On September 23, 2024, at a consultation session held by the Memorial University Presidential Search Committee, student Matt Barter challenged Chief Risk Officer Greg McDougall to a debate on civil liberties. View the transcript and video below:
Hello, those of you who don’t know me, my name is Matt. I recently graduated in May in Political Science, and I came back to do a Diploma in Public Policy. So, first of all, I’m wondering if the search committee will be conducting a rigorous review on the backgrounds of the shortlisted presidential candidates. I’m not privy to the information from the last search, but the former president, a lot of the issues she had here, like making cuts to academic funding and also increasing administrative costs at the same time. She also had those issues at her former university, and there was a non-confidence motion, and she only held on by one vote at the Senate there, and then she went on to become president here at Memorial. So, I would like someone to commit to there being a rigorous review on that, and also I think it’s important for the next president to be somebody who really supports freedom of expression, academic freedom, and protest rights, and I think not only the president should be a proponent of that but also the administrators under the president should as well because we had a number of instances, pretty much a crackdown on protest at this university. Just last week, the Chief Risk Officer took down a protest sign, and before that, the Chief Risk Officer confronted protestors who had a sign at an event and told them that he was going to remove them from university committees and he was going to replace them with students who had positive things to say about the university and even before that when I protested I was removed from this very campus. So, there’s been a whole history now of censorship and a silencing of dissent. So, I’m wondering, with regards to the presidential search committee, how can you have someone on there like the Chief Risk Officer Greg McDougall, who seems to be a proponent of censoring dissent and seems to actually make that a function of his job. And if the Chief Risk Officer does have a different view on that, I would encourage you if you want to have a debate on civil liberties. I would be glad to debate you, any time, any place.
Matt Barter is a graduate of the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland, holding a degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology. He enjoys reading thought-provoking articles, taking walks in nature, and volunteering in the community.
Leave a Reply