Dear Editor:

In the recent past, the University of Waterloo has chosen for its
senior administrators men curiously unattached to principles formerly
thought essential to an institution of higher learning:  freedom of
expression, tolerance of dissent, and a commitment to justify one's
views through the process of open debate.  Why our fair university
should be so accursed compared with other Canadian universities is,
perhaps, an enigma destined to remain forever unexplained.  To those
who read these pages, however, the litany of abuses is long and
familiar, one of the most recent being President Downey's refusal at
Senate to allow debate on administrative intransigence in the search
for a new Dean of Mathematics.

For those of us hoping that the arrival of a new President might mean
a renaissance for free expression and open debate on our campus,
the news of David Johnston's appointment came as a shock -- despite
the hagiography promoted by the University's official press.

Johnston, after all, is the man who as Principal of McGill was
responsible for one of the most egregious episodes of
university-sponsored censorship in recent memory:  the banning of the
Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.karla-homolka.

I was present at the Net '95 conference in Ottawa where Johnston
attempted to justify his decision.  Strangely absent from his talk was
any endorsement of the principle of free expression.  Strangely absent
--- considering that Johnston is a lawyer --- was any discussion of the
tenuous applicability of a ban in one province to publication in
another.  Strangely absent was any mention that over 99% of the
messages in the newsgroup would not have violated the publication ban
had they been published in Ontario.

But the most disturbing thing was Johnston's admission that his 
decision to ban the newsgroup was made on the basis of an opinion
written by the University's solicitor in fifteen minutes.   
You might think that when the head of a university is considering
engaging in censorship, more than a fifteen-minute discussion would be
called for, but in Johnston's case, you would be wrong.

I criticized Johnston's decision in an invited talk given in 1996 at
the University of Toronto, and I sent Johnston a copy.  In reply he was
unable to offer any coherent defence of his actions.  On the contrary,
he took the route of denial, insisting, "I did not censor
alt.fan.karla-homolka".

It may be said that the appointment of a man experienced in the ways of
censorship is simply carrying on a well-established tradition at the
University of Waterloo.   But it is not a tradition of which we should
be proud.

Jeffrey Shallit
Computer Science