President’s Report

Annual General Meeting

St. Thomas More Faculty Union

May 19, 2010

1.  The Executive has had an extremely active year representing the interest of it members. The activities in which the Executive has been involved have included:

- Facilitating the move of an unresolved grievance to arbitration

- Preparing for judicial review of the Arbitration Board requested by the STM Administration

- Coming to an agreement on an abeyance of arbitration of a second grievance

- Attending numerous executive meetings

- Attending meetings with the Dean and the STM College President

- Contacting, emailing and carrying out discussions with CAUT

- Consultations with Union lawyer about the above matters

- Coming to an agreement to facilitate celebration for CSF’s

- Addressing problems for members

- Attending the CAUT General assembly

     I want to note that there have been no meetings of the Consultation Committee.

2.  Initiatives discussed at the last AGM

a) Last year I discussed the establishment of a Negotiation Caucus. This group was to research issues, survey membership, establish an action Committee and form a Newletter/Information Committee. However, given all the time commitments this initiative did not get off the ground. I would like to seek a three-person ad hoc committee to pursue this initiative.

b) Last year a motion was passed to establish in principle the St. Thomas More Faculty Union Scholarship in Social Justice for any STM student in the range of $2,000 annually. Because of financial considerations, the Executive has not proceeded with this initiative

3.  The Executive has been dealing with a violation of Academic Freedom. Let me explain:

Section 3.0 of our Collective Agreement is entitled “Academic Freedom” and 3.1 states,

St. Thomas More College, as established under its Act of Incorporation, is committed to the pursuit of truth, the advancement of learning and the dissemination of knowledge. To this end academic freedom is the freedom of a member of the teaching faculty and the Librarian of the College...

It is important to emphasize that academic freedom is not just a right that tenured faculty members have at our College. It is a right that all teaching faculty have, including the Librarian, contract academic staff and tenure-track faculty. As a Union Executive, we are not only willing to pursue cases that violate a member’s academic freedom; we are obligated to do so. We must pursue violations of academic freedom regardless of whether or not we agree with the particular views that are being expressed. In the words of Article 3.1, if a member is disseminating “his/her opinion on questions relating to his/her discipline both inside and outside the classroom”, if a member is carrying out research “which she believes will enhance knowledge” and expressing the “results of such research in a reasonable manner” and even if a member is criticizing “...the College, University and Society at large”, we are obligated to defend all member’s right to do so.

In this regard, the Union is currently pursuing a case involving the violation of academic freedom for one of our members, Dr. Heidi Epstein. We have been pursuing this case for over a year and there have been two grievances regarding this case. Since we believe this is in important case for our Union, we have already put considerable time and energy into this case, along with considerable financial and legal resources. Due to our limited resources, we will need the help of CAUT and its Academic Freedom Fund to resolve this issue. Because of the important of this case, I want to take this opportunity to explain why it is an issue of academic freedom.

As many of you know, Heidi had gone through the tenure process and had been recommended for tenure at each stage of the tenure process. In other words, her peers, along with three external reviewers, had assessed her teaching, research and professional conduct. At each stage of the tenure process, it was determined that she had met the criteria. In fact, the Tenure and Promotions Committee had recommended her for tenure over a year ago. However, the STM College President is refusing to take this recommendation to the Board of Governors. President Smith is simply refusing, even though the Collective Agreement (7.7.5) states, “In the event of a positive vote by the Tenure and Promotions Committee, the recommendation shall be sent to the President who shall review the files before sending them to the President of the University…The President of the University shall make his or her recommendations on the award of tenure to the President of STM no later than February 15. The President of STM shall advise the candidate and Head of the candidate’s College department of the recommendation to be made to the Board [emphasis added]” All these “shalls” in President Smith’s eyes, apparently do not apply in this case. The President’s unprecedented step, and I want to emphasize unprecedented step, in simply refusing to make a recommendation to the Board is the subject of our second grievance which we had put in abeyance with the belief that the Administration was sincere in its intentions to resolve this matter as soon as possible. Clearly, this is not the case.

