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6-8 February 2009, Toronto, ON

by Eve Haque, York University, Department of Languages, Literatures, & Linguistics

9 Mar 09 –

Friday February 6th

The Equity Forum began Friday night with a welcome from Penni Stewart (CAUT President) in a short speech in which she highlighted CAUT’s interest in issues of equity. Jim Turk followed with some remarks. The focus of the evening was on a play entitled “Equity In Your Face” performed by Kristine Nutting and Cortney Lohnes. This play consisted of a series of vignettes which demonstrated the different ways in which racism occurs on campuses e.g., silencing, appropriation, racist practices during hirings, making faculty and students of colour invisible, harassment and so on. After the play, there was a discussion led by Rinaldo Walcott and Piet Defraeye. This was an effective way to focus attendees’ thoughts on the issues around racism and equity that were going to be discussed at the forum.

Saturday February 7th

Saturday morning began with the panel “Recasting Equity” which was a panel to examine the origins of equity and to explore what diversity means. Notable issues raised in this panel include Audrey Kobayashi’s history of the Abella report, the four designated groups (women, Aboriginal groups, people with disAbilities and visible minorities), the Federal Contractor’s Program, and her claim that it was time to move beyond numbers and targets for designated groups. This last claim is problematic in that the struggle is still to get representative numbers for faculty in several of the designated groups – especially Aboriginal faculty, faculty of colour and faculty with disAbilities. Therefore, any call to ‘move beyond number targets’ should also continue to consider that having a representative critical mass is the basis for achieving other equity goals. Next, Piet DeFraeye told the story of the University of Alberta Office of Human Rights. This was an instructive example of how campus Equity offices (often started as a result of grassroots organizing on campuses) are co-opted by administration into entities like ‘offices of human rights’ etc. in order to make administration look like they are doing something concrete about equity but, more often than not, are actually designed to minimize and neutralize issues of equity (particularly around racism) on campuses. This, of course, is happening / has happened across the country including here at York, and the best recent case is Carleton University where the Equity Office which many students (including myself), staff and some faculty of colour worked hard to establish many years ago has now become a repressive extension of the Administrative regime to muzzle student and faculty free speech on campus.

The next presentation was by Yasmin Jiwani who spoke about the difference between Equity and Equality. Equality implies ‘sameness’ but in the 1970s, there was a shift to ‘equity’ i.e., the equitable distribution of resources. This language of equality has been universalized and finds expression in such events as white feminists arguing to the Quebec Government against the hijab as an issue of equality. The question Jiwani asks is why focus on such epiphenomena as the hijab instead of fundamental issues of equity such as discriminatory wages and work conditions for women of colour? Jiwani also made the important distinction between ‘elite racism’ (such as the case of the white Quebec feminists) and ‘ambient racism’ which is the racism which exists and circulates around us all the time on a daily basis.

Richard Atleo also presented and began with this question: can the principles of equity actually work in the academy given the fundamentally inequitable (and corporate) bases of higher education in Canada? Increasingly, it is a corporate story that gets told in the academy – i.e., the survival of the fittest – and the responsibility of the university as corporation is to make money and not to serve / be accountable to people. The retention of Aboriginal students is a huge problem and filters into the problem there being few Aboriginal faculty. Richard argued that equity put into practice results in an economic benefit to society. The oppression of Aboriginal peoples in Canada costs the Canadian Government billions of dollars.

Following the presentation, there was an extensive Q and A session and many important issues were raised which I believe are important to consider:

• The corporatization of the university has meant significant structural changes to the academy in which we have become front line service providers and the students are our ‘clients’. This means that racism comes from the top down (from administration) as well as from the bottom up from students. Minority faculty, seen as low ranked service providers, often experience threatening, hostile and even violent behaviour from students.

• The limitations of the Abella report were flagged – queer category gets left out with only four federally recognized groups.

• The disinterest in age discrimination by CAUT was also flagged – this is particularly acute for women. Other disadvantaged groups are disproportionately penalized for ‘being old’ – there is very little legal protection from age discrimination.

