Equity and academic freedom are essential to the healthy and vibrant functioning of a post-secondary education institution. It is through free thought, investigation, and the development and dissemination of ideas that society advances and progress is made.

Today’s practices and beliefs become tomorrow’s discredited notions and out-moded ideas when exposed to the freedom of public debate and scientific scrutiny. Universities and colleges have essential roles to play in this process – a role that can only be fulfilled if academic freedom is broadly defined and vigorously guarded and when there is diversity and equity within the profession.

Academic staff who are speaking out against white supremacy, colonization, trans and homophobia, and other forms of oppression through their teaching, research and/or in community, are protected from institutional reprisal or censorship by academic freedom.

Below are three ways that associations can work to protect academic freedom and advance equity.

1. Fight for job security for contract academic staff

While academic freedom is entrenched in policy statements and often enshrined in our Collective Agreements, academic freedom exists in name only for contract academic staff.  These academic staff members are considered temporary employees by administrators and have no job security. Often, no concrete reason is needed to terminate their contracts.

We know that equity-deserving academic staff are under-represented in tenure-track, tenured or regularized positions.

Associations must fight for more job security for contract staff, increased tenure-track positions, specifically for equity-deserving academic staff, and review termination of contracts for any academic freedom concerns to see if a grievance or policy grievance may be warranted.

2. Undertake education on equity and academic freedom

The importance of both academic freedom and equity to the mission of post-secondary institutions is poorly understood. We can see this in debates over equity targets in hiring; some assert the need to maintain academic ‘standards’ while others prioritize reassessment and broadening of those standards. We see it in the growing number of student complaints about the use of offensive language in class when that language is taken directly from a text being studied.

Associations can help navigate these through events and education on equity and academic freedom.

3. Bargain for a broad definition of academic freedom

In Canada, academic freedom is a right that is legally guaranteed in collective bargaining agreements or memoranda with administrations. Our ‘academic freedom’ is only as strong as the language in those agreements. Strong collective bargaining, then, is crucial to the future of academic freedom. 

CAUT advocates for a broad approach to collective agreement language on academic freedom, one that extends it to all the following spheres: 1) teaching and pedagogy 2) research, scholarship, and creative activity, including all stages of inquiry and publication, 3) intramural expression, including participation in governance and criticism of the university or college, and 4) extramural expression as a citizen. Such broad language enables academic staff to critically examine systems and ways of thinking and maintain integrity in scholarship in the face of administrative pressures and colleagues, and reprisals from outside organizations, enterprises, and individuals. The ability to grieve violations of academic freedom must also be clearly enshrined in agreement language.