New issue launch Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor #35 (2024-2025)
Articles in Workplace #35 address a variety of labour issues on campus and beyond, including the first in a series of articles by graduate student participants in the Global Labour Research Centre Symposium at York University.
Find the Workplace #35 here: https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/index
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Contingent labor, Corporate University, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Employment rights, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Publications, Research, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged global labor supply, Global Labour Research Centre Symposium, migration
Submit chapters here https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/submit/6670
Proposals Submission Deadline: September 22nd, 2023
Full Chapters Due: December 21, 2023
Submission Date: December 21, 2023
“Neoliberalism has had destructive effects on the academic profession. While fulltime academic employment has always been a privilege for a few, the academic precariat has risen as a reserve army of workers with ever shorter, lower paid, hyper-flexible contracts and ever more temporally fragmented and hyper-mobile lives.” (Ivancheva, 2015, p. 39)
According to Standing (2016), starting in the 1980’s, globalisation “has generated a class structure, superimposed on earlier structures, comprising an elite, a salariat, proficians and old ‘core’ working class (proletariat), a precariat, the unemployed and a lumpen-precariat (or “underclass”)” (2014, p. 12) Connecting precariousness with vulnerability Lorey (2011) suggests Precarity is a “category […] that denotes the effects of political, social, and legal compensations for general precariousness” (para. 4). Chinnery explains: “so while we are all vulnerable to whims of fortune, health, violence, and natural disasters, there are some people whose social, economic or political status renders them more vulnerable, more precarious than others” (2015, p. 2). These people, the Precariat, are also susceptible to “the governmental or the structural ways in which precariousness in distributed and managed” (Lorey, 2011, para. 5), what Chinnery (2015) and Lorey (2011) refer to as Precaritisation.
This edited volume will provide a comprehensive scan of the politics and policies that inform and shape precarity in adult, community, and vocational education. It will explore the in/adequacy of existing theories of adult and workplace education and professional development to capture the experiences of the precariat. It will explore the role of unions and union learning in facilitating and combating precarity experienced by educators. It will showcase first-person narratives of educators who experience precaritisation, each and every day. Finally, it will explore the concept of meaningful work and self-care and describe what meaningful work and self-care look and feel like in this landscape of precarity.
Writers, researchers and practitioners in areas of:
This work will be a significant addition to the field addressing politics and policy, theory and practice, first-person narratives, all in relation to the concept and experience of meaningful work and self-care. This work will be a useful resource for adult, community, and vocational educators across a range of contexts.
In no particular order contents will include, but may not be limited to:
• Contexts of adult, community and vocational learning
• Neoliberal and globalised politics and policy as they relate to work, workplace education and professional development
• The role of unions and union learning
• Theories of work, workplace education, and professional development
• Precaritisation, precariousness, precarity
• First-person narratives of experience
• Meaningful work
• Self-care
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before August 23, 2023, a chapter proposal of 1,000 to 2,000 words clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by September 6, 2023 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by December 21, 2023, and all interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions at https://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/before-you-write/ prior to submission. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.
Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication, Precarity, Unions, and Meaningful Work in Adult, Community, and Vocational Education. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial process.
All proposals should be submitted through the eEditorial Discovery® online submission manager. Submit your proposal here:https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/submit/6670
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), an international academic publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. IGI Global specializes in publishing reference books, scholarly journals, and electronic databases featuring academic research on a variety of innovative topic areas including, but not limited to, education, social science, medicine and healthcare, business and management, information science and technology, engineering, public administration, library and information science, media and communication studies, and environmental science. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit https://www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2024.
September 22nd, 2023: Proposal Submission Deadline
From September 6, 2023: Notification of Acceptance
December 21, 2023: Full Chapter Submission
February 18, 2024: Review Results Returned
March 31, 2024: Final Acceptance Notification
April 14, 2024: Final Chapter Submission
Rupert C. Collister, PhD
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, University of New Brunswick, & Yorkville University
Comments Off on Call for Chapters: Precarity, Unions, and Meaningful Work in Adult, Community, and Vocational Education
Posted in Corporate University, Employment rights, Faculty, Publications, Research, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged adult education, Call for Manuscripts, community education, precarity, Unions, vocational education
Responding to a Petition and attached Letter (below) questioning the decision to exclude an extremely competitive African Canadian applicant from the shortlist in the search for a new Dean of Education at UBC, President Ono shut down the search and dissolved the Advisory Committee. The UBC President also indicated that Provost and Committee co-Chair Ananya Mukherjee Reed resigned from the Committee, seemingly in support of the conclusions and questions raised by the Petition and its 150 signatories.
On 9 December 2020, the UBC President wrote to faculty, staff, and students:
Yesterday, I received Prof. Ananya Mukherjee Reed’s resignation as co-chair from the President’s Advisory Committee for the Recruitment of a Dean for the Faculty of Education. This is effective immediately. I met with the PAC Committee yesterday and heard from members regarding the viability of the search moving forward, and they felt that the search could not proceed. After careful consideration and consultation with the Committee, I have decided to end the current search for a new Dean at this time.
Of course, it is extremely rare for a Dean search to be cancelled in response to grass roots efforts. It is certainly a step in the right direction of accountability. A next step is answering the various questions raised about this Advisory Committee: Why did they do what they did? In the midst of Black Lives Matter, why did they exclude a competitive African Canadian applicant?
November 26, 2020
Dear President Ono,
This Letter and attached Petition are in response to the President’s Advisory Committee for the Selection of the next Dean of the Faculty of Education’s decision to exclude Dr. Samson Nashon from its shortlist. I write on behalf of the 150 faculty, students, staff, alumni, emeriti, and community members who signed this Petition to add Dr. Nashon to the shortlist. The Petition identifies flawed procedures underwriting the President’s Advisory Committee’s decision. For example, the Committee excluded African Canadian faculty, staff, and students
The University of British Columbia’s Strategic Plan, Shaping UBC’s Next Century, emphasizes “our intention to be a leader in diversity and equity” (Strategy 1: Great People, p. 41). Leadership in diversity and equity entails fighting against racism at all levels of administration, research, service, and teaching.
