Sweeping agreements will further degrade university education in Ontario, "Canada"

 By Denis G. Rancourt


In mid-summer vacations we learned from the media that the "Ontario government has signed a sweeping set of agreements with universities and colleges that will oblige them to choose areas of specialty and avoid overlapping programs with one another". [1]

This is a structural change that goes to the heart of institutional identity and jurisdiction. Thus, it is important to ask what the large societal forces are that have driven this change, and what the foreseeable consequences of this change might be.

The significance of this massive legal and structural re-organization of the higher-education complex in Ontario is confirmed by the facts that these changes:

• were not subject to public consultation;
• were made entirely my management without seeking university senate approvals; 
• were negotiated behind closed doors without collegial participation;
• were announced when the students are away.

Since their creation, universities in Ontario have been independent bodies. This independence is statutory. Each university derives its legal authority from a law enacted by the provincial parliament. This gives each institution the responsibility to develop its academic programs through a collegial process culminating in decisions made by the university senate, subject to the management of financial funds overseen by the university board of governors.

The idea is that a university is suppose to serve the needs of the local (city and regional) population, although not exclusively, and that the collegial process involving students, professors, and community members, is best suited to identifying academic needs.

The university administrations (the executives) have now sold-off institutional independence without a fight, and without consulting their communities. They have collaborated with the service executives that run the province.

Increased specialization will necessarily have large societal costs, that will be paid by students and their families. Students will need to travel further and live away from home sooner, at great extra costs, without the option of a local institution that offers a desired program.

Increased specialization will eliminate much healthy inter-university competition, both competition for enrollments and intellectual competition between departments in a given academic discipline. Whereas, larger academic departments are known to be more hierarchical, often at the expense of the individual academic freedoms of professors and students.

As it stands, there is more variation in brilliance from professor to professor (and from student to student) than variation in brilliance from university to university. The academic reputation and influence of an individual researcher is relatively easy to gauge whereas the academic reputation of a department or university is ill-defined, and more often than not simply and superficially tied to size, and thus arising from the department's or university's political weight within the discipline.

Increased specialization will force-out individual brilliance by subjecting all the professors and students within a discipline to be subjugated to the authority of a large departmental hierarchy. All such hierarchies tend towards schools of thought, normalization of investigative procedures, and so on -- they constrain and stifle creativity and risk-taking.  

Increased specialization represents monopolizing and cantonizing of academic disciplines. The relative fluid ability that an institution possessed to create new programs and research areas will be replaced by fossilization tied to provincial funding.

Furthermore, the increased specialization will not produce savings for the province. Where are the studies that predict such savings and what are the underlying assumptions of those calculations?

The promise of savings for the province is a false pretext to achieve specialization. As with virtually all institutional changes, specialization is driven by covert underlying forces. Namely, the natural forces towards sharpening and consolidation of hierarchical control of the economy and of people who populate the economy. [2]

Specialization serves "globalization" and "corporatization" -- that is, further vassalization of "Canada" into the US corporate-military-finance empire (Empire).

Specialization of Ontario's higher-education complex enables a tighter control on students and professors in view of accepting "globalization", and of accepting their roles within the globalization project. Specialization facilitates indoctrination into the logic of the US corporate-military-finance empire. The mechanisms are as follows:

• Cross-fertalization between disciplines is physically barred.
• Disciplines that are potential threats are physically isolated and hierarchically controlled.
• Students with different perspectives cannot physically meet.
• Students in a given location are controlled by a single administration, allowing tighter discipline.
• Students are virtually all away from home and thus more vulnerable to hermetical training and indoctrination.

As a result, a student is more tightly indoctrinated into his/her role in the service of the Empire, and is thus made more stupid than he/she otherwise would be. He/she is also less able to adapt to any other role than the prescribed role -- a dangerous attribute in a changing world.

To give ONE EXAMPLE, the main geopolitical obsession of the US corporate-military-finance empire these days is its policy in the Middle East. Empire strategists believe that controlling the Middle East allows the US to control access to energy, and thus control development and a strategic resource. This militarily-enforced control of the Middle East and of the exploited realm also allows the US to impose the US-dollar as the World (energy) currency, and the dollar (which the US prints), in turn, is the empire's main economic exploitation device. [3][4]

In order to keep control in the Middle East, the US must constantly prevent the Arab Wold from coalescing and liberating itself. It must generate controlled perpetual war, as needed. It must kill Arabs. Its main agent in the region is Israel. [3][5]

In order to help make its perpetual waring acceptable to the citizens of the Empire, there must be a "war on terror", and there must be Islamaphobia, including regular discoveries of "sleeper agents", "terrorist plots", and so on [6]. All this is difficult to swallow for many students (professors generally have an easier time).

