Journalism students and faculty at Ryerson Polytechnic University are furious about a deluge of media interest in a part-time instructor who has been attacked in print and at a conference for writing articles condoning adult men having sex with teen-aged boys.
Adam Hunt, a journalism student who takes instructor Gerald Hannon's course in freelance writing, said yesterday he is insulted by published comments that Mr. Hannon should not be teaching because he thinks it is fine for adults to have sex with consenting teen-agers.
"Most of us have university degrees. We have analytical minds. Why not let us use them?" said Mr. Hunt, 25. "It's just his opinion. It has no bearing on how I live my life."
Judy Steed, a journalist and author of the book Our Little Secret, an indictment of child sexual abuse in Canada, appears to have sparked the controversy during the weekend.
Speaking on a panel discussing an unrelated topic at the Women in Media conference in Toronto, she criticized John Miller, the chairman of Ryerson's journalism department, for having Mr. Hannon on staff and said a number of students and staff had told her they were concerned about Mr. Hannon's being on staff.
Mr. Miller was in the audience and stood up to dispute her statement. Heather Bird, a Toronto Sun columnist, also was there, and she wrote a piece attacking Mr. Hannon as a proselytizer for pedophilia.
Yesterday, Ryerson's administration said it is going to investigate Mr. Hannon.
Arnice Cadieux, a spokeswoman for vice-president of academics Dennis Mock, confirmed that he will conduct an investigation. She said it will have a number of dimensions but would not say what they are.
In an interview yesterday, Ms. Steed said she wasn't calling for Mr. Hannon's head but wants a public discussion on what universities should do about professors who, in her view, advocate harm in the name of freedom of expression.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms says all rights are subject to limits justifiable in a free and democratic society - they can be denied if there's a clear and pressing concern that to exercise them would cause harm, she said. "It's clear there is such a concern in the sexual exploitation of children."
Mr. Hannon said yesterday that Ms. Steed and Ms. Bird are fabricating the whole controversy in McCarthyesque fashion, and vowed to continue to talk about anything he wants to in class, including an article he wrote for The Globe and Mail in March that slammed a London police probe of child pornography involving teen-aged male prostitutes and that was the subject of a successful complaint to the Ontario Press Council.
"I'm not going to let this intimidate me. . . . All this talk of investigation sounds horribly familiar of an earlier time in our history that we're ashamed of," Mr. Hannon said.
He does not apologize for his views on teen-age sexuality and notes that the Criminal Code sets the age of consent at 14. The real issue, he said, is that his views are private and that what he writes outside the classroom is not relevant to his position as a teacher.
He uses his freelance articles to teach about leads, structure and writing styles, he said, but he has not used the London pornography piece or one he wrote in the late 1970s in Body Politic, Men Loving Boys Loving Men, that resulted in a long trial for the newspaper's publishers on charges of distributing indecent material. (The newspaper won.)
Instead, he uses two of his National Magazine Award winners, profiles of Thomson Highway and John Bentley Mays, he said.
Don Obe, filling in as department chairman yesterday for Mr. Miller, who was away because of a family illness, said Mr. Hannon had been hounded by radio journalists all day, faculty members were upset about it and students were rallying around Mr. Hannon.
"You don't do that for someone who's been teaching you things you find repugnant," Mr. Obe said.
The top story in the journalism students' newspaper, The Ryersonian, was headlined "Students support Rye prof."
Stacey Langbein is quoted in the article as saying: "He's an excellent teacher and an amazing writer. His beliefs don't impinge on the way he teaches journalism."
Christine Purdy, who wrote the article, said in an interview that students are upset about their teacher's "being persecuted, and they want to stick up for him."
Mr. Obe, when asked whether the students' loyalty may be based partly on the awareness that Mr. Hannon grades them, said: "If they're that much of a milquetoast, if they're that intimidated, he or she has a serious problem."
Mr. Obe said the whole affair started when a student in a journalistic- ethics class decided to write an essay about the issue of adult-child sex after reading Ms. Steed's book, in which Mr. Hannon's views are mentioned. When the student talked to Ms. Steed and told her Mr. Hannon teaches at Ryerson, Ms. Steed was shocked.
Mr. Obe said the department is not conducting an investigation and that if the university administration is doing so, it is out of line.
He acknowledged that Mr. Hannon is on a contract, but said that doesn't mean his position isn't safe. There is a part-timers' union, he said, so "you can't go around firing people out of hand."
Mr. Hannon said he's on a semester-to-semester contract. The next term has been confirmed, but not the next year.
"The first time (renewal) will come up is next April. The fact I've been hired once and done a good job should be enough," he said.