• Malinda Smith stated that ‘equity’ discourses gets fixed on certain bodies i.e., the equity-seeking groups, and for everyone else, it’s not their issue, they “just need to get along” with everyone – so the question is: who is accountable? And who does the work of equity?

• There is a tension between ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’.

• Women’s equity is always about gender (only) equity and is an issue of social justice etc. and diversity is for the rest and ‘nice if you can get it’ – therefore issues of equity are not integrated i.e., race and gender and disAbility are separate issues so may get movement on one, but not on another issue and of course this means e.g., women of colour and their specific struggles are invisible.

• Audrey gave the example of the CRC challenge which was unable to move beyond the question of gender (only gender data was collected) and in the media the issue was represented as a problem of “women and other”…

• Seeking justice around equity issues will require money / resources AND political will.

Following the morning session, there were breakout groups, and the one I attended (for the whole conference) was the group on Faculty Recruitment, Promotion and Retention.

• There was an in-depth discussion in the breakout session and I will list some of the highlighted topics:

• The need for bullying policies was highlighted – a lot of racial and other forms of discrimination go on through bullying but these practices remain invisible because of the lack of language / policies around them. Quebec has work place bullying policies in place – so it is entirely possible and feasible. CAUT and faculty associations / unions should push for these policies. YUFA should push to have a bullying policy put into place.

• The problem of having a segregated approach to equity at CAUT was highlighted. This is exemplified by the fact that there is a separate women’s conference (which I have also attended) and where issues to do with racism continue to be sidelined and marginalized. Again, there was a call for both the CAUT and faculty unions to have a much more integrated approach to equity.

• The need for the collection of data around race was emphasized. Currently, Statcan does not collect this data – CAUT should lobby for the collection of this data. Also, CAUT should spearhead an effort to collect this data nationally – AND faculty associations and unions should collect data in their own institutions as soon as possible. The Guelph application centre also does not collect this data – again, lobbying for data collection should be taken up by CAUT.

• The importance of job ads – how they are written and where they are advertised is extremely important for recruitment purposes.

• There is an insidious filtering process where we have increasing numbers of racialized undergraduate students in Canadian universities, much less at the graduate level – especially PhD (and especially in Social Sciences and Humanities) and then severe filtering at the faculty level and then almost no significant numbers of faculty of colour in administration.

• We are becoming risk managers for administration – surveillance and legalistic management practices around e.g., plagiarism etc. are downloaded onto faculty, all of which has implications for our workload, our teaching practices and our pedagogical relationship with our students. Some universities have a designated Academic integrity office which takes over any suspected case of plagiarism and then the issue is dealt with through this third party leaving the instructor out of the process. This model should be implemented at York and YUFA should push for it.

• The (f)utility of teaching evaluations and how they penalize women and faculty of colour as subjective evaluations should be considered seriously. Research in the US has shown that in fact anonymous evaluations supply little ‘objective’ information but rather are often mobilized against faculty of colour (as a result, many reputable American institutions have abolished student evaluations for tenure and promotion). Therefore, the utility of teaching evaluations here in Canada should be reconsidered. This is not to say that student feedback is not useful – particularly student comments – and should not continue to be solicited – but their usefulness as instruments which can influence tenure and promotion needs to seriously be reconsidered in relation to research on race, gender and teaching evaluations. YUFA should take this on.

• One member of the breakout session – a faculty member with a disAbility – told the story of how a student was disciplined for their Ableism / racism by being forced to take a course with this particular faculty member without consideration of how it might impact him – the faculty member – to have this student with problematic attitudes in his class, and the assumption that it was this faculty member’s role alone to educate this student in this respect.

• It is important to remember that it is our colleagues (other faculty members) who are implicated in the enactment and maintenance of these exclusionary and marginalizing policies / tactics as most administrative posts are filled by faculty members.

