Modern-Day Compelled Speech at Universities

Commentary

Land acknowledgments are recited at plays and concerts, sporting events, city council meetings, and Remembrance Day ceremonies. Nowhere, though, are they as thick on the ground as at universities.

“Saint Mary’s University acknowledges that the university is located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. This territory is covered by the ‘Treaties of Peace and Friendship,’ which Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725.  The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources...”  So begins one land acknowledge officially approved for use at my university.

Sometimes, a professor or student will open a session or event by speaking a land acknowledgment just because he wants to. That’s bad enough. But frequently our administrators require that one be spoken. For instance, no one at Saint Mary’s may defend their master’s thesis unless the provenance of the land on which we’ve gathered has been acknowledged.

The ritual of reciting a land acknowledgment at university events has drawn numerous criticisms. I’ll summarize the most popular below. Then I will offer a new one, that the requirement to recite a land acknowledgment degrades whatever academic occasion it introduces.

One sufficient reason that land acknowledgments be optional is that universities would do best not to participate in discussions of matters of the day. A university that requires a land acknowledgment to be spoken is taking a side in a current debate on the ownership, stewardship, or provenance of university real estate. Universities, critics say, should not take sides so that professors and students may do so without fear of contravening a policy.

An objection to the university’s staying out of it is that there just is no staying out of it. By not acknowledging the provenance of the land, the university implicitly sides with those who deny whatever the acknowledgment seeks to acknowledge. The obvious response to this objection is that by staying out of all disputes, a university is not implicitly siding with anyone in any dispute.

Another sufficient reason why land acknowledgments should be optional is that requiring them amounts to compelled speech and a captive audience for it. Universities should not force professors chairing a session to speak words to which they object or subject audiences to political speeches they didn’t come to hear.

Now it’s true that professors who officiate at university functions are volunteers and, most often, are onside with the acknowledgment. Nonetheless, the rule that the official must speak a land acknowledgment will turn certain professors away from volunteering. It amounts to a political litmus test.

A common complaint regarding land acknowledgments is that they are mere words never conjoined with relevant, substantial actions, such as returning the land or paying rent on it.  This is an academic objection to requiring land acknowledgments, as insincerity is an academic vice. Speaking with one’s fingers crossed sets a bad example for students and professors sitting down to their academic work.

I might also mention the mawkish solemnity with which land acknowledgments are typically offered and received. They invite eye rolling, and then censoriousness toward the eye rollers, especially from those who worked hard to resist rolling their eyes.

Some among those who favour land acknowledgments deny that the ritual has anything to do with the ownership, stewardship, or provenance of university real estate. Land acknowledgments get their point, they say, from their function, not from their truth. Their function is to express the university’s commitment to indigenous Canadians.  The university’s gesture, on this understanding, is a public relations or recruitment tactic.

That land acknowledgments are not really about acknowledging anything, but are public relations exercises, may well be true; nonetheless, requiring a land acknowledgment at a thesis defence or other academic event mars the academic nature of the occasion.

Land acknowledgments, whatever institutional purpose or significance they might have, have no academic significance. Because they lack academic significance, setting aside time for one affects the atmosphere of the session. They are like little yelps and yaps before we turn to do something serious. Why not begin with “O Canada,” or a prayer, or a reading of the latest hockey scores? Speaking a land acknowledgment, like singing “O Canada” or reciting sports scores, expresses disdain for the reason for which we have assembled.

A thesis defence is an academic engagement with an academic purpose: specifically, to test the cogency of a piece of academic work. The university’s requiring that the chair speak an acknowledgment and that the rest of us sit through it amounts to our institution telling us that the academic purpose is just one among others of the university’s concerns, and that a different purpose may take precedence over it.

An objection to my observation that a land acknowledgment is an intrusion by a foreign agent into an academic space is that a thesis defence is not only (perhaps not even primarily) an academic occasion. It is also, importantly, a ceremonial space and occasion, just as, say, commencement is. It is a ritual, and comes with the traditional trappings of a ritual, trappings that have no meaning apart from their association with tradition. We have gathered to celebrate the candidate and to take him across a threshold in his life to a new stage of his journey. The testing of an academic document that he has produced is the central event within his journey at this moment in time, but that event gains its meaning from the context of the ritual in which he is involved and the celebration in which that ritual culminates. Neither “O Canada” nor a land acknowledgment need be foreign to the course of the ritual; indeed, if one or the other is installed in it by a competent authority, such as the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, then it is integral to the affair.

My response is to note that the ceremonial side of university life needn’t always penetrate into the academic side, and that it is often a distraction when it does. Commencement might be a celebration, and so, too, might be orientation and homecoming. The lecture hall and the seminar, though, are not celebrations, at least not for those whose commitments are academic. For these professors and students, the lecture, the seminar, the testing of a document mean what they do simply by being instances of academic engagement, not by being steps in a journey.

Unfortunately, the university of disputation—the university beloved by academics—has been transformed into the university of journey and celebration. Disputing is bad manners, to be avoided as far as possible, or at least contextualized as part of a quest ritual. Let us affirm and celebrate, not investigate, examine, or criticize, especially just for the sake of doing so.

The reality of the contemporary university is that ritual and celebration are muscling out academic engagement. The requirement to recite a land acknowledgment is part of this transformation. Where study for its own sake and academic values were once central, now other missions predominate, and they set the scene for whatever academic engagement remains.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.