We assume that institutions of higher learning are places of openness, not simply of tolerance, where one tolerates another, bears or is willing to ‘put up’ with the others difference. Openness requires much more than the condescension and hostility of tolerance, which always entails a hostile prejudgment, it requires an attempt to understand, to allow for possibilities and to retain this openness to the possibility of something or someone being other than what one is or knows. The problem is of course that we assume this, and in our assumption we fail to realize that institutions of higher learning began as and still are places of indoctrination, where ideology rules. This is itself a narrow reading, but is also the structure within which certain teachers and certain students are able to move beyond, to transcend such narrowness and to create a genuine space for thinking.

The past several months a professor at the University of Toronto, Doug Hutchinson, has publicly undergone an oppressive and repressive violence which arises from the narrowness of such institutions. He uses marijuana for a medical condition which he does not wish to disclose – after all, in Canada we believe that a person’s medical information is private, between that person and his or her doctor. Let us not forget this.

Doug Hutchinson is one of those rare individuals who has for years not only transcended the narrowness of the institution within the walls of the institution itself, but has taken his students with him for the ride – for him it could not be otherwise, since there is no professor who is not also a teacher and no teacher without students. These words or categories of being mean something to him, they are not simply empty signifiers to be uttered, artificially filled and sustained out of necessity and inauthenticity.

As a student at the Universtiy of Toronto I have seen how careless, inhumane and despicable an institution can be. Having spent 6 years at the university, I have seen a few things and have earned the right to speak about them. I met many of my closest and most beloved friends and professors within its walls, or perhaps without them, since many of the professor were ‘contract’ faculty, underpaid and ill treated gems. This says much of the nature of the permanent faculty of this university. As for the administration of the university, which I tried to avoid whenever I could, is an entirely different matter. The University of Toronto is indeed a great institution wherein there are the greatest resources available to students, but with the severest inhumanity one can imagine. Unfortunately, this is so common a feeling, an experience, among former students that the university is not among those universities who survey their recent graduates for ‘satisfaction’ with their education.

It was during my third year that I first met Doug Hutchinson. He was teaching a senior level undergraduate seminar on Epicurus, something he had not done for some time when it was offered that year. I am very particular about my education, my courses, the professors teaching them, the reading material and requirements – all these must work to maximize my learning experience. A course was never for me something to be settled on out of necessity, when this could be helped. For one reason or other I didn’t think I could go through with the course Doug was teaching that year. When I mentioned this to a senior professor cross appointed to philosophy and classics, he made sure I knew that I was making a big mistake and that Doug was not only the best of teachers, but also a wonderful human being and someone to know, that I would be missing a wonderful opportunity. I took the advice from this person whom I respected and the course and fell under the spell of a wonderful teacher. There is really no one like Doug Hutchinson. In that course, now over three years ago, I also met some wonderful people, who are still friends of mine. By hand picking the students, Doug managed to build an actual community, something that is antithetical to the University of Toronto’s institutional atmosphere. His attention to detail, pedagogy and his students couple with his love of the material he was teaching made for an unforgettable experience. I have never taken a better course, one more satisfying.

Since then I have worked with Doug on various projects, taken other courses with him, including independent studies and even a wonderful graduate seminar this past summer, co-thought by Monte Johnson, on their groundbreaking discovery and study of Aristotle’s Protrepticus. Today he is not only the best teacher I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and studying under, but a valued and dear friend. He is truly unique and I have considered myself fortunate to have met this man.

The fact that his use of Marijuana has become an ‘issue’ testifies to the narrowness of the university’s administration and their immediate hostile re-action, and the despicable stigma attached to marijuana. Few people ever think, ‘philosophers’ including, or at least those who masquerade as philosophers, but simply regurgitate the thoughts of others. All this despite the famous Socratic dictum that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. For example, they do not think about how the fact that certain drugs are ‘illegal’ and others ‘legal’ is completely arbitrary, about how this arbitrariness is not at all arbitrary, but the result of complex political motives such as colonialism, imperialism and capitalism that have been at work for some time now. They have little memory of the history of such things. This is of course not at all surprising in our world, in our time, or perhaps in all times.

I have seen the development of this incident over the past while and followed every detail, given that Doug needed all the support he could get as he was being bullied by such a goliath. This is time and attention, mental power and concern that they have taken away from this man, their own professor, their own employee. Despite this he has organized a wonderful course for his students on the Roman philosopher Seneca. I have watched him prepare for this course for months. He spoke to me about it with such depth of concern and attention long before it even began, about its every detail, about its textures, tastes, and outlines. No one does for their students what this man, this teacher does.

The slanderous view that smoking marijuana has negatively influenced his teaching is nothing but slander. It is a human tendency to look outwards rather than inwards, to place blame on others rather than to look at oneself and to reflect, to meditate on one’s own role in creating a given context. Our world is the way it is, the political mess that it now is, because we re-act, because we fail to act. Students tend to blame others, thinkers, texts, or teachers for their own failings. This is not to say that the source of all problems and failings is to be found in oneself, but that there is not even the slightest thought that this is a possibility, not the hint of an attempt at self examination before violent outward force is exerted. Learning, like all other spaces of being, is a con-text, what is woven together, created in community with others; therefore, its failure or breakdown can never be caused by or blamed on a single element of the context, a single individual. Such a reading would simply be a failure to accept responsibility.

I could say much more, but I have already said enough, and yet so little, since what Doug Hutchinson means to me as a teacher and a friend is beyond language, and I have tried my best to give voice to what is beyond expression. He is not comfortable with praise and a modest man, but this is what makes him so wonderful. It is this quality that allows him to be open to otherness and to genuinely engage his students and allow them to think under, but also with him. The idea of the teacher’s authority over students has never really sat well with him. He does not believe that the learning process flows in one direction, from top to bottom, from teacher to student, but that, as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed, the path down is also the path up and that these two trajectories of movement interpenetrate to create multiple and infinite paths of action and interaction between student and teacher. Herein lies the richness of learning.

Bobby Bakhtiarynia
Nantes, France
03/10/06