The 150 signatories to this Petition expect action to back up the commitments. We hope that you will address our collective concerns, convey them to the President’s Advisory Committee, and consider what can be done to redress the problem and rectify the injustice. This raises a serious procedural question of how a Committee that excluded Dr. Nashon from the shortlist can now fairly include and consider his candidacy?
The Petition with signatories is attached. On behalf of this groundswell of support for Dr. Nashon’s candidacy, thank you very much for addressing our concerns and request.
Respectfully, the [150] signatories of the Petition.
cc. Dr. Andrew Szeri, Provost and Vice-President Academic, UBC Vancouver (Co-chair)
Dr. Ananya Mukherjee Reed, Provost and Vice-President Academic, UBC Okanagan (Co-chair)
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Black Lives Matter, Campus Life, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Governance, Organizing, Race, Shared governance, Staff, Students, Working conditions
In a show of solidarity today, 150 signatories submitted a petition to University of British Columbia President Ono to account for a decision to disregard Dr. Samson Nashon‘s application for Dean of the Faculty of Education. The petition calls for the UBC President to correct procedural and evaluative oversights of an Advisory Committee (16 members):
Petition for addition of Dr. Samson Nashon to the Shortlist for Dean of the Faculty of Education
(November 21-25, 2020)
As the Black Lives Matter movement called higher education practices into question, President Ono communicated to faculty, staff, and students on June 1st, 2020: “I encourage you to think about the role you can play in fighting racism.” This petition is in the spirit of that fight.
We are concerned with the process of finding a new Dean of the UBC Faculty of Education. The President’s Advisory Committee charged with this task seems not to have taken into account the groundswell of support for Dr. Samson Nashon. Apparently, the Committee ignored the overwhelming evidence in his support from the process of shortlisting. Up through a communication indicating Dr. Nashon’s exclusion from the shortlist on November 20, over five months have passed since the Advisory Committee’s last communication to the faculty, staff, and students (on June 9, 2020). Short of a problematic election for faculty members on the Committee (only 4 Committee members out of 11 were voted in by the faculty members), faculty and staff had little input into the Committee’s composition. Consequently, the President’s Advisory Committee excluded ALL African Canadian faculty, staff, and students.
Colleagues reviewing Professor Nashon’s application for this search for a Dean of the Faculty of Education and faculty, staff, and students recommending him to the Advisory Committee via Boyden Vancouver know full well his competitive qualifications. They meet and exceed those of many Education Deans across Canada, including UBC. Why were these qualifications seemingly overlooked? Dr. Nashon was encouraged to apply by Boyden, but was then excluded from the shortlist. What does the recruitment of an African Canadian applicant mean, if the goal is merely to enrich the pool of applicants for the sake of optics?
For too long and in too many instances, UBC senior managers have created Advisory Committees that excluded and under-valued well qualified African ethnic and diasporic applicants, who are internal to the university, for leadership positions across UBC campuses. These practices account for the lack of diversity in the demographic of senior and middle management ranks in Education and elsewhere on the two campuses.
Given this, we submit this petition requesting Professor Samson Nashon be added to the shortlist for the Dean of the Faculty of Education Search.
Signed: 150 Signatories
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academics, Administration, Advocacy, BC Education, Black Lives Matter, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Faculty, Governance, Organizing, Race, Shared governance, Solidarity, Student Movement, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Governance, mismanagement, Strikes & Labor Disputes, University presidents, Working conditions
The account and evidence of how, when, where, and why Professor Wylie (Peter) was mobbed by UBC administrators are disturbing. It’s a travesty that he had to endure this mobbing. Faculty are tremendously grateful that he brought the facts out for an airing and hearing.
My Campus Administration, Faculty Association, Senate, and Me: A Case Study in Academic Mobbing
Peter Wylie
Faculty member, University of British Columbia
This in the author’s view is a clear case of academic mobbing. The case fits perfectly with what is argued that almost all scholars who study academic mobbing agree is its primary characteristics; it is initiated by administrators whose malfeasance was questioned or revealed though the expression of academic free speech; the target tend to be tenured professors who publicly speak out about administrative wrongdoing; it involves manipulation or misrepresentation of the facts regarding the victim’s motivations or behavior; the target’s colleagues are either poisoned against him or her, or choose not to support the victim due indifference, or a lack of conviction, and the target is left personally and professionally injured, while the perpetrator(s) goes unpunished (MacDonald et al., 2018, para. 12). To this the author would add that the kangaroo court investigation procedures of the university are merely an extension of the academic mobbing process. (pp. 206-207)
Read More: Wylie, P. (2019). My Campus Administration, Faculty Association, Senate, and Me: A Case Study in Academic Mobbing. In C. M. Crawford (Ed.), Confronting Academic Mobbing in Higher Education: Personal Accounts and Administrative Action (pp. 187-210). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Academics, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Bullying & Mobbing, Censorship, Corporate University, Corruption, Employment rights, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Free speech, Governance, Legal issues, Scandals, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Free speech, Governance, mismanagement, mobbing, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
*Apologies to the medievalists once again. Customized below is our semi-annual appeal to UBC managers to Lay Down the Mace:
As we count down to and roll through graduation, can we please remove the mace from convocation and governance at the University of British Columbia? The mace may have had its day in the first 100 years of this esteemed University but that day has gone.
The “ceremonial mace used at convocation ceremonies is out of step with contemporary values.” Dalhousie University now uses what it designed and calls the New Dawn Staff instead of a mace.
Indigenous peoples and advocates have said plenty about this already but the managers, well…
Currently, for instance, #UBC managers gleefully delight in the gravity and weight of their mace, entirely remiss that in addition to blunt power and violence, UBC’s mace signifies greed– the chainsaw and excavator– real estate development— digging for gold– as the University feverishly exploits its Endowment Lands (esp. Areas A, B, & D). Some traditions just aren’t worth maintaining…
Oh, and at the Nexo Knights’ Graduation Day,
Jestro grabbed a sword, a mace, and a spear and began to juggle them… The unimpressed crowd started to boo… Sweat broke out on his forehead…. He let go of the mace, and it flew across the arena. The crowd gasped and ducked… Then … bam! It hit the power grid on the arena wall. The area lights flickered, then turned off. Soon the power outage surged throughout the city.
