Canadian university professors 'condemn' Carleton University board for gag order

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The association representing Canada’s university professors condemned Carleton University’s board of governors Saturday for a new policy that will ban board members from speaking publicly about the meetings they attend.

The professors say the move is a violation of transparency and openness that is fundamental to academic freedom.

Saturday’s vote could eventually see Carleton blacklisted by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). The association, which met in Ottawa on the weekend, represents about 68,000 teachers and academic professionals.

Blacklisting would include a recommendation from the association that academics do not take jobs or attend conferences at Carleton.

At issue is a new policy by the Carleton board’s executive committee requiring all board members to undertake never to discuss board business publicly.

The restriction stays in place for the board member’s lifetime.

At least one board member — one of two Carleton faculty members on the board — is refusing to sign the new policy and is now likely to be kicked off the board.

According to Carleton University Academic Staff Association (CUASA) president Pum van Veldhoven, the board has also moved to ban faculty and student union representatives from sitting on the board, claiming they are in conflict of interest.

“It’s never been an issue before, why now?” she said.

The governors have also banned all non-board members from its meetings and instead are live streaming the proceedings to a room across campus.

The streams are not archived.

According to faculty representatives, campus police officers were posted outside the last governor’s meeting and were furnished with photographs and names of those allowed in.

“Carleton is in violation of fundamental principles observed at most universities in the country,” CAUT executive director David Robinson told the Citizen. “And those are the principles of openness and transparency in governance.

“It basically gags anyone from talking about anything,” he added, “and not only for their terms as governors but until the end of their life. It’s like they are members of the NSA or CSIS and they have state secrets. You know, if you tell anyone, you have to kill them.”

Van Veldhoven said the one-way video streaming is a poor substitute for actually being allowed into a meeting.

“In an open meeting where you are allowed to be present, body language can be seen,” she said. “They don’t see us. We have no ability to assert our concerns even with a sign.”

Biology professor Root Gorelick, the faculty representative refusing to sign onto the new edict, has blogged about the board meetings.

“It apparently gets me in trouble,” he said Saturday, “but I keep doing it. I have been told informally and somewhat more formally that it has to cease.”

The board executive committee is comprised of non-university members, and Gorelick said he would be “speculating” if he said his blogs had sparked the new rule.

“There could be other reasons, I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t think of any other reasons but there certainly is a possibility.”

Being told to sign onto the new rule “is horrible in many ways,” added Gorelick.

“The university is a provincially funded, public institution and we’re supposed to have openness and transparency in all of our governance. This removes all of it.

“When I blog, I blog about the open sessions,” he said, “and it makes a mockery of the word open when nobody can speak about them. And since April the Carleton community can’t even sit in and watch (live).”

The university governors haven’t publicly stated why they have introduced the gag order but there was a student protest at a board meeting last March when the board debated tuition fee increases.

“It was a peaceful protest, but it was disruptive,” said Gorelick. “It stopped the meeting from occurring. At some point, the meeting might have been adjourned but nobody really knew.

“We could have dealt with it really easily but we didn’t,” he said. “We can get around these things and still have open meetings but like the U.S. Congress after 9/11, it was used as an excuse to bring in really draconian reforms.”

Gorelick, who says the board’s executive committee does not have the power to impose any rule change without the full board’s approval,  said he wants to see how the CAUT investigation plays out before formally refusing to sign onto the new gag order.

In one of two statements sent to the Citizen on Saturday, the university accused Gorelick of making “inaccurate statements about members, meetings, discussions and decisions of the Board are neither appropriate nor legal, according to advice obtained by the Board.”

Saturday’s meeting mandated national union leader Robinson to launch an investigation before deciding on the next step.

“Universities are supposed to be places where we have vigorous debates,” he said. “They are supposed to be democratic institutions and responsive to their communities. The board is trying to do an end run around that so we are looking at all our options to get them to reverse course.”

In its statement, Carleton said that the “confidentiality obligations” apply only to closed meetings and that non-board members can attend open sessions but only with prior permission.

“It has been recognized at law that, generally speaking, once a Board has made a decision that members are to respect the integrity of and support decisions,” said the statement. “Fulsome candid discussion and debate by Board members is to be conducted at meetings, not retrospectively following a meeting in an online or public forum.”

The university governors remain committed to openness and transparency, it said.

The statement did not fully address all of the other issues raised by CAUT and CUASA and the Citizen was not given the opportunity to ask questions of a university representative.

The board’s next meeting is in January.

ccobb@ottawacitizen.com

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