What makes this matter an issue of academic freedom needs explanation. The reason for the President Smith’s refusal to take the recommendation further appears to be his belief that material contained in a memo by Dean Still (dated February 12, 2009) was not given adequate consideration by the Tenure and Promotions Committee. The Still Memo was submitted two weeks prior to the Tenure and Promotions Committee meeting. The material consists of a handful of student complaints, which, even in Dean Still’s own words, is a “summary account” that is “largely one-sided” and which appears to be serious and intentional misrepresentation of events with the goal of putting Dr. Epstein's conduct in the worst light possible. This action should raise a number of questions. Why should a handful of student complaints, none of which, apparently, warranted so much as a letter of warning being placed in Heidi’s file, be so vital as to hold up a tenure process? It needs to be emphasized that there are no letters of warning, letters of discipline or letters of reprimand contained in Heidi’s “personal file”. If these complaints were so serious, why did the Administration not deal with these complaints in a serious manner? Further, why should a handful of complaints from a select group of students outweigh all of the input from students found in the very large number of student evaluations submitted by Heidi in her tenure dossier, as well as the yearly peer evaluations she submitted?

The Administration would have us believe that the President Smith’s unprecedented step in simply refusing to proceed with a tenure process is justified because of the “unprofessional conduct” on the part of Heidi in dealing with students and/or colleagues. The fact that Heidi's professional conduct was assessed and deemed satisfactory at the level of her department, at her tenure committee meeting and, most importantly, at the Tenure and Promotions Committee meeting, does not seem to make a difference to President Smith or Dean Still. And, again, if her conduct was so out of line prior to her application for tenure, why didn’t the Administration pursue any formal process of discipline as outlined in 24.1? Clause 24.6 explicitly states, “The College and the Union recognizes the value of progressive discipline as a corrective to unacceptable behaviour.” Where was the progressive discipline?

We want to be clear that this is not an issue about a “problem” colleague – recall that her professional conduct was deemed satisfactory by her peers as discussed above. These actions are an attempt on the part of the Administration to violate a colleague’s academic freedom in the classroom, on her office door and in her research. I will address how her academic freedom is being violated in each case.

First, the Administration is choosing to give disproportionate weight to the opinions of a particular handful of students, many with fundamentalist or conservative views, in evaluating Heidi's teaching and conduct. In deciding that this particular group of student’s views matter, rather than, say, feminist students’ views, the Administration is itself trying to dictate the content of what is taught in the classroom at STM. In fact, there is explicit mention in Dean Still’s Memo of a complaint from a student in a course entitled, “Sex, God, and Rock n’ Roll”. Note, this course was approved by the University of Saskatchewan, indicating the merit of such a course within the Religious Studies Department. The fact that the Administration is giving excessive weight to fundamentalist student complaints in a course such as this, shows that the Administration clearly has much more sympathy with the handful of fundamentalist and conservative students views rather than with the views of the large number of students that enjoyed the course (as indicated with the student evaluations submitted by Heidi in her tenure dossier). Even now, the Administration is trying to stop Heidi from teaching, even though she has not been denied tenure. Since the Administration should know that this absence from teaching will negatively impact her professionally and will be detrimental to the financial interests of the College and program interests of her department, the Administration is making it a priority to keep her (and her views) out of the classroom. This action is a violation of academic freedom, and, in particular, clause 3.1 i) the freedom “...to examine, to question, teach and learn”, as well as clause 3.1 ii) the freedom “...to disseminate his/her opinions on questions related to his/her discipline both inside and outside the classroom.”

Second, the Administration wanted Heidi out of her office with materials on her door removed. The materials included a “Positive Spaces” poster, a “Pope on a Rope” and a Jesus action figure - the latter two items, incidentally, having been gifts given to her in response to her teaching academic materials specifically related to Religion and Popular Culture. This demand to remove material from her door and window supports the conclusion that it is fundamentalist/conservative religious view that matters in the Administration’s opinion and not other people’s views. You may not like or approve of the materials displayed on Heidi’s door. You may not get her sense of humor or appreciate her sense of irony. But freedom of expression in University necessarily involves toleration. If we only allowed views to be expressed that are “approved of” or “liked” by the Administration, then we simply would not have academic freedom at the College. Clause 3.1 ii) states that members have a right to disseminate opinions on questions related to her discipline both inside and outside the classroom. Heidi teaches in the Religious Studies Department and has a right to express her opinions related to Religious Studies inside and outside the classroom. The fact that the Administration has decided to place as a condition for the continuation of her pay and benefits that Heidi remove materials from her door (a condition that is not put on any other faculty member) has made it clear that their actions constitute a violation of her academic freedom.

As an Executive, we want to be clear that we will defend members, whether left-leaning or conservative-leaning, who are asked to remove materials from their door because the Administration did not agree or like those views. We will defend a member’s right to academic freedom, regardless of whether or not we happen to agree or like his or her views.