Meanwhile again in England, Bradford College faculty members called the admin’s decision to spend £24,000 on a new mace for graduation ceremonies a “crass bit of judgement.”
The days of the mace in Convocation and governance are of the past and that part of the past is no longer worth reenacting.
It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.
It is time to retire the mace, symbol of aggression, authority, and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies in late May and November with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.
UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?
From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.
Stephen Heatley wields the mace at the 2018 convocation.
It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.
Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?
Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into Martha Piper’s Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May.
Is it not time to retire the mace and mace bearer?
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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Advocacy, Budgets & Funding, Bullying & Mobbing, Censorship, Critical University Studies, Culture, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Free speech, Governance, Maces, Organizing, Politics, Regalia, Solidarity, Students, Violence
Peter Wylie, Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science, March 2018
The following are the results of the 2011, 2014 and 2017 Workplace Experiences Surveys (WES) based on the responses of all faculty in the Barber School – that is, all regular, permanent faculty members as well as sessional faculty, deans, associate deans, heads, post-docs, and research associates. The 2011 and 2014 results are presented in absolute terms and the 2017 results are presented both in absolute terms and relative to the responses of all faculty at UBC (UBCO plus UBCV).
The company that completed the 2017 survey, TalentMap, states: “Generally, a % Favourable of 70 or above is considered good, a % Favourable in the 60s is considered acceptable, and a % Favourable of lower than 60 would indicate the need to investigate further.” Or, to put in the parlance of what faculty members might better relate to, an overall grade of above 70 is good (B- and above), a grade in the 60s in acceptable (C), and a grade lower than 60 is generally unacceptable. An overall grade n the 50s is a marginal pass (D), but generally seen as still not good enough, and a grade lower than 50 is a fail (F) and entirely unacceptable.
The 2011 results overall
54 faculty in the School completed the 2011 survey, a reported response rate of 32%, implying that there were approximately 165 such faculty in the School when the survey was completed in November 2011. The vast majority of the faculty respondents were permanent faculty members (47) and the others respondents were 3 sessional faculty and 4 deans, associate deans, heads etc. The survey misclassified heads as non-bargaining unit faculty.
The 2011 WES results for all faculty in the Barber School were generally negative, reflecting an overall disengaged faculty. The average percent of all faculty giving favourable responses (“very satisfied/satisfied” or “agree/strongly agree” etc.) across all 79 questions in the survey was 47%, which in most faculty members’ estimation is an F, fail.
The results were known as of February 2012 but no action was undertaken by the Barber School Dean’s Office to discuss them with faculty until, on the initiative of faculty members themselves, an ad-hoc committee of the Barber School Faculty Council was established in February 2013. This was the first such committee ever established by Faculty Council, and it was to study the poor results in detail and to make recommendations that would help make the Barber School a better, or at least a less bad, place for faculty to work. No interest was shown by the Dean’s Office in the work of this committee over its approximately one full year of deliberations, and both the Barber School acting dean at the time and the Barber School dean at the time the survey was completed (the then acting provost) refused to meet with the committee.
The 2014 results overall
The 2014 results were brought to the attention of faculty in the School by the Dean’s Office only in November 2017, and, it appears, were not analyzed nor acted upon by the School before then. The 2014 survey reported a response rate of 33%, the same as in 2011, but did not report the actual number of responses. If there were approximately 180 faculty in the School in November 2014 inclusive of all permanent faculty members as well as sessional faculty, deans, associate deans, heads, etc., then a response rate of 33% implies that approximately 60 faculty or so in the School completed the survey in November 2014. The survey in 2014 again misclassified heads as non-bargaining unit faculty.
The 2014 WES results for all faculty in the Barber School were again generally negative, reflecting an overall disengaged faculty. The average percent of all faculty giving favourable responses (“very satisfied/satisfied” or “agree/strongly agree” etc.) across all 69 questions in the survey was 57%, which in most faculty members’ estimation is a D grade, a marginal pass, but generally unacceptable.
The 2017 results overall
The 2017 results were brought to the attention of faculty in the School by the Dean’s Office in February 2018. 82 faculty in the School completed the 2017 survey, a reported response rate of 44% and implying that there were approximately 185 or so such faculty in the School when the survey was completed in November 2017.
The 2017 WES results for all faculty in the Barber School remain generally negative, reflecting an overall disengaged faculty. The average percent of all faculty giving Favourable responses (“very satisfied/satisfied” or “agree/strongly agree” etc.) across all 91 questions in the survey was 49%, which in most faculty members’ estimation is an F, fail.
For UBC overall, the average percent of all faculty at UBC giving Favourable responses (“very satisfied/satisfied” or “agree/strongly agree” etc.) across all 91 questions in the 2017 survey was 61%, so just marginally acceptable. Results for the Barber School are hence an average of 12% lower, pushing the Barber School into the fail, unacceptable range.
So there has been little improvement overall in the Barber School in the results 2011 to 2014 to 2017, and the average grade is an F across the period. So I think we have to ponder why, in our School with its $15m endowment and commitment to “an environment of academic excellence” and “a liberal arts and sciences school in the finest tradition” workplace experiences of faculty are apparently so poor, both in absolute terms and relative to faculty elsewhere at UBC.
Comparison of results of similar questions across the 2011, 2014 and 2017 surveys
Of course an overall grade across all categories and across three different surveys where the questions differ to different degrees, and the respondents differ to different degrees, is only a fairly crude comparison, but still valid to a large extent (we do the same comparisons in the student grade averages in our courses across sections and years). However, if some of the questions remained largely the same across the three surveys it is also instructive to look at the results of specific questions. Unfortunately, the questions change quite a bit across the surveys, especially for the 2017 survey relative to those of 2011 and 2014.
The ad-hoc committee of Faculty Council established to analyze the 2011 WES results for the Barber School identified four major themes of workplace dissatisfaction:
1. Low Level of morale and organizational engagement
2. Dissatisfaction with senior leadership, managerial communications and transparency
3. Dissatisfaction with workload, workload flexibility, support/resources and work-life balance
4. Dissatisfaction with opportunities for career progression and professional development
Themes 1 and 2 fell into the category of “general work atmosphere issues” and themes 3 and 4 into the category of “personal work and workload issues”. The committee presented its final report to Faculty Council in March 2014 and made a number of recommendations that it felt would improve things in each of these two major categories, but none of these recommendations were implemented by the
School. The acting dean and provost at the time showed no interest in the final report of the committee, and made no official response to it, and when its report was brought to the attention of the new(and current) dean in 2016, he said he had never heard of it and hence had never read it.
