Category Archives: Ethics

UBC President Toope addresses sexual assaults at press conference #bced #ubc

Will McDonald, The Ubyssey, October 30, 2013– UBC president Stephen Toope addressed the recent sexual assaults at a press conference today.

Toope said UBC is doing all they can to keep students safe in the face of the environment of insecurity currently felt on campus.

“I have kids who live on campus and I am every bit as concerned about their safety as any parent. I can reassure parents across the world that we are doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of their children.”

Toope said the university has already increased both lighting and security patrols on campus, but questioned adding security cameras due to privacy concerns.

“That’s going to be a longer term discussion,” he said. “I certainly am reluctant to make a commitment at this point that the entire campus would be subject to surveillance.”

He said a working group has been formed to discuss issues such as the merits of adding cameras and the possibility of adding more lighting on campus.

“What I can tell you is that we are putting [in] the resources that are necessary to keep this campus as safe as we can. Frankly, we are not counting pennies right now.”

Toope also commended students who have banded together in organizations like Safewalk in the wake of the sexual assaults.

“This is a moment for community building. This is a moment to resist fear, to push back at a person who is making our community feel vulnerable,” he said.

Toope emphasized that the new security measures are a temporary response to the recent sexual assaults. He said the working group would look at longer-term security plans.

“This is one of the safest campuses in North America. There is not normally a climate of fear of or insecurity on the campus.”

Read More: The Ubyssey

Stephen J. Toope: Attacks at UBC’s Vancouver campus #ubc #bced

October 29, 2013

Dear members of UBC’s Vancouver campus community:

Today UBC joined the RCMP for a press conference that revealed new, disturbing information about the spate of sexual assaults on our Vancouver campus.

This is a time of stress for everyone in our community and I, like you, am extremely concerned by these developments.  I am grateful to the RCMP who have made this a top priority. Their investigation is critical to restoring the safety of our campus and UBC is working closely with them to solve this crime.  If you have information that could help the RCMP in their investigation, I urge you to contact them (1-800-222-TIPS).

We are working with our campus leaders – staff, faculty and students – to continue enhanced campus security and increase support for our campus community.  This is now our number one priority, and we are mobilizing all necessary resources to this end.

This latest news will no doubt be frightening to many of you, so if you feel you need to talk, please do not hesitate to make use of the UBC, AMS and RCMP counselling services listed on our new safety web site:http://www.ubc.ca/staysafe.

This new central web site will provide you with the latest information, safety tips and campus resources all in one hub.

In the days to come, until the alleged perpetrator is apprehended, I ask you to be extra vigilant. Make sure you have the information you need to stay safe.  The ultimate choice is yours, but the RCMP is advising you not to walk alone after dark.  Please look out for each other.

But above all, I believe this is not a time to give in to anxiety. This is a time to rally in support of one another, stand up against violence, and live out our commitment to a dynamic learning community free from fear.

Tell us what we can do better. Voice your concerns and take steps to make others feel safe during your daily activities.

We will get through this, together.

Stephen J. Toope
President and Vice-Chancellor

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT : : UBC RALLY AND MARCH SPEAK OUT #ubc #bcpoli #bced #education #yteubc

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT
UBC RALLY AND MARCH SPEAK OUT
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 30, 2013
5 PM
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Unceded Coast Salish Territories

We will march to specific locations on campus, briefly state how the location relates to persisting rape culture on campus (with reference to its colonial history), and have an ongoing open mic for people to speak about their experiences. We march to heal, resist, and speak out (side note: if you have knowledge about the histories of these locations or would want to speak to them please contact us, we need your help here).

If you are unsure of speaking at the march/rally about your experiences with rape culture at UBC, PLEASE understand that you will be supported and heard. You will not be standing alone at any point, this march/rally is for those of you who are constantly silenced and harmed at this school. Take Back the Night is for you to reclaim voice in spaces that keep trying to suppress it, spaces keeping you unsafe.

If you want to speak at the march/rally, please message us or send us an email ubctakebackthenight@gmail.com. This is by no means necessary if you choose to speak at the march, it just helps us a lot for planning and time purposes

This TBTN event places great emphasis on history—both personal and societal. The march/rally will be a highly emotional and potentially triggering event; we will have crisis relief support for those who need it.

*very* rough schedule based on suggested locations (still working on security and accessibility):
5:00 Museum of Anthropology, Opening
5:40 Place Vanier Residence
6:10 Henry Angus Building (Sauder)
6:50 Fraternity Village
7:15 RCMP Campus Headquarters
7:40 Thunderbird Sports Centre
8:00 Engineering
8:25 Allard Hall (Law Building), Closing
8:30 Debriefing Space and Discussion, SUB 212, for female and woman identified people

UBC, CAMPUS SECURITY, AND THE RCMP: STOP BLAMING THE VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT!

Read More: Take Back the Night Rally at UBC in Protest of Six Recent Sexual Assaults on Vancouver Campus

The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students: new issue of Workplace #occupyeducation

The Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES) is extremely pleased to announce the launch of Workplace Issue #22, “The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students” (Guest Editors Bradley J. Porfilio, Julie A. Gorlewski & Shelley Pineo-Jensen).

