The following letter was sent to Paul Ramsey, Minister of Education, Skills and Training, on April 10, 1997. It follows up a brief meeting between Ramsey and CUFA/BC representatives held on April 7, 1997.
April 10, 1997
Honourable Paul Ramsey
Minister of Education, Skills and Training
Parliament Buildings
Victoria, B.C. V8V 1X4
Via FAX Transmission - 2 Pages - (250) 387-3200
Dear Paul,
Thank you for taking a moment out of your busy schedule on Monday to speak with Robert Clift and myself. Robert subsequently spoke to Lionel Yip, and the resolution of that discussion was that CUFA/BC should send you this letter, which reiterates our concerns about possible legislation for the Technical University of British Columbia. On February 15, 1996, we wrote a detailed letter to Shell Harvey expressing our concerns about draft legislation for the Technical University. As we have no such draft legislation to comment on this time, we will address the governance principles we think ought to be addressed in any new legislation.
Our fundamental concern is the idea that a new university, even a specific-purpose university, could be brought into existence without legislative guarantees that academic decision-making will be put into the hands of the professional educators. The modern university has developed on the basis of a separation of responsibilities between an academic senate (or education council) and board of governors, with the institutional president acting as a bridge between the two bodies. Although there is a long history of the university in Western culture which provides the precedent for this division, there are examples in this century, in Canada, as to why it is important.
Boards of governors at Canadian universities have sought on many occasions to discipline or dismiss faculty members for saying, teaching, or researching things that the boards found objectionable. In 1939, University of Toronto historian Frank Underhill suggested that Canada might consider isolating itself from another "British war." He followed this up in 1940 with the speculation that Canada might, in the future, become more tightly bonded with the United States than with Britain. In hindsight neither statement appears particularly harmful, but on the eve of a second war in Europe, many members of the public and many members of the board of governors of the University of Toronto cried for his scalp. Underhill was ultimately saved by the intervention of powerful friends in Ottawa. There were no collective agreements, much less clauses on academic freedom, to protect him in those days.
Although this is an instance of individual academic freedom being threatened, it illustrates the temptations for the non-academics involved in the support and governance of our public universities to exercise power when academics talk, think or act in ways that are unfashionable. Similarly, those non-academics who serve on boards of governors may be tempted to interfere in curriculum and other academic matters. This potential was demonstrated by comments about women's studies and first nations studies at the University of Northern British Columbia during the last provincial election. This is why the history of faculty associations in Canada has been about securing both personal academic freedom, and institutional academic freedom through academic senates.
We have heard it said that the Technical University needs to be an innovative and flexible institution and that a senate is a relic of the past that will impede this dynamism. We disagree. The dynamism of an institution, or lack thereof, is a function of leadership and institutional culture. If the appropriate leadership is brought to bear, and the effort is made to develop an institutional culture which engenders the desired dynamism, it will be reflected in the operation of the academic senate and the board of governors.
Although there have been the usual start-up problems at UNBC, I think it very much reflects this idea in practice. The fact that Dr. Winifred Kessler, the CUFA/BC Academic of the Year for 1997, was able to establish a program at UNBC which challenges the orthodoxy of forestry education is a testament to this. Elsewhere in the country, the University of Waterloo certainly reflects a similar dynamism in its engineering, computer science and mathematics programs.
It is also curious to us that this government, which is responsible for the creation of education councils in the province's colleges, university-colleges, and institutes, might consider establishing a university without an academic senate or equivalent body enshrined in legislation. We know that many of the same arguments made against the introduction and adoption of the College and Institute Amendment Act and the Institute of Technology Amendment Act are being made with respect to the Technical University. Government was not inclined to accept those arguments in 1994, and we do not think it should be inclined to accept them now.
We understand that there is considerable pressure to introduce legislation for the Technical University, should the cabinet decide the project will proceed. We appreciate this and suggest that if government is currently disinclined to include an academic senate or equivalent body in the legislation, that enabling legislation be introduced instead. This would then give the requisite time for all the parties interested in this matter to be brought together to air their differences and see if consensus could be reached. If consensus could be reached, then government can proceed secure in the knowledge that content experts are making the academic decisions, and that the government is supporting the freedom to teach, the freedom to conduct research, and the freedom to comment on public matters; which is as it should be in our public universities.
Sincerely,
Lee Keener
President
CUFA/BC