We will however use these categories found to be the major areas of concern in the final report of the ad-hoc committee to discuss below the differences and similarities between the 2011, 2014 and 2017 results, because these areas still show up in 2017, not unexpectedly given the lack of attention to the results of the 2011 and 2014 surveys by Barber School or University management to date, as the major areas or concern.
Comparison of results of inside and outside the Barber School at UBCO, 2017 survey
The total results for faculty of the 2017 WES for UBCO overall have not been released to the UBCO academic community yet. What has been released is a PowerPoint presentation put together by the survey company for the UBCO Department of Human Resources (HR). In this presentation, only results of 35 of the 91 questions are revealed for faculty only. Avoided entirely in the presentation are the results for the most negative areas for the Barber School and presumably UBCO overall for faculty; work environment, work/life integration, communications, collaboration, immediate unit head/manager, UBCO’s senior leadership, and health and wellbeing. It is perhaps to be expected that HR might wish to dwell on the positive rather than the negative. More worrying is the fact that on the PowerPoint, all of these areas where the % responding favorably at UBCO are the lowest are assigned a “medium to low priority” by HR! Maybe these areas are seen as lost causes?
So the focus of the PowerPoint is only on the “key strengths” to “leverage and expand” that is, the most positive results. It states “focusing on the low…scores…may not fully address what is needed…” Is this not perhaps contradictory to the survey company’s argument that low scores “would indicate the need to investigate further”?
The PowerPoint then states that the focus should be on the areas where the performance is low but that are somehow designated as “key drivers of engagement” – faculty support, senior leadership and collaboration. But then presented are only the detailed results for faculty for only the three most positive scoring areas – professional growth, student focus, and inclusion and respect. Very odd indeed.
The faculty response rate for UBCO overall was 173 out of 459 faculty; or 38%. Since the response rate in the Barber School was 82 out of 185 (44%), that implies that the response rate outside of the Barber School was 91 out of 274, that is a response rate of 33%, for an overall UBCO response rate of 38%. So there was a better response from faculty in the Barber School than from faculty in the rest of UBCO.
Of the results of the 35 questions revealed, for 22 of these questions the results were more-or-less identical for the Barber School and for UBCO overall. For 13 of the questions, the results are much worse in the Barber School than outside of the Barber School. For no question or statement of these 35 were the results for the Barber School more favourable than for UBCO overall. The results of the 13 questions are below where the results for the Barber School faculty (UBCO-BS) are much worse than for faculty outside of the Barber School (UBCO-O). This can be inferred from decomposing the UBCO overall results into UBCO-BS (which is known) and UBCO-O (which is inferred from the overall UBCO results, which are also known).
How are we to interpret these results? Is it just that the Barber School has a higher proportion of grumpy old members (e.g. “heritage faculty”?) than elsewhere at UBCO, or is it that there are there serious problems in the Barber School that don’t exist elsewhere at UBCO? Probably not the first hypothesis (FCCS, Nursing etc. also perhaps have a high proportion of “heritage faculty”) so perhaps the second hypothesis should be taken seriously by the UBCO senior administration and HR?
Read the complete report here: WES 2011 to 2017
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Posted in Faculty
Tagged Faculty, Peter Wylie, UBC, UBCO, UBCV, workplace experience survey
*Apologies to the medievalists again. Customized below is our semi-annual appeal to UBC managers to Lay Down the Mace:
As we count down to and roll through graduation, can we please remove the mace from convocation and governance at the University of British Columbia? The mace had its day in the first 100 years of this esteemed University but that day has gone.
Dalhousie University is currently embroiled in controversy over its mace, decorated as it is to demonstrate racial supremacy (“the rose, thistle, fieur-de-lys, and shamrock, depicting the major racial groups of our country”). Indigenous peoples and advocates have said enough already.
Some traditions just aren’t worth maintaining…
At the Nexo Knights’ Graduation Day,
Jestro grabbed a sword, a mace, and a spear and began to juggle them… The unimpressed crowd started to boo… Sweat broke out on his forehead…. He let go of the mace, and it flew across the arena. The crowd gasped and ducked… Then … bam! It hit the power grid on the arena wall. The area lights flickered, then turned off. Soon the power outage surged throughout the city.
Yes, this really did happen in a Lego story! And in England, Bradford College faculty members called the admin’s decision to spend £24,000 on a new mace for graduation ceremonies a “crass bit of judgement.”
At UBC, things were questionable again this past year. With an opportunity to follow faculty and staff members’ and students’ proposal to divest from fossil fuel investments, in mid February UBC chose to continue to be a part of the problem of climate change instead of the solution. Still heavily invested. And after chalking up a $22m budget surplus, in April & May UBC jumped the line at Wholefoods to draw $7,230 in grocery bag donations. On 24 April an Open Letter signed by 110 faculty members was submitted to the UBC Chancellor Reappointment Committee questioning the process.
The days of the mace in Convocation and governance are of the past and that part of the past is no longer worth reenacting.
It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.
It is time to retire the mace, symbol of aggression, authority, and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies in late May and November with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.
UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?
From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.
Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics, with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.
It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.
Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?
Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into Martha Piper’s Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May.
Is it not time to retire the mace?
Comments Off on #UBC time to lay down the mace in graduation and governance #ubcnews #bced #highered
Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, BC Education, Budgets, Commentary, Critical University Studies, Faculty, Governance, Maces, Shared governance, Students, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Faculty, Global Warming, Governance, Protests, Students, University presidents, Working conditions
The pomp of graduation, a time of calm reflection as students’ rite of passage is conferred under the mesmerizing pronouncements of the convocation speaker. And at UBC, a time to hear administrators chant tuum est, it is yours!
Reality check.
Increasingly, UBC administrators are confidently asserting meum est, it is mine!
The latest sign of meum est is the quickening process to reappoint UBC’s Chancellor Lindsay Gordon despite serious problems and reservations, such as those articulated in the 24 April Open Letter to the UBC Chancellor Reappointment Committee (signed by 110 faculty members).
