Over the past several years, some Canadian faculty associations have adopted formal positions on complex international political issues. These positions have often alienated those members who are not engaged with these issues and isolated those who disagree. In response, within both CAUT and local faculty associations, there is an increasing interest in adopting a position of political neutrality. Advocates for this view often cite the Kalven Report, which argued from free speech principles in favour of the neutrality of universities:
The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic... To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.
However, there is a branch of scholarship that argues the goal of political neutrality is impossible to achieve as it serves to maintain existing power structures. Apart from that concern, CAUT and faculty associations are inherently political organizations, having the common political purpose of advocating for faculty working conditions. Given this fact, what are the appropriate political boundaries for faculty associations, if any?
We consider three principles that provide guidance on this question, the first being that a faculty association follows a democratic governance structure with limited authority, as specified by its constitution. Constitutions are premised on the idea that the powers and authority of a governing body derive from its members. Therefore, the constitution of a faculty association represents a type of social contract upon which (almost) all members agree. It specifies the issues that the faculty association is mandated to address and resolve through democratic processes on the members’ behalf.
This principle of constitutional democracy means that a faculty association cannot adopt any position it wants — and ignore its mandate — just because it employs democratic processes. Canadian faculty associations were founded to advance working conditions, and their constitutions specify the use of democratic processes to carry out this mandate. But it is difficult to imagine that academics — whose disciplines require the freedom to consider, discuss and debate ideas through scholarship — would agree to form an association in which they would abandon scholarship and adjudicate differences on other political issues by majority vote. In short, faculty associations are bound by rules and should not engage in any political activity beyond their constitutional mandate.
The second principle is that faculty associations have a mandate to protect academic freedom, which requires them to defend their members’ rights to express and debate diverse ideas, within the limits of the law, without fear of retribution or punishment. In this regard, an association must protect its members in a non-discriminatory fashion; it cannot treat some ideas as more worthy of protection than others. Thus, when a faculty association refrains from taking a position on a contentious issue, it is not being politically neutral. Rather, it is taking the active political position — derived from its obligation to defend academic freedom — that it values the diversity of opinion among its members more than any individual opinion. This position requires the faculty association to not discriminate between the viewpoints of its members. Conversely, whenever a faculty association adopts a position on a divisive issue, it signals that it values some viewpoints over others, which is inconsistent with this obligation.
Like any political position, the obligation to defend academic freedom comes with costs. It requires tolerating and defending all viewpoints that are within the limits of the law without discrimination — including those that a majority may view as wrong-headed or even abhorrent — which is a crucial precondition for scholarly activity.
The third and final principle is that certified faculty associations have a legal duty of fair representation, which requires them to represent all members in good faith without discrimination. When a faculty association adopts an opinion on a divisive issue, it may violate this legal duty by acting in a discriminatory fashion in supporting the views of some members over others.
Together, these principles argue that a faculty association should avoid adopting political positions unless expressly authorized in its constitution: the political line in the sand is spelled out in the constitution.
There is also a practical consideration that serves to moderate a faculty association’s political reach. The success that faculty associations have in improving working conditions strongly depends on their membership being unified. Simply put, adopting controversial views that divide the membership weakens the unions’ solidarity in addressing working conditions. In an era when faculty face multiple challenges to their working conditions (threats to academic freedom, loss of collegial governance, loss of government funding, administrative bloat), the inevitable differences they have over extrinsic political issues may threaten the very unity that’s required for their associations to effectively confront these challenges. Requiring our faculty associations to treat our viewpoints fairly and equally, by not unnecessarily taking sides on constitutionally extrinsic political issues, is crucial to maintaining faculty solidarity and protecting academic freedom.
By extension, the same applies to CAUT, whose “role is not to weigh in on the subjects being debated, but rather to ensure that all academic staff in Canada can exercise their right to engage in controversial discussion free from reprisal or penalty by the administration.” In a time of massive risk to both democracy and higher education, CAUT must also prioritize solidarity. Fighting to uphold the principles that sustain us all is the only way forward.
Paul Andrews is an Associate Professor of Psychology at McMaster University. Theresa Bianco is a Professor of Psychology at Concordia University. Mary-Michelle DeCoste is an Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Guelph. Michael Greenspan is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s University. Cary Nelson is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Shelley Z. Reuter is a Professor of Sociology at Concordia University.
