Report requested by professors condemns university administration
On March 16, 2016, an investigation authorized by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) found that senior officials at Laurentian University have routinely violated academic freedom and principles of collegial governance.
An Ad-Hoc Investigatory Committee (AHIC) was established by CAUT, following complaints from the president of the formerly named Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA). According to the report published on March 16, “Professor Farah requested that CAUT consider the situation and take appropriate action. Upon reviewing the matter, the CAUT President, the Chair of the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee, and the Executive Director authorized the creation of an Ad Hoc Investigatory Committee to look into these matters.”
The report was prepared by Dr. Sheila Embleton, a professor of linguistics at York University, and Professor Eric Tucker, Scholar in Residence at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Cleveland State University.
The President of LUFA, Professor Anis Farah, alleged that the university administration had “Changed grades without the instructors’ agreement or following Senate rules; blocked the appointment of elected chairs; denied faculty access to the departmental office; had numerous grievances against involving violations of the collective agreement and collegial governance; was allegedly guilty of gross interference with workload assignments recommended by departments; and had removed significant numbers of the faculty complement in some departments.”
The complaints were filed on May 8, 2014, and the AHIC has been investigating the alleged violations of policy since then. The committee found that many of the complaints had significant evidence to support them.
The full report is 36 pages in length and provided two recommendations that just stop short of being critical of the conduct of the administration. Instead, the report outlined two objectives that give the accused the benefit of the doubt.
The first recommendation states that “[the] university administration should formally recommit itself to the principle that academic planning—including curriculum redesign—should be open, transparent, and collegial, and that the facts upon which academic planning is based should also be open.”
The first recommendation addresses the severe cuts that have occurred since 2009 in the arts and humanities departments of the university.
The second recommendation, which states that “[the] University administration should formally confirm that in the future resource allocation, including complement allocation, will be open and transparent,” addresses the unsolicited, or opaque interaction that faculty had with the student body.
The AHIC provided a closing statement outlining the sources of their findings. They state that they interviewed 14 faculty members and LUFA staff, but that “university officials have refused to meet with us or to provide us with any documents and so we have not had the benefit of their input.”
The AHIC implied that the evidence they were able to obtain, even without the administration, was enough. The rest of the concluding statement from the report stated, “On the basis of the information we did receive, we were left with a disturbing picture of an environment in which the principles of academic freedom and collegial governance are not consistently adhered to…The overall effect of these actions has been to create a feeling, at least among some portion of the faculty, that their academic freedom is under threat and that they are not being respected as valued members of the academic community. We have made…specific recommendations that aim to address these concerns, but we want to emphasize the overarching need for the [university’s] administration to affirm its support for and commitment to the principles of academic freedom and collegial governance and their application in the day to day governance of the university.”