 The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students

Articles:

  • The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students: Introduction to the Special Issue (Brad Porfilio, Julie Gorlewski, Shelley Pineo-Jensen)
  • Dismissing Academic Surplus: How Discursive Support for the Neoliberal Self Silences New Faculty (Julie Gorlewski)
  • Academia and the American Worker: Right to Work in an Era of Disaster Capitalism? (Paul Thomas)
  • Survival Guide Advice and the Spirit of Academic Entrepreneurship: Why Graduate Students Will Never Just Take Your Word for It (Paul Cook)
  • Standing Against Future Contingency: Activist Mentoring in Composition Studies (Casie Fedukovich)
  • From the New Deal to the Raw Deal: 21st Century Poetics and Academic Labor (Virginia Konchan)
  • How to Survive a Graduate Career (Roger Whitson)
  • In Every Way I’m Hustlin’: The Post-Graduate School Intersectional Experiences of Activist-Oriented Adjunct and Independent Scholars (Naomi Reed, Amy Brown)
  • Ivory Tower Graduates in the Red: The Role of Debt in Higher Education (Nicholas Hartlep, Lucille T. Eckrich)
  • Lines of Flight: the New Ph.D. as Migrant (Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim)

The scope and depth of scholarship within this Special Issue has direct and immediate relevance for graduate students and new and senior scholars alike. We encourage you to review the Table of Contents and articles of interest.

Our blogs and links to our Facebook timelines and Twitter stream can be found at https://blogs.ubc.ca/workplace/ and https://blogs.ubc.ca/ices/

 

Thank you for your ongoing support of Workplace,

Sandra Mathison, Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, co-Directors
Institute for Critical Education Studies
Critical Education

UBC President responds to Business students controversy #bced

Office of the President, September 16, 2013

Update on UBC Action in Response to the C.U.S. FROSH Events

Our university has been in the news since Friday September 6th, and for all the wrong reasons. Most of you are rightly concerned not only by the disturbing reports of chants endorsing rape and sexual violence, but you have been waiting for a university response to these reports.

Some facts have now been established and publicly acknowledged.  Earlier this month, UBC Sauder School of Business first year students were led in this appalling chant during FROSH events organized by the Commerce Undergraduate Society.  The C.U.S. is an independent student organization representing students of the UBC Sauder School of Business, and it has publicly admitted the chant was used during their FROSH events. Four of their leaders have now resigned.

Last week, UBC Sauder School of Business Dean Robert Helsley emphasized that these events are completely inconsistent with the values of the school and of UBC, and announced the faculty was withdrawing any support for C.U.S.  FROSH.  Dean Helsley went on to acknowledge the steps taken by the C.U.S., including the leadership resignations and their own cancellation of FROSH.

A fact-finding panel was appointed last week and submitted its report to our VP Students and to the Dean of the Sauder School of Business today.  The university will quickly determine what actions are appropriate, and this will be made public on Wednesday September 18.

Read More: Office of the President

Quebec intellectuals denounce Charter of Values

CTV Montreal, September 6, 2013– A group of 91 Quebec thinkers – mostly francophone academics – have signed a letter denouncing the PQ’s charter of values that is expected to be debated at the National Assembly as soon as next week.

Although the exact details of the soon-to-be proposed legislation remain unknown, the group is clear in its rejection of the project, as evidenced in its 1,000 word manifesto entitled “Our values exclude exclusion.”

The letter begins emphatically: “We are against any proposed Charter of Quebec Values. We share values such as equality between men and women and the secular nature of the state and public institutions.

The signatories include McGill academics Abby Lippman and Ethel Groffier, writer Norman Nawrocki and activist Will Prosper.

The letter defends what it calls “the rejection of racism,” and calls the bill a “repressive and divisive project.”

Read more: CTV Montreal

UBC Sauder School of Business students’ ‘non-consensual sex’ cheer to be investigated #UBC

Arno Rosenfeld, Ubyssey, September 7, 2013– [University of British Columbia] UBC announced Saturday that they will investigate whether Commerce Undergraduate Society (CUS) leaders told volunteers to keep an offensive chant within their orientation groups.

In a statement released by Robert Helsley, dean of UBC’s Sauder School of Business, and UBC’s VP Students Louise Cowin, the university pledged to investigate the chant.

“The Sauder School of Business and the Office of the Vice-President, Students will jointly conduct a thorough investigation of these reports. Any disciplinary measures will follow the university’s policy on discipline for non-academic misconduct,” the statement read.

The Ubyssey reported on Friday that group leaders at FROSH, the CUS-organized orientation for Sauder first-years, led their “froshees” in a variation of the Y-O-U-N-G cheer.

