Judge Accused of Conflict of Interest Loses Decorum and Withdraws from Case

July 24, 2012

by Student's-Eye View

Why donate to my Legal Fund?

I was fired from my tenured full professorship at the University of Ottawa, Canada, because I stood for my principles in every facet of my professional life, and because I was an outspoken critic of the university administration and its executives. I stood for rational education based on proven research rather than obedience training, and I stood for ethical management rather than careerism. I was fired under the false pretext of fraudulent grading in a one-semester advanced physics course. I was handcuffed, arrested, and dragged off campus in front of my students for attending the weekly public discussion seminar that I had created and run for many years. Now the University of Ottawa is fighting in court to not allow me back on campus and is funding a $1 million private defamation lawsuit against me.

This is an appeal to donate to my legal fund (the Denis Rancourt Legal Fund) in order to provide a moderately fair trial in the private civil lawsuit that some observers have characterized as a SLAPP (strategic litigation against public participation) against me.

I am committed to obtaining justice but justice is illusive when there is a large asymmetry of means between the opposing parties. At this point I will have exhausted all my financial savings within a month or so.

I was wrongly fired in 2009 from my tenured full professorship in physics at the University of Ottawa by a president, Allan Rock, who had a personal mission to get me.  He instructed his executives and hired lawyers to fire me, and this was executed without due process.

Under false pretence, in November 2008, my students and I were locked out of our laboratory and offices without warning.

My research associate of 12 years was summarily fired (she sued and won a settlement).

The laboratory was dismantled before I was even informed of the mock procedure to fire me that was initiated in December 2008 when I was banned from campus, again without notice, under police escort. 

The false pretext used was that I had fraudulently assigned grades in one advanced physics course in the winter 2008 semester. The University’s main witness at a recent hearing admitted under oath that the university had no evidence for this for any student.

The real reason that Allan Rock wants to shut me down may be my “U of O Watch” blog and its persistent criticism of university management and executives, including: criticism of the university’s treatments of students, criticism of Rock’s on-going career dealings, criticisms of administrators and colleagues who, in my view, act against public and/or student interests, exposing executive malfeasance such as doctoring documents “to make a point”, and so on.

The true reasons for firing me may also include: my development of a new and highly popular “activism course”, my weekly “cinema politica” public event on campus, my weekly on-going campus radio show, inviting critical speakers into my classes, my liberating pedagogical methods focussed on learning rather than obedience, my continued invitations in university classrooms as an invited intervener, and so on.

Rock hoped that firing me would be the end of me:

“With any luck, firing him will get him off campus …”
       -- December 15, 2008 email, Allan Rock to staff

After firing me at an executive meeting that he chaired on March 31, 2009, Rock continued to express his views about me and to search for ways to “get the facts out”:

“Far from having had ‘an impeccable pedagogical career’, Rancourt has spent the last several years undermining pedagogy, denying students access to an education and engaging in a cynical mockery of the whole education process; and

Rancourt is trafficking in fictions to try to save his own skin while recklessly and irresponsibly creating tensions in Ottawa’s religious communities. (As to ‘fiction’, I refer to the example of his lying about me going to Israel last July.)

How best to get the facts out?

Allan”
      -- April 19, 2009 email, Allan Rock to Bruce Feldthusen (then VP, now dean of common law)

In what I believe to be the latest episode to “get Rancourt”, Allan Rock has, following a “recommendation” from Bruce Feldthusen, personally agreed to entirely finance – without a spending limit – a private $ 1 million defamation lawsuit against me, for a blogpost on my “U of O Watch” blog. The private litigant did not contact a lawyer until after the agreement for unlimited funding was made – according to sworn testimonies given in my recent court motion to dismiss the action (ref).

Irrespective of the legal merits of the defamation claim and irrespective of the legal merits of my defence, the plaintiff’s unlimited funding is such that, as an unsalaried self-represented defendant, I find myself pitted against two major law firms (Gowlings and BLG), thus creating a Charter breach to my fundamental rights (ref, at paragraphs 61 to 67).

The legal process is complex and expensive. I am working hard to learn the theory and practice of litigation.

Even if I do not pay legal fees to a lawyer representing me, there are court and proceeding costs, and, most importantly, each time I lose an interim procedural motion I must pay the legal costs of the opponents. On some motions, the University of Ottawa itself is a second opponent (using the BLG law firm).

There have been over ten such motions (or mini-trials) to date and I will soon (this month or next) have exhausted my life savings at this point. If I win a motion, the other side argues that I need not have costs because I am self-represented.

