebody self-identifies. This is also why woke persons are so quick to invoke their feelings. Hurt feelings give them moral authority.This is a closed circuit for the woke, which is why Widdowson called it totalitarian.The woke oppose those whom they call racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, and so on. And if anyone dares oppose them and denies that they are racist, etc., the woke respond first by saying that their opponents are in denial, and then they say that such denials hurt their feelings.About all that persons such as Frances Widdowson can do is point out that giving priority to feelings is what children do. Wokeism is institutionalized infantilism, which points to a final irony: most of the supporters of Widdowson the Marxist would likely identify as conservatives.