The phenomenon of meum est across a variety of campuses was detailed in The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.
I manage UBC, therefore, meum est, it is mine.
*See UBC time to change motto for a conceptual history of tuum est.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Campus Life, Ethics, Faculty, Governance, Government, Regalia, Students
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Ethics, Free speech, Governance, Government, Working conditions
E. Wayne Ross provided this gem of information and insight to UBC’s “first” Faculty of Education:
In the recent past, Dean Frank has spoken of the possibility of the UBC Okanagan Faculty of Education being “merged” with or administered by the UBC Vancouver Faculty of Education.
I am not aware of any recent developments or announcements regarding this merger, take-over (or what have you) nor am I aware of any discussions or reports on the implications of such an action.
I am raising the issue because in paper delivered earlier this month Peter Wylie, professor of economics at UBCO, describes the take over as a done deal [p. 31].
I agree with Wayne’s points and it would be nice to know which analogy to adopt: merger, make-over, take-over, left-over, etc.? On the other hand, the information here seems like an easy lob over a net just wanting a return…
UBCO’s Faculty of Education has been innovative from its beginning in 2005. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Deborah Buszard called UBCO a “bold new UBC presence” when it was founded.
UBCO Education is a full Faculty that apparently gets along quite well without any Associate or Assistant Deans. That is bold. Apparently, it has gotten along quite readily for nearly the past three years without a Dean. Or if you will on a technicality, an Acting Dean that covers two Faculties.
Indeed, UBCO’s Faculty of Education has done its part in reducing admin bloat and demonstrated quite readily that faculty members can self-manage and govern. That is bold.
Under these conditions, the faculty members and students managed to rescue their BEd program mid December last year from closure. Or, at least they won a reprieve for a year (i.e., new closure date December 2017) and had to limit the admissions to just over 50%. Still, that is bold.
Hello? For what problem is this transfer a solution?
Hello again? At UBCV we have had no (read “0”) discussion about this. This is *not* bold.
Comments Off on Is #UBC Okanagan Education merging with #UBCeduc Education? #ubcnews #ubconews #bced #bcpoli
Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Faculty, Governance, Students, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Governance, mismanagement, Unions, Working conditions
Dear John, how goes it?
Did you hear what happened? Spoiler Alert: you’re not going to believe it!
Just a bit of a head’s up cause Arvind is now allowed to talk! (Hey, see if you can get UBC to say something lol)
First Law of UBC’s Statement on Respectful Environment: Thou cannot complain up.
You and our good ‘ol Board of Governors knew this better than everyone; after all, pursuant to Policy #1, you administrated all 97 Policies, plus the Statement.
And we all know what that Statement says about complaining up: “Bullying or harassment does not include the exercise of appropriate managerial or supervisory direction, including performance management.”
The President, of all people, has the right under the Statement to be uppity, snippity, and, to be candid, John, “void of empathy” whenever he, she, or they exercise/s managerial direction. It’s b&w in the Statement. It’s in the book.
Truth be told John, if the middle managers deemed Arvind “too quick to engage in debate in a confrontational or dismissive manner, which is demoralising to a group of executives in fear of their employment security,” you should have enforced the First Law, took those managers to task, and protected that top level.
Remember, the purpose of the Statement is not only to pit faculty against faculty, staff against staff, and student against student. It is all that, secondarily for sure.
The primary purpose of the Statement is to protect managers from any bottom up criticism. That toxic critique of Arvind should’ve been nipped in the bud.
Top down, never bottom up.
It’s awesome to know you and we all now feel we know you even better. You now know us a little better too! Sometimes a “course correction” is ok.
Be good (and if you can’t be good at BMO, by all means, be bad).
Comments Off on Dear John, head’s up, Arvind is now talking RE #UBC disrespect #ubcnews #ubc100 #bced
Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Students, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
It has been an emotional year for the University of British Columbia. As budgets moved from Central, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada launched Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. The residential university and college take on new meaning. As we launched the celebration of our Centennial at UBC 100, our President resigned under a cloak of secrecy. As we began to party, we launched an investigation to discover the lengths to which a Chair of the Board of Governors and administrators might go to suppress academic freedom. Now, as we march to Convocation, students and alumni launch evidence that UBC is failing to properly respond to sexual assaults on campus.
In the meantime, terrorists and terror struck Sharm el-Sheikh, Beirut and Paris while the dogs of war howl for bombers and drones to command from the skies above. Increasingly larger regions of the world live in a state of emergency.
It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.
To take a stand symbolic of peace and reconciliation, please lay down the mace for ceremonies and Convocation. Please put away the coat of arms and lay down the mace. If not for good, then how about for peace?
It is time to retire this symbol of aggression, authority and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies this week with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.
UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?
From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.
Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics, with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.
It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.
Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?
Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into your Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May. That’s “too messed,” as the students say.
Is it not time to retire both?
Comments Off on Letter to @UBC President: time to lay down the mace #ubc100 #ubcnews #ubc #bced #highered #caut
Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Campus Life, Commentary, Critical University Studies, Faculty, Free speech, Governance, Government, Maces, Regalia, Scandals, Students
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Ethics, Faculty, Free speech, Governance, Government, Students, University presidents
At the University of British Columbia, there are depths, and then there are new depths, in the mistreatment of PT faculty members. In the midst of a teaching term, a faculty member received this directive from UBC’s administration:
Yes, sad as it is, there are new lows in the mistreatment of faculty members.
For an analysis of the new academic work and workplace, see “Threat Convergence.”
Oh yea, almost forgot, happy birthday UBC!
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Academics, Accountability, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Administration, Faculty, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, adjuncts, Administration, Contingent labor, University presidents, Working conditions
[Cross-posted from Where the Blog has No Name]
University of Louisville president James Ramsey posed for photo in sombrero, poncho at the his 2015 Halloween party
In the late 1990s, Kentucky’s legislature initiated a program to upgrade and reform the state’s postsecondary education system, it was called “Bucks for Brains.” (The state’s promotional tagline at the time was “Open for Business.”)
