September 2003
The annual meeting, held
at the University of Western Ontario, was attended by over 30 members,
with 17 staying for the business meeting. Once again, we thank Daniella
Chirila, our SAFS secretary, for coordinating the conference, arranging
morning coffee and lunch, and booking the meeting rooms.
A) In my opening remarks,
I noted that this year we were doubling the number of morning panel sessions
and thus, in the interest of saving time for these sessions, I would
not be reviewing the recent cases with which SAFS was involved. Instead,
I directed the members to the SAFS website for recent updates. Additionally,
I informed the audience that there would be no winner of the Furedy Award
for Academic Freedom this year.
B) The first morning session
was entitled, “Research Ethics Boards: Protecting the Public or Limiting
Academic Freedom.” The speakers were Ben Forster and John Mueller.
The session was chaired by Steve Lupker.
Ben Forster reviewed the
background, structure and operations of the University of Western Ontario
Review Board for Non-Medical Research Involving Human Subjects of which
he is currently Chair. He outlined the larger national context, and urged
involvement in the processes now ongoing which are to define not only a
revised Tri-Council Statement on Research Ethics but also national systems
of oversight and accreditation.
John Mueller, in his presentation,
noted the continued growth of the research ethics bureaucracy. He
said that many of the complications came
from trying to apply a model of medical research to the social
and behavioral sciences, and some came from mindless insatiable bureaucratic
growth. He argued the effectiveness of many of the regulations is not apparent
on the surface, and it seems there is no concern with documenting effectiveness,
and no accountability for the added bureaucracy. The way these
ethics boards do, or may come to, constrain inquiry on campus was discussed.
His full talk can be read at http://mueller.educ.ucalgary.ca/SAFS2003/
and for SAFS response on research ethics see page 4 of this issue.
The second morning session,
“Strategies and Tactics in the ‘Diversity/Equity’ Debates,” was chaired
by John Furedy.
The session was a review
of a prior panel, organized by several SAFS members (John Furedy, Doreen
Kimura, Clive Seligman, and Philip Sullivan), that took place at the “Excellence
Through Diversity” conference, held at the University of Toronto, in March
2003. The SAFS panel at that Toronto conference was the only one
to disagree with the conference theme, as evident in the name of our session,
“The moral bankruptcy of diversity/equity hiring policies for university
faculty: Empirical, logical, and ethical considerations.” Nonetheless,
the session drew a large audience, almost none of whom agreed with anything
we had to say. Accordingly, the AGM session was organized to
discuss our failure to be persuasive. The session began with
a tape of some of the discussion that took place at the Toronto session,
and this was followed by presentations by Philip Sullivan and Martin Wall.
Phil Sullivan argued that
the reaction of the Toronto audience, many of whom were employed in diversity
positions in education, was akin to that of advocates of creation science,
who see the issue as a moral crusade. Sullivan said that in equity
advocacy we see moral fervor, bold assertions, dogma, determinism, and
the discounting of contrary scientific evidence. He suggested that we should
learn from how scientists have argued with creationists, i.e., we should
assemble contrary evidence in a comprehensive way and work harder to disseminate
it to the public.
Marty Wall, who was in the
audience, at the Toronto session initially thought it would be a wonderful
attempt to engage productively with a somewhat hostile audience and to
raise some questions in their minds, even if not actually to
change their minds. In Marty’s view, the
opportunity was lost. There was
little communication.
Judging from the comments,
many in the audience viewed
the panel as appearing
arrogant, which
made it too easy for them to be dismissive toward the arguments and data
presented. The atmosphere became highly charged. Marty urged us to
draw from our experience as teachers, to be sensitive to where the audience
is coming from, and to build our case slowly, moving from non-controversial
to more controversial arguments.
Although there was not a
lot of time for questions and answers after the speakers’ portion of the
sessions, the discussion was lively.
C) Our keynote speaker, Dr.
Frederick H. Lowy, Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Concordia University, spoke
on the topic, “Defending Academic Freedom in the Politicized University.”
Dr. Lowy gave a thorough, sensitive, and balanced account of the recent
problems at Concordia University that culminated in the riot that prevented
Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel, from delivering an
invited talk on campus in September, 2002. He discussed the history of
Concordia University, its diverse student population, and the problem of
radicalized students who see the university as a defender of the status
quo. The difficulties were enlarged due to the fact that in Quebec
student unions have labor union status and the university has no control
of the fees the students pay to support their union, and thus little control
over their activities. Since the problems in the Middle East became
more intense in recent years, there has been a growing tension between
pro-Palestinian students, aligned with the radical students in the student
union, and other groups, particularly pro-Israeli supporters. Dr.
Lowy outlined various events that have occurred on campus that raised serious
questions of how to defend academic freedom while trying to contain increasingly
violent activities.
Dr. Lowy stated firmly that
he and Concordia University believe in the core values of the Academy,
including academic freedom and free speech, and they will defend them.
A lengthy and candid question and answer period followed Dr. Lowy’s talk.
A fuller account of Dr. Lowy’s remarks, prepared by Chris Furedy, is on
page 11 of this issue.
D) The Annual Business Meeting
was held at the end of the day. The minutes are circulated to the
members with this issue. Please save the minutes to bring with
you to the next AGM.
Help us maintain freedom in teaching, research and scholarship by joining SAFS or making a donation.