It is obvious to me now that a minimum degree of justice requires at least a minimum of funding.

At stake is freedom of expression on matters of public interest (here, namely, the possibility of systemic racism at the University of Ottawa). At stake is access to justice. At stake is fundamental fairness in the justice system itself in treating self-represented litigants. At stake is the need for SLAPP-informed funding rules in private civil litigation in Ontario.

Please contribute to my legal fund. All donations go to my legal costs to obtain a just treatment before the courts. All court documents are posted to the web (e.g., ref).

(LINK: Donate, Legal Fund -- donate web page)

Related articles:

This is what targeting a dissident tenured professor looks like in Canada

Hearings into dismissal of Rancourt reveal much

TVO (TV Ontario) interview with Denis Rancourt:

Fired for inciting learning -- Video interview series

Joshua Blakeney interviews Denis Rancourt about the professor's conflict with the University of Ottawa.

On who killed Malcolm X

I just finished reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told by Alex Haley and the epilogue by Haley, and the endnote "On Malcolm X" (reproduced below) by Ossie Davis who had delivered this moving eulogy.

I am thoroughly shocked by the brutality of the military-style execution that ended Malcolm X. (And immensely moved by who Malcolm X was, and his absolute dedication to justice by exposing the paired crimes -- at the societal and individual levels -- of organized oppression and of accepting one's own oppression.)

I'm also stunned by Malcolm X's depth of understanding of societal phenomena as historically formed and sustained by individual psychology and the degree to which he constantly pursued this understanding. I am awed by his intellectual honesty and by his incessant quest for meaning in action and in influence. Nothing in Haley's or Davis' words come close to the truths that X was perceiving about the nature of societal and individual forces.

In my opinion, this was no simple honour killing by sectarian opponents, as Malcolm X himself came to understand. The murder's planning and precision and evasion by most of those involved strongly suggest the dominant presence of a powerful military organization, experienced in political assassinations. Similar assassinations include those of Kennedy and King.

The US industrial-military-complex thrives on war and continental exploitation. Malcolm X created international outreach to solidify ties with independent African and Asian governments and he was assassinated. Kennedy moderated attacks against Cuba and moderated war-machine diplomacy and he was assassinated. King moved to direct black civil power against the Vietnam war and he was assassinated.

Below one can witness in words the personal impact Malcolm X had on at least one intellectual (Ossie Davis).

Tirelessly insisting that oppressed people stand up for themselves, as did Mother Jones in a previous era -- who also focused her relentless agitation on the "paired crimes" (my term). There was that unique kind of depth in Malcolm X. In that sense, I see him as a black brother of the white sister Mother Jones.

Each of us who recast and do not wish to understand Malcolm X are contributing to his death. Each of us who instinctively feel the necessity to defend oneself and who by practice experience this struggle for dignity contribute to keeping him alive.

Ossie Davis, ON MALCOM X:

Mr. Davis wrote the following in response to a magazine editor's question: Why did you eulogize Malcolm X?

You are not the only person curious to know why I would eulogize a man like Malcolm X. Many who know and respect me have written letters. Of these letters I am proudest of those from a sixth-grade class of young white boys and girls who asked me to explain. I appreciate your giving me this chance to do so.

You may anticipate my defense somewhat by considering the following fact: no Negro has yet asked me that question. (My pastor in Grace Baptist Church where I teach Sunday School preached a sermon about Malcolm in which he called him a "giant in a sick world.") Every one of the many letters I got from my own people lauded Malcolm as a man, and commended me for having spoken at his funeral.

At the same time-and this is important-most of them took special pains to disagree with much or all of what Malcolm said and what he stood for. That is, with one singing exception, they all, every last,black, glory-hugging one of them, knew that Malcolm-whatever else he was or was not Malcolm was a man!

White folks do not need anybody to remind them that they are men. We do! This was his one incontrovertible benefit to his people.

Protocol and common sense require that Negroes stand back and let the white man speak up for us,defend us, and lead us from behind the scene in our fight. This is the essence of Negro politics. But Malcolm said to hell with that! Get up off your knees and fight your own battles. That's the way to win back your self-respect. That's the way to make the white man respect you. And if he won't let you live like a man, he certainly can't keep you from dying like one!

Malcolm, as you can see, was refreshing excitement; he scared hell out of the rest of us, bred as we are to caution, to hypocrisy in the presence of white folks, to the smile that never fades. Malcolm knew that every white man in America profits directly or indirectly from his position vis-a-vis Negroes,profits from racism even though he does not practice it or believe in it.

