JAABC supports academic freedom and a diversity of viewpoints. The same principle that supports faculty teaching freely, also supports students learning and expressing themselves freely.
Especially given the power imbalance between professors and students, students can be silenced, or even pressured and intimidated, when professors cross a line in telling their students what they should believe and what political actions to take. We are worried that this may be what happened here. We believe that the classroom is a place that should foster critical thinking and that should allow students freely to come to their own conclusions and to express themselves and to be heard by others without embarrassment or fear.
Where faculty fail to do that, it is essential that the university enforce its own standards and ideals and we call upon UBC to do so.