Read More: Ubyssey

What Contingent Faculty Can Learn From Fast-Food Workers #bced #yteubc

Brian Haman, Counterpunch, August 30, 2013 — It has become a truism in American higher education: seventy-five percent of undergraduate courses at U.S. colleges and universities are taught by contingent faculty1, most of whom lack health insurance,2carry onerous student debt,3 receive poverty-level compensation, and often rely on public assistance such as food stamps in order to make ends meet.4 This percentage translates into more than 1.3 million highly-educated, qualified, and competent, but poorly-paid, undervalued, and underappreciated American workers. Conversely, administrative costs at colleges have soared in recent years. The academic managerial class (provosts, vice and associate vice provosts, deans, presidents, vice presidents, etc.) routinely earn six-figure salaries, often with generous perks including vacation homes.5

According to U.S. Education Department data, “U.S. universities employed more than 230,000 administrators in 2009, up 60 percent from 1993, or 10 times the rate of growth of the tenured faculty, those with permanent positions and job security”.6 Most new hires on American campuses never even set foot in the classroom simply because they are not teachers but administrators.7 Furthermore, the cost of a college degree in the U.S. has increased by 1,120 percent since 1978.8 The overwhelming majority of the academic labor force (to say nothing of students, who voluntarily submit to indentured servitude in the form of student debt) suffers disproportionately due to enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of a small and privileged elite.

We find a similar dynamic in other segments of the American labor force, especially in the fast-food industry. Fast-food workers endure low wages (and indeed wage stagnation), few if any benefits, and a scarcity of full-time contracts.9 The marginalized and contingent workforce at places such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and KFC share similar concerns and face similar challenges such as starvation wages, reliance on government assistance, and job insecurity that academic workers endure at some of our nation’s leading universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Michigan.10 However, unlike the academy, the difference between CEO compensation and fast-food workers’ pay is truly breathtaking. David C. Novak, CEO of Yum Brands, which includes chains such as KFC and Pizza Hut, received a total annual compensation of $29.67 million in 2012.11

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Last year, McDonald’s gave [Dan] Thompson a compensation package worth $13.8 million, or more than 558 times what McDonald’s expects employees to make — from two jobs”.12 The national minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25 per hour and the top five largest employers (McDonald’s is among them) pay its workers at or near the minimum wage. We may reiterate the conclusion of the previous paragraph with one minor revision: The overwhelming majority of the fast-food labor force suffers disproportionately due to enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of a small and privileged elite.

When faced with such systemic and structural inequalities, how have fast-food workers responded? The answer is quite instructive. They have staged local protests and walkouts in cities across the country and are planning a national walkout in order to fight for a higher minimum wage. As Professor Anne Kalleberg has noted, however, the protests are not union-sponsored but socially organized.13 Fast-food workers, just like their academic counterparts, often struggle to unionize due, at times, to explicit efforts by their employers to prevent them from doing so. Nevertheless, despite such grim circumstances, fast-food workers have pushed their plight quite successfully into the national consciousness just as Occupy movements have done.

Their campaign, entitled “Fast Food Forward”, articulates their purpose with self-assured clarity: “Fast Food Forward joins the momentum of the Black Friday strikes and other low-wage worker struggles to build community engagement, hold corporations and their CEOs accountable, and to raise wages so that all Americans can prosper”.14 Despite its origins in New York City, the movement is gaining momentum; many are now calling for a nationwide strike to take place on 29 August and even President Obama has addressed the issue.

How is all of this relevant for the contingent academic workforce? Well, for one thing, there is strength in numbers. Collective action is an especially effective instrument both to challenge and redress structural inequalities. If, as the aforementioned statistics indicate, seventy-five percent of undergraduate courses at U.S. colleges and universities are taught by adjuncts, then a walkout would bring the academy to a grinding halt. If fast-food workers with fewer career opportunities, less educational attainment, more grueling working conditions (e.g. fast-paced environments, high-temperature workplaces, etc.), and far more to lose can risk their only source of income for themselves and their families for the sake of the collective good, then what is preventing adjuncts from doing the same? The short answer is simple: nothing.

Alas, many adjuncts enable and perpetuate the “system” through their deferential subservience simply by participating in it (recent unionization efforts at Georgetown and elsewhere duly noted). As universities and departments downsize and the numbers of Ph.D. graduates outpace available jobs, many adjuncts accept grossly underpaid positions with long working hours and virtually no benefits with the expectation that a foot in the door will somehow lead to the promised land of a tenure-track position. Supply and demand dictates otherwise and the vast battalions of well-paid academic administrators are more than happy to continue to exploit such naïve and misguided expectations in the name of efficiency.

Surely, too, graduate programs inculcate (and indeed indoctrinate) students in the ways of the academy: publish or perish and do not rock the proverbial boat. On the one hand, academics are expected to challenge scholarly orthodoxies in their respective fields through creative, innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship. And yet in other aspects of their lives, namely those that deal with the contractual conditions under which they labor, they must conform and remain obedient in order to secure employment. It becomes an insidious and corrosive form of selection in which independent thought is filtered out of a system that was designed to protect it. Contradictions become self-evident: the imposition of an authorial canon in the humanities is anathema, whereas wage slavery becomes institutionalized.

