On Wednesday, February 2 keynote speakers Ward Churchill and Angela Davis spoke at Convocation Hall to an audience of 350 people as part of the University of Toronto Student Union’s eXpression Against Oppression week.
Ward Churchill is an American scholar and activist who focuses on the historic treatment of Native Americans and political dissenters in the United States. He gained media notoriety in 2005 for an essay he published in 2001. “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” alleged that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of US policy. Angela Davis is an activist, author, and retired professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is the former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.
The talk was part of a series of campus discussions, performances, and movie screenings organized by UTSU’s Equity Commission to raise awareness of equity issues at home and abroad. Both speakers spoke to a number of issues, including their experiences with organizing against oppression, the conditions of Aboriginals in Canada, and emerging issues at the University of Toronto.
The talk began with a speech by OISE faculty member and Assistant Professor Roland Sintos Coloma, who started the evening talking about what it means to apologize. He made reference to the infamous Maclean’s “Too Asian” article.
“If the media offends us we have the right to talk back,” said Coloma. He urged the audience to voice their concerns and send postcards to the minister of culture to cut public funding from Maclean’s.
Churchill then began to speak, focusing on what he characterized as the detrimental role of corporatization on campus. “Power is not listening. […] You do not speak truth to power, you speak truth to people. […] Private financing of post-secondary education leads to crushing of academic freedom.”
Churchill continued to discuss alleged oppressions of speech due to political beliefs in academic settings. He used the example of Norman Finkelstein, who wrote The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, who was allegedly denied tenure because of his political views.
Davis began her speech discussing access to education and corporatization on campus. “The University of Toronto is not a public institution. It is a publicly-assisted not-for-profit corporation.”
She went on to speak about the “American prison-industrial complex,” alleging that Stephen Harper is taking a similar approach. “It’s a shame he is prioritizing prisons not education.”
At the end of the speech both speakers were invited by Danielle Sandhu, vice president equity, to sign the stop flat fees petititon in support of free higher education.
The talk received opposition from some students. After the keynote the Student Political Action committee condemned what they alleged to be the use of student fees to promote “radical politics” on campus.
“Both speakers said some pretty outrageous things,” said Student PAC representative, Robert Boissonneault, in an email to The Varsity. “They have a right to say those things, though. That does not mean they should be hosted, promoted, and paid for by our student union with our money.”
“U.T.S.U collects nearly $2 million from students every year and that money should be spent on things that matter to ordinary students, not on promoting a radical political agenda.”
