Noah D. Arney

Tag: Post-Secondary

  • What is Political?

    I’m trying to use this blog more as a way to think through things that I disagree with. It’s not good to have an immediate knee jerk reaction to something and to leave it there. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I had just stayed with my assumptions of the past. So, similar to how I treated McKinnon a few weeks back today I’m going to try to actively and intentionally engage with something that based on the news articles, I will probably disagree with. But maybe I won’t. I may be wrong.

    Today I’m reading through the petition to the BC Supreme Court by Andrew Irvine (Professor), Nathan Cockram (Recent PhD Student), Brad Epperly (Associate Professor), Christopher Kam (Professor), and Michael Treschow (Associate Professor). They have submitted a request for judicial review about their institution, the University of British Columbia.

    To be clear, I write this as someone who is supportive of institutional neutrality and how it supports free expression. So I am coming into this as the type of person this should be persuasive to.

    First, since I hate it when people don’t include the original, here is the petition.

    Petition-VLC-S-S-252602-filed-7Apr2025Download

    The background required for their argument in the petition is that under the University Act in BC, which all public universities are under to one level or another, “66 (1)A university must be non-sectarian and non-political in principle.”

    Now the reason I say one level or another is that this is in Part 12, in the subheading “Theological colleges” because the purpose of section 66 is actually about exemptions to (1) which allows a university to have a theological college affiliated with them. If it does so, then despite what (1) says, a theological college may:

    (a)make provisions it considers proper in regard to religious instruction and religious worship for its own students, and

    (b)require religious observance as part of its discipline.

    This section does not apply to all public universities, specifically the two universities with their own acts, Royal Roads University and Thompson Rivers University. Neither of these universities includes section 66 in their Act specifically or through reference. More on that shortly.

    Orders Sought

    The specifics requested in the petition are to prohibit UBC from:

    1. “engaging in political activity within the meaning of s.66”
    2. “declaring or acknowledging that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land”
      • As done by administrators, Senates, and Board
    3. “requiring or encouraging other persons to declare or acknowledge that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land”
      • As done by administrators, Senates, and Board
    4. “making statements or declarations of support or condemnation of Israel or Palestine”
      • As done by Okanagan Senate and Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies
    5. “stating opinions on the absolute or relative morality, lawfulness or political justification of violence in Israel or Palestine”
      • As done by Okanagan Senate and Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies
    6. “requiring expressions of agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, equity and inclusion doctrines, or any other political beliefs, as a condition of applying for UBC faculty positions and/or as a condition of appointment as UBC faculty”
      • As done by the administrators in charge of hiring and academic departments

    There are several additional things that are essentially to tell UBC to issue retractions or take things down from their website. Next up is a request that the court determine who does and does not speak for “UBC”.

    • Those who are the “university” when they speak would be all administrators, the Board of Governors, all Board committees, the Senates of Vancouver and Okanagan, their committees, all “UBC faculties, schools, departments, institutes, centres, programs and other academic and administrative units” and all those with “governance or administrative roles and capacities”
    • Those who are NOT the “university” when they speak are “professors, instructors, lecturers, scholars, researchers, artists, performers, librarians, archivists, curators, students, and other members of Convocation not holding an administrative or governance position”

    Why are they petitioning?

    The key thing they are trying to do explicitly here is assert that “Section 66 of the University Act is an express and specific statutory provision intended to preserve and uphold academic freedom….” I will leave to the side the concern that the petitioners are saying that the section that does not apply to two of the public research universities in the province is the one that is about academic freedom seems concerning to me.

    The petitioners are asking for this because they say UBC has done the following:

    a. UBC has declared and/or acknowledged, orally and in writing, electronically on its website and in print media, that UBC is on unceded indigenous land;

    b. UBC has required and/or encouraged persons within its sphere of influence, including professors and students, to declare or acknowledge that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land;

    c. UBC has issued and publicized declaratory statements condemning violence in Israel or Palestine and has issued and publicized opinions on the morality, lawfulness or justification of violence in Israel or Palestine; and

    d. UBC has imposed and/or approved application processes for hiring faculty members and criteria for hiring or appointing faculty members that require applicants to express agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines (“DEI” or “EDI”)

    The Key Arguments

    1. Someone who speaks for the University declaring that UBC is on unceded land is a political statement
    2. Someone who speaks for the University condemning violence committed by a state or organization, calling the actions of another country genocide, and condemning the actions of another organization as discriminatory, are all political statements
    3. UBC requiring an EDI statement from potential applicants in a hiring process, or a department stating that they wish to hire people who agree with a “commitment to… equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice” are political actions, and may rise to the level of requiring “specific political beliefs as a condition of employment.”

    The petitioners say that these actions of the university create an environment where individual members of the institution are pressured to agree with the perspective of the institution. So the first question to be asked is what definition should there be for “political”?

    What is Political?

    The petitioners say that the meaning of “non-political” must be the “reader’s first impression meaning”. Which seems strange when there is a counter example already given in the Act. Section 66 (1) is given so that section 66 (4) has something to be the exception to. The exception then is:

    (a)make provisions it considers proper in regard to religious instruction and religious worship for its own students, and

    (b)require religious observance as part of its discipline.

    If we work from the exception to the rule, it means that “non-sectarian and non-political” means the opposite of that:

    1. You may not mandate religious (or political) instruction for students
    2. You may not mandate religious worship (or political actions) by students
    3. you may not require religious (or political) observance as discipline (in the punishment sense)

    This is not about punishment, so we can ignore #3. But #1 and #2 are about mandating instruction and actions for students, which the petitioners do not seem to be alleging has happened.