Read more: Counterpunch

From McJob to McAdemic: Labor activism and unrest as economy tanks #bced #yteubc

(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The walkout by service workers in the US on August 29 marked a number of efforts over the past year to organize and make a statement on cost of living ground lost amidst inflation and a tanking economy. Economic reports in Canada and the US for August merely indicate the long trend toward part-time McJobs as youth are more and more often finding that their competition is their grandmothers or seniors unable to make it without additional income. Requests by the workers is an increase in the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25/hr to $15/hr and the right to unionize without interference from employers. Obama democrats are proposing a modest increase to $9/hr.

Like the McJob trend, the large balance of college and university jobs are now part-time and low wage. Many with the McAdemic job, defined by low pay and limited prospects, work just above minimum wage when it’s all said and done. Although among the most exploited of part-time workers given their expertise and education debt-load, adjunct, contingent, or sessional faculty members in Canada and the US retain an element of autonomy for their job. Whether with a modicum of a wage per course or a piecemeal per student wage for online instructors, many by and large take home a pay that hovers just above minimum wage after hours in are calculated. Unlike the basic McJob, which has a definitive beginning and end to the workday, the academic job has no limits to the amount of time expended to prepare, teach, counsel, and assess. And given that, like for most with a McJob, there is a dignity to a McAdemic job and most put in long hours (e.g., 10x contact hours required) that knowingly reduce their wages to something just above the minimum.

In BC, the minimum wage is merely $10.25, which today after exchange and purchasing power parity is about $7.25/hr USD. At UBC, the step 1 salary for contingent or sessional faculty is $5,970 per 3 credit course (about $4,305 USD after exchange and PPP). Comparisons of McAdemic job with McJob and of stratification within the two sectors are not exaggerated, as Postdoctoral Fellow Brian Haman wrote in “What Contingent Faculty Can Learn From Fast-Food Workers:”

 As universities and departments downsize and the numbers of Ph.D. graduates outpace available jobs, many adjuncts accept grossly underpaid positions with long working hours and virtually no benefits with the expectation that a foot in the door will somehow lead to the promised land of a tenure-track position. Supply and demand dictates otherwise and the vast battalions of well-paid academic administrators are more than happy to continue to exploit such naïve and misguided expectations in the name of efficiency…. Clearly, something must change. It seems, therefore, sensible, entirely feasible, and just to stand in solidarity with fast-food workers, many of whom earn as much as adjuncts. Their struggles are our struggles. Moreover, their lessons can be our lessons. The efficacy and consequences of collective action are unambiguous.

Welcome back to the “respectful environment” of your academic workplace

All characters and actions in the story linked below are purely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or activities experienced in any supposed “respectful environment” of an academic workplace is purely coincidental.

From McSweeney’s:

“Everyone Did Such a Great Job in the Leadership Workshop Today Except Spencer”

By Tim Sniffen

 

Tell the Dept. of Ed to Drop Sallie Mae!

Even in the face of 14,000 activists urging Sallie Mae to break up with ALEC, more news articles exposing their relationship, and my personal phone call this week to Sallie Mae executive Martha Holler asking the company directly to end ties with the powerful “Stand Your Ground,” anti-democratic, pay-to-play front group for right-wing corporate interests… Sallie Mae just won’t quit ALEC.

But that membership has its price. By not formally disclosing its role in ALEC to the Department of Education, Sallie Mae is in breach of its contract with the government.

Since 2009 Sallie Mae has had a contract with the Department of Education to administer federal student loans. Sallie Mae has netted over $300 million in taxpayer money through this lucrative contract while simultaneously lobbying against affordable higher education.1

Join us in demanding that the Department of Education enforce the “conflict of interest” disclosure clause in the contract. Tell U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to drop Sallie Mae!

Beyond its membership in ALEC, Sallie Mae is also likely in breach of its Department of Education contract because of two major legal violations. This month, public disclosure reports revealed that Sallie Mae has been accused of overcharging active duty service members on their student loan interest rates.2 News reports confirm that federal regulators will file a formal complaint against Sallie Mae for these violations within weeks, and a Department of Justice investigation of Sallie Mae is underway. As if that weren’t enough, Sallie Mae has already faced numerous class action lawsuits alleging predatory and racially discriminatory lending and was issued a cease-and-desist letter from the FDIC for redlining.3

We think the government shouldn’t be in business with a company whose lending practices are shameful and illegal. And even the Secretary of Education agrees. During a meeting earlier this year where students were raising concerns about Sallie Mae, Secretary Duncan personally told us, “We don’t want to do business with people who violate the law.”4

Tell Arne Duncan to live up to his words and terminate the department’s contract with Sallie Mae NOW!

Our urgency is real. In two weeks, students around the country will be arriving on campuses, and soon after they’ll receive information on who will be managing their loans. That means the Department of Education has a narrow window to end its contract with Sallie Mae and reallocate loan administration and collection duties to another bank before the school year begins.