I was recruited to the University of Louisville in 2001 and spent two-and-a-half years on the faculty there as a department chair and distinguished university scholar, which gave me an up close and personal experience with a university administration that’s, as they say where my family’s from, sigogglin.
John W. Shumaker, a classics scholar, was UofL president when I arrived and he proved to be an incredible fund raiser, increasing the university’s endowment from under $200 million to $550 million.
Of course, the UofL has long been the recipient of corporate largesse, especially from the Louisville’s corporate giants Brown-Forman (one of America’s largest spirits and wine companies); Brown & Williamson (which chemically enhanced the addictiveness of cigarettes, remember whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand? No? Well I’m sure you remember Russell Crowe playing Wigand the blockbuster movie The Insider); Papa John’s Pizza (UofL football Cardinals play in Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium); and Yum! Brands (“feeding the world” crap food via KFC, Pizza Hut, and, of course, Taco Bell, more on the Mexican connection later).
The Brown & Williamson Club at the University of Louisville’s Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium
After Shumaker left to head up the University of Tennessee (where he resigned in disgrace after 3 years), he was replaced by James R. Ramsey, who had been Kentucky’s state budget director under Gov. Paul E. Patton (who became wealthy by exploiting Kentucky’s coal miners).
Patton’s major achievement as governor was overhauling postsecondary education in the Kentucky. But Patton’s political career was de-railed by duelling scandals: (1) an extramarital affair and a sex-for-favors scandal; and (2) pardoning four of his political advisers who were indicted for violating Kentucky’s campaign finance laws and for allegedly abusing his patronage powers.
All of this is just everyday Kentucky politics, so Patton wasn’t distracted enough to forget he had to find a soft-landing for his budget director, thus Ramsey, with no university administration experience, became the 17th president of the University of Louisville.
Since Ramsey has been in office the UofL, in endowment has continued to grow and is now pushing the $1 billion mark, which is really the only logical explanation for why he hasn’t been bounced because Ramsey’s administration has more ethical lapses than Carter has liver pills, pretty much proving that the UofL has more bucks than brains.
Robert Felner: Former Dean, Convicted Felon
Felner arrived in Louisville with some spiffy credentials: PhD in psychology from Yale; former head of the department of psychology at the University of Illinois; a CV packed with pages upon pages listing his publications in top journals and, most importantly for the UofL administration, a staggering number of grants.
Despite several red flags about Felner’s candidacy for dean of UofL’s College of Education and Human Development, Ramsey and his long time provost, Shirley Willihnganz, couldn’t wait to get Felner on campus.
Ramsey was in such as rush to land Felner he and Willihnganz forgot to tell the interim dean (and other finalist for the position) they hired Felner, so he was left to discover the decision when Felner call his secretary and started giving her instructions. So much for that HR seminar!
Things in CEHD soon started to fall apart.
I resigned from my department chair position two weeks after Felner took over as dean and later moved to UBC.
Within a few years, there had been 30 grievances filed by faculty and students against Felner for a wide range of abusive managerial practices and a faculty vote of no-confidence in Felner’s leadership of the CEHD. Reasons given by faculty for the vote of non-confidence included:
Public humiliation of faculty, work place harassment, retaliation for voicing opinions, little or no governance, decisions that hurt College, unacceptable and unfair hiring practice; rude, offensive, unethical behavior by CEHD representatives; denial of support for research to those who differ in opinion; and extreme inequity of pay. (See CEHD meeting notes published here.)
Despite the abominable conditions in CEHD, UofL Provost Willihnganz and Ramsey both supported Felner publicly.
One year after the vote of no-confidence, Felner announced he was leaving the UofL to become president of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside.
The Chronicle of Higher Education described Felner as “riding high” a couple of years into his deanship at UofL, well-paid, and having secured a $700,000 grant from the US Department of Education. However, he “pressed his luck” during his last weeks in Louisville.
Even though only $96,000 remained in the account, he implored Louisville officials to approve a $200,000 subcontract with a nonprofit organization in Illinois that had already received $450,000 from the grant. Perhaps, he suggested, the university could draw on a special fund that had been established by the daughter of a former trustee.
The Illinois group, Mr. Felner said, had been surveying students and teachers in Kentucky. That survey would “let us give the feds something that should make them very happy about the efficiency and joint commitment of the university to doing a good job with an earmark, as I know we will want more from this agency,” he wrote in an e-mail message on June 18.
But on June 20, his last day as Dean of CEHD before he headed off to Wisconsin, those big black SUVs with government plates (like the ones you see on Criminal Minds) rolled into the CEHD parking lot. US Secret Service, US Postal Inspectors, and UofL Police questioned Felner and escorted him off campus, along with his computers and records.
There was a simultaneous raid on UW-Parkside to confiscate material Felner had shipped ahead of his arrival there.
In October 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Felner on nine counts of mail fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. According to the indictment,
the Illinois nonprofit group, known as the National Center on Public Education and Prevention, was simply a shell that funneled money into the personal bank accounts of Mr. Felner and Thomas Schroeder, a former student of his and the group’s “executive director.” Prosecutors say the two men siphoned away not only the $694,000 earmarked grant, but also $1.7-million in payments from three urban school districts, money that ought to have gone to the legitimate public-education center that Mr. Felner had created in Rhode Island.
In January 2010, Felner pleaded guilty to nine Federal charges, including income tax evasion.
In May 2010, Felner was sentenced to 63 months in US Federal Prison for his role in defrauding defrauding the UofL and the University of Rhode Island, where he had been director of the School of Education, of $2.3 million of US Department of Education funds earmarked for No Child Left Behind Act research.
10775-033 aka Robert Felner was released from US Prison in May 2014
For a a short course on the felonious Felner see the PageOneKentucky.com summary of events. For a full course on the Felonious Felner and the incompetence and ethical lapses of Ramsey’s UofL administration click here. (Shout out to Jake at PageOneKentucky for excellent investigative reporting on Felner and the UofL.)
For Workplace Blog coverage of Felner click here.
And here is a Louisville Courier-Journal profile of Felner that pretty much sums up the guy that Ramsey defended until he pleaded guilty: Robert Felner profile: Arrogant, outrageous, abusive and duplicitous.