He also knew that every Negro who did not challenge on the spot every instance of racism, overt or covert, committed against him and his people, who chose instead to swallow his spit and go on smiling, was an Uncle Tom and a traitor, without balls or guts, or any other commonly accepted aspects of manhood!

Now, we knew all these things as well as Malcolm did, but we also knew what happened to people who stick their necks out and say them. And if all the lies we tell ourselves by way of extenuation were put into print, it would constitute one of the great chapters in the history of man's justifiable cowardice in the face of other men.

But Malcolm kept snatching our lies away. He kept shouting the painful truth we whites and blacks did not want to hear from all the housetops. And he wouldn't stop for love nor money.

You can imagine what a howling, shocking nuisance this man was to both Negroes and whites. Once Malcolm fastened on you, you could not escape. He was one of the most fascinating and charming men I have ever met, and never hesitated to take his attractiveness and beat you to death with it. Yet his irritation, though painful to us, was most salutary. He would make you angry as hell, but he would also make you proud. It was impossible to remain defensive and apologetic about being a Negro in his presence. He wouldn't let you. And you always left his presence with the sneaky suspicion that maybe, after all, you _were_ a man!

But in explaining Malcolm, let me take care not to explain him away. He had been a criminal, an addict, a pimp, and a prisoner; a racist, and a hater, he had really believed the white man was a devil.

But all this had changed. Two days before his death, in commenting to Gordon Parks about his past life he said: "That was a mad scene. The sickness and madness of those days! I'm glad to be free of them."And Malcolm was free. No one who knew him before and after his trip to Mecca could doubt that he had completely abandoned racism, separatism, and hatred. But he had not abandoned his shock-effect statements, his bristling agitation for immediate freedom in this country not only for blacks, but for everybody. And most of all, in the area of race relations, he still delighted in twisting the white man's tail, and in making Uncle Toms, compromisers and accommodationists - I deliberately include myself - thoroughly ashamed of the urbane and smiling hypocrisy we practice merely to exist in a world whose values we both envy and despise.

But even had Malcolm not changed, he would still have been a relevant figure on the American scene, standing in relation as he does, to the "responsible" civil rights leaders, just about where John Brown stood in relation to the "responsible abolitionists in the fight against slavery. Almost all disagreed with Brown's mad and fanatical tactics which led him foolishly to attack a Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry,to lose two sons there, and later to be hanged for treason.

Yet today the world, and especially the Negro people, proclaim Brown not a traitor, but a hero and a martyr in a noble cause So in future, I will not be surprised if men come to see that Malcolm X was,within his own limitations, and in his own inimitable style, also a martyr in that cause.

But there is much controversy still about this most controversial American, and I am content to wait for history to make the final decision.

But in personal judgment, there is no appeal from instinct. I knew the man personally, and however much I disagreed with him, I never doubted that Malcolm X, even when he was wrong, was always that rarest thing in the world among us Negroes: a true man. And if to protect my relations with the many good white folk who make it possible for me to earn a fairly good living in the entertainment industry, I was too chicken, too cautious, to admit that fact when he was alive, I thought at least that now when all the white folks are safe from him at last, I could be honest with myself enough to lift my hat for one final salute to that brave, black, ironic gallantry, which was his style and hallmark, that shocking _zing_ of fire-and-be-damned-to-you, so absolutely absent in every other Negro man I know,which brought him, too soon, to his death.

On the specific meaning of "house negro"

Arguably the first definition of "service intellectual" was given in my 2006 essay "Gradual change is not progress" [1]:

"Comfortable First World liberal and left intellectuals claiming to work for change often project the opinion that positive change is best achieved by incremental improvements, gradual progress, dialogue, and negotiations that acknowledge the legitimacy of the other side. They assert that confrontation is ‘counter productive’. There is an army of academics, managers, and professionals, who will argue this point quite strenuously. They are the service intellectuals.

Their job is to block any model that would involve people of the disadvantaged side actually demanding change in the structure that keeps them at the bottom. Instead, they promote a dialogue model in which the disadvantaged side enters into loaded and unwinable negotiations with players that hold all the cards. These negotiations ensure that institutional structures of inequity are reinforced rather than progressively dismantled. [...]"

In retrospect, the term is exactly a race-neutral version of the "house negro" term defined for modern use by Malcolm X. [2]

Both these terms, "service intellectual" and "house negro", are precise, needed, and powerful. And it is important to preserve their meanings without allowing dilution or imprecision or re-casting.

Therefore, I want to stress the difference between a "service intellectual" and what I will call a "service manager"; or between a "house negro" and what one could call a "manager negro".