Sallie Mae is supposed to be in the business of making education a reality. Instead the company profiteers off its student borrowers by granting risky loans with high interest rates. Last year, U.S. student debt hit $1 trillion – meanwhile, Sallie Mae cleared $1 billion in profits. So to recap: Sallie Mae is taking advantage of taxpayers, students, members of the military, and people of color.

The government shouldn’t be outsourcing loan administration jobs to a big bank in the first place, and it definitely shouldn’t be awarding contracts worth hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to a shady company like Sallie Mae.

Even though its own policies dictate that it should drop Sallie Mae, the Department of Education won’t end this contract without public pressure. So we’re pulling out all the stops. We’re mobilizing a coalition of consumer watchdogs, military and veterans’ advocates, student activists, and labor groups to join us. We’re reaching out to Members of Congress and have put even more journalists on their trail. Can we count on you to encourage the Department of Education to do the right thing and stop doing business with Sallie Mae?

Send your message today to ensure Sallie Mae will be held accountable.

Sophia Zaman
USSA President

1 http://www.usaspending.gov
2 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/us/sallie-mae-to-be-accused-of-overcharging-military-personnel-on-loans.html?_r=0
3 http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/enforcement/2008-08-10.pdf
4 http://www.aft.org/newspubs/news/2013/051413studentdebt.cfm

“Let Freedom Ring” events for culmination of 50th Anniversary of March on Washington and MLK dream

AP/ Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., waves to supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 28 August, 1963, on The Mall in Washington, DC, upon giving the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

The King Center, July 16, 2013– The King Center and the 50th Anniversary Coalition are calling on people and organizations across America to help culminate the 50th anniversary of The March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech with “Let Freedom Ring” bell-ringing events at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on August 28th, a half-century to the minute after Dr. King delivered his historic address. In other nations, there will be bell-ringing ceremonies at 3:00 p.m. in their respective time zones.

“We are calling on people across America and throughout the world to join with us as we pause to mark the 50th anniversary of my father’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech with ‘Let Freedom Ring’ bell-ringing events and programs that affirm the unity of people of all races, religions and nations,” said King Center C.E.O. Bernice A. King. “My father concluded his great speech with a call to ‘Let freedom ring,’ and that is a challenge we will meet with a magnificent display of brotherhood and sisterhood in symbolic bell-ringing at places of worship, schools and other venues where bells are available from coast to coast and continent to continent.”

Local groups are encouraged to present diverse commemorative programs, which bring people together across cultural and political lines to celebrate the common humanity in creative and uplifting ways in the spirit of the dream. Ms. King especially urges that all of the programs involve children and young people, since children are mentioned in several passages of her father’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

There will be a “Let Freedom Ring” Commemoration & Call to Action” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on August 28th.  The program begins with an interfaith service from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Tidal Basin, followed by the “Let Freedom Ring” Commemoration and Call to Action at the nearby Lincoln Memorial from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. that includes the bell-ringing ceremony at 3:00 p.m.

Groups are already planning bell-ringing events in places as diverse as Concord, New Hampshire, Allentown PA, Lutry Switzerland and Tokyo Japan. Governors of the 50 states have been asked to support the bell-ringing, and many have already responded enthusiastically, with more expected to join the effort.  The King Center requests that all groups planning programs submit a brief description of your 50th anniversary ‘Let Freedom Ring’ bell-ringing event to website@thekingcenter.org.

“Let Freedom Ring” will conclude seven-days of events commemorating the March on Washington and Dr. King’s Dream speech. For the millions who can’t come to Washington, D.C. for the seven-day program, the local ‘Let Freedom Ring’ programs will provide a unique opportunity to get involved in a poignant nation-wide and global day of unity in their respective home towns.

“Our World, His Dream: Freedom – Make it Happen” is the theme for the “Let Freedom Ring” commemoration and call to action.  This theme is undergirded by the three sub-themes: “Freedom to Prosper in Life;”  “Freedom to Peacefully Co-Exist;” and “Freedom to Participate in Government.”

For more information about the 50th Anniversary of the I Have A Dream speech, please contact The King Center (Atlanta, GA) at 404-526-8944, sklein@thekingcenter.org or visit the websitewww.mlkdream50.com.  To stay in touch with updated details, participate with the following:  Twitter twitter.com/DCMARCHMLK50; Facebook www.facebook.com/Mlkdream50; Pinterest pinterest.com/mlkdream50/; and Intstagram mlkdream50.  The Hashtag is  #mlkdream50.

George Mason University course to examine Trayvon Martin case

Holly Hobbs, Fairfax Times, July 18, 2013– As the nation reflects on the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a college course this fall will offer an academic look at the case’s impact outside of the courtroom.

George Mason University Professor Rutledge Dennis, a professor of sociology and anthropology, will teach “From Homer Plessy to Trayvon Martin: Issues in Race, Culture, and Politics,” which he said would look at historic cases involving race and their impacts on society. The course title has been abbreviated on Mason’s website: Plessy to Martin: Race and Politics.

“I hope our students will get out of it a sense of how racial, political and cultural issues impact how we interact,” Dennis said.

