* The Jane and John Does of Kinder Morgan's injunction

There's nothing more unambiguous in the battle against global ecocide than placing one's body between the fertile earth and a giant fossil fuel company. This is why when one spends a few minutes with the caretakers of Burnaby Mountain, one develops a genuinely abiding allegiance to their cause. This is direct witness to the existential immediacy of the climate crisis that threatens the future of our planet. This is appropriate response to the danger climate change entails. In comparison, reading Simon Fraser University President Andrew Petter's letter in response to calls for support to the "Kinder Morgan Five" leaves a lingering question: where does he and the university really stand?

Saying the university is a "credible and neutral defender of speech rights" seems akin to saying climate change deniers should have equal hearing in policy debates to 97 per cent of climate scientists who are convinced of anthropogenic climate change. Claiming that taking a stand on issues concerning the very survival of civilization is beyond the university's "core institutional mandate" seems a Weberian caricature. Relying on SFU's participation in the National Energy Board hearings as an adequate response to the dangers of the new Trans Canada pipeline rings as "farcical" as the NEB process itself (as Marc Elieson characterises it). To disregard the legitimacy of potential civil disobedience in critical social change is to deny the "credibility" of the historical struggle against anachronistic legal strictures in the face of slavery and women's oppression.