    However, later on (s. 33) the petitioners state that the implication of section 66 is that it is to ensure that “the University and its administrative components are prohibited from undertaking political activities that are inconsistent with [academic freedom]”. They go on to say that political should be interpreted as part of freedom of expression under the charter

    2 Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

    (a) freedom of conscience and religion;

    (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

    (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

    (d) freedom of association.

    In that “non-political” means the institution may not compel or mandate any “thought, belief, opinion and expression”.

    The petitioners go on to say that a statement made by the institution that is “political” applies pressure to those who should have academic freedom to agree with a specific “thought, belief, opinion and expression” because it implies that those who do not agree are not welcome at UBC.

    The concern I have here is that the counter example given in the Act is about actions by the institution (requiring religious classes, requiring attendance at religious observances, and using religion based punishments), but the petition asks us to redefine political from political actions to “political statements” which is not supported by a reading of the Act.

    We’ll come back to the statements vs. actions later, but for now lets accept the petitioner’s redefinition to political statements. If we do so, then, while it makes sense not to have the University as a whole dictate the thoughts of an individual, we need to first look at who the petitioners are saying speak for the University.

    Who Speaks for the University?

    The first argument to look at is around who speaks on behalf of the University. It is easy to know who makes up the University as an institution, it’s in the Act:

    3 (2.1) … the University of British Columbia is composed of a chancellor, a convocation, a board, an Okanagan senate, a Vancouver senate, a council and faculties.

    But who speaks on behalf of the university? It cannot be everyone listed above because that includes a huge list of people including all faculty and all graduates. I am a graduate of UBC, and so am part of convocation, but by no means am I speaking on behalf of UBC when I say anything. Who speaks then? Well the Act does say:

    46.1 A university has the power and capacity of a natural person of full capacity.

    And when it exercises that power it does so by using the “corporate name and seal of the university” which are controlled by the Board. In fact we then see the following sections laying out who is in charge and could be conceivably making a political statement on behalf of the university:

    27 (1)The management, administration and control of the property, revenue, business and affairs of the university are vested in the board.

    59 (1)There must be a president of the university, who is to be the chief executive officer and must generally supervise and direct the academic work of the university.

    So then based on this it seems like the Board as a whole or the President may be the ones who speak on behalf of the university. UBC has a process for this to further restrict it beyond the assumption of Board and President to say that no, only the President may speak on behalf of the University:

    Speaking on Behalf of the University

    The President, or her/his designate, is the spokesperson for the University.

    The Chair of the Board only is the spokesperson for the Board and, in this connection, the Chair consults the President.

    The Chair will seek guidance from the Board of Governors, in consultation with the President, to determine the items which will be released publicly.

    Going back to the petition, it asks the court to designate the following as individuals and groups who speak on behalf of UBC:

    1. Chancellor
    2. President and Vice-Chancellor
    3. Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor
    4. Vice-Presidents
    5. UBC Board of Governors
    6. Board Committees
    7. Vancouver Senate
    8. Okanagan Senate
    9. Vancouver and Okanagan Senate Committees
    10. Faculties
    11. Schools
    12. Departments
    13. Institutes
    14. Centres
    15. Programs
    16. Academic Units
    17. Administrative Units
    18. Deans, Assistant Deans, Heads, Assistant Heads, and all other administrators – when speaking in their administrative roles and capacities

    Although it is clear that the President speaks on behalf of the University, and it makes sense that the Principal and VPs speaking could be construed as being endorsed by the President, anything beyond that is a lot. But the petitioners want to have the court determine that regardless of “official” statements, that any statements by these groups and individuals that is sectarian or political is against the Act.

    Collective vs. Individual Academic Freedom

    The biggest concern I see are the Academic Units listed. At UBC the Faculties (sometimes called Faculty Councils) are made up of the Dean of the Faculty, three ex officio members (who normally don’t attend), the faculty members and other teaching staff, and a few staff and students. But these are always primarily faculty members, meaning any decision by a UBC Faculty, such as the one identified in s.14 of the petition by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, was a decision made by the very “professors, instructors, lecturers, scholars” etc. that they are asking to be the ones who can speak to political matters. The petitioners are asking for the freedom of expression of a collective of individuals with Academic Freedom to be restricted so that the freedom of expression of any one individual with Academic Freedom is not limited.

    To combine this with the above definition they want for “political” it would mean that a UBC Faculty may not require or even request any individual to agree with a specific “thought, belief, opinion and expression” if there is any “controversial political debate” around it. The problem there is that taken to its logical conclusion this means that the Faculty of Science may not put out a statement stating that they affirm something which people may disagree with, such as evolution. This of course sounds ridiculous, as a Faculty is individual faculty members who have come to this decision together as a group based on what they think or believe and are individually protected to say it as they have Academic Freedom.

    To save the core of the petitioner’s argument, then, I will need to remove any of the groups that are primarily made up of those with Academic Freedom then from the list, which would be the academic units, faculties, senates and senate committees. But next I will need to remove those who are explicitly prevented from speaking on behalf of the University, that would be the Board and their committees. The Chancellor’s power outside of their role on the Board is only the conferring of degrees and chairing Convocation, so they also must be removed. Finally, administrative units are made up of individuals and act on the behest of the head of the unit, so statements from them have only the power given to their head or the individuals and since this can’t be about the group they are removed.

    1. President and Vice-Chancellor
    2. Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor
    3. Vice-Presidents
    4. Deans, Assistant Deans, Heads, Assistant Heads, and all other administrators – when speaking in their administrative roles and capacities

    Remaining are the administrative employees. This means that the key arguments need to be rewritten, because #2 only had examples from Senate or a Faculty (both primarily made up of faculty members and therefore cannot be statements of the University).