• The problematic nature of ‘collegiality’ – particularly as a part of tenure and promotion processes was mentioned – particularly in relation to faculty of colour who were often characterized as ‘angry’ and ‘ungrateful’ (i.e., for being ‘given’ a position) and therefore uncollegial. This is a very common experience for many faculty of colour at York and speaks to the insidious nature of ‘collegiality’ as a formal part of academic life. How can YUFA begin to tackle this?

After the breakout session, we had lunch and then we went to Panel 2 which was on Academic Freedom and Equity (“Tensions and Complements”)

Mark Neufeld from Trent began by telling his story about his experience of discrimination for depression. Neufeld suffers a form of depression called SAD and he spoke of how his illness was not seen as an authentic condition (unlike his broken leg or even his Type I diabetes) – however, his depression was seen by his department and the university as a form of ‘malingering’ and he was told to take long term disability leave and banned from campus. CAUT was able to help him but this story points to the discriminations that still exist around mental health issues.

Bonita Lawrence spoke about the censure by CAUT of First Nations University. She began by stating that although she wanted to speak about the censure, in no way did she intend to minimize the suffering of faculty and staff at the university. She then spoke compellingly about the need to contextualize the existence of the few recognized First Nations Universities within the history of the ultimate destruction of Aboriginal worldviews (through residential schooling, forced relocations, and so on) and the fact that mainstream university education for Aboriginal students is education for assimilation. Thus, the presence of Aboriginal run institutions is critical for maintaining and fostering Aboriginal approaches to education and the maintenance / revival of Aboriginal worldviews. Indigenous post-secondary institutions tend to be community based, have elder involvement in curriculum delivery and have flexible modes of delivery to accommodate Aboriginal students. Although there are approximately 50 such institutions across Canada, most are not officially recognized so they have to partner with other degree granting institutions – especially for funding. However, First Nations University did have official recognition and therefore received regular government funding. Lawrence concluded by stating that this larger context cannot be uncoupled from this censure and we need to ask how we can support indigenous institutions without perpetuating assimilative colonial relations.

Rinaldo Walcott spoke next and he urged the audience to consider how we could think about “another university now”. He asked how can we make equitable an institution whose foundation is fundamentally inequitable? He urged the audience to think about two important issues – the need to address numbers (contra Kobayashi’s call) and also the need to consider climate in relation to equity. He also spoke about how the discourse of equity has been co-opted and that the real meaning of equity has to be resuscitated. He urged everyone to work against a politics of being tokenized and patronized as a strategy of inclusion. He concluded by stating that the universities have to consider that the demographics of Canada have changed drastically and that the urgency of equity issues are not going to go away – especially if not dealt with now.

Ena Dua spoke last and told us about her project to evaluate anti-racism policies across campuses to see what exists and what is effective. She looked at 33 universities in Canada. She found that most universities have anti-racism policies but most are at the performative level – there are few employment equity policies. Anti-harassment and anti-racism workshops are the main focus of these equity policies. She found that one important limitation to anti-racism policies was the attitude of senior administration – she found that in order to implement the existing policies, there HAD to be political will from senior administration. However, she found that most often members of senior administration denied that racism existed and reacted defensively to reports of racism. Therefore, most often, these policies were window dressing. These policies have failed to take hold institutionally. WHY? Dua explained that these policies were not emerging out of anti-racism activism BUT out of feminist activism and therefore policy accountability was directed most often to sexual harassment. So, the environment in which the policy is applied is important. Dua found that administrative decision-makers believe that addressing racism is about looking for favours. So, Dua asked, how do we make senior administration accountable for what we are trying to achieve? One strategy is at the time of the administrative appointment, ask them how they will be accountable to equity issues. Of course, this is going to be a problem in the kind of senior administrative hiring practices which take place behind closed doors (increasingly frequent here are York).

After this panel, the second breakout sessions took place. Some of the important issues that emerged are listed below:

• CAUT’s What is Fair Hiring resource was mentioned – faculty unions should obtain this resource and circulate it widely in their institutions.

• The need for CAUT to rank universities and departments on equity issues was raised.

