Changing our minds about the cartoon controversy.

• Date: 01 January 2006
• Author: Fletcher, Joseph F.

When a student newspaper at our university recently published an original editorial cartoon showing Mohammed and Jesus kissing in a "tunnel of tolerance," we viewed this as a clear case of freedom of expression. And we were relieved when university officials, as we expected, likewise defended it as a legitimate exercise of free speech. The incident was, of course, a spin-off from the broader controversy over the twelve caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammed originally published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Truth be told, we tended to think of the cartoon issue almost entirely as a matter of free speech. So we accepted pretty much at face value the claim made by the publisher of The Western Standard in defending the decision to give some of the now infamous Danish cartoons their Canadian debut. He said that "the only appropriate response to free speech is more free speech." (1) And so we were pleased when Alberta prosecutors decided, as we knew they should, that republication of the cartoons should not be prosecuted under Canadian laws against hate speech.

For those of us who tend to think of ourselves as civil libertarians, the notion of imposing limits on freedom of expression is particularly troublesome and should only be done, if at all, with great and deliberate care. The violent reaction throughout the Muslim world, and in some extreme cases the calls to behead the Danish cartoonists, shocked us nearly into smugness over our own appreciation for the fundamental principle of liberty underlying our democratic life in Canada. And we were discomforted by the decision of some Canadian bookstores in choosing to ban the cartoon-carrying issue of The Western Standard, citing a potentially heightened risk to Canadian troops in Afghanistan. So we read with interest the critical commentary in the national press suggesting that the response in the Muslim world was largely an instance of Islamic elite manipulation, designed to place the West on the defensive, using tactics of moral intimidation.

As social scientists, our initial reactions to this affair no doubt derive in large measure from the long tradition of research stretching back to the mid-1950s to the work of Samuel Stouffer, who investigated the empirical bases of support for civil liberties. By documenting how public support for core political values may waver or even splinter in the heat of controversy, this work dispensed with the idea of democracy being based upon broad public consensus on fundamental issues such as freedom of expression. The key claim of these studies is that those in positions of responsibility and power are more likely than the ordinary citizen to stand by democratic values such as freedom of expression through tough times. Thus, the classic formulation suggests that, in present circumstances, university officials and government lawyers should on the whole be more likely than the average citizen to act in ways consistent with basic democratic principles. To be sure, this is not always the case. There are those who, through mischief or ambition, fail to act in ways consistent with our best democratic principles. However, the essential point of this research tradition is that democratic values are better served by focusing not upon the particular passions at stake in a specific controversy but upon the broader issues involved, thus taking a "sober second thought." And in this regard, those in positions of responsibility are often thought, on balance, to be a better bet to do so than those most exercised by a particular controversy or the...