    1. An administrator Someone who speaks for the University declaring that UBC is on unceded land is a political statement
    2. Someone who speaks for the University condemning violence committed by a state or organization, calling the actions of another country genocide, and condemning the actions of another organization as discriminatory, are all political statements
    3. UBC requiring an EDI statement from potential applicants in a hiring process, or a department stating that they wish to hire people who agree with a “commitment to… equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice” are political, and may rise to the level of requiring “specific political beliefs as a condition of employment.”

    What is unceded

    The petition states that calling the land UBC is on “unceded” is a “political statement” and asks us to define unceded as “the claim to Canadian sovereign territory is illegitimate or unethical or contrary to international law.”

    While I’m sure that there are some who would agree with that definition, it seems strange for the petitioners to state that is it’s “ordinary usage”. The OED defines it as:

    Of land, territory, etc.: belonging to Indigenous peoples; not ceded, given up, or handed over to a colonizing people, government, or nation.

    The ordinary usage in Canada since before Canada was a country for “unceded” is “not under treaty” in 1848 we see it used in a recommendation for the government to establish a national treaty in order to “extinguish the Indian claim to all the unceded Lands…” for the land not yet under treaty. UBC even has a page explaining this where they say “Unceded: refers to land that was not turned over to the Crown (government) by a treaty or other agreement.” Since this is a website by one of the VPs, someone the petitioners say speak for the University, then since UBC’s usage, the OED current definition, and the historical usage of the term all mean the same thing, we cannot accept the petitioners definition.

    The question for this now is “was the land UBC is on ever transferred under treaty to Britain, British Columbia, or Canada?”

    I am unable to find any record of a treaty transferring the land UBC is on from the Musqueam, Syilx, Squamish, or Tsleil-Waututh. So the phrase that is considered objectionable which is on the UBC website is a statement of fact:

    We acknowledge that UBC’s two main campuses are situated within the ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people, and in the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples.

    I assume that the petitioners don’t feel that a statement of fact is a political statement. If they do then we have a different discussion to have here. We then must remove the first argument entirely as it is a statement of fact rather than a political opinion.

    Remaining Concerns

    The remaining specific exercises of “statutory powers” that infringes on the “non-political” issue then are:

    a. UBC has declared and/or acknowledged, orally and in writing, electronically on its website and in print media, that UBC is on unceded indigenous land;

    b. UBC has required and/or encouraged persons within its sphere of influence, including professors and students, to declare or acknowledge that UBC is on unceded Indigenous land;

    c. UBC has issued and publicized declaratory statements condemning violence in Israel or Palestine and has issued and publicized opinions on the morality, lawfulness or justification of violence in Israel or Palestine; and

    d. UBC has imposed and/or approved application processes for hiring faculty members and criteria for hiring or appointing faculty members that require applicants to express agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines (“DEI” or “EDI”)

    EDI and Politics

    Moving to the section on “UBC Imposes Political EDI Criteria for Hiring Processes and Appointment Decisions” s.16-19. The sub argument here is:

    1. UBC requires applicants to submit an EDI statement and identify how they have, or plan to, advance EDI.
    2. Specific departments want to hire new faculty who “share a commitment” to EDI.
    3. EDI principles are “informed by critical race theory and include the belief that individuals, institutions and societies are inherently patriarchal, colonialist and racist”.

    I will make the assumption that the petitioners are not interested in requiring the University to ignore the BC Human Rights Code or the Canadian Employment Equity Act and what BC calls “Special Programs” and so I assume that what they mean by 1 is this guide by HR which has this to say about the EDID statements:

    Examine EDID statements for insights on a candidate’s reflections and capacity to create environments where all students and colleagues can learn and thrive. While the EDID statement will not receive its own rating, it will contribute to the general rating of the candidate with respect to their score on the evaluation criteria that relates to commitment to inclusive excellence and EDID competencies. The statement should not be used to exclude an applicant unless their commentary is openly and clearly in violation of UBC’s human rights commitments and policies and/or the specific job being advertised requires particular EDID competencies that are not being demonstrated in the candidate’s statement.

    The hiring process recommended by HR is that the minimum employment requirements are used first to screen candidates. Then a long list is created based on who the most qualified candidates are. The short list is developed by using various rubrics and guides including the above review of the EDID statement. The EDID statement is to be used only if it shows an opposition to Equity, Inclusion, or Diversity, and even the Faculties which use a rubric to assess the EDID statements allow the individual to use their own definition of Equity, Diversity, or Inclusion, rather than the petitioner’s claim that it must affirm “that individuals, institutions and societies are inherently patriarchal, colonialist and racist”.

    The closest the rubric gets to that claim is if the writer is “Unaware of (or does not understand) the particular challenges that individuals from HPSM groups face in academia, or feel any personal responsibility for helping to create an equitable and inclusive environment for all” or “Explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and “treat everyone the same.”” Of note, HPSM seems to have a definition in line with the BC Human Rights Code.

    Because the specific “fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines” that are in UBC’s documents are those aligned with both BC and Federal legislation on the matter I find it hard to see the concern here as requesting someone to align with legislation cannot be a prohibited political statement. That means sub-argument 3 has to be left. There may be more of a problem in the specifics for sub-arguments 1 and 2 rather than the general process though. For that we will focus on s.42 in the petition:

    Similarly, the EDI Hiring Requirements imposed by UBC effectively prohibit the appointment to faculty of any person, however qualified, who does not personally support and uphold EDI principles and values. A person, for example, who took the political position, on the basis of equality of opportunity, that all hiring of faculty should be done on the basis of merit, would be prevented from applying for a faculty position and prevented from being appointed as faculty. A critic of critical race theory, for example, would be ineligible for appointment as faculty and would be deterred from exercising their entitlement to apply for a position, in the case of the Petitioner Nathan Cockram, Dr. Cockram was effectively excluded from applying for or being appointed to otherwise open UBC faculty positions by the EDI Hiring Requirements.