While the course aims to introduce students to historic themes through a contemporary example, Dennis and the university garnered much criticism online, mostly from conservative bloggers and media outlets like The Daily Caller, The National Review and Red Alert Politics.

“I have received a lot of nasty, hateful emails about this course because people assume it’s a course [only] about Trayvon Martin,” Dennis said. “Trayvon Martin is just one case.”

The course begins with coverage of the landmark 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, which upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation of public facilities. Students also will study other historic cases, such as the 1931 arrests of the “Scottsboro Boys,” a group of nine black teenagers who were accused of raping two white women in Alabama. The course includes a number of contemporary high-profile trials like the 1992 trials of Los Angeles police officers accused of beating construction worker Rodney King and the murder trial of former NFL running back O.J. Simpson, which ended in 1995.

Many of the trials included in the course syllabus occurred before most current undergraduate students were born. The Trayvon Martin case offers a current example and context for undergrads, Dennis said.

“The Trayvon Martin case is important academically because race and issues around race are academic issues,” Dennis said, adding that the humanities often study gender and class; so why not race? “While this case did not begin as a racial case, it ended as one.”

Mason Provost Peter Stearns says criticism of curriculum is not a common occurrence for the university, but it is also not unheard of.

“Regularly, university faculty deal with topics that have different viewpoints. [Previously] George Mason University has been accused of being too liberal and too conservative,” he said. “One of the challenges in teaching is you want to make sure students understand the historical context and themes. But we also want to make sure they can apply this knowledge to current issues.”

Dennis said he hopes his course will offer students the opportunity to debate why Martin’s death and Zimmerman’s trial sparked intense media coverage and debate.

“I think it got attention for many people because we have an unarmed teenager who was shot by someone of another ethnic group,” Dennis said. “Young black men have been taken advantage of by the system. … And this becomes, for many, another example of a young black man being taken advantage of by the system.”

As of Wednesday, 16 students had registered for Dennis’ class (AFAM 390), which is cross-listed as both an African and African American Studies and Sociology/Anthropology course.

First Nations leaders demand apology for nutritional experiments

CBC News, July 17, 2013– First Nations leaders are demanding an apology from the federal government after it was revealed that Canada ran nutritional experiments on malnourished aboriginal children and adults during and after the Second World War.

Recently published research by Canadian food historian Ian Mosby has revealed that at least 1,300 aboriginal people — most of them children — were used as test subjects in the 1940s and ’50s by researchers looking at the effectiveness of vitamin supplements. [See “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952″]

The research began in 1942 on about 300 Cree in Norway House in northern Manitoba. Plans were later developed for research on about 1,000 hungry aboriginal children in six residential schools in Port Alberni, B.C., Kenora, Ont., Shubenacadie, N.S., and Lethbridge, Alta.

Vivian Ketchum, whose mother attended St. Mary’s Residential School in Kenora, told CBC News that hearing of the experiments has brought her sorrow and anger to a new level. “Immediately my thoughts were to my parents. Like, I thought the residential school issues [were] bad enough, and now this on top of it?” Ketchum said Wednesday.

Mosby said his research puts the spotlight on a little-known event that was perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of government policy toward aboriginal people. “It shows Canadians the mentality behind Canada’s Indian administration during this period,” he said. “It seems that little good came out of the studies in terms of scientific knowledge.”

‘Abhorrent and completely unacceptable’

In a statement, the federal government said officials are looking into the matter. “If this story is true, this is abhorrent and completely unacceptable,” the statement read in part.

Read More: CBC News

Chan v UBC discrimination case sent back to BC Human Rights Tribunal

The University of British Columbia’s petition to dismiss Dr. Jennifer Chan’s complaint of racial discrimination must go back to the BC Human Rights Tribunal says a 29 May 2013 BC Supreme Court’s judgment. The BCHRT’s decision on 24 January 2012 to hear the Chan v UBC and others [Beth Haverkamp, David Farrar, Jon Shapiro, Rob Tierney] case was moved to the Supreme Court for a judicial review. In addition to the BCHRT decision and Supreme Court judgment, the Ubyssey’s (UBC student newspaper) feature article provides a background to the case.

In the Supreme Court judgment, Madam Justice Loo argues that the BCHRT must assess whether “the complaint has been appropriately dealt with in another proceeding.” A decision within the BCHRT to hear the case must address UBC’s argument that “internal university processes [used to hear Chan’s appeals] qualified under the Code as ‘proceedings’ that had appropriately addressed the substance of” Chan’s complaint. Chan “asserts that she has exhausted the internal complaint mechanism of UBC and that it was flawed.”

We Too Are #IdleNoMore : UBC’s Non-Indigenous Scholars and the Politics of Engaging Indigeneity

We Too Are “Idle No More”:
UBC’s Non-Indigenous Scholars and the Politics of Engaging Indigeneity

Monday
May 27, 2013
8:30am to 5:30pm

FREE and open to the public

A Centre for Culture, Identity and Education (CCIE) Project; in collaboration with the Office of the Associate Dean of Indigenous Education

RSVP : http://tinyurl.com/cwvyqoy
DATE:  Monday, May 27, 2013
VENUE: University of British Columbia, Longhouse, Sty-Wet-Tan
1985 West Mall
Map: http://bit.ly/aiSPhB
TIME: 8:30am to 5:30pm, 5:30 – 6:30 Mingler and further discussion

Welcome:  Elder Larry Grant

Opening Plenary Panel: Blye Frank, Dean of Education & Jo-ann Archibald, Associate Dean of Indigenous Education.

