Tag Archives: Faculty

#NLRB decision v athletes & students as shadow workers #highered #criticaled #ncaa

Posted on August 22, 2015 by | Comments Off on #NLRB decision v athletes & students as shadow workers #highered #criticaled #ncaa

There are a few high profile workplaces wherein the worker pays to work: amateur athletes in sporting venues, strippers in strip clubs and students in classrooms are among the most notable. On 17 August however, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overturned Northwestern University’s football team’s bid to unionize as employees. This overturned a 2014 regional NLRB decision paving the way for players to unionize.

The decision hinges on whether athletes are “primarily students” and whether those with funding or paid jobs are “statutory employees.” The NLRB did not rule on these questions and researchers have yet to adequately theorize the problem of whether students per se are workers. If students are workers, what type of workers are they?

Ivan Illich offered the best analysis thus far in depicting students as shadow workers (see also NYT article). Without the shadow work or unpaid work of students, and increasingly professors, academic capitalism would come to a halt or at least be curbed. Paying students for studying and performing in classrooms would mean that colleges and universities would have to recognize all students as the workers or employees that they are. The 2004 NLRB decision that graduate student teaching assistants are “primarily students” entirely overlooks shadow work. Like the athletes at Northwestern, all students would have the prerogative to unionize.

Compensating or remunerating shadow work would mean that colleges and universities would have to recognize that most of its faculty members are doing the work of two these days.

But the counter question is why faculty members are all too willing to do the work of two? This academic shadow work buttresses and contributes to the growth of academic capitalism—it bails out the system from certain failure. As Illich says, “increasingly the unpaid self-discipline of shadow work becomes more important than wage labor for further economic growth.”

In “Threat Convergence,” we tried to work through this problem by analyzing the changing nature and definition of the academic workplace. It’s a start. Given the fragmentation, intensification, segmentation, shifting and creep of academic work, it is due time researchers attended to the problem as opposed to the continued romanticism of the intellectual.

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Posted in Academic Labor, Athletics, Employment rights, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Organizing, Students, Unions

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#FAUBC introduces mystery dean into #UBC crisis of administration #caut #highered #bced

Posted on August 22, 2015 by | Comments Off on #FAUBC introduces mystery dean into #UBC crisis of administration #caut #highered #bced

Curiously, when the Faculty Association of UBC called for the resignation of the Chair of the Board of Governors, it came short of calling for the resignation of the Dean who is cozying up to the Chair.

Specifically, the Chair of the Board also sits on a Faculty Advisory Council, and we are advised has been in communication with a Dean over internal operational and academic issues. This arrangement circumvents the formal organizational bicameral structure of the university…

Who is this mystery Dean? Why did the FAUBC fail to request her or his resignation along with the Chair of BoG? It takes two or three to tango here, as they say. Why hasn’t this Dean stepped forward to offer a resignation, having circumvented or transgressed faculty governance to ostensibly acquire capital or resources for her or his career and Faculty?

Just as the FAUBC bemoans the “absence of an informed explanation since the August 7th resignation” of President Gupta, it clouds communication with its members by raising the spectre of a mystery Dean. Exactly who is the mystery Dean?

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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Corruption, Faculty, Governance, Unions

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Hiring freeze on #UBC middle managers requested & rejected #highered #caut #bced #ubcnews

Posted on August 20, 2015 by | 1 comment

Over the past year, UBC instituted a series of austerity measures, including a hiring freeze, in various faculties to correct deficits. As a result, some academic units have been downsized or stagnant. For instance, the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy has had only three tenure track faculty searches in six years, a stagnation that has done serious damage to faculty renewal and in effect, academic integrity.

Comparatively, the appointment of assistant and associate deans in the Faculty outpaced tenure track appointments in this Department. With the at whim appointment of directors added to the mix, the appointment of middle managers outpaced tenure track appointments by 3:1.

It has been frustrating and troubling that the University’s hiring chills and freezes are wink wink (i.e., preferential and selective). Hence, a request made in June to the Provost, pro tem to implement a hiring freeze on middle managers to curb the administrative bloat across the University system, Okanagan and Vancouver, was rejected out of hand. A hiring freeze on these middle managers would create a form of parity that might suggest the senior administrators acknowledge the mess they’re in.

Under the old and still current regime at UBC, a hiring freeze on middle managers was a pipe dream and dismissed with no discussion. But now, with the crisis of administration exposed by the resignation of President Gupta, it’s due time President Piper to put a check and balance on these at whim admin hires.

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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Budgets & Funding, Faculty, Governance, Working conditions

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#UBC crisis of administration extends downward to bloated middle management #highered #caut #bced #ubcnews

Posted on August 20, 2015 by | 1 comment

The University of British Columbia’s current failures of academic governance may have been publicly signalled by the sudden resignation of President Gupta on 7 August, but the crisis of administration extends well back into the University’s recent past and down into the lower chain of command. In fact, the President’s resignation is just the tip of the iceberg. The failures and crises extend from the President’s Office through the deans down to the bloat of middle managers, assistant and associate deans. Most noticeably, UBC has been skirting and fumbling around Canada’s Federal Contractor’s Program to appoint its middle managers. One might conclude that favouritism, if not nepotism in cases, is common while searches bound by the Federal Program of employment equity are rare. For this rank of middle managers, appointments are made with no procedures and hence there is no input from faculty members or the wider academic community and reappointments are made with no evaluation or review.

Unlike policies governing the appointment of department heads and deans, which are regulated by searches and reviews, there is no University policy to regulate the appointment and reappointment of assistant and associate deans. UBC has 97 policies but suspiciously none to regulate the hiring of these middle managers. Why is this? And unlike other universities (e.g., Simon Fraser, Toronto), at UBC the deans have liberty to appoint middle managers at pleasure or whim. The result is a bloating of the assistant and associate dean ranks from 47 in 2000 to 72 in 2015— ostensibly all without searches or regard for policy. With no policies or searches to regulate or monitor qualifications, the result is a mixed bag and questionable levels of competence.