    The core of this is that (in alignment with sub-argument 1) a person who disagrees with the use, at all, of EDID statements in hiring, and so refuses to submit one is excluded from being able to apply; and (in alignment with sub-argument 2) if they do submit one but it does not meet the expectations of the specific hiring committee they will not be hired.

    Here I agree with sub-argument 1. A persons refusal to submit a required piece of documentation because of a political position opposed to that type of document would be excluded from the job.

    Sub-argument 2 however is about the determination of the hiring committee. The guide for these documents is that the use of EDID statements isn’t until the long list has been created. And that long list is a list of all of those who meet the required qualifications, and are on the list of people who would be able to successfully do the job. That means that all candidates are already past the “merit” bar before any consideration of an EDID statement. Any use of the EDID statement beyond “do you disagree with the Human Rights Code” seems to be left up to the individuals on the hiring committee, and so that is not a political action by the university, but a decision of an individual or small group of individuals.

    So only sub-argument 1 remains, but with the caveat that “diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines” in this case means not to discriminate against disadvantaged individuals or groups under the BC Human Rights Code and to actively oppose discrimination of those disadvantaged individuals or groups.

    d. UBC has imposed and/or approved application processes for hiring faculty members and criteria for hiring or appointing faculty members that require applicants to express agreement with, fidelity to or loyalty to diversity, inclusion and equity doctrines (“DEI” or “EDI”)

    As previously stated, agreeing with legislation cannot be a prohibited political act. This means that what remains is a request for a judge to tell UBC what it may or may not request in their job applications.

    Conclusion

    I am not a lawyer (IANAL) and so I have no idea what will happen with this petition for judicial review. But I do a lot of deep reading on things so here’s my take:

    1. Trying to define section 66 as the one which protects Academic Freedom in BC is a mistake because it does not apply to two of the six research universities in the province.
    2. “Non-political in principle” does not mean “must refrain from all political speech”, it means must not enforce political actions beyond adherence to this and other legislation (so you can’t require people to be a member of the Liberal Party to have a job, but you can require them to not break the criminal code).
    3. Claiming your opponent is using one definition when they have been very clear they are using a different one (and your opponent’s is actually aligned with the dictionary definition) is not a great look from an academic.
    4. Acknowledging that “UBC is on unceded Indigenous land” is a historical fact under the specific definition of the words in that phrase.
    5. Asking a judge to restrict the free expression of a group of faculty is a bad look from a faculty member.
    6. It may be possible that some departmental hiring committees are going too far with how they use EDID statements, but it is also true that many of them have historically used other parts of the application package in a way that goes too far (the use of reference letters historically) so perhaps this is not the correct venue for asking for change.

    Too many of these claims lack merit, support, or are unconnected to what they claim to be about. That makes me worry that I’ve put too much thought into what is actually an attempt to “virtue signal” and is not an honest critique of UBC, but here we are.

  • “A Stark Warning” on Ideological Control of Universities

    It’s been a while since I did one of these long replies to an editorial, but this one needs a response. The other week I was reading Peter MacKinnon’s “A stark warning about the state of Canadian academia: Universities are ostracizing monocultures that need reform“

    Peter MacKinnon often has interesting things to talk about, and I appreciate hearing his perspective, much as I often disagree with his solutions. So lets look at his evidence and solutions

    The Evidence

    The starting point to this editorial is a quote from Dr. Yuan Yi Zhu when speaking to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research. I’ll give you the long version:

    However, I think it is fair to say that within Canadian academia, there is a monoculture where, if you deviate even very slightly from what is fashionable and what is commonly accepted by your peers, not only will you be ostracized, but often you will not be able to have an academic career in the first place.

    Unfortunately, when I advise my students, I have to tell them, “You know, if you are in any way not progressive, you have to hide your views until you actually have at least a dissertation accepted, because otherwise you will never get ahead.”

    https://openparliament.ca/committees/science-and-research/44-1/111/dr-yuan-yi-zhu-2

    This was said in the context of concerns being raised regarding the use of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion requirements in applications for federal research funding. Dr. Yuan also had concerns that the approval of funding applications was often tied to the use of specific buzzwords rather than the strength of the research proposal. He proposes that both the requirement to speak to EDI and the preference given to buzzwords means that federal research funding tends to follow ideological trends.

    I think it’s important to point out that Dr. Yuan’s perspective here is that the funding awarding needs to be non-ideological, because that is not what MacKinnon takes away from it. Instead his reading of it is influenced primarily by the other presenters at the same committee session, Eric Kaufmann and Christopher Dummitt.

    Although Mr. Kaufmann tried to connect his perspective with Dr. Yuan’s, his perspective was that the problem is not lack of neutrality, but rather that the reviewers are politically left leaning and the political perspectives of the granting council need to be balanced

    I think that the values of the general public that supports research are what should prevail, not the values of academics, I’m afraid—or at least the vocal academics who wind up participating in these committees.

    I disagree with Mr. Kaufmann here that his perspective is the same as what Dr. Yuan stated. It may align with what Dr. Yuan believes and has said elsewhere, but it does not align with what he said in this case and so I have no interest in trying to attach Kaufmann’s perspective to Dr. Yuan, unfortunately, this is exactly what MacKinnon does.

    MacKinnon links in an editorial to support him written by Jamie Sarkonak, which is focused more on what Dr. Christopher Dummitt discussed at the committee, around a lack of “viewpoint diversity” in academia and that this leads to conservative academics “self-censoring” which, he says, damages any attempt to have universities be a “truth-seeking and truth-validating research enterprise”.