Overall, their is a risk that the Empire's perpetual waring, including Israel's pet project of its genocide against Palestinians, will become fatally unsavory to liberal citizens of the Empire (except in Israel where killing Arabs is, by necessity, culturally normalized by state indoctrination and enforcement). The main agent at home to align political positions, thought, and discourse on Israel is the Israel Lobby [3][7][8]. But the Lobby is becoming insufficient. Campuses are alight with "Israeli Apartheid Weeks" and with "BDS campaigns". And genocides and war crimes seen on YouTube make people quite angry.

One part of the solution, for universities, is a classic divide and conquer: Specialization. [9]

When campuses become unimodal professional-training boot camps, there is no campus activism that could poison societal consciousness [10]. And the professors are not disturbed by colleagues in other fields having different perspectives.


Endnotes

[1] "Ontario unveils deal with universities, colleges to specialize programs" by Adrian Morrow, Globe & Mail, August 8, 2014. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-unveils-deal-with-universities-colleges-to-specialize-programs/article19969302/

[2] "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism" by Denis G. Rancourt, Stairway Press, Mount Vernon, WA, 2013; see chapter entitled "Institutions Naturally Evolve Toward More Control".

[3] "The Intended Roles of the Israel-Lobby and of Israel in the US-Empire are Incompatible with Peace" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 30, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-intended-roles-of-israel-lobby-and.html -- and at Dissident Voice.

[4] "Global Economic Model of War: Understanding Syria and more" by Denis G. Rancourt, September 3, 2013; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2013/09/global-economic-model-of-war.html -- and at Veterans Today.

[5] "Israel's attempted genocide must fail -- Lessons from Canada's genocide" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 29, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/israels-attempted-genocide-must-fail.html -- and at Dissident Voice.

[6] "Canadian judge goes bonkers on a thought crime: Case of Mohamed Hersi defended by lawyer Paul Slansky" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 25, 2014. http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/canadian-judge-goes-bonkers-on-thought.html

[7] "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

[8] "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" by Norman G. Finkelstein, Verso, NY, 2000.

[9] Similarly, all the major societal changes that have occurred in Canada since Jean Chrétien was ousted -- prominence of the Israel Lobby, change of position on Palestine at the UN, seeking foreign investments as the main economic "motor", allowing exponential increase in foreign ownership, privatization of public holdings, change of geopolitical stance from peace-keeping to war-mongering, treatment of refugees and immigration policy, politicization/corporatization/globalization of universities, militarization of police, surveillance practices, increased criminalization of citizens, reduction of democratic processes, alignment of the media, ... -- are attributable to the on-going vassalization of "Canada" into the US corporate-military-finance empire, and its pillaging.

[10] See "Disciplined Minds -- A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes their Lives" by Jeff Schmidt; Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK. 

Will freedom of expression come to Canada?

OCLA's principled letter to the AG of Ontario...

By Denis G. Rancourt

Political agents across the left-right spectrum in the USA, including left public intellectual Noam Chomsky, positively advance the USA as being the modern society with the greatest protections for free speech.

In the USA, expression of opinion is absolutely protected, as is all expression except in limited areas (LINK):

Criticism of the government and advocacy of unpopular ideas that people may find distasteful or against public policy are almost always permitted. There are exceptions to these general protections, including the Miller test for obscenity, child pornography laws, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. Within these limited areas, other limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for authors and inventors over their works and discoveries (copyright and patent), protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons (restrictions on fighting words), or the use of untruths to harm others (slander). Distinctions are often made between speech and other acts which may have symbolic significance.

Canada, on the other hand, has not been so fortunate. It is stuck with a far more backward remnant of the common law tort of defamation (LINK):

Libel law developed in an ancient era which we would today consider backward, tyrannical and repressive. It is rooted in 16th and 17th century criminal statutes protecting nobility from criticism. Cases of political libel and eventually damages actions were handled by the infamous Star Chamber until its abolition in 1641. By the end of that century, many elements of the common law of libel we would recognize today had been established.

Under the common law of defamation in Canada, when a plaintiff claims defamation for some insult or opinion, then damages and malice are presumed (malice of defamation versus express malice), and the defendant has the onus to prove his or her innocence based on strictly limited defences allowed in the common law.

