CAUT
REPORT
I was the
AUFA delegate as Member-at-Large to the general meeting of CAUT Council held in
Ottawa on April 25-27, 2002, as well as a participant in the new CAUT workshop
for new presidents held in Ottawa, June 2002.
The spring 2002 general meeting of CAUT Council
was focussed on two key issues: the defence of Academic Freedom and the funding
of Post-Secondary Education.
Following
recommendations in response to the Oliveri Committee
of Inquiry and with a view to access the Academic Freedom Fund, CAUT moved to
amend CAUT procedures in Academic Freedom cases, thereby empowering the Executive Director to act
expeditiously on those cases he judged to merit immediate action. The motion passed, subject to the condition
that the Executive Director refer all other cases to the Academic Freedom &
Tenure Committee for further consideration, and
provide (to the President of CAUT and the Chair of AF&T)
a list of all other requests brought to his attention. I spoke in strong support of this motion on
the grounds that we should trust those we deem fit to elect to the CAUT
executive to carry out their duties with integrity. Also, I stated that it was counter-productive
to empower the Executive Director to command CAUT resources in the defence of
academic freedom, and then to deny the effective command of these resources by
subjecting them to bureaucratic safeguards.
We also
learned that CAUT’s application to have the AFF granted charitable status was denied; the decision
being appealed.
A panel
presentation on “Post-Secondary Education Under Attack – Responding to the
Challenges” covered topics such as the
BC Bill 28 attack on collective agreements, deregulation of tuition,
under-funding, and the Dalhousie strike. CAUT is advocating the legislation of
a national Post-Secondary Education Act as the best way of addressing our
concerns. A presentation on increased inaccessibility to U of Toronto Law School
was particularly interesting—not least to have a law professor speak against
(her own) salary increase as an administrative tactic that persuaded her
colleagues to go along with the enormous hike in tuition that will be a real
barrier to low income candidates.
I should
report that I also spoke to two political motions. I strongly objected to a
(biased) motion addressing the middle-east crisis on the grounds that it was
not the business of CAUT to enter into the fray of international politics—that
motion was tabled, largely on grounds that the members of Council were divided
on the motion; I also objected to a motion to express support for Leonard
Pelletier on the same grounds, that political causes should not be the concern
of an academic organization. However, I
was persuaded by one of the movers, Andy Wainwright (DFA),
to support the motion on two grounds: first, that there was a real element of
academic freedom involved in the Pelletier case; and second, I accepted his
argument that, where the sentiments of members of Council were in unanimous
agreement on a political motion, it was valid for CAUT to lend its support to
political causes, especially humanitarian causes. As Andy pointed out, academic
freedom and post-secondary education issues are very much political causes in
their own right, so CAUT was by nature a political body, though its mandate was
clearly academic.
From the New Presidents workshop, I received
several CAUT publications, gratis,
including the 2002 CAUT Almanac of
Post-Secondary Education—the most
comprehensive statistical profile of post-secondary education published in
Canada; The Olivieri
Report by H. Thompson, P Baird and J. Downie; Counting
Out the Scholars: The Case Against Performance Indicators in Universities and Colleges by W. Bruneau and D. Savage; Universities
for Sale: Resisting Corporate Control Over Canadian Higher Education by N. Tudiver. These can
be accessed through Jane Coldwell.
The AUFA delegates to the CAUT Council in
Ottawa, November 21-25, 2002 will be myself, as President, and Janice Best, as
Vice-President.
Other CAUT conferences to be attended by the AUFA
representatives this term are:
o
COACL (Coalition of Contingent Academic Labour)
Conference on Part Time Faculty, sponsored by CAUT, hosted by Concordia
University Part Time Faculty Assocation.
o
Part
of CAUT’s campaign to educate its members about the
overuse and exploitation of contract staff (part timers)
o
AUFA delegates: PT Heather Pyrcz
(& FT Greg)
o Gender Equity ... From Graduate Student to Professor Emerita
o Focus on the career paths of female academics and explore the conditions and consequences of women’s labour in the academy.
o
AUFA delegate: Anne Quema, Status of
Women Committee
o
Co-hosted
by CAUT & sponsored by Canada’s
largest union of media workers, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.
o
One
of the speakers will be our chair, Pat O’Neill, president elect of the Canadian
Psychological Association & past chair of
CAUT’s Academic Freedom & Tenure
Committee.
o
Focus
is on Disciplining Dissent: The Curbing
of Free Expression in Academia and the Media
§
AUFA delegate: Janice Best, AUFA
Vice-President
Vernon Provencal