Closing Plenary Panel: Anna Kindler- Vice Provost, Academic & Linc Kesler- Senior Advisor to President on Aboriginal Affairs

This symposium will involve plenary and regular panels composed of non-indigenous administrators, faculty, graduate students and staff from a variety of units across UBC addressing the details and politics of engaging Indigeneity, with responses from Indigenous administrator and scholar discussants. While the project originates from the Faculty of Education, the aim is to provide an overview and details of work on academic and administrative topics and projects on indigeneity across UBC.  

Symposium Details:

Co-sponsors: Faculty of Education – Year of Indigenous Education, Indigenous Education Institute of Canada, Department of Educational Studies, Department of Language and Literacy Education, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, First Nations Studies Program, Department of English, Department of Anthropology, Department of Art History Visual Art and Theory and Belkin Art Gallery, Office of the Provost and Vice President, Academic

Muzzling scientists is an assault on democracy

David Suzuki, Rabble.ca, April 9, 2013–

Access to information is a basic foundation of democracy. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms also gives us “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

We must protect these rights. As we alter the chemical, physical and biological properties of the biosphere, we face an increasingly uncertain future, and the best information we have to guide us comes from science. That scientists – and even librarians – are speaking out against what appear to be increasing efforts to suppress information shows we have cause for concern. The situation has become so alarming that Canada’s Information Commissioner is investigating seven government departments in response to a complaint that they’re “muzzling” scientists.

The submission from the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre and Democracy Watch alleges that “the federal government is preventing the media and the Canadian public from speaking to government scientists for news stories – especially when the scientists’ research or point of view runs counter to current Government policies on matters such as environmental protection, oil sands development, and climate change” and that this “impoverishes the public debate on issues of significant national concern.”

The complaint and investigation follow numerous similar charges from scientists and organizations such as the Canadian Science Writers’ Association and the World Federation of Science Journalists, and publications such as the science journal Nature. Hundreds of scientists marched on Parliament Hill last July to mark “the death of evidence”.

The list of actions prompting these grievances is long. It includes shutting the world-renownedExperimental Lakes Area, axing the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, eliminating funding for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences and prohibiting federal scientists from speaking about research on subjects ranging from ozone to climate change to salmon.

All of this has been taking place as the federal government guts environmental laws and cuts funding for environmental departments through its omnibus budget bills. It has justified those massive environmental policy changes in part by saying the review process was slow and inefficient, but research by scientists at the University of Toronto, published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, “found no evidence that regulatory review in Canada was inefficient, even when regulators had an ongoing load of over 600 projects for review at any given time.”…

Read More: Rabble.ca

Lessons of Harvard’s secret email search

Dan Gillmor, The Guardian, March 11, 2013— According to Harvard Universityemail subject lines are not “content”. This remarkable claim comes in a university statement, sardonicallycalled a “partial apology” by the Boston Globe, attempting to explain why Harvard semi-searched email accounts of 16 “resident deans” to find out who’d leaked information about a student cheating scandal to the press.

The statement attempted to put to rest a mini-uproar set off by theGlobe’s initial report on the leaker probe methods. In attempting to explain what had happened, and to assure the Harvard community that people’s emails weren’t being scanned wholesale, the statement answered some questions but only provoked others.

Most of all, the entire episode highlighted several realities in today’s working world: notably, the folly of using an employer’s email system for any purpose that might ever prove controversial.

I won’t even attempt to sort out the Harvard explanation; it’s too convoluted. But I do want to point to the bizarre assertion mentioned at the top of this piece. The statement says, in part:

“The search did not involve a review of email content; it was limited to a search of the subject line of the email that had been inappropriately forwarded. To be clear: no one’s emails were opened and the contents of no one’s emails were searched by human or machine.”

I have news for the deans under whose names this statement appeared. Like most people who send email, I try hard to make the subject line relevant enough that the recipient will be inclined to open the missive and read it. Other highly relevant material in my email includes the name of the person I’m sending it to; the date; the time; the internet address of the machine I’m using; and the network I’m sending from. None of those is the message itself, but they are “content” in every way that matters. That data form the basis for all kinds of inferences and knowledge about me.

I take for granted that Harvard, like all employers, has a right to look at pretty much anything it pleases on the machines that are part of its network, and I’d put administrative email accounts, as these were, fairly high on the list. That doesn’t mean Harvard is necessarily doing the right thing, or that any employer exercising its internal snooping rights, except in the rarest of circumstances, is being honorable with its employees.

It does mean that employees should always assume that their employers’ networks are under surveillance, at least internally.

