Academic Freedom on Campus and Beyond

By Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, History

On Tuesday, November 17, 2009, a timely discussion on academic freedom took place at the Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall.  The panel that initiated this conversation consisted of four faculty members of University of Winnipeg:  Kelly Gorkoff, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Guelph, and presently an Instructor in the Criminal Justice Department; Christopher Leo, professor in the Department of Politics; Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar, Instructor  in the Department of Physics; and Brock Pitawanakwat, Assistant Professor in the Aboriginal Governance Program.

The evening began with a spirited introduction to concerns about academic freedom at a number of universities around the globe, delivered by Milena Placentile, a local curator and writer.  With examples of struggles in universities in South Africa, Poland, and the U.S., among others, Placentile illustrated the extent to which university citizens, and citizens at large, need to be vigilant in order to safeguard academic freedom which, in her opinion, should be “protected as a universal civil right.”

Although all four panellists were academics, the discussion was especially successful because it focussed on issues of concern with which both faculty and students could relate.  A seemingly complex question was examined from the grassroots, with just the right combination of academic inquiry and personal stories.  With topics ranging from the demands and limits placed on contract faculty, to increased privatisation and entrepreneurial models adopted by some university administrations, the panel did not attempt to arrive at some superficial common ground, but rather addressed the broader theme of the need for spaces for critical thought.

As moderator,  Milena Placentile began the discussion with two probing questions: “Should academics carry on building traditional networks and hope their dissenting opinions will appear more palatable through association with moderates, or should they find altogether new ways of working?  Should they speak out and risk being ostracised by their professional community, or take that chance and turn their practices of research and analysis into active resistance?”

Not surprisingly, none of the panellists had definitive answers to offer to either of these questions, but their individual stories on the challenges they each faced in their respective fields provided much food for thought.  Kelly Gorkoff, for instance, outlined the path of her personal growth as an emerging academic by highlighting the “seductive illusion” of post-secondary education.  Although still working on her doctorate, Gorkoff has already had an article of hers labelled “dangerous scholarship,” which was subsequently denied publication.  Furthermore, with one foot in graduate studies and the other in university teaching, Gorkoff is in the unenviable position of seeing the perilous road ahead.  As she jokingly admitted, she used to believe that once she became a professor, she would be free to research as she pleased, but the demands to get tenure can dampen that freedom.  Gorkoff provided a particularly articulate account of the disconcerting trends around her, from the pressure to teach larger and larger classes, and the call for academics to teach marketable or transferable skills, to the lack of incentives at the university to hire critical scholars.

Gorkoff’s poignant observations were followed by those of a more experienced scholar, Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar, whose expertise and years of experience in former Yugoslavia proved to be inadequate in the Canadian context, despite the fact that she and her husband had been recruited by Canadian immigrant officials.  Milosevic-Zdjelar’s story resonates with those of many recent arrivals in Canada, whose qualifications from their homelands do not qualify them to work in the line of work for which they were trained, a finding that Milosevic-Zdjelar found especially puzzling given the reputation that Canada has for its purported fair treatment of minority groups.  On the academic front more specifically, Milosevic-Zdjelar spoke fervently of the shock she experienced when she arrived in Canada because she saw nothing but an Anglo-Saxon curriculum, and try as she might, she could not figure out the reasons for the absence of Aboriginal world views, for instance.  She was equally surprised to learn that if it was difficult to ask questions in her former home, it was not necessarily any easier in her new one.

Almost in answer to Milosevic-Zdjelar’s queries, Brock Pitawanakwat stepped up to the podium with some insightful comments on the complexities surrounding post-secondary education and Canada’s First Nations peoples.  On the one hand, he pointed out the ways in which the university is a colonized space that promotes a “white-stream” curriculum; on the other hand, indigenous peoples see post-secondary education as a means of empowerment in their struggles for self-governance.  As a member of the Aboriginal Governance Program at The University of Winnipeg,  Pitawanakwat is well placed to see the challenges that First Nations peoples face in their attempts to have their experiences legitimated, not least of which is the lack of academic freedom inherent in the urban, Christian-based calendar that the university follows, a calendar that does not accommodate Aboriginal historical and cultural ceremonies.

The final discussant at this conversation on academic freedom was Christopher Leo, whose tongue-in-cheek presentation was not so much on academic freedom but on what he called “academic helplessness.”  Essentially Leo bemoaned the “pathetic readership of academic articles” and promoted the internet, and “the blog” in particular, as a means for academics to reach a wider audience.  As a former journalist, Leo was accustomed to having his articles widely read, but he became an academic because he wanted to do more in-depth research, which he has accomplished, but now he gets no readers, or very few in comparison to his journalistic output. Providing an entertaining and perhaps useful alternative for the dissemination of scholarly work, Leo’s critiques on the refereeing process, the inaccessibility of academic journals, and the students’ reluctance to read such journals raise interesting questions about the nature of academic work.  If an increase in readership is a primary goal, should we adopt the Reader’s Digest as our model?

The question-and-answer segment of the evening was in many ways a feather in the cap of a very fine event, with many self-identified students in the audience articulating intelligent, and often personal, points of view in ways that highlighted the diversity of The University of Winnipeg student body, and the need for more open discussions of this kind.  The themes that were raised generated such interest that the audience voted to extend the time allotted for the event.  Perhaps at the next meeting organizers could invite some students to do a formal presentation as well, rather than have them react to faculty concerns alone, worthy as those may be.