Many critics will be outraged at my alleged disrespect as a white man to be defining terms such as "house negro" and "manager negro" and would have me chastised, fired, sued, or jailed. To you I say four things:

1. Good sense is where you find it.
2. Would you prefer that a service intellectual--of any colour--define the terms?
3. Most whites when they talk about race say shit but a white can be right on race.
4. Suppression of freedom of expression is harmful.
   

Unlike a "service intellectual" ("house negro"), a "service manager" ("manager negro") is not primarily concerned with image and mental environment maintenance but instead has the primary assigned task of managing some sector or enterprise for the hierarchical bosses.

In a "race conscious" racialized hierarchy of dominance it is useful for white masters to employ black managers. But it is more than useful in terms only of "race relations" it is also simple recruitment from the appropriate class base and it can be strategic in terms of the sector or enterprise to be managed.

Given these distinctions, I would say that figures such as US president Obama are more "manager negroes" than they are "house negroes"; just as the modern white presidents were mostly manager whiteys rather than service intellectuals (no argument there!). To call Obama a "house negro" is to dilute and weaken the term. He is primarily a manager.

I suggest we preserve the meaning intended by Malcolm X, following his years of study in a unique prison library and years of battle in the public arena [2]:

Since slavery, the American white man has always kept some handpicked Negroes who fared much better than the black masses suffering and slaving out in the hot fields. The white man had these "house" and "yard" Negroes for his special servants. He threw them more crumbs from his rich table, he even let them eat in his kitchen. He knew that he could always count on them to keep "good massa" happy in his self-image of being so "good" and "righteous." "Good massa" always heard just what he wanted to hear from these "house" and "yard" blacks. "You're such a good, fine massa!" Or, "Oh, massa, those old black nigger fieldhands out there, they're happy just like they are; why, massa, they're not intelligent enough for you to try and do any better for them, massa -- "

Well, slavery time's "house" and "yard" Negroes had become more sophisticated, that was all. When now the white man picked up his telephone and dialed his "house" and "yard" Negroes -- why, he didn't even need to instruct the trained black puppets. They had seen the television program; had read the newspapers. They were already composing their lines. They knew what to do.

I'm not going to call any names. But if you make a list of the biggest Negro "leaders," so-called, in 1960, then you've named the ones who began to attack us "field" Negroes who were sounding insane, talking that way about "good massa."

"By no means do these Muslims represent the Negro masses --" That was the first worry, to reassure "good massa" that he had no reason to be concerned about his fieldhands in the ghettoes. "An irresponsible hate cult" . . . "an unfortunate Negro image, just when the racial picture is improving -- "

and avoid most of the newer "hogwash" meanings proposed by the ever growing army of service intellectuals and manager academics. [3][4]


Endnotes

[1] "Gradual change is not progress" by Denis G. Rancourt, Global Research, May 3, 2006.

[2] "The autobiography of Malcolm X" told by Alex Haley, Random House, 1964; Chapter 14.

[3] "Critical race theory, in the service of whitey" by Denis G. Rancourt, Activist Teacher blog, 2011.

[4] "'Anti-racism' in support of racism" by Denis G. Rancourt, Activist Teacher blog, 2011.

Other essays by Denis G. Rancourt

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science (including physics and environmental science) which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals and several social commentary essays. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009. His dismissal case is in court hearings that will extend into 2012. He is presently being sued in a $1 million defamation action entirely funded by the University of Ottawa, over a use of the term "house negro".

Students: Plan your escape from academia before you enter it

The undergraduate degree is a brutal endurance test for obedience. It is an imposed gateway into graduate or professional school where you hope things will be somewhat more sane.

Actually, graduate or professional school will rob you of you. Powerful structural forces will draw you into the profession where you will be pushed to brainwash yourself into accepting an ideology of service to the established order, at the expense of your moral values.[1]

Most of your colleagues will accept this personal transformation and its associated benefits of high social status and financial rewards. They will believe the mythology of the profession because this mythology facilitates preserving a positive self-image in spite of the reality of the oppressive system that they are being groomed to serve and maintain.

They will also increase their class bias (class-ism) in order to cope with the class oppression that they are trained to support. And they will begin to practice ancillary donations of their time (vanity volunteerism) aimed at medicating lower class "suffering", "public ignorance", "poverty", and so on -- by serving on various committees, boards, and with public lectures and conference papers about social problems. All part of the needed guilt alleviation and maintenance of positive self-image.

