York University has been caught in a firestorm over its decision to side with a male student over his wish to be excused from a group project because of his claim that his religious beliefs prevented him from working with women. This case has again reignited the age-old debate between secularism and religious values and between inclusiveness and diversity, debates that university administrations have historically been plagued with. Many have found the student’s request and York’s decision to be completely at odds with the progressive ideals of feminism.
Of course, religious freedom is one of the hallmarks of liberal democracy and a celebrated Canadian value. However, many commentators have denounced this incident as an affront to women’s rights. The faculty member involved, Professor J. Paul Grayson, a Sociology professor, defended his refusal to accommodate the student by citing his fear of being an “accessory to sexism.” This charge of sexism has gained ammunition and has dominated the national narrative. But, is this really such a clear-cut case of gender discrimination as headlines and social media platforms have been quick to assert?
Structural sexism is encountered every day in our universities, offices and homes, and we should fight it everywhere. However, separating men and women cannot be necessarily assumed to be an assertion of male supremacy or in the reverse, female inferiority. Certainly, there are entire states and cultures that segregate sexes based on such bigoted views and while tempting, it is premature, unfair and myopic to come to that conclusion in this case.
In some religious communities, gender separation is viewed as a way of encouraging modest conduct between the sexes, and accordingly, it is practiced by both men and women alike. The idea is then not that the men or women think association with the opposite sex leads to defilement, but that limiting the mixing of unmarried men and women helps prevent sexual distraction and temptation. Furthermore, physical separation may reflect a personal preference, as in women-only spaces like gyms where women feel more comfortable and safe. Similarly, single-sex schools are not establishments that deem women inferior to men or vice-versa, but rather as some educationalists argue, boys and girls often perform better when separated as such, free from distraction in co-ed classrooms. These kinds of spatial distinctions are not synonymous with gender politics, but rather attest to a deeply personal preference.
To support his stance, Professor Grayson has entertained a provocative hypothetical: what if it had been Blacks that the student did not want to work with? Again, I caution that a refusal to work with female peers in person by a student enrolled in an online course cannot, without further interrogation or explanation by the student himself, be unequivocally taken as a sexist impulse. This is not necessarily a case of snubbing women or as one article sensationally claimed as “soiling himself with the company of women.” However, the kind of racial segregation Grayson imagines is clearly premised on racial supremacy and represents clear, indisputable bigotry. The case at hand is far more nuanced and cannot be dispensed with so easily.
This incident is particularly interesting in a Euro-Canadian context because it is usually women that are the seekers of this kind of religious accommodation, not men. To complicate the charge of sexism that has been laid on both the student and the university by national media, I will pose another hypothetical inquiry: what if it was a woman who did not feel comfortable working with a group of men, and requested this kind of accommodation? Is this also a case of gender discrimination against the men? In theory, it should be. However, I speculate that if the dynamic had been such, the case would not have been so inflammatory, nor would accusations of sexism be as pervasive.
This prompts the question: what is the resulting harm of accommodating the male student’s wish to not work with his female peers, and is it so significant as to override his right to religious expression? Here, I defer to one of the most basic principles of libertarian politics: the harm principle. That is, if an individual does not cause harm to others, then a social body has no right to coerce or restrict the individual. In this case, the Dean had advised that in order to deter harm, the concerned female classmates ought not to be told of such personal accommodation, but in true sociological fashion, Mr. Grayson conducted a hypothetical survey in his class, asking the female students how they would react if such a situation occurred. The findings confirmed Professor Grayson’s suspicions: the women were outraged and felt ostracized.
Moreover, many observers have argued that religious leaders in orthodox religious communities do not endorse the student’s beliefs. Professor Grayson went one step further and took it upon himself to investigate Islam and Judaism’s stance on this matter. He consulted with religious scholars and found that there was no religious basis to the student’s request. However, Grayson failed to consider that naturally, different people adhere to different levels of religiosity. It is important to allow for different interpretations of what constitutes religious requirement- something so personal and subjective. The Supreme Court of Canada has taken heed of this concern and recently devised a test of religious belief where an individual’s sincere beliefs, regardless of how rare, take precedence over a community’s beliefs. While this case does not involve government action, these principles are still useful. Only the person’s sincerity of belief matters, not what their imam or rabbi thinks.
This controversy about gender segregation in the classroom is not the first of its kind in recent times. Across the pond, a similar debate has been raging for months. Last December, the U.K.’s University College London became embroiled in scandal when on several occasions, there was the voluntary separation of men and women in lectures sponsored by Muslim groups, often with men on one side of the room and women on the other. Like York University, the leading universities organization, Universities UK, accommodated the practice and insisted that institutions would not enforce segregation, but if participants were happy to sit in separate groups, that would be permitted as long as there was no disadvantage. This ruling provoked public outcry and condemnation as politicians and commentators alike issued diktats warning of Britain’s backwards descent.
In the final analysis, this is a unique, complicated and sensitive story that has polarized Canadians in recent weeks. However, even in the most intuitively unfamiliar or strange circumstances, we not only have a moral duty as human beings, but also a duty as legal students trained in the discipline of critical thinking and careful reasoning, to challenge or at least question such blanket coverage and dangerous charges, especially where disclosure has been partial and the full picture is still very much unclear. After all, while Professor Grayson has detailed his thoughts, actions and motivations in a variety of media, the student’s identity, reasoning, along with his representation of the story, have been completely shrouded in anonymity. Doesn’t everyone deserve a fair trial?