Faculty members were expecting President Gupta to clean up a mess. Cleaning house, he predictably ran into the resistance of status quo. The provosts and middle managers preferred to leave well enough alone. Consider this for instance:

On 19 September 2014, a few months into President Gupta’s appointment, I submitted a request to the Board of Governors to form a policy for hiring and reappointing assistant and associate deans. Basically, the request was to reign in these at whim appointments, curb the bloat of middle managers and align with fair hiring practices. Refusing to address the request, in October the BoG bounced it to University Counsel, which proceeded to ‘consult’ with the Provosts, Vancouver and Okanagan. On 12 January, I was told by University Counsel that the two Provosts, “who would be the Responsible Executives for such a policy do not consider this to be a priority.” In other words, employment equity does not apply to a large and bloated subset of management within the University. On 23 February and 30 March 2015 I followed up with renewed requests to the President’s Office. The President advised re-routing the request back to the Provost’s Office. I hesitated until the announcement of the Provost, pro tem. Sadly, unwilling to shake up status quo, on 24 June the new Provost repeated the old: “I also do not see it as a priority at this time.”

Although the provosts, and by prerogative the deans, do not consider employment equity and fair procedures “to be a priority” in the appointment of the University’s managers, for the balance of the University faculty and staff, this remains priority.

Bounced around the President’s Office for nearly a year, this basic request to align administrative appointments with hiring guidelines and peer universities has come full circle. The middle management bloat at UBC coincidentally began with President Piper’s initial appointment. Now, looking back and wondering how we got here, requests to deal with the administrative crisis are piling up, higher and deeper. Now, with President Piper back in office, this specific request lands on her desk, regardless of how and where it has been bounced.

With the Faculty Association of UBC calling for the resignation of the Chair of the BoG, perhaps this faculty governance body will make good on its responsibility to form meaningful policy. Top down or bottom up, its time to clean up UBC’s administrative mess, failure by failure, crisis by crisis. Sorry to say provosts, this actually is a priority.

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#FAUBC calls for #UBC Chair of BoG resignation #highered

Posted on August 19, 2015 by | Comments Off on #FAUBC calls for #UBC Chair of BoG resignation #highered
FAUBC, August 19, 2015– The events at UBC following the unexplained resignation of Professor Arvind Gupta as President have been exceptional. Fallout from the resignation created the unprecedented situation in which the Chair of the Board of Governors is alleged to have compromised the academic freedom of a UBC faculty member. Academic administrators are also implicated in allegations surrounding this incident. Since these allegations came to our attention last Wednesday, we have been working hard to maintain the integrity of the normal labour relations processes we use at UBC to resolve our grievances. While these processes have been working well as we investigate the roles that various academic administrators have played in this case, established procedures have been compromised as they pertain to the alleged actions of the Chair.The concerns leading to this conclusion focus on the fact that the University itself has sidestepped standard protocols for handling grievances. More specifically, the Chair of the Board of Governors, the Board’s chief spokesperson, gave public, personal testimony related to the case in a University media release. We were shocked that this happened in a formal University media release posted on a University website. (This media release seems to have been removed from news.ubc.ca late Tuesday evening. We have a downloaded copy.) Mr. Montalbano has confused personal interests with the University’s interests.

As a result of this communication, we had earlier in the day decided to call for Mr. Montalbano to step aside during an investigation of the allegations against him.

By late afternoon, we became aware Mr. Montalbano was giving a series of interviews on radio and television, entirely in contradiction to the August 17th press release signed by Provost pro tem Anji Redish and Interim President Martha Piper in which it was affirmed that: “it would entirely be inappropriate to comment further on the allegations until this process has been concluded.”

And, yet, Mr. Montalbano was doing precisely this in his capacity as Chair of UBC’s Board of Governors.Finding a sound and proper process inside the University or with the Board for investigation of the concerns around Mr. Montalbano’s behaviours no longer seemed a viable option.While the University has publicly said that a grievance involving Mr. Montalbano could be managed under our usual collective agreement processes, this no longer seemed possible. Mr. Montalbano is a government appointee, not a University employee, so establishing and implementing a fair process to investigate the Chair of the Board of Governors given that Chair’s dominating presence in and apparent mobilization of the entire system in his own interest seemed challenging, to say the least.

Indeed, even though we had initiated our usual informal processes with the University in a way that made it clear that there were serious allegations against Mr. Montalbano, Mr. Montalbano did not step aside as Chair pending the conclusion of a full investigation.

We have lost confidence that there can be an internal investigation process uninfluenced by Mr. Montalbano, either within our usual labour relations processes or through a Board-driven process.

Consequently, we are calling for Mr. Montalbano’s immediate resignation as Chair of the Board of Governors. He has shown an inability to allow proper procedures to proceed and has used his office as Chair of the Board to engage personally and publicly with the issues under investigation. This behaviour is ill judged and threatens the integrity of ongoing processes.

We did not take this decision to request Mr. Montalbano’s resignation lightly. His handling of Professor Gupta’s resignation and his mismanagement of subsequent events are now compounded by breaches of standard protocols, and lead us to believe that his resignation will be in the best interests of the University and the public.

Please read our letter carefully.

Sincerely,
Mark Mac Lean
President

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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Corporate University, Critical University Studies, Faculty, Governance

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#FAUBC presses for accountability in #UBC president’s resignation #highered

Posted on August 17, 2015 by | Comments Off on #FAUBC presses for accountability in #UBC president’s resignation #highered
FAUBC, August 17, 2015: As you may know, last week the UBC Faculty Association presented a request to the Board oaf Governors asking for more details on the resignation of Professor Gupta as President. We received the Board’s response on August 14.

We are disappointed that the Board’s response provides no new information. In essence, it asks the university community — and the public at large — to take on faith, the fact that the Board has acted responsibly and in the public interest. While the Board should normally have the trust and confidence of the university community, events surrounding the resignation of Professor Gupta make this increasingly difficult.

The resignation of Professor Gupta as President of UBC is not simply a “personnel matter” for the University, as the Board claims. Rather, there is a high expectation of complete transparency and accountability around the resignation of a President of a public institution as significant and vital as UBC.