In Canada, the courts had the occasion to significantly reform the common law of defamation when the legal landscape was changed by the introduction of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but have steadfastly refused to do so, in ruling after ruling.

Instead, incremental changes have been installed that further entrench the common law of defamation in its egregious reverse onus stance, such as the new "responsible journalism" defence -- introduced with great fanfare, after most other common law jurisdictions (UK, Australia, etc.) had seen this particular light.

The common law tort of defamation is the only cause of action which assumes damages without any requirement to prove damages in the court. Other torts that address harm to reputation, such as the tort of malicious falsehood, do not assume damages.

Is there any hope that freedom of expression will ever come to Canada?

I can report recent evidence that may justify some hope: THIS RECENT LETTER of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (independent from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and the CCLA position on the same matter) to the Attorney General of Canada's province of Ontario.

OCLA's letter is strong and principled. OCLA is refusing to ignore the elephant in the room.

Thus, there is hope. This (OCLA's letter) may be a start that could lead to the downfall of the Star Chamberesque jurisdiction of Canadian courts in matters of individual expression?

Denis G. Rancourt is the Self-Represented Litigants Workgroup Coordinator of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He practiced various areas of science which were funded by a national agency, has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. He has self-represented himself in several courts and tribunals: labour relations board, access to information appeals, municipal court, Superior Court of Justice for Ontario, Court of Appeal for Ontario, and filed motions at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Saudi doctors lose appeal of dismissal of University of Ottawa lawsuit -- media article, judgement, and commentary

Dr. Khalid Aba-Alkhail (left), and Dr. Waleed AlGhaithy

The Ottawa Citizen has reported this short story: HERE.

The actual Court of Appeal for Ontario judgement is HERE.

Well there you have it. The claimants were simply never allowed to be heard in the Ontario courts regarding how they were treated by University of Ottawa administrators. Plain and simple denial of access to justice. Straight up. Is anybody paying attention?

The "Neuroleaks" emails constitute a textbook example of evidence for bad faith, of the type that should be written up in law school curricula, yet the "Neuroleaks" evidence was not known by the claimants until after all the internal University tribunals were done, yet the Ontario courts "found" (that's the legal term) that all the evidence was considered by the internal University tribunals... Both the Superior Court of Justice for Ontario and the Court of Appeal for Ontario "found" (by some process that defies reality) that all the evidence had already been considered by the internal University tribunals. No it had not. Just look at the documents filed with the courts, or the fact that a motion was won by the claimants in judicial review at the Divisional Court to introduce the new "Neuroleaks" evidence after the internal University tribunals were done, or all of this chronologically reported in the media, the same media that do not hiccup at this latest October 18, 2013 Court of Appeal judgement:

[13] Finally, the appellants argued that the trial judge erred in finding that they are relying on the same facts as in the discipline proceedings. They pointed to certain emails that they say were either not before the tribunals or not taken into account by them because there was nothing the tribunals could use them for. This position was disputed by the respondent.

To this observer, this means that the courts can and do make up the facts. In addition, the media and legal researchers clearly don't scrutinize the courts! What's the point of having a so-called open court principle in Canada if no one dares to scrutinize the darn courts? Incredible.

Well, HERE, again, is a copy of some of these "Neuroleaks" emails. Judge for yourselves. Read the six emails at that link. If your hair does not stand on end, then you are pathologically cynical. How the judges could have overlooked such administrative misbehaviour (that is putting it very politely) which ended the careers of a star neurosurgeon (weeks from being certified) and of two interns in cardiology, is, well, not what one expects in a free and democratic society.

The behaviour of the courts in Ontario, in this case, has the effect of condoning the egregious behaviours of administrators at the University of Ottawa, and it produces a striking denial of access to justice in which claimants, whose careers were ruined, are simply never heard on the full evidence and on the merits of their arguments.

The claimants never had their day in court. We must ask the question: Is that because they are Saudi?

Ontariariario!

First posted on U of O Watch: HERE.

Ontario Family Survival Guide

Would you be surprised to learn that in Ontario, Canada, the government has farmed out child protection to a ruthless corporate mob that gets paid "by the head" and that is accountable to no one?

Some extraordinary parents and victims are fighting back:

Fighting 4 Families

Here is their survival guide: LINK.

Read it as soon as you can, especially if you are a foster "care" survivor thinking of keeping your children!

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