Concordia University administrators really have to get a grip. There is no doubt that they found the Sept. 9 protest over a scheduled speech by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu traumatizing, but to call for the Montreal police to evict a single student sitting at a display on free trade verges on hysterical.
Concordia student Yves Engler, a vice-president of the Concordia Student Union, was led from the university in handcuffs Thursday by Montreal police. Mr. Engler said he was interviewed by police in their car and then immediately released. This shows that the police possess, if not judgment, at least knowledge of the law. The presence of 19 squad cars to quell Mr. Engler and his information table suggests that there was more than enough hysteria to go around.
The ability to distinguish between a protest in which people were pushed and hit and windows were broken and the protest of a student peaceably disseminating information on a university campus where he studies should not be beyond the grasp of the administrators of a large, multi-ethnic, urban university such as Concordia. The top administrative positions of such a campus require the presence of people of sophistication and judgment. These qualities have not been conspicuous at Concordia.
Granted, Mr. Engler deliberately flouted the moratorium on information tables on any subject, imposed by the university in the wake of the Netanyahu protest. (Mr. Netanyahu did not speak after being advised by police that they could not guarantee his personal safety.)
Rather than continue to call for a police presence on campus every time a student tries to hand out pamphlets, Concordia should by now be moving beyond its moratorium. How, exactly, does it calm campus tensions over the Middle East to stop Mr. Engler from distributing pamphlets about the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and related protests scheduled for Oct. 31?
The moratorium on the distribution of information is wrong. The university thought it needed a cooling-off period after the Netanyahu protest, but if so, it should have had the courage to impose this moratorium on Middle-East-related speech alone since that is the issue that caused the trouble. By banning information dissemination on all subjects, the administration is behaving like the kind of teacher who can't discipline the one unruly student, so keeps everyone in after class.
Earlier this month, the university senate called on Concordia's board of governors to lift the moratorium. The board, to whom university management answers, rejected the senate's request. This means the moratorium will go on, and rector Frederick Lowy will continue to hold the extraordinary power to decide alone whether to expel a student. This power, which circumvents the university's code of rights and responsibilities, was granted to Dr. Lowy in September.
When Dr. Lowy imposed the ban, he spoke of a temporary measure while other solutions were found. So what have Concordia officials been doing since then? And how long will they continue this ban?
Neither the ban nor one-man rule befits Concordia as a place of intellectual inquiry and free debate. The incident involving Mr. Engler has revealed that the moratorium, however well intentioned, has become an odious infringement on individual freedom of speech.
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