Sophistry 101 -- Allan Rock on what is not an "academic program"

When lawyers run the world... It's not every day that the president of "Canada's university" overtly manufactures a novel mental construct to circumvent the statute (law) that defines the mission and governance structure of the institution.

There you have it, as reported by Student's-Eye View:

Video of Allan Rock Interview with La Rotonde

November 17, 2014

by Student's-Eye View

 

La Rotonde has posted a video (in french) of its recent interview with University of Ottawa President Allan Rock.

At 1:40 in the video, Allan Rock is asked why the university’s new Security and Policy Institute (SPI) program was not approved by the university Senate or Board of Governors.

An English translation of this segment of the video (beginning at 1:40 and ending at 3:34) is as follows (free translation):

LR: Our next question is about the Security and Policy Institute.
Rock: Yes.
LR: So, since the Board of Governors and the Senate were not consulted, we would like to know who approved the program and why there were no consultations?
Rock: Yes. Generally, when we launch a new program, whether it’s in Science, or the Faculty of Arts, or somewhere, we have a consultation and then we also have an analysis and discussions at the level of the Senate and its committees. In this case, we are talking about a program that is non-academic, in the sense that it’s not credited, it’s a program which is offered to people who are implicated in the domain, so that they can perfect their skills, in the professional sense. So, given that it’s not an academic program, we don’t need approval from the Senate and we did not initiate a consultation like we would do with an academic program. The Continuing Education Centre exists in order to give people who are already in the job market a means of improving and perfecting their professional skills — we hire people mostly from outside the university as teachers — so it’s not an academic program as such. We use the framework of the university to offer professional programs, and we also hope to generate additional revenue for the university.

Video by La Rotonde: