Tag Archives: Academic Left

News

University of Calgary denies legal counsel to accused accused students

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This week, the fascist administrators of the University of Calgary decided to hold kangaroo court hearings behind closed doors.

Excerpt:

The University of Calgary is proceeding with individual non-academic misconduct hearings, which include the possibility of expulsion, for eight members of the Campus Pro-Life (CPL) student group regarding a pro-life display held earlier this month.

The University administration notified students that “legal representatives are not suitable Advisors and are not welcome” at the individual, closed-door hearings, scheduled for April 28th and April 30th.

“This feels like a show trial where they’ve already convicted us unjustly and now want to punish us unjustly,” said Alanna Campbell, CPL President.

Earlier this month, after having set up a pro-life display on campus for the ninth time since 2006, members of the group were notified that they were being charged with a ‘Major Violation’ under Section 4.10 of the University of Calgary’s Non-Academic Misconduct Policy for “failure to comply with a Campus Security officer or University official in legitimate pursuit of his/her duties.” In 2006 and 2007, during the first four displays of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on campus, the University defended the students’ right to expression under the Charter, but in 2008 the University reversed its policy without explanation.

Two hearings will be held on April 28th, at 1:00pm and 1:30pm. The remaining six are scheduled throughout the day on Friday, April 30th, with the first at 9:30am.

“We’ve never received an explanation for why the University reversed their position, nor have we received any explanation as to what a security official’s legitimate duties actually include,” stated Vice-President (Internal) Peter Csillag.

The University of Calgary receives a massive amount of funding from taxpayers. The working parents of those pro-life students are funding the very institution that is intimidating their children.

Here is an excellent post about pro-lifers’ use of visual aids from Neil Simpson’s latest round-up.

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News

University of Calgary students face expulsion for pro-life display

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Story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Eight pro-life students at the University of Calgary (UofC), faced with possible expulsion for their activism, gathered this morning to deliver a simple message to their university: “Do unto us whatever you desire, punish us however you wish; but our convictions shall not change, and we shall not alter our actions based on intimidation.”

These words were read by Cameron Wilson, vice president of UofC’s Campus Pro-Life (CPL), at a press conference this morning in front of the school library.  Wilson is one of eight CPL members who were notified late last week that they have been charged with non-academic misconduct over their presentation of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on April 8-9.

The group has put up the GAP display, which compares abortion to past historical atrocities through the use of graphic images, on the University of Calgary grounds without incident eight times since 2006.

In 2009, the university charged six students with trespassing in relation to the display, but the crown prosecutor stayed these charges prior to a trial scheduled for November 2009. The university has threatened participating students with non-academic misconduct charges on the occasion of each display, but this is the first time they are following through with their threat.

[…]“If [UofC] were a private institution then they would have the right to censor whatever viewpoints they want,” explained John Carpay, a lawyer with the pro-free speech Canadian Constitution Foundation, who has represented the students since the fall of 2008.  “But they get the majority of their funding from Alberta taxpayers, and so they don’t have a right to discriminate based on viewpoint.”

[…]Each student is required to appear at a hearing before UofC’s Vice-Provost in the next few weeks, to which they have been told they are not permitted to bring legal counsel.  There the students could face penalties including probation or even expulsion.  Once a decision is rendered, there are two levels of appeal within the university and then, if necessary, the case would go to the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench.

Unbelievable. In the most conservative city in Canada. Pro-life taxpayers in Alberta are paying an academic institution that censors and persecutes pro-lifers. Imagine. Parents subsidizing the persecution of their own children – subsidizing the violation of the human rights of their own children.

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News

Are liberal lawyers and law professors in favor of open debate?

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Here’s a great post over at Stuart Schneiderman’s blog.

The topic of the post is a high-profile meeting  of lawyers and law professors at NYU Law School to discuss the recent Supreme Court decision that allow businesses to make political donations to candidates in the same way that trial lawyer organizations and teacher unions and abortion providers do. The meeting was supposed to be an open and honest debate on the issues. Was it?

Excerpt:

The most disturbing aspect of the meeting was that everyone took for granted that the the decision had been wrongly decided. There was no free trade in ideas about the correctness or incorrectness of the decision; only a discussion about how to overturn the decision.

In their modus operandi the assembled lawyers were ignoring the marketplace of ideas in favor of their own dogmatic beliefs. These defenders of the marketplace of ideas were constitutionally incapable of finding any merit whatever in an opposing viewpoint.

If you refuse to allow an idea (whether a policy or a belief) to be tested against reality, then the question becomes who has the strongest faith. True believers are willing to fight and die to prove that their strength is strongest, thus, most true.

[…]Why were the assembled liberal lawyers so lathered up about the Citizens United decision. Simply, because they believed, dogmatically and unthinkingly, that corporate money was fundamentally corrupt and corrupting. Corporations were sinners; they had acquired their money by less than idealist means; they had no right to try to influence the democratic political process.

Again, dogmatic belief leads to a fighting faith. Why? Perhaps they wanted to maintain their own monopoly control of correct opinion. The greatest enemy of free trade in ideas today is the monopoly on dogmatic belief that is maintained by the educational and media establishments.

Surely, opposing views are aired, through conservative talk radio and through Fox News. But these engines of the free market in ideas are often subject to attack. Those who prefer a more mercantilist, monopoly control over the marketplace in ideas, want to invoke the fairness doctrine to shut down much of conservative talk radio. They often try to discredit Fox News for trafficking in hate speech.

As several of the commenters on the Times site pointed out, none of these great legal minds seem to have the least problem with the influence that labor unions exert on elections through their political advertising. At a time when the political power of labor unions has brought states, cities, and counties to the brink of bankruptcy… lawyers are about to go to war to stop corporations from spending money on political advertising.

This post highlights a change in my own views. I once wanted to be a lawyer, you see. And my judicial philosophy was one of idealism and judicial activism. But after reading Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” three times, I am now a strict constructionist, while respecting rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Legislating from the bench now seems to me to be the wrong point of view. Injustices need to be fixed by legislators elected by the people, not by an appointed oligarchy of out-of-touch judges. So don’t ever say that I don’t change my mind when confronted with the evidence! It happens all the time. Well, sometimes.