Until recently, it was possible to assume that the so-called “campus free speech” debate was a distinctly American phenomenon—the product, perhaps, of a more divisive and toxic political culture. The stories emerging from U.S. campuses, about protests to rename university buildings, insensitive Halloween costumes, administrators being shouted down in the streets—plus the familiar chorus of right-wing pundits sounding the free-speech alarms—sounded like dispatches from an alternate universe. It wasn’t that Canadian students didn’t care about the “problematic” speakers occasionally sponsored by the local chapter of the men’s rights movement. It’s just that they cared more about what was on the midterm.
Most still do. Outside my office at the University of Toronto, prospective students and their parents are ambling through the quad in serene contemplation of the next four years. The vast majority who enrol will graduate without being impacted by this “crisis” that is...
Ira Wells teaches literature and cultural criticism at the University of Toronto. His work has appeared in The Walrus, The New Republic, American Quarterly, and elsewhere.
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