The case of Dr. Valentina Azarova gained international attention when the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law abruptly ended negotiations to hire her as the Director of the International Human Rights Program. This followed immediately after concerns were raised by a major donor and sitting judge over Dr. Azarova’s academic work on human rights in Israel and Palestine. After a lengthy review of the case, CAUT Council imposed a rare censure on the University of Toronto administration, concluding that the decision to cancel Dr. Azarova’s hiring was politically motivated and as such constitutes a serious breach of widely recognized principles of academic freedom.
Sunera Thobani
In 2002, Charles Huntzinger, president and CEO of Imperial Parking, the largest carpark operator in Canada and the fourth largest in North America, and a recent immigrant to Canada from the United States, urged donors to withhold contributions to the University of British Columbia as long as Professor Sunera Thobani remained on staff.
Thobani sparked a media frenzy when, at a women's conference on violence against women, she strongly criticized American foreign policy in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.
The UBC administration was quick to defend Thobani's academic freedom pointing out that the cornerstone of a university is the ability to speak out on important issues.
Stéphane McLachlan
University of Manitoba professor Stéphane McLachlan and doctoral student Ian Mauro researched the impact of genetically modified crops on farming and compiled their findings in a documentary entitled Seeds of Change: Farmers, Biotechnology and the New Face of Agriculture. Their research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. When it was time to screen the research documentary, the University of Manitoba administration effectively blocked its release by using a long-standing policy that gives it an interest in every recording made on equipment it owns.
Harry Crowe
Professor Harry Crowe was a tenured Associate Professor of History and an active member of the faculty association at United College (now the University of Winnipeg, and at the time affiliated with the United Church). In March 1958, while at Queen’s University as a Visiting Professor, Professor Crowe sent a private letter to a colleague at United College, Professor William Packer. The letter was mysteriously intercepted and forwarded to the College Principal, Rev. Dr. Wilfred C. Lockhart. Although the thrust of Crowe’s letter was a discussion of the upcoming federal election, it opened with two short paragraphs critical of current and former College administrators, including Principal Lockhart, suggesting they were hypocritical and not to be trusted, and adding that, “religion is a corrosive force” at the College.
Based on the contents of the letter, United’s Board of Regents dismissed Crowe in July 1958. The dismissal of Crowe had become a matter of intense public controversy in Winnipeg. In early September, Board representatives indicated to Crowe that the College would reinstate him for a year. Then, two weeks later, however, Crowe was handed a second dismissal letter and the Board issued the following public statement to the press:
The board’s opinion of the letter [by Crowe] is that the attitude toward religion revealed by it is incompatible with the traditions and objectives of United College, and that, in the manner in which he has named in the letter six faculty members, two of whom are deceased and of hallowed memory, Prof. Crowe overstepped the limits of decency.
The CAUT committee investigating Crowe’s dismissal completed its report in November 1958 and found that on substantive and procedural grounds, Crowe’s dismissal was unfair and unreasonable, and contrary to the basic understanding of academic freedom:
The privilege of a teacher in a university or college to utter and publish opinions in the course of teaching and research and to exchange opinions with faculty colleagues without liability of official censure or discipline is the commonly understood substance of academic freedom…. Academic freedom would be vulnerable indeed if its limits depended on the interpretation placed by a college administration on the remarks of a member of the academic staff.
Lee Lorch
Mathematician Lee Lorch was terminated by the City College of New York in 1948 because of his advocacy of civil rights for Black Americans. Two years later, he was fired by Pennsylvania State University because he had allowed the family of a Black war veteran to stay in his New York City apartment. Penn State publicly denounced Lorch’s behaviour as, “extreme, illegal and immoral and damaging to the public relations of the college”. A few years later, Lorch was terminated by Fisk University in Tennessee following his subpoenaed appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he had been called after his attempt to enrol his daughter in an all-Black school to protest school segregation. Lorch and many of his colleagues eventually took up posts in Canada. CAUT’s award in recognition of the defense of academic freedom is named after Lee Lorch.