    Sarkonak condenses all of this into the declaration

    Together, they described an environment of injustice and conformity — cultivated in part by the ideologically guided hand of the federal government through its research funding agencies. It’s just not fair.

    Although beginning with the quote from Dr. Yuan, the true starting point for MacKinnon is that the combination of DEI statement requirements as well as the lack of politically conservative members of the decision panels means that access to federal research funding is not a level playing field and leads to a lack of viewpoint diversity. That term is important because it is a term that is never mentioned by MacKinnon, but is in the title of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute study (“The viewpoint diversity crisis at Canadian universities” by lead researcher Dr. Dummitt who I previously mentioned) that he uses to transition from talking about federal research funding to the actions of professors collectively, and to bring up his concerns with the the political beliefs of professors.

    MacKinnon continues by citing the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2021 political platform encouraging diversity in various areas. Of note, from what I can tell, the result of this platform four years later is the creation of a leadership development initiative and the hiring of less than two dozen “culturally competent and trauma-informed” counsellors.

    These three points, MacKinnon, contends, have led to a situation where “students fall silent rather than challenge orthodoxies presented to them in classes”.

    This provides the background to the rest of his editorial. His evidence then is:

    1. Dr. Yuan’s statements about how Canada has gone too far toward trying to use federal research funding to encourage Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and instead the funding should be ideologically neutral.
    2. There is a lack of conservative viewpoints among federal research funding reviewers.
    3. The current government party talks about wanting to increase diversity across Canada.
    4. There is a lack of conservative viewpoints among professors in Academia.
    5. The lack of conservative viewpoints among professors discourages conservative students from expressing themselves.

    Unfortunately MacKinnon does not directly connect from the first three points to the final two, allowing the reader to make their own connection, but as I see it, the argument is that the Liberals have imposed their view (evidence point 3) on the granting councils (point 2) which can now be seen in Dr. Yuan’s perspective (point 1) and because they have done this it has changed the political ideology of professors (point 4) and that is impacting students (point 5) and is further changing the makeup of granting councils (point 2). The implicit argument is that this is a cyclical problem which would make things worse eventually for those who are not left leaning.

    In support of his point is Drs. Dummitt and Patterson’s research that 88 percent of professors identify as voting for left leaning parties and only 9 percent for right leaning parties. Now, if this is a cyclical problem advanced by the ideology of the Liberal Party it means that it must have something to do with the ascent of the Liberal Party ten years ago. Thankfully we don’t have to take their word for it, we can look at previous research such as that published by Nakhaie and Adam in the Canadian Journal of Sociology in 2008 (PDF) which helped form the foundation of Dummitt & Patterson’s. As seen in these tables, although the headline of Dummitt & Patterson’s research is what political direction they claim to lean (88/9), the research on how they voted is different.

    Self-reported voted for1993199720002021
    Right leaning1311118
    Left leaning80837877
    Professors
    Self-reported voted for1993199720002021
    Right leaning35383837
    Left leaning62606060
    General Population

    As you can see from these comparisons there is very little change over time for the general population in Canada. Just under 40% of the population votes for right leaning parties while around 60% votes for left leaning parties. And there is a noticeable change for professors, but the biggest change for professors is actually an increase in voting for non-major parties, which moved from 2.7% to 7.4% between 1993 and 2021.

    Unfortunately this leaves the evidence rather shaky. If the proportion of left/right hasn’t changed much in thirty years, then this is not a new problem, rather this is something that is simply reflective of who decides to work in academia. The political ideology of professors has not substantially changed (if using who they vote for as the assessment) since 1993. Which means that the makeup of granting councils is unlikely to have changed. And since there was no actual material changes made by the Liberals in their push for diversity with the exception of adding the EDI statements, points 2, 3, and 4 are flimsy, but point 1 still stands. Point 5 was an extrapolation by MacKinnon from the first four, which without further evidence seems unsupported.

    Unfortunately this leaves us where we started, with Dr. Yuan’s statement on the importance of research funding being independent from ideology being the only evidence we have going into MacKinnon’s solutions.

    The Problem and Solution

    This problem, according to MacKinnon is best seen by his first solution:

    What is to be done? There is a short-term and long-term answer to this question. A prospective change of government in Ottawa should reverse the present government’s agenda that has been imposed on the sector, and provincial governments should insist that their universities focus on excellence and the search for truth, not on progressive or social justice goals. Failure of any institutions to do so should be reflected in funding decisions.

    The problem represented here is that the government’s focus on and requirements around diversity distracts from, or harms, a “focus on excellence and the search for truth”.

    That would line up well with Dr. Yuan’s perspective that mandating diversity statements is harmful to research independence. However, the final line of the proposal is not about government, but rather about institutions needing to abandon “progressive or social justice goals” and that the government should cut their funding if they don’t. Because some research is directly and intentionally about progressive goals or social justice goals, this means that MacKinnon is not advocating neutrality in funding allocation, but rather is advocating replacing the Liberal Party of Canada’s ideology with another party’s ideology.

    Although this does not align with Dr. Yuan’s words, it does align with Dr. Dummitt’s and Mr. Kaufmann’s. The problem for them is not that the government needs to get out of the role of imposing their ideology, but rather that other ideologies should be able to be imposed.

    MacKinnon then continues into his longer term proposal, which is governance reform. Here he identifies several threats to good university governance.

    1. Substantial institutional growth
    2. Faculty unionization leading to Senate dysfunction
    3. Student councils using member fees for causes students don’t support
    4. Flawed Board appointment processes and dysfunction

    His questions then are:

    how do we strengthen statutory governance bodies, boards and senates? How do we ensure that freedom of expression and academic freedom prevail over institutional and personal politics? Should we insist that fees collected by students or on their behalf be used for student services, and not for political causes inimical to the interests of some that pay them?

