The AASUA learned about issues impacting academic staff across the country at the 100th Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Council. In attendance were AASUA President Gordon Swaters, Vice-President Kristine Smitka, Executive Director & General Counsel Brygeda Renke, Labour Relations Officer Brandon Hammond, and Communications Officer Rachel Narvey.
One information session “Institutional Neutrality and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion,” provided a space for attendees to share the backlash against EDI playing out at their institutions.
On March 27, the University of Alberta Board of Governors passed a revised Recruitment Policy that removes Equity, Diversity and Inclusion measures and does not replace them with a substitute (for example, newly adopted “Access, Community, and Belonging” language).
Kristine Smitka, incoming AASUA President and Contract Academic Staff Committee Chair on CAUT’s Executive Committee, shared this update from UofA.
Info session attendees shared that EDI backlash is also impacting their institutions in alarming ways.
For example, a Freedom of Expression taskforce at Wilfred Laurier University is looking into measures to support “institutional neutrality,” including the potential for professors to be charged with “abuse of podium,” a charge of political advocacy in the classroom.
Fasal Kanouté, Smitka’s co-presenter and Vice-President of the Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d'université (FQPPU), noted one of the ways to combat EDI backlash is to reframe the narrative.
For example, Kanouté noted that critics of EDI make it sound like diverse hires are being handed jobs for minimal effort, as opposed to the reality: extremely qualified candidates who have been systemically disadvantaged just now beginning to receive recognition for their qualifications.
Reframing the Ivory Tower as a Lighthouse
Taking control of how the narrative is framed was also a theme when Marc Spooner, University of Regina Education Professor, answered questions about a book he co-edited alongside James McNich, former UofR Faculty of Education Dean and Professor Emeritus.
The book, “Knowledge Under Siege: Charting a Future for Universities,” analyzes today’s unstable post-secondary education landscape and asks how institutions can resist the unprecedented threats they are now facing.
“In addition to chronic underfunding, which I think is the biggest threat to education, the university’s biggest threats are not only occurring in authoritarian countries, but also in traditionally regarded liberal democracies,” Spooner said.
“The goal is not just to control universities, but to reshape the civic imagination, to erode the idea that higher education should nurture questioning, complexity, and dissent.”
Spooner said in a democracy, the university serves the unique purpose of asking difficult questions of power structures, including the government.
“The University’s role includes ensuring that public policies are informed by the best available evidence,” Spooner said. “As well as helping to foster critical and creative citizens whose formation prepares them for a lifetime of meaningful employment, community engagement, and democratic participation.”
Robin Whitaker, CAUT President, said Spooner’s book is a vital contribution when academic staff are so often forced to react to the narratives of higher education critics.
“We’re always responding by providing the dollars and cents value” Whitaker said. “How do we reset the question, so we give politicians a mandate to support public post-secondary education?”
Spooner said one route he has found useful is to start reframing the metaphors people use to imagine post-secondary.
“One simple reframe that’s available to us is every time someone tells me I’m in an ivory tower, I tell them I am in a tower, but it’s a lighthouse,” Spooner said. “This usually leads to some further engagement.”
Robin Vose, Council Speaker and St. Thomas University History Professor, spoke in his capacity as past president of his faculty association and said he appreciated Spooner using the simple confidence that comes through in the metaphor of the lighthouse.
“Often as academics, we default to self-doubt and self-criticism, because that’s what we’re trained to do,” Vose said. “We’re trained to think hard about all the flaws in our arguments, and we know that everything’s complicated, but when you’re talking to the public, sometimes it’s important to say simply that you do something important, and tell them why it’s important.”
He gave the example of the existential challenge posed by Artificial Intelligence.
“Young people today need perspective,” he said. “They need to understand how to communicate as a human, and think as a human, now more than ever. That’s what post-secondary education can give them.”
Canadians overall disagree with government interference in post-secondary
Canadians generally believe that post-secondary institutions should be independent in their decisions, a recent public opinion survey of 4,350 Canadians has found.
Brad Lavigne and Stephanie Coulter of Counsel Public Affairs said one central takeaway from the survey was that the public is largely unaware of goings-on in post-secondary.
“In the general public at large there’s a lot of shrugging,” Coulter said, noting that when people were asked whether things were improving or worsening in post-secondary, a quarter of people said they were unsure.
People also report hearing less about post-secondary from the news.
“Recollection of post-secondary news coverage is low, and it has declined year over year,” Coulter said.
Those who had heard of universities in the news counted among the most common topics: foreign/international students (likely due to policy changes from the federal government, Coulter said), the cost of education, and labour disputes.
“There’s space to educate and tell stories, because most people aren’t hearing anything at all,” Coulter said.
One aspect of post-secondary Canadians had strong opinions on was that they generally believe PSE institutions should be independent in their decisions.
“Largely, the public seems to think that post-secondary institutions are managing things well on their own, and they don't need the government stepping in to tell them what to do,” Coulter said.
Solidarity in the face of declining resources
Both Robin Whitaker, CAUT President, and David Robinson, CAUT Executive Director, spoke to the difficult political moment facing post-secondary institutions.
“Public colleges and universities from west to east and north to south face program cuts and restructuring, hiring freezes and job losses,” Whitaker said. “These include invisible job cuts, where term contracts are simply eliminated from the budget for next year, sparing management the need for academic staff layoffs without cause.”
Whitaker noted that contract academic staff are often the first to face impacts of cuts as their precarity allows management to “externalize the institutional risk onto the lives of workers.”
“But insecurity for some harms all of us, not least by creating an opening for those who hope to sow division and defensiveness at a time when what we need most is to stand shoulder to shoulder,” Whitaker said.
She added that “support for all is strength for all.”
“Solidarity, and strength in numbers, remains our superpower.”
David Robinson, CAUT’s Executive Director, also highlighted the importance of solidarity between academic staff. He traced the history of CAUT, which began as an association of tenured professors.
Now CAUT includes other academic staff groups such as researchers, librarians, and professional staff. Robinson said contract academic staff make up around a third of the academic staff within the associations in CAUT.
“We’re a more diverse organization,” Robinson said. “With that diversity comes strength but also a potential for weakness in the sense that employers and governments would like nothing more than to divide us.”
He said one lesson that can be gleaned from the 1980s and 1990s is that “maintaining solidarity is absolutely critical in the face of declining resources.”
“We need to make sure that we represent everyone, that we bring everyone along and stand in solidarity at a political moment when the issues of funding and financing are front and centre.”