Felner Footnotes: Indians, John Deasy, Non-Disclosure Agreements & Ramsey as the Frito Bandito
(1) When Felner announced his resignation, UofL president Ramsey wroted to Felner and said he was worried about “letting the Indians get back in control of the reservation.” That’s some serious respect for university faculty and the idea of shared governance, eh?
(2) Los Angeles school superintendent, John Deasy, has had his academic credentials called into question. Deasy was given a PhD by the University of Louisville after he was enrolled for four months and received a total of nine credits.
Deasy’s doctoral advisor was, surprise, Robert Felner! Deasy had previously awarded $375,000 in consulting contracts to Felner, while Deasy was Superintendent of Santa Monica schools.
Ramsey appointed a “blue-ribbon” panel to investigate Deasy’s degree. The panel found that getting a PhD in four months at the UofL was not cause for concern, thus plunging the UofL’s academic reputation down into the neighbourhood of fly-by-night for-profit “higher” education.
Deasy is now working in an unaccredited training program sponsored by educational de-formers the Broad Foundation, which teaches school leaders business methods and supports charter schools and closing public schools.
(3) Ramsey has been making double retirement payouts to UofL administrators for their silence.
In March 2014, UofL made a $346,000.00 settlement with university counsel Angela Kosawha:
It costs a lot for Ramsey to cover up details of his administration’s incompetence and shenanigans, but remember there are lots of bucks at UofL.
(4) Provost Shirley Willihnganz stepped down as UofL provost earlier this year. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that
Under her watch, however, university employees have stole, misspent or mishandled at least $7.6 million in schemes at the health science campus, the law school, the business school and the athletic department’s ticket office.
Willihnganz also was criticized for approving about $1 million in buyouts for former high-ranking employees, some of which included agreements not to disparage the university or its leaders.
She also was forced to apologize to CEHD faculty in 2008 for failing to take any common-sense action against Felner for his intimidation, harassment, humiliation and retaliation against faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Willihnganz said at the time that she tended to dismiss the early complaints against Felner — including a no-confidence vote by faculty — because he was a “high performer” and because the complaints came from professors and staff “entrenched in their ways and resistant to change.”
She later told faculty at a meeting that she was sorry. “Mostly what I think I want to say is people have been hurt and something very bad happened, and as provost I feel like I am ultimately responsible for that,” she said.
No duh! She actually is directly responsible for the Felner disaster (along with Ramsey), that’s probably why she feels that way. And speaking of resistance to change …
(5) This next item has nothing to do with Felner, except that his former boss and advocate, James Ramsey, is also the long time boss of UofL basketball coach Rick Pitino who admitted to having sex with a women in a swanky Italian restaurant in Louisville. Apparently that’s not a problem with Ramsey and the UofL because Pitino said it wasn’t rape.
And, now Pitino is using hookers and strippers to recruit high school basketball players to come to the UofL. See Dave Zirin’s pieces on the latest Ramsey supervised scandal:
(6) And I almost forgot. Remember the Taco Bell/Mexican connection. This week Ramsey had a little halloween party at the UofL. Ramsey goes racist (again). Yes, he dressed up like the Frito Bandito.
UofL President James Ramsey says “Yo quiero Taco Bell.”
And you thought the HR training at UofL was bad, get that guy to the diversity office and cross your fingers that they’re better than the university’s accounting folks.
Comments Off on More bucks than brains: James Ramey and the ruination of the University of Louisville
Posted in Academic Labor, Administration, Bullying & Mobbing, Commentary, Corporate University, Corruption, Diversity, Ethics, Faculty, Governance, Just Kidding (not), Scandals, Working conditions
Tagged Corruption, Criminal investigation, Diversity, Ethics, felons, James Ramsey, non-discloure agreements, Robert Felner, Scandal, Shirley Willihnganz, University of Louisville, University presidents
A few weeks ago, we posted “Shared governance hits rock bottom at UBC.” Respondents noted that there was still a glimmer of hope for governance and recoiled at the suggestion that “equally futile in introducing even a modicum of accountability or insight into the non-disclosure scandal is the UBC Senate.”
At this evening’s Senate meeting, Senator Anstee moved a motion for transparency in the confidentiality agreement between UBC and past-President Arvind Gupta, but the motion was defeated. Yes there was debate but the motion for transparency was defeated.
The initial premise holds: equally futile in shared governance– when it really counts– is the UBC Board of Governors and Senate. Sure, faculty, staff and students can banter over the objectives of a new course or the fine print of a new policy. But on the meaningful decisions at this point at the University of British Columbia, governance is dominated by developers and investment bankers and confined by legalism. The two are hand in glove.
Again, the BoG’s, Senate’s and Senior Administration’s rejection of multiple requests and appeals for accountability in the President’s resignation marks the low point of shared or faculty governance at the University. Hoping to rise to the occasion of its 100th, UBC instead sunk to rock bottom.
Comments Off on #UBC Senate defeats transparency motion #ubc100 #ubcnews #ubysseynews #highered #bced #ubcgss
Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Shared governance, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Students, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
In keeping with the language of the Collective Agreement, the terms of reference established a fact-finding process to investigate whether Dr. Berdahl’ s academic freedom was “interfered with in any way.” The Investigation concluded that it was.
The University, however, repeatedly stated that Dr. Berdahl’s academic freedom was not infringed. This communication is not entirely consistent with the Summary Report.
While the Summary Report concludes that no single individual alone is responsible for the infringement, it clearly communicates that the cumulative effect of the actions as well as inactions of the University amounted to interference with Dr. Berdahl’s academic freedom. To quote directly from the public Summary Report, Professor Smith found that:
UBC failed in its obligation to protect and support Dr. Berdahl’s academic freedom. The Collective Agreement Preamble creates a positive obligation to support and protect academic freedom. Through the combined acts and omissions of Mr. Montalbano, the named individuals in the Sauder School, and others, UBC as an institution failed to meet that obligation with respect to Dr. Berdahl’s academic freedom.
Further, because the question of whether interference occurred was foreseeable, the University and the Faculty Association had a phone conversation with Professor Smith to clarify the matter. Professor Smith explicitly confirmed for the Parties that one of her findings was that Dr. Berdahl’s academic freedom had indeed been interfered with.
