Media, Colonial-Mindedness, And The Culture Of Canada (Part Three: Higher Educat

“Because the jobs are prestigious and well-paid,” you say, “is no reason why presidents should be colonial-minded.” That would be a suitable remark in France or Italy or Germany or South Africa, or any number of other countries. Not in Canada. Before a person can be a university or college president in Canada he or she has to be closely examined and carefully screened and cleared. He or she must be interviewed by the Board of Governors or a committee of it. And who are the members of the Boards of Governors of universities and colleges? They are people who are absolutely acceptable to the corporate class. Their job is to see that no candidate gets through who might make a fool of himself or herself on “national” issues – on any issues concerning, say, the management, control, and ownership of Canadian wealth. And no candidate gets through who might insist Canadian universities and colleges should develop and hire Canadians, richly develop Canadian materials, and show leadership in urging young Canadians to know and study their own country. To do those positive things is highly dangerous. Young Canadians might begin to see the extent to which the U.S. has ownership and control of the Canadian economy. The students might not like what they see. They might begin to make trouble. Who needs trouble? I am not writing out of fantasy, but from experience. In the 1960s, when established universities were expanding and new universities and colleges were being founded, the word in corporate Canada was that Canadians were bad managers. That was not so, but it was repeated constantly as part of the propaganda for U.S. takeover of the economy. The same falsehoods were being spread in the university system, and Canadian universities began to believe only presidents from the U.S.A. could be efficient. The hiring of U.S. presidents began – in the West. Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Lethbridge began what would have become a flood but for the events that intervened. One of the events was an investigation by students of the University of Victoria into the qualifications of David Partridge, the then recently appointed president (from the U.S.) after a wide search by a 17-person elite committee of the university. The students discovered the U.S. appointee had two fake degrees purchased from a two-room, degree-granting “institution” in Chicago. They drove him, by means of hilarious, full-page advertisements in their paper, from the job. A highly placed University of Victoria officer told me that the price paid by B.C. taxpayers to remove Partridge was astounding. Patridge then applied to the U.B.C. Law School, was admitted(!), graduated, and went to work as a lawyer in Victoria. The fight for Canadian presidents was one part of the battle. There were two other parts: (1) the fight to end discrimination against excellent Canadians at all levels, and (2) the fight to get Canadian materials taught fairly in universities, colleges, and – ultimately – schools. U.S. immigrants were teaching U.S. sociology, U.S. literature, U.S. politics and government, U.S. philosophy, etc., as primary learning for Canadian students. “Foreign” professors (U.S., British, and other) were cornering the university job market for their own, and they were doing it very effectively. Canadians were being actively discriminated against, kept out of their own institutions. In 1970, for instance, about 1500 new appointments were made to Canadian universities. More than 1000 of them were of foreign, of mostly U.S. origin, then British, then other. Most of the appointments were made without any advertising of the positions in Canada. But by that year the fight had become nationally known and the book, The Struggle for Canadian Universities, had been published. What, then, was the role of most university presidents? They did everything they could to obstruct, to hamper, and to delay reform. They worked to prevent federal action to demand fair treatment for Canadians. They issued statements about “self-regulation” that were meaningless. By the same token, the national university professors association did the same, and it even wrote “guidelines” for hiring Canadians. At that time the national association was largely in the hands of foreigners pursuing their own ends. The toothless, largely useless “guidelines” document was written by a U.S. citizen. The university presidents did everything they could to obstruct, hamper, and delay the implementation of Canadian courses and the building of Canadian resource materials. Though they couldn’t block some improvement, they were effective in keeping (to this day) “Canadian learning” as a second-class activity in Canadian universities and colleges. In the years from about 1968 to 1976 James A. Steele and I lectured on the issues hundreds of times, all over Canada, visiting most universities more than once as well as many colleges and other public places. We were never – and I was only once – asked by a university president (and/or top administration) to discuss the issue. The only time I addressed the National Council of the Canadian Association of University Teachers I had to picket the Park Plaza Hotel in Toronto (where the meeting was being held) to gain admission. Once again, a U.S. citizen was “door keeper” and he had denied me – over a three-month period - the right to speak to my own organization. When I spoke, the majority of the delegates there from Canadian universities were foreign, mostly from the U.S., and they treated my submission on the rights of Canadians with open contempt. The struggle went on for years. One Employment and Immigration minister after another was appealed to without any action resulting, until Lloyd Axworthy became minister. Then a two-tier system of hiring was put in place. Since there are about 600 million English speakers and 100 million French speakers to produce applicants for university and college positions in Canada – a country of 30 million people – something had to be done. The two-tier system, which was in place from the late 1970s until a few years ago, required that all Canadian applications be reviewed before foreign applications. Where a qualified Canadian of excellence was found, he or she had to be hired. When not, the foreign applications could be opened. The system worked well – though of course it was sometimes violated. Canadians began to be restored in Canadian universities and colleges in a reasonable proportion. From the first day of the two-tier system, however, university and college presidents – through their organization, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada - worked to destroy the system that was working well, fairly, and productively. Every few years they would try to break the system. Every few years a story would appear in the papers that they believed the system had served its purpose and could now be destroyed. Always, U.S. and corporate interests were supportive of attempts to break the system that provided equity to Canadians. About four or five years ago, with almost no public announcement, the two-tier system was abolished. What is the result? Foreign faculty (this is admitted by spokespeople at the University of Toronto) - especially from the U.S. – are flooding into Canadian universities, taking administrative positions, and re-possessing Canadian higher education. Two years ago at U.B.C. (Canada’s second largest university) a senior associate dean approached me. He told me U.S. faculty and administrators were being flooded into Canadian universities. He almost whispered the information to me, as if it were something he had to be secret about but something I might be able to act upon. But he, a Canadian, highly placed at U.B.C., would do nothing. Obviously. The struggle for Canadian universities, as it was called, gave Canadians a quarter-century of the two-tier system, during which time Canadians of excellence have taken their places in Canadian universities and colleges. Since the two-tier system was quietly erased not a single one of those Canadians – who might very well never have gained a position in a Canadian university or college but for the two-tier system – NOT ONE OF THEM has taken a public position demanding the restoration of the system. Part two of this series reported that a grade ten teacher at a preferred high school in Ottawa neglected the Ontario Ministry’s academic curriculum outline in order to ignore work by Canadian writers. I wrote that the teacher is victimizing the students but is also a victim. This column goes a little way to show why I call him or her a victim as well as a victimizer. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on March 7, 2005]