Finally, the Administration’s emphasis on fundamentalist and conservative religious views raises rather serious questions for us about how they are assessing Heidi’s research interests that include the area of Queer Theory. Clause 3.1 iii) explicitly states that members have the right to “...carry out research which he/she believes will enhance knowledge” and 3.1 iv) states that members have a right “...to express the results of such research in a reasonable manner.” These clauses of the Collective Agreement apply to all faculty including tenure track faculty. Heidi is an accomplished researcher as attested to by the decision of her tenure committee, the three external reviewers, and the Tenure and Promotions Committee itself. However, this fact seems to have so little bearing on the Administration’s actions that it raises very serious questions of whether the Administration is disregarding peer-evaluated research simply because they do not agree with it. Is the Administration also attempting to get rid of a faculty member because of the research she does? Given the Administration’s actions in this case, which seem so entirely disproportionate to the actual events, we can come to no other conclusion than that their actions constitute a violation of the academic freedom of Dr. Heidi Epstein.

It is the Executive’s opinion that Heidi’s case is not about concerns regarding her conduct but rather her case is about the Administration attempting to get rid of a faculty member because of her views, her teaching and the research she does. The actions of this administration constitute a violation of academic freedom.

4. Grievances

a) The Union has recently filed a new grievance regarding the stated intention of the administration to set out preconditions prior to allowing Dr. Epstein to teach her normal teaching load. In the opinion of the Union, these preconditions constitute discipline without cause and hence we have grieved.

b) The Union had previously received the message that the administration wished to settle a grievance regarding President’s Smith refusal to forward a recommendation of the Tenure and Promotions Committee. However, their actions leading to the above grievance along with their stalling by waiting the outcome of the judicial review indicate no interest in settling the outstanding grievance. Thus the Union has rescinded its agreement to an abeyance of the grievance involving the President being unwilling to follow the terms of the Collective Agreement. Thus, we are heading toward another arbitration.

5. The Union has applied to CAUT’s Academic Freedom Fund to cover the costs we have incurred and will continue to incur in dealing with the violation of Dr. Epstein’s academic freedom.

6.  I am pleased to announce that James Turk, Executive Director of CAUT, will be here on May 26, 2010 at 10:00 am to present a talk entitled “Academic Freedom Under Attack”. He will present in 344B STM – all members of the College and university are invited to attend.

STM Faculty Union

October 28, 2008

STM         Newsletter

Faculty

Union

WELCOME

   The new term is well underway and the STMFU Executive wishes to welcome new members and welcome back all members. We hope that everyone has had a good summer. We are confident you will have a fruitful year of research and instruction.

   The past year was full of challenges for the union. Thanks to the strength of our members we have come through these struggles with a new collective agreement (you should have received a copy in your mailbox) and, hopefully, a heightened respect for each other. Of course not all problems have been solved. New, and especially for some of our members, particularly difficult challenges have arisen. We will be working to bring about as good an outcome as possible for these members. In these times, we hope that all members will demonstrate the care for which the STM community is renowned and encourage those members which are under threat at this time. A demoralized community would be a weakened community. We believe it is particularly important that we build each other up to empower one another to meet the challenges ahead. Given our members’ particularly strong talents, courage and caring concern, the executive is confident that our current difficulties will only serve to make us stronger.

Executive Activities

The executive is pleased to welcome Chris Foley to the executive. Although Chris is on sabbatical, he has agreed to serve on the executive this year. (This was an executive appointment as there was a resignation after the elections were held last spring.) The executive is committed to serving the membership. We have been consulting with CSF in an attempt to determine how best to bargain for their needs. We have formed an “ad hoc CSF committee” consisting of Ria Jenkins and Brian Chartier to negotiate these matters with administration. All members are encouraged to continue to raise issues of concern with the executive.

Update on Defense Fund Trustees Annual Meeting

The Union Executive would like to thank David McGrane, our STMFU CAUT Defense Fund Trustee, for attending the CAUT Defence Fund Trustees Annual General Meeting held in Fredericton, New Brunswick on October 18 th-19 th, 2008. The written report from David was particularly important in clarifying how the Fund works and how much it costs. David also gave us some favourable impressions of the organization and the meeting, as well as relating some possible union-related storm clouds on the horizon. David did point out some outstanding issues in relation to our membership in the fund. It is our hope that we will deal with these outstanding issues at our next general meeting.

Committees

The executive wishes to thank all those who have agreed to serve on STMFU committees.