The American Political Science Association--the largest association for political scientists in the world--is planning to host its 2009 annual conference in Toronto. That has some political scientists sufficiently concerned to start a petition to keep the event out of Canada.
What are they afraid of? According to an article by former Western Standard editor Kevin Libin, these political scientists are concerned that some of their fellow academics will get ensnared by Canada's Human Rights Commissions
August 20, 2009:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The 105th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) will convene from September 3-6 in Toronto, Canada at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, the InterContinental Toronto Centre, and the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.
They can't have been that scared, I guess. Meanwhile, Ezra is working on a new book, tentatively titled Shakedown II: Yeah I'm Still Relevant.
3 comments:
The "Speechies" entire agenda has been "made-up"...nothing but a facade.
I thought that bit was hysterical at the time. From what I can see, Canada does a lot better job at protecting academic freedom than the US. There have been countless instances of American academics being persecuted (job loss, denial of tenure, general public harassment, vilification and marginalisation in the media, etc. for expressing ideas not even remotely related to hate) than anything happening here.
In the US, they have this paranoia about the big bad State. For some reason, it's intolerable when the (democratically-elected) government takes a position with respect to intellectual freedom but when unelected, unaccountable agents effectively produce outcomes that are much worse than anything a human rights tribunal can do, that's somehow ok.
I blame liberal free speech absolutists like Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky as much as anyone else, although I understand where they're coming from.
Maybe Henry the K. is a member.
Ti-Guy, what about poor Tim Ball? Sure he's dishonest and incompetent, but I didn't notice that you mentioned those caveats. :)
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