Un-Chartered Waters: Ontario’s Campus Speech Directive and the Intersections of Academic Freedom, Expressive Freedom, and Institutional Autonomy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In August 2018, the Ford Government in Ontario introduced a ‘Directive’ entitled “Upholding Free Speech on Ontario’s University and College Campuses” (the Directive).1 The Directive required all publicly supported universities and colleges2 in Ontario to create a free speech policy by January 1st 2019 that applies to “faculty, students, staff, management and guests,” and includes a) a definition of free speech, and b) reference to various “principles” of free speech similar to those elucidated by the University of Chicago (Chicago Principles).3 According to the Directive, speech that is otherwise illegal is not permitted. Illegal speech includes hate speech and uttering threats that are proscribed by Canada’s Criminal Code,4 defamatory speech which can give rise to both criminal5 and civil6 actions, as well as workplace harassment.7 * Dr. Alison Braley-Rattai is Assistant Professor of Labour Studies at Brock University. Dr. Kate Bezanson is Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Brock University. 1 Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, “Upholding Free Speech on Ontario’s University and College Campuses” (30 August 2018) online: Government of Ontario Newsroom [perma.cc/7VXR-K4RB] [Directive].2 This piece is only concerned about the university sector. There are noteworthy differences between colleges and universities with regard to topics discussed in this piece that are unexplored here.3 The Committee on Freedom of Expression, “Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression” (2014) online (pdf): University of Chicago [perma.cc/LAA4-RW43].4 Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, s 319(1).5 Ibid, ss 297-304.6 Libel and Slander Act, RSO 1990, c L.12.7 Occupational Health and Safety Act, RSO 1990, c O.1; Human Rights Code, RSO 1990, c H.19.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.023 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".