    I agree with MacKinnon that Senates and Boards need to be focused, strong, and know what their roles, goals, and objectives are. Further, I think he may be correct that substantial institutional growth and changes in faculty labour relations have caused some of the lack of focus and unclear roles in governance. I probably disagree with him on how to solve that however, because although MacKinnon doesn’t present any full solutions, he does hint that one solution is more oversight through external board appointees who are more in line with the public interest as determined by the government. Or to put it another way, more in line with the ideology of governments. And as mentioned in his short term solutions, a government without a left-wing ideology.

    It’s the final two questions that make me raise an eyebrow. He advocates for freedom of expression and for academic freedom (two separate things). But he also has concerns with how student councils operate. He earlier states that “student councils use member fees to support causes that are an affront to some of those obliged to pay them”. Student councils are elected by other students. He seems to be advocating for universities to mandate how these councils may operate. But that would indeed be the institution rejecting the freedom of expression of students, as displayed by their choices in a student council election.

    My worry here then is that his short term solution is not independence, but rather requiring adherence of universities to a government ideology (just a different one than currently), and his long term solution is not freedom of expression, but limiting expression to ideology approved by the university.

    A Stark Warning

    Peter MacKinnon is indeed giving a stark warning. It’s a stark warning that when he looks at the problems in Canadian Academia he sees the problem is not that it is a “monoculture” but that it is the wrong “monoculture”. If we work from the short term solution to the long we see this:

    1. Replace a left-wing ideology in government with a right wing ideology
    2. Ensure that the new government ideology is reflected in funding decisions for research
    3. Reform University Governance to better align with and implement the new government ideology
    4. Limit student expression that does not align with the new government ideology

    I want to close off where MacKinnon does

    Everyone in our universities, and governments responsible for them, should be chilled by the diagnosis of Professor Yuan, and should ask themselves if there is truth in his words. If their answers are yes, as they should be, they must commit to reforms that are necessary for their institutions to survive and again command wide public support.

    I ask myself if there is truth in Professor Yuan’s words, and the answer is yes, on the concept that research funding should be ideologically neutral. MacKinnon then says that I must commit to reforms, but the reforms that MacKinnon proposes are not ideologically neutral, but rather are the opposite. What is proposed is not neutrality in the search for truth, it is adherence to the ideology brought in after “A prospective change of government in Ottawa”.

    MacKinnon is right, the idea of someone as well regarded as he is proposing more government control of research and university governance, and limitations on student speech should be a stark warning to everyone in Canadian academia.

  • This is how you get an academic survelence state.

    Sometimes great ideas start throwing up red flags very quickly.

    I love data. Data is my jam. It’s why I’m currently on the Strategic Enrolment Management group at my university and why I’ve been part of a similar group at two previous institutions. Data and assessment are a great way to enable us to make things better for students. So I’m coming at this as the type of person that the author of this piece want to recruit toward their way of thinking and I need to tell you OH HELL NO.

    Higher Education Needs Its Own Version of Moneyball

    Lets start with part 1 of the premise:

    Higher education needs its own version of moneyball—a set of active, predictive and creative measures that can be deployed to improve student outcomes and fulfill their promise of student success.

    Makes a lot of sense, and I fully agree. This is what a culture of assessment and SEM looks like. It’s amazing and I am here for it.

    And then in the next sentence the red flag gets waved high:

    Postsecondary institutions must be able to collect and instantaneously analyze student progress data and have intentional plans for adjusting in the moment to the needs of their learners.

    There’s the oh hell no moment. Moneyball style analysis uses publicly accessible and consensually given information and visible information to work. This asks us to tie every moment of a student into a machine.

    Ok, lets dig into the points that support the premise.

    1. part time learners don’t complete their programs as often so they should be assessed more
      • But part time learners often have other things outside of school like work or family responsibilities, which normally means that they are more likely to be financially disadvantaged students. So you’re asking us to have more surveillance of those who we know are already over surveilled and over policed?
      • Also there are often reasons why students pick their course load. Supporting them in increasing that course load is a great idea, forcing them to increase their course load without supporting the reasons they didn’t think they could is awful.
    2. Productive credit hours as a measure – do students take more classes at certain times or days, or are there too many gateway classes preventing moving forward
      • This one makes sense and I’m here for it, but this is just proper scheduling and doesn’t require real-time analysis, just semester based analysis which is what SEM already does.
    3. Predictive metrics
      • There isn’t any information given for this one so I’ll have to make assumptions. “This planning starts with insights that enable institutions to identify opportunities for accelerating student progress and predict the efficacy of those interventions on retention and graduation rates.” Predictive metrics mean one of two things:
        • Constant surveillance of students (how often do they attend events, library use, computer on campus use, assignment submission times, in-semester grades) which is problematic and sounds like a surveillance state.
        • Assumptions of students based on statistical models which often break down when applied to the individual. For example, in the USA, ~1-5% of adults are diagnosed with ADHD, but ~25% of adults in prison in are diagnosed with ADHD. Does that mean ADHD is a predictor of crime, or that people who are institutionalized are more likely to receive a diagnosis? What about when you find out that ~20% of adults in post-secondary education have ADHD? Are the predictions based on data always reliable? They might be in aggregate, but the idea here is to take that aggregate and apply it to the individual. That’s like looking at a normal curve and saying “well, people over 7’4″ don’t exist” when we know for a fact that they do, but they are rare.
    4. Make the stats open to all
      • Again, statistics in aggregate about the student body, even when looking at relatively small groups, is a great idea. How many students take classed in X department, how many of them pass it, how many are International student, etc. This data is important for SEM to identify gateway classes, problem pathways, programs that are missing something, or departments that are under-enrolled. But using it in specific is dangerous.
      • Do we really want a professor to be able to know how long a student takes to complete an assignment in someone else’s class? What about whether or not they use the library? How much data do you need about the specifics of someone? I don’t even like that my LMS lets me know how long ago a student accessed the system.