The day ended with a report back from all the breakout sessions; the following were mentioned as important issues which had been raised in the sessions:

• Aboriginal and faculty of colour are stretched to do representation and mentoring work – this has serious implications for workload. The fact that workload is racialized and a lot of the ‘racialized workload’ is invisible needs to be seriously addressed by faculty unions.

• Better language in the collective agreements on workload, tenure and hirings which have an equity analysis (e.g., see previous point) needs to be included.

• CAUT needs to pull together existing language on child and elder care – more expansive definitions of family need to be included in the CA as many diverse cultural communities have different notions of family and therefore have diverse family care responsibilities. The family model which recognizes and privileges only the nuclear family has discriminatory effects for different cultural communities. Faculty associations should push for this in the CAs.

• Workload with respect to equity service needs to be considered and also included in CAs.

• Training with respect to equity needs to be carried out – especially for senior admin and decision-makers.

• CAUT needs a more expansive definition of equity to consider age and sexual orientation.

• Review how effective CAs and memoranda of understanding are with respect to equity issues.

• The trap of hierarchies of equity concerns was raised.

• The lack of priority between academic staff and faculty equity concerns was highlighted.

• It was recommended that the phrase “a change in the culture” be incorporated into all CAs with respect to equity.

• CAUT was urged to consider the often violent and aggressive nature of the grievance process.

• CAUT needs more resources for equity – money, website (interactive), dedicated equity officer.

• The problematic and racialized nature of ‘collegiality’ has to be discussed

• How teaching evaluations are used to discipline and regulate racialized faculty needs to be flagged.

• And a repeated recommendation from the forum was that: CAUT needs to make equity its top priority for the next 5 years and needs to begin with a thorough equity audit on Canadian universities.

Sunday February 8th

The next morning began with a panel on “Strategies and Tactics”. Rosanna Carreon began by stating that resources and political will for implementing change around equity issues was lacking. Also, universities were reacting to equity issues and not being pro-active in dealing with equity. She emphasized that allocation of significant resources shows a quantifiable commitment to equity e.g., at University of Ottawa, there was 1.25 people and $5,000 dollars per year for equity versus at the University of Manitoba where there was 4 staff people and $50,000 per year. But the important question is whether these financial commitments translate into concrete change. Financial commitment also requires accountability – e.g., the location of equity offices – basements versus central and accessible locations. Lines of reporting are also important – e.g., does the equity office report to Human Resources and then on through many other levels to senior administration OR does the equity office report directly to the president. However, direct access to decision-makers is useless without resources. Lack of leadership with senior administration has a silencing effect on equity based critiques. Student support on equity issues can be very helpful as well – student support can also be important for optics. Rosanna concluded with a call for substantive equity as opposed to formal equality (which can be just statements or policy). Often, formal equality maintains the status quo because of the focus on equality of treatment / fairness as opposed to equitable outcomes. Rosanna concluded with a call for the need to look for patterns of disadvantage, inequitable outcomes and the redistribution of resources.

Malinda Smith presented next beginning her presentation with a Chinese proverb “Talk does not cook rice” and the question of what is required of us. Specifically, how can we transform the academy if we cannot transform ourselves? Smith stated that we are too strongly focused on gender difference as THE difference when it comes to equity issues which in turn narrows down the 4 Abella report equity categories to just 1 category: white women. Smith issued a call to dismantle the dividing practices which separate gender and racialized groups. For example, the creation of separate spaces for developing equity strategies at the expense of developing collective strategies across equity groups. Smith cited Kawakami’s research (profiled on Y-file) which shows that racial solidarity is often an abstraction and does not translate into concrete practices. Smith also cited Bonilla Silva who shows how liberalism enables the continuance of racism by claiming that everyone is equal without considering how different groups have their choices limited structurally. Smith also mentioned the insidiousness of cultural racism.

The next presenter was Doreen Fumia, who spoke about the Ryerson Task Force. She asked if the Task Force would actually change racist practices or just be window dressing to make the administration look good. Problematic examples included the honorary degree given to Margaret Somerville. The Task Force noted over 20 examples of overt racism at Ryerson in the past year. Fumia concluded by mentioning the importance of student resistance.