This expectation has not been met. The absence of an informed explanation since the August 7th resignation has led to ill-informed speculation taking the place of information. In our opinion, this situation makes any non-disclosure provision in Professor Gupta’s exit agreement contrary to the public interest and contrary to the best practices expected of a major public institution.

Furthermore, the handling of Professor Gupta’s resignation and its aftermath have exposed serious weaknesses in the governance of the university, due to the apparent failure to manage significant and perceived high-risk personal conflicts of interest involving Mr. Montalbano, the Chair of the Board. The concerns raised in this regard compound those already expressed about the lack of transparency in the processes surrounding the President’s resignation. In our opinion, these conflicts of interest should not have existed in the first place and must be remedied immediately.

Specifically, the Chair of the Board also sits on a Faculty Advisory Council, and we are advised has been in communication with a Dean over internal operational and academic issues. This arrangement circumvents the formal organizational bicameral structure of the university, which would require that communication between the Board and the university be routed through the President (or acting President). The role of the Board is to set general policy and to manage, administer, and control of the property, revenue, business, and affairs of the University, and not to become involved in academic governance.

The Chair of the Board should not be able to meddle directly in internal academic affairs. Yet, disregard for this organizational structure as well as interference in academic affairs, is precisely what is alleged to have happened this past week in relation to the comments made by a faculty member concerning the President’s resignation by the Chair of Board.

We are also concerned — in reference to the same faculty member — about alleged violations of academic freedom and of the university’s respectful environment statement committed by a number of individuals, including the Chair of the Board of Governors. While these allegations are still under investigation, there are sufficient facts known to lead us to question how well those involved, including the Chair of the Board himself, understand the principle of academic freedom, and whether they understand their obligations under UBC’s public commitment to providing a respectful workplace environment. Each of these principles is a fundamental tenet of a university.

Mr. Montalbano’s apparent lack of understanding of the principles of academic freedom, and the questionable judgement he is alleged to have exhibited in interfering with internal operations and with university employees, have caused the Faculty Association Executive Committee to lose confidence in Mr. Montalbano as the Chair of the Board of Governors.

Given the conflicts of interest, and the missteps that that have come to light this week, we believe it is even more imperative to have the full story behind the resignation of Professor Gupta as President of UBC. Full disclosure is the only way to restore trust in the governance of the University of British Columbia.

Read More: FAUBC
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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Faculty, Scandals, Working conditions

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#FAUBC questions suspicious resignation of #ubc President #highered

Posted on August 10, 2015 by | Comments Off on #FAUBC questions suspicious resignation of #ubc President #highered

As questions go unanswered regarding the suspicious resignation of UBC President Arvind Gupta, the Faculty Association of UBC is pressing for answers. The University has been silent about the sudden resignation, writing off the past year of Gupta’s appointment as a mere “leadership transition.” Four years of  leadership transitions– the last two and the next two– sound more like an administrative crisis than merely a change.

FAUBC President Mark MacLean, August 10, 2015: 

Shortly before 1pm on Friday, I received a phone call from the University to inform me that Professor Arvind Gupta would resign as President of UBC effective at 1 p.m. that afternoon, and that a public announcement would be made at 1:15 p.m. This news came as a complete surprise to me, and I have spent the weekend trying to make sense of it.

This was a sudden and immediate resignation, and I am skeptical that the reason for it is simply that Professor Gupta wishes to return to the life of a Professor of Computer Science.  We of course, will not hear directly from Professor Gupta since such resignations typically come with a non-disclosure agreement.

The Board of Governors must explain what transpired to end Professor Gupta’s Presidency after only one year.  What caused this leadership crisis?

Over the past year, I had conversations with Professor Gupta about his desire for UBC to thrive as a place where faculty are supported and valued unconditionally.  He truly viewed us as his colleagues. Contrary to some of the public speculation since his resignation, he had a serious plan well under development to achieve the goals he set for himself and the University, and faculty were at the heart of his plan.

In support of this plan, President Gupta’s budget decisions were designed to move resources into the academic units and to mitigate the impacts that high growth rates of student numbers are having on the entire university.  As a result, significant amounts of money are set to move from non-academic operations to support research and teaching.

Does Professor Gupta’s resignation mean the Board no longer supports realigning the University’s resources to better support the research and teaching missions?

Professor Gupta saw faculty as the heart of the University and collegial governance as a fundamental principle upon which the best universities operate.  Will the Board of Governors continue to use these principles as the basis of its relationship with the faculty?

I believe Professor Gupta’s resignation represents a serious loss to UBC.  It certainly represents a failure point in the governance of the University.  We need to understand this failure and the Board must recognize that we cannot move on until we do.

I also have questions about the future leadership of the University. We have in progress searches for a Provost and VP Academic, a Vice President Research, and a Vice President External and Communications.  Those who fill these positions must ultimately hold the confidence of the President they will serve.  What will happen with these searches now?  President Emerita Martha Piper has considerable experience as a past UBC President, but should she hire three key Vice Presidents for the next President of UBC?

All of my concerns and questions aside, I am committed to working with Professors Redish and Piper under the same model of trusty and openness with which I was able to operate with President Gupta.  I have every expectation they will want to continue the positive relationship that has developed between the Administration and the Faculty Association over the past year.

I invite you to send me your responses to the President’s resignation.

Sincerely;

Mark Mac Lean
President of the UBC Faculty Association

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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, Unions

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Threat Convergence: The New Academic Work by Petrina, Mathison & Ross #academicfreedom

Posted on June 9, 2015 by | Comments Off on Threat Convergence: The New Academic Work by Petrina, Mathison & Ross #academicfreedom

THREAT CONVERGENCE:
THE NEW ACADEMIC WORK, BULLYING, MOBBING AND FREEDOM

Stephen Petrina, Sandra Mathison & E. Wayne Ross

The convergence of the casualization, fragmentation, intensification, segmentation, shifting and creep of academic work with the post-9/11 gentrificaton of criticism and dissent is arguably one of the greatest threats to academic freedom since the Nazi elimination of the Jewish professoriate and critique in 1933, Bantu Education Act’s reinforcement of apartheid in South Africa in 1952, and McCarthyism in Canada and the US in the 1950s and 1960s. In the history of education, this would be quite the claim yet the evidence seems to speak for itself. Academic work has been fragmented into piecemeal modes and intensified as academics absorbed, through amalgamation, traditional clerical staff and counseling work. The balance of the academic workforce has been reduced and casualized or segmented to an “at whim,” insecure, unsalaried part-time labor pool, the 8-hour workday and 40-hour academic workweek collapsed to 60-80 hours, and the primary locus of academic work shifted off-campus as the workplace crept into the home and its communal establishments. Academic stress— manifested as burnout through amalgamation and creep of work, and as distress through bullying, mobbing and victimization— underwrites increases in leaves of absence. Non-tenure track faculty are hit particularly hard, indicating “contingency or the precariousness of their position” as relentless stressors.