They will learn to accentuate extreme aversion to in-class injustices (age, gender, race, sexual-orientation, and so on) while doing nothing to address the gross inter-class inequities that dominate the social landscape. The greater the aversion, the better one can avoid the obvious.

They will "think globally and act locally": Perceive sanitized planetary-scale threats and act within their class to address these perceived threats via their every day lifestyle and consumer choices and via weekend political "agency". Or form some other self-supported social network of validation.

If you foresee that you will have significant difficulty with the imposed personal transition required in graduate and professional training, then you can plan your escape before you enter.

Expect to be shocked by the requirements of the profession, by the definition of "professionalism". Recognize that you are being subjected to a cleansing. Know that it is wrong and that you are right. Find friends who, like you, want to survive with their personalities and values intact, rather than "adapt".

Plan to weather the storm without buying into the lies. Cynicism is only a face-saving way to buy into the lie. It won't save you. You need to actively push the limits of your resistance every step of the process in order to discover yourself and preserve yourself. This will also expose the true nature of the beast that wants to eat you.

You won't make friends with the bosses and you won't be rewarded with high grades and praise but you will learn more and be more authentic. You will prepare yourself for a real life in the real world, not a class-secluded life in a superficial world. You will be more able to love yourself and to love others. It's not called "the good fight" for nothing.

You'll get true feedback from your environment. If they are not coming after you then you are faking it.

You can figure out how to graduate while pushing back. That is the challenge; that will preserve you rather than destroy you.

Or, just kiss ass and you will "succeed".


Endnotes

[1] "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt.

Other essays by Denis G. Rancourt

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science (including physics and environmental science) which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals and several social commentary essays. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009. His dismissal case is in court hearings that will extend into 2012.

Reflections of a self-represented litigant as an old man

At my advanced age of 54 I find myself being sued for $1 million for a blog post on a blog (not this blog, another blog) critical of the University of Ottawa. All the blog posts (on the other blog) in the matter are HERE-link. The lawsuit against me is entirely funded by the University of Ottawa -- a public university in Canada's capital -- and the funding was directly approved by university president Allan Rock, who is amply criticized on the (other) blog in question (e.g., LINK).

I would characterize the legal action against me as aggressive, with a heavy use of procedural motions before the court and a less-than-cooperative lead opposing counsel, arguably one of Canada's leading defamation lawyers. It's been called a SLAPP.

I am self-represented and I have never done this before. To say that it is a learning experience is a vast understatement. At "mandatory mediation" I was alone facing five opposing lawyers, including the Plaintiff-on-record who is a law professor at the University of Ottawa. I was not allowed to bring an adviser or an accompanying person.

To date nine motions have been filed and I have appeared before the court six times. I have been cross-examined twice out-of-court on my affidavit evidence for motions. I'm starting to truly understand what Foucault was talking about in his analyses of state institutions. I don't think I could have learned this any other way.

So let me summarize some first observations -- preliminary conclusions, if you like.

(1) The court is balanced in terms of applying the law when the opposing litigants are both of high societal status and of equal societal status; like two corporations, or two billionaires, etc. Otherwise, the asymmetry in status is mapped into an asymmetry of treatment.

(2) The entire court hearing (on a motion or at trial) is a contest of impressions. The judge does not read and only asks to be impressed by the slogans and spin of the parties that resonate with his/her self-image. The competing shots to impress are received or deflected in a self-organized phase transition from initial position to coalesced final opinion. This is followed by a technical step of providing "reasons" for the final opinion.

(3) There is some measure of care with parties who have the means to appeal decisions. Otherwise, it's all purely an exercise of the establishment preserving the established order. It's a class war in most cases, and this is overt in family court with state intervention agencies or with corporate landlord v. tenant disputes.

(4) The lofty principles expounded in Supreme Court decisions are barely perceivable in the every day judicial decisions of establishment maintenance; and are often contradicted without a second thought. The court archives are stuffed with hand-written "endorsements" on the backsheets of motions that are at odds with "established" norms of justice and with any semblance of logic -- pure oozings of coalesced opinion.

(5) The rules of procedure are rationalized in terms of honorable motives but actually provide structural support for establishment maintenance. For example, mandatory mediation is said to provide a desirable mechanism for resolution by mutual consent. Yet it is overtly used as an instrument of intimidation by dominant parties with the full consent of the court.

(6) The rules are only a trap for self-represented litigants because only the lawyers and judges know which rules must be followed and which can be ignored and which rules are superseded by unwritten practice. And the first rule is that the judge can make up the rules "to provide a fair administration of justice".

There is no solution. Only navigation with a changing destination. They are as bad as we let them be.