It is therefore disappointing that despite such explicit clarification the University failed to acknowledge this important finding of fact in the press conference yesterday and instead simply repeated that there was no infringement of Dr. Berdahl’s academic freedom. In essence, the University has only acknowledged part of the problem….
Read More: FAUBC
Mark Mac Lean, President
On behalf of the UBC Faculty Association Executive Committee
Comments Off on FAUBC blasts #UBC admin for academic freedom failures #ubcnews #ubc100 #bced #highered
Posted in Academic freedom, Academics, Accountability, Faculty, Governance, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Students, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
The University of British Columbia is 0 / 2 in its ability to find facts in its most recent “fact-finding processes.” The first was the Fact Finding Report: Commerce Undergraduate Society (CUS) FROSH CHANTS. The second was the Summary of the fact-finding process and conclusions regarding alleged breaches of academic freedom and other university policies at the University of British Columbia.
How or why is it that fact-finders appointed to find facts cannot find any facts of administration? Or of specific administrators?
Is it that the the facts are so tiny, so microscopic that they are there but cannot be found? Is it that facts of administration are so taken-for-granted that they are too big to be found?
Is it that facts of the administration of UBC cannot be found because they need not be found?
Is it that secrecy prevails and the evidence put in front of the fact-finders has no bearing whatsoever on the facts of administration?
Is it that legalism at UBC is in itself culpable and invariably can find neither fact nor fault with specific administrators at UBC? Is this sort of a legal fox guarding managerial hen-houses story at UBC?
Comments Off on No facts of admin in fact-finding at #UBC #ubcnews #ubysseynews #ubc100 #caut #bced #highered
Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Students, Unions, Working conditions
We have to say, the comedy of errors continues in the administration of the Sauder School of Business while nothing sticks to the teflon Dean.
“As it happened,” the Honourable Lynn Smith reports, there was a flurry of suppressions of academic freedom in the building but “the Dean of the Sauder School of Business was away and only intermittently in touch.”
When the Sauder students chanted a rhyme about rape two years ago, again no administrators were home. In that fact-finding report, again there was no accountability. Curiously, the words “administration” and “administrator” do not appear while “student/s” appears 46 times. Then and now, there were no facts to find on administrators or administration in Sauder.
With this new non-finding in the Smith Report, Sauder Dean Robert Helsley has to be laughing.
Is this not a pattern and a failure of legalism here at UBC?
Comments Off on Teflon Admin at #UBC #ubcsauderschool #ubcnews #ubc100 #bced #highered
Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Students, Unions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Ethics, Faculty, Students, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
Faculty members at the University of British Columbia are now left in the dark of legalism. On one hand is the overuse and abuse of legalistic non-disclosure agreements, such as that between the Board of Governors and ex-President Gupta. This form of legalism prevents us from knowing why our President resigned and who was behind the resignation.
Now, on the other hand is the Honourable Lynn Smith’s Report on interference with academic freedom, specifically on whether BoG Chair Montalbano and Sauder School of Business administrators acted to suppress Jennifer Berdahl’s inquiry into the resignation. Smith delivered one of the most legalistic fact-finding Reports one could write on the case. This form of legalism prevents us from knowing why a faculty member was submitted to forces of suppression and who is accountable.
In a masterful crafting, Smith found that
UBC failed in its obligation to protect and support Dr. Berdahl’s academic freedom… UBC as an institution failed [however] Mr. Montalbano, on his own, did not infringe any provision of the Collective Agreement, the UBC Statement on Respectful Environment, or any of the applicable university policies. No individual in the Sauder School of Business identified by the Faculty Association, on his or her own, infringed any provision of the Collective Agreement, the UBC Statement on Respectful Environment, or any of the applicable university policies. (pp. 3-4)
“UBC failed…” UBC the corporate person contravened the Collective Agreement and interfered with academic freedom. But no human person contravened or interfered.
If Lynn Smith finds the corporation of UBC liable for violating an article of the Collective Agreement and a faculty member’s academic freedom, then which of its administrators or officials are responsible? Through which administrators or officials was the University acting in this case?
It’s a basic question of corporate liability that first year law students confront. But it’s also an advanced question that tests legal scholars. One retributivist option is to acknowledge UBC corporate personhood and responsibility while at the same time holding to account senior officials, whether or not they participated in the transgressions, tolerated the actions taken, in this case by Montalbano and Sauder administrators, or just looked the other way.
“UBC failed,” and legalism is failing UBC. Jennifer Berdahl’s response takes the next step, noting she’s “disappointed that university leaders” lost sight of academic freedom. The Faculty Association’s response takes the next step in this process, noting that “Senior academic leaders were conspicuously absent and silent.”
Who then were the senior administrators that tolerated the breaches or looked the other way? Provost and VP Academic pro tem? VP Human Resources? University Counsel? Dean of Sauder School of Business?
Through which administrators or officials was UBC acting in this case?
Once again, now is the time to speculate.
Comments Off on Failures of legalism and academic freedom at #UBC #caut #ubysseynews #lawstudents #ubcnews #ubc100 #bced
Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Shared governance, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Governance, Students, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
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Peter Wylie: My Faculty Association and Me: A Case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing
My Faculty Association and Me: A Case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing
By Peter Wylie
This paper recounts recent experiences of mine with the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty Association (UBCFA). I am a tenured Associate Professor at UBC, Okanagan campus (UBCO) and I began my FA role as 1st Vice-Chair of the Okanagan Faculty Committee (OFC), an executive position on this standing committee of the FA, in July 2017. The paper is couched in terms of the relatively recent concept of academic mobbing, defined as “an insidious, non-violent and sophisticated kind of psychological bullying that predominantly takes place in college and university campuses.”1 It also employs the concept of “sweetheart unionism” defined as a deal between an employer and union officials that benefits both at the expense of employees; in this case, a deal between UBCO and UBCFA that benefits UBCO management and FA Executive Director and staff in Vancouver at the expense of UBCO faculty members.
My Faculty Association and Me A case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing.pdf
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Posted in Academic Labor, Bullying & Mobbing, Commentary, Corporate University, Faculty, Free speech, Solidarity, Unions
Tagged bullying, Corporate Univeristy, Free speech, mobbing, UBC, UBCFA, unionism, Unions, University of British Columbia