Read More: The Guardian

#IdleNoMore UNBC students in action

Rolling Stone, Brooke Jarvis, February 4, 2013— As members of Canada’s House of Commons returned to work last week in Ottawa, they found several hundred protesters waiting for them under a heavy snowfall on Parliament Hill. Many were dressed in traditional clothing of Canada’s First Nations….

Similar protests took place in Halifax, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal, Vancouver and other cities across Canada and in the United States. They were part of a “world day of action” organized under the banner of Idle No More – a native rights movement that has been heating up since October, when the Canadian government proposed a bill, known as C-45, that included provisions to undermine environmental protection and indigenous sovereignty.

C-45, which passed in December, changes the way that First Nations approve the surrendering or leasing of territory, making it easier to open indigenous treaty lands to development. The law also reduces the number of development projects that require environmental assessment and dramatically changes the nation’s Navigable Waters Protection Act – which, since 1882, has made it illegal to “block, alter or destroy any water deep enough to float a canoe without federal approval.” Now, only specifically enumerated bodies of water have that protection….

Shalane Pauls is a 24-year-old biochemistry student at the University of Northern British Columbia and a member of the Tsimshian and Tahltan nations. In the last few months, she has organized three Idle No More rallies. She is in the process of planning a teach-in to discuss what she calls myths about the movement, primarily claims that First Nations receive unfair government support. But the biggest myth, she said, is that water pollution only matters to native people. “It’s not just a First Nations issue,” says Pauls. “It’s a human rights issue. It’s a Canadian issue. It’s not just aboriginal children we’re looking out for; it’s the children of the nation.”

Idle No More has been subject to many of the same criticisms as other social movements: that its purpose isn’t sufficiently clear, that tactics will turn off potential allies, that infighting and tribal mismanagement mar the message. There’s no way to tell how long its momentum will last. Still, Pauls sees the movement as a turning point in the political involvement of Canada’s First Nations. “For so long, we haven’t been heard. And so, for so long we just sat, idly. But the title in itself really wakes people up. To be like, ‘Hey, I don’t want to be idle anymore – this is what I want to see, this is how I feel.’ There’s always going to be something worth fighting for.”

Read More: Idle No More: Native-Led Protest Movement Takes On Canadian Government | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

Power of #IdleNoMore movement lies in direct action, says UBC prof

Georgia Straight, Yolanda Cole, February 6, 2013 — THE IDLE NO More movement is undergoing a moment of “pause and critical reflection”, in the view of one participant.

Speaking at an Idle No More “teach-in” event at the University of British Columbia on February 1, Coulthard addressed the potential impact of direct actions staged by the movement.

The political science and First Nations Studies faculty member argued that grassroots forms of protests such as blockades have historically led to changes on indigenous issues.

“Historically, I would venture to suggest that all negotiations, over the scope and content of aboriginal people’s rights in the last 40 years, have piggybacked off of the assertive direct actions, including the escalated use of blockades, spearheaded by indigenous women and other grassroots elements of our community,” Coulthard told a crowd of more than 300 students and members of the public at the First Nations House of Learning at UBC.

Coulthard, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, disputed what he said is an assumption that official negotiations among leadership are the “most productive means to forge real change in the lives of indigenous communities”.

“I think that there’s a latent understanding that the negotiations aren’t about making the transformative changes that indigenous peoples need in order to live healthy, cultured lives, and if you look at the history of negotiations, they’ve always come in order to placate the transformative energy that has emerged in more grassroots forms of protest actions,” he said in an interview.

In fact, he argued, inquiries such as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the B.C. missing women inquiry wouldn’t have occurred if sustained direct actions led by indigenous communities hadn’t brought attention to the issues.

Coulthard noted it wouldn’t surprise him if Idle No More demonstrations escalate to “more assertive” forms of peaceful protest. Idle No More actions in Ontario have included railway and highway blockades.

“I think that it’s pretty clear that the federal government is maintaining its stance on the problematic pieces of legislation that have upset indigenous peoples so much,” he stated. “And if history has taught us anything, these cycles of anger and pent-up frustration will tend to be played out in activism.”

The demonstrations were initially sparked out of opposition to federal omnibus legislation that included changes to the Indian Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

Coulthard noted that the movement has gained unprecedented sustained attention from the general population.

“I think it’s because Canadians, nonindigenous peoples, are seeing their own interests perhaps better represented by indigenous peoples, especially concerning environmental sustainability and the land,” he said in an interview. “These legislative changes are also violations of nonindigenous peoples’ aspirations with respect to the integrity of the land, having it shared more equitably.”

In Coulthard’s view, movements like Idle No More “have within their sights, now more than ever” a restructuring of the relationship between indigenous peoples and Canada. But he added that changes to that relationship are a “distant, long-term goal”.

“The impacts [of the movement] will be long-term, and they will eventually compel Canada to come to the negotiating table on equitable terms, honor its treaty obligations, and correct the colonial relationship between indigenous peoples and the state,” he said.

“The inequalities and the privileges that have built up are centuries old now, so it’s not going to happen overnight.”

Red More: Georgia Straight