Nowadays, it’s whimsical to reminisce about work-life balance and promises that the academic workforce will be renewed as boomers retire with baited expectations, or that the workweek and workplace for salaried full-timers could be contained within the seduction of flextime and telecommuting. In many ways, the flexible workplace is the plan for boomers by boomers with both nest eggs and limits on retirement age breaking. As currency values, retirement portfolios, and savings spiral downward while dependent children and grandchildren and inflation spiral upward, incentives to retire erode. Precariously unemployed, underemployed and part-time academics aside, boomers still in the academic system are trended to face the biggest losses. As economic incentives to retire decrease, incentives for intellectual immortality and legacy management flourish with the boomers’ political leanings moving toward the center. One can hardly blame them.

Enthusiasts of anything “flexible” (learning, space, time, work, etc.) and everything “tele” (commuting, conference, learning, phone, work, etc.), academics readily workshift with additional liability but no additional remuneration— instead is an unquestioned acceptance of the “overtime exemption”— while the employer saves about $6,500 per year per worker in the tradeoff as worksite or workspace shifts from campus to home. The academic workweek is now conservatively 60 hours with many PT and FT reporting persistent 70-80 hour weeks. Perhaps academic women can finally have it all after putting in the 120 hour workweek. One reason institutions now cope with many fewer FT hires is that academics are all too willing to do the work of two. As Gina Anderson found a decade ago, “with apparently unconscious irony, many academics reported that they particularly valued the flexibility of their working week, in terms of both time and space… in the same breath as reporting working weeks in the order of 60 hours.” For most academic workers, the cost of flexibility is effectively a salary cut as overheads of electricity, heat, water, communication and consumables are shifted to the home. Carbon footprint reductions are a net benefit and for a minority, the savings of commuting and parking offset the costs of this homework or housework. What is the nature or implications of this increasing domestication of academic work and displacement of the academic workplace? For academic couples with or without children, the dynamics of housecohabitry, househusbandry or housewifery necessarily change as the academic workplace shifts and labor creeps into the home. With temptations to procrastinate on deluges of academic deadlines, academic homes have never been cleaner and more organized. Nevermind the technocreep of remote monitoring. Over the long run, although some administrators cling to the digital punch card and time stamp with Hivedesk, Worksnaps or MySammy, “smashing the clock” in the name of flextime and telework is about the best thing that ever happened to academic capitalism.

This is not exactly a SWOT analysis, where Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are given due treatment. Rather, the focus is on this threat convergence as it resolves through historic displacements of the academic workplace and work. To what degree are the new policies for academic speech inscribed in academic work, regardless of where it’s done? As the academic workplace is increasingly displaced and distributed, are academic policies displaced and distributed as well? Observed at work, monitored at home and tracked in between—these are not so much choices as the cold reality of 21st century academic work.

Read More: Threat Convergence

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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Academics, Accountability, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Administration, Bullying & Mobbing, Critical University Studies, Free speech, Government, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Students, Technology, Working conditions

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Divest #ubc from fossil fuel #globalwarming #faubc #bced #bcpoli

Posted on February 8, 2015 by | Comments Off on Divest #ubc from fossil fuel #globalwarming #faubc #bced #bcpoli

UBC faculty members, one hour left to vote on the Referendum for

 Fossil Fuel Divestment at the University of British Columbia: 

A Responsible Investment Proposal 

Go to UBC Faculty Vote (poll closes at 12:30 today, 8 February 2015)

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#Dalhousie students, staff & faculty rally against admin mishandling of dentistry students misogynistic Facebook group

Posted on January 6, 2015 by | Comments Off on #Dalhousie students, staff & faculty rally against admin mishandling of dentistry students misogynistic Facebook group

DSC_7714-1024x682

Jennifer Gosnell, DalGazette, January 6, 2014–“Hey hey, ho ho, misogyny has go to go,” roared a crowd of about 200 people gathered at a rally yesterday afternoon outside Dalhousie’s Henry Hicks Building.

The rally targeted Dalhousie administration’s reaction to a misogynistic Facebook group made up of male dentistry students.

The rally came right after the announcement that Dalhousie University has suspended the clinical privileges of thirteen men in their fourth year of Dal’s Doctor of Dental Surgery program.

These men were suspended as Dalhousie’s ongoing response to complaints against the men’s posts in a Facebook group called the Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen where some of them posted comments about female classmates that included discussions of sexual violence.

The protestors rallied together against a lack of action on Dalhousie’s part and a lack of justice on the part of victims of the posts and survivors of sexual assault.

Jennifer Nowoselski, Dalhousie Student Union Vice President (Internal), spoke of her experiences witnessing harassment on campus.

“I cannot tell you how many students across various faculties come to the Union with complaints of discrimination on a regular basis,” said Nowoselski. “I am enraged.”

“No options to address sexist comments? No options to address sexual harassment? No options to address sexist treatment of women students? Out of justified fear, individuals cannot demand action to make them feel safe on this campus. There is no safe internal process available to our members,” Nowoselski said.

She turned her questions to the Henry Hicks building itself, which hosts university president Richard Florizone’s office.

“Through a media storm, voiced concerns through students and community members, a community-organized rally, petitions, a formal complaint from faculty, threats of losing funding, concern from the government, and with the entire country watching, you created a task force?” Nowoselski asked.

Board members of South House, a student-funded sexual and gender resource centre in Halifax, spoke at the rally. They voiced issues of concern about underfunding for their volunteer-driven services that are often turned to for support by people who have experienced sexual violence.

