Endorsement of activist group sees DSU drop in national campus freedom rankings
Because the Dalhousie Student Union (DSU) endorses the Divest Dal campaign, their ranking in a national report on freedom of speech at Canadian universities has dropped to one of the lowest grades in Canada.
The Campus Freedom Index is an annual report released by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a Canadian thinktank who says their mission is to “defend the constitutional freedoms of Canadians through litigation and education.”
The 202-page report gives graded rankings from “A” to “F” to 52 Canadian universities based on the practices and policies of the university and its student union.
This year, Dalhousie was given an “F” in its policies and practices, grades retained from the 2013 index.
Reasons include policies that could “open to the door to complaints about ‘discriminatory’ speech,” and the university not indicating it will depart from its past practices of occasionally cancelling lectures by controversial speakers.
The DSU’s grades for policies dropped from “D” to “F”, and their grade in practices went down from “C” to “D”.
When are endorsements beyond the union’s mandate?
“The Dalhousie Student Union (DSU) slides to an ‘F’ because of its recent endorsement of the Divest Dal movement, which aims to see Dalhousie University end its investments in fossil fuels,” says the report.
The report contains the criteria on which the rankings are given. One criterion for a student union’s policies to be ranked “F” is: “The student union adopts formal positions in respect of provincial, federal or international issues not related to post-secondary education.”
Michael Kennedy, one of the report’s co-authors, says the DSU’s endorsement of Divest Dal falls under that criterion.
Kennedy says that according to the report’s grading criteria, as of last year, the only thing the DSU was doing well was that it wasn’t taking political positions on issues outside of its mandate.
“This changed in the 2013/2014 year, when the DSU council endorsed the Divest Dal movement,” says Kennedy.
The DSU voted to endorse the Divest Dal campaign at a council meeting last November. The campaign, which aims to have Dalhousie divest its endowment funds from fossil fuels and make its endowment investments public, does not receive financial support from the DSU.
Stephen Thomas, a member of Divest Dal, says the group feels it is appropriate for the DSU to take a stance on issues happening at the university.
“The issue of fossil fuel divestment is on the table and is being worked on actively at the Board of Governor level, at the administration at Dalhousie University,” says Thomas.
“We feel that [the DSU] are certainly free to go through their own processes as a council and support or withhold support from any student campaign that is active at the Board of Governor’s level, or active as something that’s happening within the university administration itself.”
Kennedy, who graduated from Dalhousie in 2011 with a BA in political science and economics, doesn’t believe taking a stance on the university’s investments falls under the mandate of the student union.
“The problem with taking political stances on issues that are outside of the mandate of the student union is, of course, students can’t opt out of the DSU,” says Kennedy.
“And at a campus with 18,000 students, there’s going to be a lot of disagreement and diversity of opinion on every issue, especially something like Divest Dal.”
Kennedy says that when the DSU executive endorses a blanket political stance on behalf of its members, it makes students who disagree with them feel like they don’t have a voice in their union.
“It makes them feel excluded from the union, and that’s not the kind of atmosphere that the student union should be trying to support,” says Kennedy.
Thomas, who graduated from Dalhousie’s mechanical engineering program last year, says he has a difficult time seeing how students would feel excluded from the DSU because of their endorsement of Divest Dal.
“With any elected body, there will be those who are of the opinion that is not shared by the folks who have been elected as representatives,” says Thomas.
Thomas says Divest Dal has held a number of “Demystifying Divestment” and “Divest 101” events to make sure they answered all questions people have about their campaign and fossil fuel divestiture.
“We’re not trying to silence anyone,” says Thomas, “and we don’t feel that the DSU’s endorsement of our work is stopping anyone from saying what they have to say, and being heard in doing that.”
Credibility of the report
Divest Dal members had not heard of the Campus Freedom Index or the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms prior to this year’s report, says Thomas.
After seeing they were mentioned in the report, they looked at Michael Kennedy’s LinkedIn profile and saw he was formerly an associate at the Charles Koch Institute.
The Charles Koch Institute is a professional educational organization founded by Charles Koch, chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc. Koch Industries is a multibillion-dollar company with subsidiaries in petroleum manufacturing, refining and distribution.
“I have to call to question that the issue of fossil fuel was just given there as one sentence within the report itself,” says Thomas, “and we feel that the authors of the report not thinking kindly of the endorsement of fossil fuel divestment has more to do with Michael Kennedy working for the Charles Koch Institute than it does issues of freedom or liberty.”
Kennedy says the credibility of the report is evident in the report.
“We’re very clear on our methodology, on our grading criteria, on how we assign grades,” says Kennedy. “We provide almost 200 pages of documentation of 52 universities, 24 of the 25 largest universities that are public in Canada, and the Justice Centre has a lot of experience in court winning cases for students whose rights have been infringed by their university or their student union.”
“There’s a strong legal case in Canada for the kinds of campus free speech rights that we’re advocating for in the report, and that we’re highlighting where they’ve been appealed,” says Kennedy.
“So I think the report really does speak for itself, in highlighting how important it is we recognize that our universities and student unions are failing in their mission to provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas.”
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