This is an odd story, Dear Reader, and I beg your indulgence to tell it my way.
A few days ago, I got an email from Kevin McDonough of McGill University, directing my attention to a statement about academic freedom by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC)—a body that serves (among other things) as a college of university presidents. Reading through the AUCC statement quickly, I found it fairly anodyne. But I was about to be educated.
- It leaves out the “freedom of extramural utterance and action” that figured in standard statements, going back to the classic 1915 formulation of the American Association of University Professors. They point out that Bertrand Russell was twice fired for “extramural” utterances.
- The AUCC statement also “makes no mention of academic freedom including the right to criticize the institution where one works.” And Kevin pointed out to me (in a later email) that this could put Hasana Sharp and Will Roberts at risk for their important post on events at McGill.
- The CAUT letter took exception to the following in the AUCC statement: “"Academic freedom is constrained by the professional standards of the relevant discipline and the responsibility of the institution to organize its academic mission. The insistence on professional standards speaks to the rigor of the enquiry and not to its outcome.” They think that this unduly exposes scholars to the vagaries of peer opinion.
I am no expert on these matters, and I still thought the story a bit boring. But I thought that I would ask around. And so I wrote to an academic administrator in (my) University of Toronto. After all, Toronto is a member of AUCC: they must have an opinion. The administrator, whom I’ll call Bob, was not aware of the issue but undertook to find out and get back to me. A day later Bob wrote: “Much agitation this end.” Perhaps the AUCC statement was not so anodyne after all, I thought.
This morning, David Naylor, the President of University of Toronto posted a comment on the University’s website. Naylor said that while he obviously supported any affirmation of academic freedom, it was unfortunate that AUCC had treated this particular statement as criterial for membership. “It would have been helpful if the press release had instead specified that the Statement was another signpost of the centrality of academic freedom to the AUCC,” he wrote. In other words, nothing wrong with what it says, but something wrong about treating it as a complete formulation of academic freedom, such that new members have to conform to it and nothing more.
Naylor says that he was not present at the meeting that passed the statement, and that “the AUCC’s initiative in this regard has not drawn my close attention.” Now, this statement is intentionally and calculatedly disingenuous and should not be taken at face value. The President of the University of Toronto is not expected to keep track of his email inbox the way you and I do, Dear Reader. He has a staff. So he's not saying that all of this came about because he was asleep. What he is saying, ever so diplomatically, is that proper notice of the action was not given.
And then he dropped a bombshell: “time constraints preclude my giving AUCC the hours now required for volunteer service in a governance or committee capacity. I have accordingly resigned from the AUCC Board.” Think of it. The President of Canada’s largest university, the country's research powerhouse, resigns from the Board of AUCC following a statement on academic freedom.
Draw from this what conclusions you will, Dear Reader. Let me tell you what conclusions I draw. There are small colleges/universities clamouring for admission to AUCC. Some of these don’t protect academic freedom to its full extent. AUCC has modified its criteria in order to allow them to join. The University of Toronto was not given a proper opportunity to oppose.
Finally, and for purposes of comparison, here is an extract from the University of Toronto’s Memorandum of Agreement with its Faculty Association, which as Naylor points out, is the governing doctrine at the University:
The parties to this Agreement acknowledge that the University is committed to the pursuit of truth, the advancement of learning, and the dissemination of knowledge. To this end, they agree to abide by the principles of academic freedom as expressed in the following statement: academic freedom is the freedom to examine, question, teach, and learn, and it involves the right to investigate, speculate, and comment without reference to prescribed doctrine, as well as the right to criticize the University and society at large.
A little more like what CAUT wants, no?
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