Various survivors of sexual violence took to the megaphone to discuss the impact of their experiences.

One survivor said she was sexually assaulted by her dentist.

Others shared stories of going to Dalhousie’s offices to report their abuse and being met with blame or disbelief.

Read More: DalGazette

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Posted in Accountability, Administration, Advocacy, Equity, Ethics, Free speech, Protests, Scandals, Student Movement, Students, Working conditions

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#Dalhousie profs complaint on misogynistic dentistry students’ #Facebook posts #highered #dalhousiehateswomen

Posted on January 6, 2015 by | Comments Off on #Dalhousie profs complaint on misogynistic dentistry students’ #Facebook posts #highered #dalhousiehateswomen

CTV, January 5, 2015–Four Dalhousie professors have gone public with a formal complaint they submitted to the university last month, which called for male dentistry students linked to a sexually explicit Facebook discussion to be suspended before classes resume on Monday.

One of the professors, Francoise Baylis, said they decided to go public because they haven’t yet been assured that the complaint has been properly submitted and whether it will be addressed.

“Students have to go back to school tomorrow morning, and in our view, the university has an obligation to provide all students with a safe and supportive learning environment,” Baylis, who teaches at Dalhousie’s medical school, told CTV Atlantic.

“Our view is that it’s important to have at least addressed the complaint prior to the students coming back.”

The formal complaint from Dec. 21 calls for the university to hand out suspensions to all fourth-year students who were allegedly involved in offensive posts discussing female students in the Faculty of Dentistry. The complaint is co-signed by Baylis and fellow Dalhousie professors Jocelyn Downie, Brian Noble and Jacqueline Warwick.

“The purpose of the Complaint was to trigger an interim suspension prior to the start of classes on Monday, January 5, 2015,” the professors said in a statement emailed to CTVNews.ca on Sunday.

The complaint cites a number of posts allegedly made by fourth-year students in the Facebook group called “Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen.”

One poster reportedly joked about using chloroform to render a woman unconscious. Another asked members which female students they would like to have “hate sex” with. A third post showed a photo of a woman in a bikini with the caption: “bang until stress is relieved or unconscious (girl).”

The formal complaint matches these allegations up to violations under the school’s Code of Student Conduct. It says offending students should be suspended because they “pose a threat of disruption or interference with the operations of the University and the activities of its members.”

Baylis said the formal process was engaged because some of the affected female students either did not consent to, or were not approached about the informal “restorative justice” approach the university decided to take.

On Dec. 17, university president Richard Florizone said administrators were looking into informal complaints by women who were subjects of the offensive posts. He also left the door open to a formal complaint process if the affected women chose to pursue it.

“I ask for our communities to give our students and university administrators the time to complete their work through the restorative justice process and forge meaningful, responsible outcomes,” Florizone said in a statement.

“Our overall response must also address cultures of sexism, misogyny and sexualized violence,” he added.

Baylis said the offensive Facebook posts require both an individual and a “systemic” response.

“All of us believe that we’re at a very unique cultural moment in time where we’re actually able to name the problem publicly, to call this misogyny, to talk about gendered violence,” she said.

Read more: CTV

Read the Complaint: 

Statement from faculty members who brought a complaint under Dalhousie University’s Code of

Student Conduct re: the “Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen”

We are at a distinct cultural moment in which real change with respect to misogyny and gendered violence is possible.

Events involving the “Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen” create a complex situation demanding thoughtful, sensitive responses from a variety of perspectives using a variety of procedural tools.

We ground our engagement with this situation in commitments to:

  • acknowledging that the problem of misogyny and gendered violence exists on Dalhousie campuses and campuses across the country;
  • doing the work required to make our campuses safe and supportive learning environments for all members of our community and with particular concern for women and members of other vulnerable groups;
  • ensuring due process;
  • pursuing an integrated approach involving both systemic and specific responses.

President Florizone has committed to responding to the specific incident within the Faculty of Dentistry and to seeking strategies for meaningful long-term change. Our formal Complaint is an effort to contribute constructively to the comprehensive response required.

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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Advocacy, Campus Life, Ethics, Events, Protests, Solidarity, Student Movement, Students, Working conditions

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Symposium: Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture #highered #criticaled #caut #aaup

Posted on December 2, 2014 by | Comments Off on Symposium: Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture #highered #criticaled #caut #aaup

Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture

July 23-25, 2015

Faculty of Education, University of Regina

This symposium will examine accelerating trends in higher education: neoliberalism, the politics of evidence, and the audit culture. In an age in which value is often equated with accountancy, we will examine the place in the academy for public intellectualism, community-engagement, Indigenous epistemologies, and how the impact of our scholarship is, and ought to be, justly assessed. Invited presenters will provoke lively discussion, but going beyond discussion, and blurring the lines between presenter and audience member, participants will be invited to engage actively with other presenter/participants in attendance for the purpose of effecting changes at their home institutions. Opportunities will be available for reconsidering and strategizing academic issues such as faculty criteria documents, measurement rankings, traditional impact factors, and other academic matters affected by the politics of austerity, neoliberalism, and new management technologies. Action will also be encouraged through submissions to a special issue of in education (the University of Regina Faculty of Education’s journal), potentially collaborating on an edited book, TED-style dissemination videos, producing a list of recommendations, developing examples of inclusive faculty criteria documents, possibly developing a community impact factor as an alternative to journal impact factor metrics, and further actions as collectively discussed at the symposium.

Questions to be explored include:

  • What counts as scholarship and why?
  • How do we achieve accountability in an age of accountancy?
  • How do we measure research impact, (i.e., journal impact factor vs community and policy impact)?
  • Impact for whom?
  • Who and how do we determine whose evidence and what research is legitimate?
  • What can be done? How do we effect change to university practices?
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Critical University Studies, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Politics, Solidarity, Students, Tenure & Promotion, Working conditions

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CFP: Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor #highered #edstudies #criticaled

Posted on November 30, 2014 by | Comments Off on CFP: Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor #highered #edstudies #criticaled

Call for Papers
Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor

Special Issue of Workplace
Guest Editors: Karen Gregory & Joss Winn

Articles in Workplace have repeatedly called for increased collective organisation in opposition to a disturbing trajectory: individual autonomy is decreasing, contractual conditions are worsening, individual mental health issues are rising, and academic work is being intensified. Despite our theoretical advances and concerted practical efforts to resist these conditions, the gains of the 20th century labor movement are diminishing and the history of the university appears to be on a determinate course. To date, this course is often spoken of in the language of “crisis.”