David Newhouse was the next panelist and he began by talking about the 2008 CAUT Aboriginal forum. There are currently about 120 Aboriginal faculty members across the country. Newhouse spoke of knowledge equity versus presence equity. This was the desire to use Aboriginal knowledge as a basis for academic life as well as the desire to decolonize academic life and to foster places of respect and dignity. But these desires are seen as institutional burdens i.e., space and resource demanding and therefore, not part of everyday normal academic business. 

Ruthann Dyer was the final speaker on the panel and spoke of how it was possible (sometimes) to achieve equity outcomes without using equity language but instead using the existing CA and memos of understanding. She suggested that it was possible to be subversive and creative with the existing documents. She also suggested that there should be a “one-stop shopping” place on campus for addressing disAbility issues so faculty would not have to go through deans and chairs.

After this panel, there was the final breakout session of the forum. Listed below are some of the key issues that were discussed.

• Alok (a disAbled faculty member) spoke about the expansion of the category of disAbility. He correctly identified this as a big problem because resources are being spent on the accommodation of particular kinds of disAbilities while people who have historically been excluded (and remain excluded) from the academy are still not being accommodated. He spoke of the opportunistic nature of these kinds of claim for accommodation with respect to disAbility (in effect the trivialization of the accommodation of disAbility) and how this also allowed the employer to look like they were doing something with respect to disAbility although it was really window dressing. He asked the question, as activists and strategists, what should we do about these kinds of equity issues. He suggested that we need to think about the fact that when we make claims in the name of advancing equity issues like disability, we need to be aware of what we are doing to the group as a whole.

• The issue of research and teaching was raised. Important questions about what we research and how we go about it. As well, the competitive climate of research at the university was raised and how it was requiring faculty to change in order to fit into a competitive corporate model of academic life. People expressed a sense of discomfort in the institution and the difficulties of teaching were expressed. The question of how to talk about difference in the academy was raised.

• Someone mentioned the issue of ‘knowledge equity’ e.g., being a teacher of Marx / Hegel versus Postcolonial theory – which is valued / marginalized and this has implications for who gets hired and what kinds of theses are written and what kinds of students are admitted. This goes to the question of what is seen as core curriculum and / or the supplement to the curriculum. This has implications also for what kinds of job ads are posted, departmental politics i.e., who runs the department who is seen to have the authority to speak on behalf of the department / discipline – in short, who has power.

• A suggestion was made that CAUT should make a comment on “primary source thinkers” with respect to curriculum development.

• The issue of grievances and their privatized nature was discussed. Specifically, the conundrum of trying to build equity through non-equitable processes. The private nature of grievances means that gains can’t necessarily be built on publicly.

• There was a critique of Dyer’s approach to accommodation as not being accountable to equity because whenever someone exercises discretion it should be directly linked to equity if substantive changes are to be made.

• A suggestion was made that department standards of tenure and promotion should be questioned in an ongoing way and workshops for depts. should be given – how to write letters, etc.

• Everyone was reminded that their association can bring forward motions from the CAUT council floor (which meets twice a year – April and November) to push forward equity issues.

• The important issue of making equity the priority for CAUT for the next 5 years was raised again – a member-at-large from CAUT was present at the breakout session and finally we were able to get him to make some admissions about CAUT and the possibilities of making equity its top priority. He stated that academic freedom is seen as the number one issue at CAUT and that academic freedom is seen to be so fundamental an issue that it can take care of all equity problems. This is the fundamental ideological battle at CAUT. To realistically get CAUT to make equity a priority means making a change in this ideology.

• As Walcott stated, in order to make long term gains, “often one has to go against oneself”.

• Tariq added that this (the problem of making equity the number one issue at CAUT) is how ‘democracy’ gets used to entrench inequity – ‘autonomy’ etc. also gets used to shut down claims for equity and majoritarianism gets used to stifle ‘minority’ progress.

• A final question of the session was how we move beyond mere accommodation.

Other Delegates from this Conference:
Deborah Brock
Peter Duerr
Mitzi Mitchell