Academic Freedom: A Threat to One is a Threat to All

Dr. Richard Kool, President, Confederation of University Faculty Associations, BC

October 2012

One of the privileges of being CUFA BC President is attending the meetings of our sister organizations, the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA) and the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). CAFA recently held their fall Council meeting in Edmonton, and joined with the Association of Academic Staff of the University of Alberta to host a presentation, The Relevance of Academic Freedom.

Academic freedom seems to be a bit like motherhood: rarely (at least inside the academy) would someone (publically) speak against it. But how one conceptualizes and then actualizes academic freedom can vary quite widely. For example, the President of uAlberta, Dr. Indira Samarasekera, spoke at the presentation about the great public good that academic freedom provides, and quoted approvingly from the faculty handbook about the academic freedoms enjoyed at her university. However, the organization representing the university presidents in Canada, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) recently promulgated a “new” definition of academic freedom that is seen by many faculty members, associations and the Canadian Association of University Teachers as retreating from, rather than advancing, this vital freedom. And while our university presidents all espouse the principles of academic freedom, neither Dr. Samarasekera nor our BC university presidents have challenged the AUCC definition.

The major speaker at the presentation was Dr. Jocelyn Downie, a Professor of Ethics in both the Faculties of Law and Medicine at Dalhousie University. Dr. Downie presented a highly nuanced analysis of academic freedom around the questions of what is academic freedom, why does it matter, and why should we talk about it.

In her lecture, Dr. Downie related the Olivieri case (1) (a sordid tale of an academic clinical researcher, Dr. Nancy Olivieri, who was abused by the University of Toronto, the Hospital for Sick Children (HSC) and the drug manufacturer Apotex) to her analysis of academic freedom. Beyond the details of this case, I was reminded of the writings of Raul Hilberg, who spoke, in the context of the Holocaust, of the roles of victims, rescuers, bystanders and perpetrators. All of these roles were played out in the Olivieri case, and all are related to academic freedom in our institutions.

Olivieri was clearly the victim here, and her life and career were seriously impacted by the attempt to limit her ability to carry out research in an ethical and responsible manner congruent with the standards and norms of her discipline. The perpetrators are clear too. She was threatened by a drug company seemingly more interested in profits than in the health of the research participants or in the people who might ultimately be taking a flawed medication. Perpetrators also included the institutions involved; the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, who, at the same time as Olivieri was being threatened, sued and barred from carrying out her research, was negotiating with Apotex for a donation of funds reaching into the tens of millions of dollars.

But for me, the real concern is with the rescuers and the bystanders. Four of Olivieri’s colleagues came to her defence, standing up for her academic rights and, based on their principals, put themselves in harm’s way (2). Outside of her institutional colleagues, the CAUT was and continues to be a strong advocate for Olivieri and for academic freedom. But four colleagues is not a very large number: most of the academic clinical staff at HSC and uToronto were bystanders and while their motivations have never been studied, it is easy to understand what they might be: fear of retribution, worry about their own research funding, and no desire to be branded a troublemaker. It is not hard to imagine why one would not get involved in a fight against both your direct employer and a large drug company.

So why does academic freedom matter? Because, as Dr. Downie says, “society needs people willing to speak truth to power.” Power rarely appreciate hearing truth, whether power be in the form of pharmaceutical companies that do not want to hear from the Therapeutics Initiative at UBC or from researchers like Dr. Olivieri, or in governments that would rather not hear from its scientists about the state of the environment. If and when we become aware of pressure being put on colleagues to “toe the party line”, or when our colleagues are threatened with loss of funding based on their research and thoughts, or when the threat of tenure decisions are used to try and silence controversial voices, we are, at that point, all threatened. And while there may be a single victim initially, unless we all become involved in efforts to ensure academic freedom, bystanders too end can end up as victims.

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[1] Thompson, J., Baird, P., & Downie, J. (2001). The Olivieri Report. Toronto: James Lorimer and Company.

[2] Baylis, F. (2004). The Olivieri debacle: where were the heroes of bioethics? Journal of Medical Ethics, 30, 44-49. doi: 10.1136/jme.2003.005330