While crisis may indeed point us toward the contemporary social experience of work and study within the university, we suggest that there is one response to the transformation of the university that has yet to be adequately explored: A thoroughgoing and reflexive critique of academic labor and its ensuing forms of value. By this, we mean a negative critique of academic labor and its role in the political economy of capitalism; one which focuses on understanding the basic character of ‘labor’ in capitalism as a historically specific social form. Beyond the framework of crisis, what productive, definite social relations are actively resituating the university and its labor within the demands, proliferations, and contradictions of capital?

We aim to produce a negative critique of academic labor that not only makes transparent these social relations, but repositions academic labor within a new conversation of possibility.

We are calling for papers that acknowledge the foundational work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for labor theory and engage closely and critically with the critique of political economy. Marx regarded his discovery of the dual character of labor in capitalism (i.e. concrete and abstract) as one of his most important achievements and “the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns.” With this in mind, we seek contributions that employ Marx’s and Engels’ critical categories of labor, value, the commodity, capital, etc. in reflexive ways which illuminate the role and character of academic labor today and how its existing form might be, according to Marx, abolished, transcended and overcome (aufheben).

Contributions:

  1. A variety of forms and approaches, demonstrating a close engagement with Marx’s theory and method: Theoretical critiques, case studies, historical analyses, (auto-)ethnographies, essays, and narratives are all welcome. Contributors from all academic disciplines are encouraged.
  2. Any reasonable length will be considered. Where appropriate they should adopt a consistent style (e.g. Chicago, Harvard, MLA, APA).
  3. Will be Refereed.
  4. Contributions and questions should be sent to:

Joss Winn (jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk) and Karen Gregory (kgregory@ccny.cuny.edu)

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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, CFPs, Critical University Studies, Faculty, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Organizing, Solidarity, Unions, Working conditions

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New #UBC Grad Program in Critical Pedagogy & Education Activism #bctf #bced #yteubc #yreubc #criticaled

Posted on November 7, 2014 by | Comments Off on New #UBC Grad Program in Critical Pedagogy & Education Activism #bctf #bced #yteubc #yreubc #criticaled

NEW MASTERS PROGRAM IN THE INSTITUTE FOR CRITICAL EDUCATION STUDIES
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION ACTIVISM
BEGINS JULY 2014

APPLY NOW!

The new UBC Masters Program in Critical Pedagogy and Education Activism (Curriculum Studies) has the goal of bringing about positive change in schools and education. This cohort addresses issues such as environmentalism, equity and social justice, and private versus public education funding debates and facilitates activism across curriculum and evaluation within the schools and critical analysis and activism in communities and the media. The cohort is organized around three core themes: solidarity, engagement, and critical analysis and research.

BCTFRallySignJune2014

The new UBC M.Ed. in Critical Pedagogy and Education Activism (Curriculum Studies) is a cohort program in which participants attend courses together in a central location. It supports participation in face-to-face, hybrid (blended), and online activism and learning.

A Perfect Opportunity

  • Earn your Master’s degree in 2 years (part-time)
  • Enjoy the benefits of collaborative study and coalition building
  • Channel your activism inside and outside school (K-12)
  • Sharpen your knowledge of critical practices and skill with media and technology
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Posted in BC Education, Critical University Studies, Institute for Critical Education Studies, K-12 issues, Organizing, Students, Unions

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CFP for iPopU #edstudies #occupyed #criticaled

Posted on October 26, 2014 by | Comments Off on CFP for iPopU #edstudies #occupyed #criticaled

CFP: iPopU

Topdown 100 Innorenovations 
Special Issue of Workplace (iPopU) 2015

iPopU is cataloguing its mold-breaking outside-the-box ‘you won’t find these on the shelf of brick and mortar’ innorenovations. So this is a chance for U to contribute to the iPopU Topdown 100 countdown. See the Innovation in Evaluation nomination for No. 11 in iPopU’s Topdown 100.

Contributions to the iPopU Topdown 100 for Workplace should be about 500-1,500 words in length and yield to iPopU style. Submit all iPopU Topdown 100 innorenovations via the Workplace OJS.

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Posted in Academic freedom, Administration, Critical University Studies, Faculty, Just Kidding (not), Organizing, Students, Working conditions

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#CapilanoUniversity whac-a-sculpture futile as yet one more surfaces #GeorgeRammell #caut #bced

Posted on October 11, 2014 by | Comments Off on #CapilanoUniversity whac-a-sculpture futile as yet one more surfaces #GeorgeRammell #caut #bced
"Margaux and the Monarch"

“Margaux and the Monarch”

Ever futile is Capilano University’s game of whac-a-mole turn whac-a-sculpture, as yet one more caricature of President Kris Bulcroft has surfaced. When Blathering On in Krisendom surfaced Capilano University whacked it to pieces in May.

Now in October, where life imitates art as whac-a-sculpture, another has surfaced at the hands of sculptor George Rammell. Margaux and the Monarch is indeed a thing of beauty, mace, pen and pooch! What grand preparation for the graduation ceremony!

As Capilano’s Convocation guide indicates, “The mace depicts the authority vested in the University to…” well, fill in the blanks. “In keeping with this longstanding tradition” of a raw and visible demonstration of power, the Convocation guide indicates, “our ceremonial mace will be carried by Capilano University’s director of Buildings and Grounds.”

It is unlikely the Director of Building and Grounds will carry the entire sculpture. Just the mace. Margaux and the Monarch!

PS. Just looked outside and swear the garden gnome is now a  $^@&% ‘n mini-Margaux and the Monarch statue.