    Where this article is right: SEM is the way forward. Data is important, and needs to be viewed by as many people as possible. Universities and Colleges are filled with brilliant people, getting more eyes on a problem with the relevant data means more potential solutions.

    Where this article is scary: implying that we need to feed all data about students in real time into a data analytics system, and then turning that into and using it as predictive metrics of success.

    It feels like an article written by someone who isn’t seeing students as people, but as bundles of data that they can access. That way lies teaching machines, but the way forward toward better developmental and lifelong learning outcomes for students (regardless of academic outcomes) is through relational connections on the individual level that are supported by using data on the macro level.

  • Ohio Micromanages PSE

    Ready for a wild ride?

    https://legiscan.com/OH/text/SB83/id/2745695

    Legislation in Ohio has passed the house to micromanage the public post-secondary system. It now goes to the senate. It is being opposed by nearly every post-secondary association and freedom of speech association and is generally a contradictory mess. Don’t believe me? Well here’s the best (worst) bits:

    Every institution must change its mission statement to affirm that it is committed to tolerating differences in opinion, but they must also allow students to formally evaluate professors on their ideology and require departments to teach controversial topics (being those that are believed by a substantial number of Americans).

    I’m sure the faculty of science will enjoy needing to include a class about how the moon landing was faked and the earth is flat (both believed by 10% of the US).

    They must both “Prohibit political and ideological litmus tests in all hiring, promotion, and admissions decisions” while also requiring that promotion decisions are based at least partially on student’s evaluation of the professor’s ideology.

    They must both treat all equally while being prohibited to provide the support required for those who were treated unequally by other levels of education. Essentially a return to the 1970s era post-secondary access.

    And strangest of all they will be mandated to collect and report on all demographic data including race and sex, and report publicly on academic achievement by those disaggregated demographics while at the same time are prohibited to have any policies that use any of the collected data for improving results. If information is mandated to be collected but not used by one group, then you can guarantee that it will be used by those mandating it. And since those mandating it has no way of actually using that data to improve things then the only thing I can see is that it’s being collected not for improvement but for something else.

    Finally, it bans all sex segregated extracurricular activities and residence housing. Which seems strange considering other things the republicans have been complaining about the last few years.

    I’m more than a little concerned at the US trying to burn down its post-secondary system, and very worried that the same ideas will come up here (some already are).

  • Humanities Vs Business has more to do with marketing than reality

    As has been the case since before I got my BA in English and Theatre, people remain concerned about the crisis in the humanities and the shift to business instead.

    John Warner has a great post about this over at his blog.

    I wanted to look at something I find interesting with the data though, from a career development standpoint.

    My English degree has been incredibly helpful in all of my roles, and something I’ve, especially when I lived in Calgary, is the number of management people I met who have humanities degrees. It’s really common. So common that it sometimes makes me question why so many universities have a BBAs in Management. Accounting, economics, finance, and supply chain all make sense to me, but Management before the graduate level has always been strange to me.

    Business degrees are often chosen because there is a straight line from degree title to job title and that makes things less worrisome. It’s what I call the “well worn path” method of choosing a post-secondary education program.

    Some quick definitions about what is normally called an Arts or Humanities program in Canada using ISCED info to help align things (PDF here).

    Generally under Arts:

    • 2 Humanities and arts
      • 21 Arts
        • Fine arts: drawing, painting, sculpture;
        • Performing arts: music, drama, dance, circus;
        • Graphic and audio-visual arts: photography, cinematography, music production, radio and television production, printing and publishing;
        • Design; craft skills.
      • 22 Humanities
        • Religion and theology;
        • Foreign languages and cultures: living or ‘dead’ languages and their literature, area studies;
        • Native languages: current or vernacular language and its literature;
        • Other humanities: interpretation and translation, linguistics, comparative literature, history, archaeology, philosophy, ethics.
    • 3 Social sciences, business and law
      • 31 Social and behavioural science
        • Sociology, demography, anthropology (except physical anthropology), ethnology, futurology,
        • Psychology
        • Geography (except physical geography), peace and conflict studies, human rights.
      • 32 Journalism and information
        • Journalism;
        • Library technician and science;
        • Technicians in museums and similar repositories;
        • Documentation techniques;
        • Archival sciences.

    Generally under Business:

    • 3 Social sciences, business and law
      • 31 Social and behavioural science
        • Economics, economic history, political science;
      • 34 Business and administration
        • Retailing, marketing, sales, public relations, real estate;
        • Finance, banking, insurance, investment analysis;
        • Accounting, auditing, bookkeeping;
        • Management, public administration, institutional administration, personnel administration;
        • Secretarial and office work.

    So Arts covers everything from fine arts to sociology while business is more focused. And oddly enough, social sciences, the section that in Canada is considered Arts but internationally is together with business seems to be the one group in Arts that’s bucking the downward trend. There’s a lot of cross over in the social sciences between arts and business, especially as economics tends to show up in both areas. Similarly the blurred line between communications and public relations has caused many a faculty argument in the past. Side note, the ISCED considers Supply Chain Management or Logistics to be part of Management and instead of Human Resources uses the term Personnel Administration. They also put political science and economics together. Instead of separating that I’m just putting both in the Business category.

    To simplify things I’m going to break it down into some common majors in the two fields, and this is a massive oversimplification.

