THE AUFA PRESIDENT COMMUNICATES

At the November meeting of CAUT Council, the following motion was brought forward:

“THAT CAUT give notice to the Administration and Board of Acadia University that, unless Professor Colin Wightman is restored to his position as a Full Professor at the University, with suitable redress for the actions the Administration and Board took against him, censure will be imposed at the April 2009 CAUT Council meeting.”

This motion passed with no contrary votes and one abstention (mine). Between now and April, CAUT will continue its efforts to reach a settlement with the administration, and the AUFA Executive, on the direction of the membership as expressed unanimously at the November general meeting, will do all it can to persuade the administration to seek a resolution before censure is invoked.

If censure is invoked, CAUT will advise its members:

• not to accept appointments at a censured institution;
• not to accept invitations to speak or participate in academic conferences there;
• not to accept any distinction or honour that may be offered by that institution.

Censure also means that CAUT will:

• refuse to accept advertisements for positions vacant at an institution under censure in the CAUT Bulletin or on the CAUT website;
• widely publicize the dispute in the media and in the CAUT Bulletin and other publications;
• bring the censure to the attention of associations of academic staff in other countries, request that they publish an account of the dispute in their journals and ask their members to respect the censure;
• bring the censure motion to the attention of post-secondary student organizations, the Canadian Labour Congress, and other appropriate groups;
• encourage academic disciplinary associations to refuse to carry advertisements for or hold events at censured institutions.

If censure is invoked, it is not lifted until the situation that gave rise to it is addressed to CAUT's satisfaction. Memorial University, the last institution to be under CAUT censure, remained under censure for some ten years (1979-1989). It was not until the Social Science Federation of Canada and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities refused to hold the Learneds (as the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences was then known) at Memorial because of the censure situation that Memorial's administration agreed to a settlement.

We will be updating the membership on the situation at the next general meeting on Tuesday, January 20 at 4:30pm. In the meantime, I would remind you of AUFA's blog at http://acadiaufa.wordpress.com where we post timely news items of interest to the Canadian post-secondary labour community. We even scooped CAUT on the results of the two censure motions passed at CAUT Council.

Also in January, we will host the first of a series of talks on topics of relevance as we approach another round of collective bargaining. On Tuesday, January 27 from 11:30 to 12:30 (location TBA), Vicky Smallman from CAUT and Geoff Martin from the Mount Allison Faculty Association will join us to discuss issues facing part-time faculty members and some of the strategies that have been effective in securing and protecting rights for this shamefully exploited group of the professoriate.

I hope you have all had a restful holiday break and have returned refreshed and ready for the “interesting times” that lie ahead.

Erin Patterson

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