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Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Censorship, Commentary, Faculty, Free speech, Human Rights, Politics, Protests, Working conditions

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#CapilanoUniversity censorship of #GeorgeRammell case progresses #caut #bced

Posted on October 11, 2014 by | Comments Off on #CapilanoUniversity censorship of #GeorgeRammell case progresses #caut #bced
dismantled_sculpture

George Rammell with the remnants of Blathering On in Krisendom, which Capilano university officials confiscated and dismantled.

Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, October 8, 2014– It took 53 days for George Rammell to get back a sculpture he’d made caricaturing his university’s president and, when officials at British Columbia’s Capilano University finally returned it to him, it was in pieces.

“They gave it back to me all smashed up,” said Rammell, a former instructor at Capilano whose sculpture was seized from the studio arts building last spring by university officials on the grounds that it constituted “harassment” of Capilano President Kris Bulcroft.

“They claim they had to destroy it in order to move it, which is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve moved it myself.”

The original sculpture, titled Blathering On in Krisendom, depicted the president and her poodle as ventriloquist dolls draped in an American flag and was conceived, as Rammell explained it, as an “anti-monument” to the president in protest of her role in carrying out program cuts. Bulcroft oversaw the elimination of several programs, including the studio arts program in which Rammell taught, in a process that was later deemed by British Columbia’s Supreme Court to be contrary to the province’s University Act in that Capilano’s Senate was not consulted.

Rammell described the original sculpture as an example of constitutionally protected caricature, but Capilano’s former board chair, Jane Shackell, directed that it be confiscated from university property because it was, she said, being “used in a manner amounting to workplace harassment of an individual employee, intended to belittle and humiliate the president.”

In order to reclaim his artwork, Rammell said, he signed an agreement that stated that he would be permitted to work on the piece in the studio arts building until his employment at the university ended on July 31. After that time, he would remove the sculpture from campus and would not bring it back. Rammell said the agreement also stipulated that he would not display any photographs of the sculpture on campus until five years after the president’s retirement. (Rammell declined to share the text of the agreement he signed but described its contents to Inside Higher Ed. Capilano officials declined to comment on the specific terms of the grievance agreement, which a university spokeswoman described as related to a personnel matter and thus confidential.)

In compensation for the damages to the sculpture, Rammell said, he received the equivalent of four days’ teaching wages.

“In retrospect I should never have signed the stupid thing; I could have finished the sculpture without getting the heap back,” said Rammell.

Finish the sculpture he has. The new sculpture, made up of pieces of the original as well as newly created components, was unveiled last week in an event at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in Vancouver. The piece has two faces, or fronts: a newly sculpted depiction of the president holding a mace backs up against the reassembled components of the original sculpture. Among the new elements of the sculpture, Rammell said a mace is intended to signify the trust placed in the university president, and a pen is intended to represent Bulcroft’s “unilateral” signing authority in eliminating the studio arts and other Capilano programs. The new piece is entitled Margaux and the Monarch, Margaux being the name of Bulcroft’s dog.

As for the American flag, Bulcroft previously worked at Western Washington University. Rammell said that while he has nothing against international hires, he did object to Bulcroft’s seeming disregard for a Canadian law, specifically the University Act.

“The whole piece is about academic freedom and everybody seems to be under threat,” Rammell said.

Bulcroft declined an interview through a Capilano spokeswoman, Borjana Slipicevic. A statement emailed by Slipicevic that repeatedly misspelled Rammell’s name said that “Capilano University is aware of Mr. Rammel’s current actions. The university is committed to a safe and respectful workplace for all faculty and staff; the decision to remove Mr. Rammel’s sculpture from campus was made in this vein. Capilano University and Mr. Rammel’s union negotiated a mutually acceptable settlement that resulted in giving the sculpture to Mr. Rammell; thus Capilano University considers this matter closed.”

As for the condition of the sculpture upon its return, the university’s statement said, “The effigy was dismantled to facilitate its removal; Mr. Rammel was advised that this was the case.”

Read More: Inside Higher Ed

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Posted in Academic freedom, Administration, Censorship, Culture, Faculty, Free speech, Human Rights, Intellectual property, Legal issues, Politics, Working conditions

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Canadian Universities increasing exploitation of sessional, contract academic staff #highered #cocal #caut #bced

Posted on September 7, 2014 by | Comments Off on Canadian Universities increasing exploitation of sessional, contract academic staff #highered #cocal #caut #bced
COCAL X Conference (Photo by David Milroy)

COCAL X Conference (Photo by David Milroy)

Listen to Class Struggle, Ira Basen’s documentary of the plight of part-time faculty in Canadian universities.

Ira Basen, CBC, September 7, 2014– Kimberley Ellis Hale has been an instructor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., for 16 years. This summer, while teaching an introductory course in sociology, she presented her students with a role-playing game to help them understand how precarious economic security is for millions of Canadian workers.

In her scenario, students were told they had lost their jobs, their marriage had broken up, and they needed to find someplace to live.  And they had to figure out a way to live on just $1,000 a month.

What those students didn’t know was the life they were being asked to imagine was not very different than the life of their instructor.

According to figures provided by the Laurier Faculty Association, 52 per cent of Laurier students were taught by CAS in 2012, up from 38 per cent in 2008. (Brian St-Denis (CBC News))

Hale is 51 years old, and a single mother with two kids.  She is what her university calls a CAS (contract academic staff). Other schools use titles such as sessional lecturers and adjunct faculty.

That means that despite her 16 years of service, she has no job security.  She still needs to apply to teach her courses every semester. She gets none of the perks that a full time professor gets; generous benefits and pension, sabbaticals, money for travel and research, and job security in the form of tenure that most workers can only dream about.

And then there’s the money.

A full course load for professors teaching at most Canadian universities is four courses a year.  Depending on the faculty, their salary will range between $80,000 and $150,000 a year.  A contract faculty person teaching those same four courses will earn about $28,000.

Full time faculty are also required to research, publish, and serve on committees, but many contract staff do that as well in the hope of one day moving up the academic ladder.  The difference is they have to do it on their own time and on their own dime.

Precariat

The reality of Kimberley’s life would be hard for most students to grasp.