    • Arts
      • Fine & Performing Arts
      • Graphic Arts and Design
      • History and Archaeology
      • Human Geography and related studies
      • Journalism, Publishing, and Media Production
      • Languages, Literature, and Linguistics
      • Library, Museum, and Archival studies
      • Philosophy & Ethics
      • Psychology
      • Sociology, Anthropology, and related studies
      • Theology
    • Business
      • Accounting
      • Business Administration
      • Economics
      • Finance
      • Human Rescources Management
      • Management
      • Marketing
      • Political Science
      • Public Administration
      • Public Relations
      • Retailing and Sales
      • Supply Chain Management

    But with those definitions out of the way lets move on to the NOC and compare the jobs there under business with the various majors. I’m only looking at TEER 1 jobs (generally requires a 4 year degree) as the TEER 0 (management) and TEER 2/3 (1-3 year degree) aren’t usually the ones BA/BBA students are looking at right after graduation.

    With that though suddenly the number of careers in the NOC drops rapidly. For the Arts/Business crowd you’re left with Professional Occupations in Business and Finance (11) and Professional occupations in art and culture (51). It excludes the entirety of Sales and Service occupations (6). In general the included roles under Art and Culture require an arts degree, but there are substantially fewer of them than the roles under Business and Finance. So let’s drill down into the jobs in Business and Finance.

    • Financial auditors and accountants
      • Licensing or certification post business degree in Accounting or Finance
    • Financial and investment analysts
      • Business degree in any major, Economics or Finance preferred
    • Financial advisors
      • Business degree in any major
    • Securities agents, investment dealers and brokers
      • Business degree or any other degree and experience
    • Other financial officers
      • Business degree with additional designations after
    • Human resources professionals
      • Business or social sciences degree
    • Professional occupations in business management consulting
      • Arts, Business, or Social Sciences degree
    • Professional occupations in advertising, marketing and public relations
      • Arts, Business, or Social Sciences degree

    So the TL:DR there is that it is a “well worn path” to have your major be the same thing you’re looking to do in a job, but outside of regulated professions like Accounting and Finance it’s not actually needed.

    Why is this important? I want students who want to work in marketing and communications to stop worrying about whether they should be in a marketing program or a communications program or a journalism program. Similarly I want students interested in HR and Organizational Management to stop worrying about if they should be in an HR program or a Psychology program or a Sociology program. They all work. What matters is who you are, what skills you develop, and how you want to use them.

    It is always easier for students to pick the “well worn path” program. That’s a communications problem that post-secondary hasn’t solved yet, but maybe someday we will.

    Final Note: I didn’t go into the management ones today because, well that has a lot more to do with the organization itself than with the degree. I’ve met a lot of IT managers with a Bachelors degree in English and a two year programing diploma. Because their job is a lot more about writing to non-technical people than it is programming.

  • Skills Assessment and Behaviourism

    This was going to be a short twitter thread, then it got too long, so I made a blog post instead. I read an opinion piece in the Toronto Star today and I’m concerned. Mostly I’m concerned about the train of thought it represents. The article, “We need to start giving soft skills more credit“, is the newest version of similar work around soft/transferable skills that’s been around for years, but now with AI.

    This seems like a good thing, because employers want employees with strong transferable skills, and colleges and universities already teach technical skills, and programs are designed so that students pick up transferable skills along the way. My problem is that the discourse is always focused on a behaviourist understanding of people. It presupposes that:

    1. Students must be explicitly taught something to learn it
    2. Evaluation means learning happened
    (more…)

  • Book Review of “The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You About College Teaching”

    A snippet from my review posted at the Canadian Journal of Higher Education

    In my classes I try to explain to second year comput-ing students that their technical skills are only one part of what they need to succeed. Many jobs are like that, requiring both discipline or field specific skills and trans-ferable or soft skills. In The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You About College Teaching (2019) David Gooblar explains that for postsecondary profes-sors teaching is not a soft skill, it is a second discipline we should be engaging in the same way we engage with our primary discipline.

    The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is not a new discipline. However, it is often neglected in grad-uate studies, relegated to the individual’s professional development rather than being a core part of the curric-ulum. The Missing Course (2019) is Gooblar’s attempt to provide a concise and practical overview of teaching and learning with the objective of helping college and university instructors improve their classroom teaching. It is a valuable book for everyone who teaches or plans to teach in postsecondary from full professors to new graduate students.

  • Alberta Post-Secondary Roles and Mandates

    A snippet from my article for Communiqué

    The Alberta system of post-secondary education may be unique in Canada. As Alex Usher says, “Alberta not only has the closest thing Canada has to a genuine system of education, but the government is also by some distance the most interventionist in the country when it comes to universities” (Usher, 2019). The Albertan system has changed over the years from its single public university – the University of Alberta founded only three years after the province was created (Macleod, 2016) – to the current seven universities. Four of the universities are called comprehensive academic and research universities and three are called undergraduate universities (Types of publicly funded institutions, 2020). In addition to the universities, the province has eleven publicly funded comprehensive community colleges; two polytechnic institutions; five private universities; and the Banff Centre, a specialized arts and cultural institution.

    The Alberta system went through an overhaul in the first decade of the twenty-first century. New institutions were added, institutions changed from being colleges to being universities, and funding, which had been cut substantially in the 1990s, was increased (Usher, 2019). More importantly, in this decade was the 2007 introduction of The Roles and Mandates: Policy Framework for Alberta’s Publicly Funded Advanced Education System, which I will refer to as Roles and Mandates 2007. This document formalized the six-sector model that Alberta continues to follow today and laid out the goals and directions the system works towards. Although it has been superseded by 2019’s The Roles and Mandates: Policy Framework for Alberta’s Adult Learning System, referred to as Roles and Mandates 2019, the current structure of the Alberta system was formed by the 2007 version and so this inquiry will focus on the Roles and Mandates 2007 and the report that led to it.

    Read the rest here