‘I never imagined myself in this position, where every four months I worry about how I’m going to put food on the table.’– Kimberley Ellis Hale, instructor

For them, a professor is a professor. How could someone with graduate degrees who teaches at a prestigious university belong to what sociologists now call the “precariat, ” a social class whose working lives lack predictability or financial security?

It’s a question that Kimberley often asks herself.

“I never imagined myself in this position,” she says in an interview at her home later that day, “where every four months I worry about how I’m going to put food on the table. So what I did with them this morning is try to get them to think, ‘Well what if you were in this position?’”

Contract faculty

In Canada today, it’s estimated that more than half of all undergraduates are taught by contract faculty.

 Not all of those people live on the margins. In specialized fields like law, business and journalism, people are hired for the special expertise they bring to the field. They have other sources of income. And retired professors on a pension sometimes welcome the opportunity to teach a course or two.

But there are many thousands of people trying to cobble together a full-time salary with part-time work.

They often teach the large introductory courses that tenured faculty like to avoid.  They put in 60- to 70-hour weeks grading hundreds of essays and exams, for wages that sometimes barely break the poverty line.

It’s what Kimberley Ellis Hale calls the university’s “dirty little secret.”

Our universities are rightly celebrated for their great achievements in research. That’s what attracts the money, the prestige and the distinguished scholars. But the core of the teaching is being done by the most precarious of academic labourers.

And without them, the business model of the university would collapse.

Enrollment at Canadian universities is soaring (up 23 per cent at Laurierover the past decade, for example). And while most universities are still hiring tenure-track faculty, they aren’t hiring enough to match the growing student population.  So classes are getting bigger, and more “sessional” instructors are being hired.

“It helps financially,” concedes Pat Rogers, Laurier’s vice-president of teaching.  “If you can’t afford to hire a faculty member who will only teach four courses, you can hire many more sessional faculty for that money.

“Universities are really strapped now. I think it’s regrettable, and I think there are legitimate concerns about having such a large part-time workforce, but it’s an unfortunate consequence of underfunding of the university.”

Read More: CBC, “Most University undergrads now taught by poorly paid part-timers”

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Posted in Academics, Adjuncts & Sessionals, BC Education, Campus Life, Employment rights, Equity, Solidarity, Working conditions

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Saint Mary’s major changes, #UBC not so much #SMUHalifaxNews #ubcSauderschool

Posted on September 5, 2014 by | Comments Off on Saint Mary’s major changes, #UBC not so much #SMUHalifaxNews #ubcSauderschool

Welcome Back! Or so two universities sheepishly say to new students in a wake of orientation disasters last year. At UBC, the rape chant at the Sauder School of Business this was the Ubyssey‘s top story of the year. As it went, for the same practice Saint Mary’s University conducted an extensive investigation and issued an exhaustive report– 110 pages. Administrators held or took accountability. At UBC, in Sauder, not so much. A thin 5 page report and no mention of administration– this with a bloated leadership team at Sauder.

So what happened between December 2013, report time and now late summer 2014, orientation time? Well, this summer SMU issued an Update from the President’s Council and created an Action Team. The entire orientation culture was changed. At UBC, not so much.

Sauder Dean Helsley said “There has been a lot of work done in setting expectations for what is appropriate in orientation activities.”

New activities are good.

But Dean Helsley has yet– after a year– to account for his administration’s failures or announce changes at the top that might actually trim the bloat and streamline a few of the associate or assistant deans toward the undergraduate curriculum and students. Nothing yet. Still waiting. Welcome back!

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Posted in Accountability, BC Education, Equity, Students

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Thank you Jim Turk! leader of #CAUT reflects on struggles #ubc #criticaled #aaup

Posted on June 11, 2014 by | Comments Off on Thank you Jim Turk! leader of #CAUT reflects on struggles #ubc #criticaled #aaup

JimTurkMarch2014

Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2014–James L. Turk is retiring from his post as executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the national union representing almost all of Canada’s faculty and academic staff members, on June 30. In an interview with Karen Birchard, a Canadian correspondent for The Chronicle, he looked back on his 16 years at the helm of the organization. What follows is an edited version of their conversation.

Q. Why are you retiring now?

A. I feel very strongly that organizations need new blood and new leadership. I probably pushed the envelope by staying 16 years. I love what I’m doing and look forward to it every morning, but it’s good for the organization to have someone else do the job.

Q. Did you achieve what you wanted to at CAUT?

A. The organization has grown and moved forward. But there’s always so much more that can be done.

Q. Like what?

A. A lot of union members treat membership like their insurance company—”We pay our dues, and if there’s trouble, there’s the union to support us.” But the reality is, our biggest obligation is to defend and protect those things that are the core of what makes good university and college education possible. There are powerful forces trying to change those things, and we have to engage our members more actively in that struggle.

Q. What issue stands out?

A. One of our biggest problems, like in the United States, has been the casualization of the profession. This means a significant proportion of the people teaching at our universities are exploited, are paid a miserable amount of money, don’t have basic rights to be paid to do scholarly work or to do service, and are often excluded from participation in development of curriculum. We’ve made huge progress in unionizing them and creating the possibility for advances, but a large part of that work is undone.

Q. What’s the future for unionism for academic faculty and staff members in Canada and the United States?

A. In Canada, university and college teachers have the highest degree of unionization of any employee group in the country, and that has been vital in protecting the integrity of our universities and colleges, as well as academic freedom and the quality of education.

The situation is dramatically different in the United States, where the majority of universities don’t even have faculty unions. More than a third of the states have laws that effectively undermine unionization, so faculty in the United States don’t have the tools available to us in Canada.

Q. Is academic freedom in Canada stronger or weaker than when you started?

A. I would say stronger, in part because now almost everybody is unionized. We have such a strong expectation of academic freedom in Canada that any university administration that violates it becomes a pariah.

Q. What are you going to do next?

A. I’ve been offered a position as a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University, in Toronto. I’m going to be working toward creating a center for the promotion of freedom of expression. I will also be doing some work with CAUT and with some individual faculty associations and a fair amount of media work around higher education.

Read More: Chronicle of Higher Ed

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Posted in Academic freedom, Advocacy, Faculty, Organizing, Solidarity, Unions, Working conditions

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