Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy want an R2P war in Syria

Commentary on -- Looking back at Kosovo can move the Syria conflict forward, By Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, Special to The Globe and Mail, Aug. 26 2013

Allan Rock has the pet project, among other such pet projects, to use his position as president of the University of Ottawa, to promote the "doctrine" of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a preferred pretext for geopolitical wars.

His latest enthusiastic call, with Lloyd Axworthy, for an illegal war in Syria is sickening. Is the Globe and Mail looking to be part of a Liberal Machine come back?

You have to read this stuff to believe it:

What strengthens the hand of the President ["the President", not "the US President"?] and others who must plan these steps is that in 2005, subsequent to the Kosovo intervention, UN member states unanimously adopted the principle of Responsibility to Protect or “R2P”, establishing the basis for international action to prevent or stop the wholesale murder of innocent people by their governments. The principle that holds that military action, as a last resort, is justified to protect civilian populations from mass murder, provided that the force used is proportionate to the threat, likely to succeed and unlikely to cause more harm than good. R2P has been reaffirmed more than once since 2005 by the General Assembly and continues to enjoy wide-spread support. It was the basis for the successful UN/NATO intervention in Libya. ["successful"? As in all-out war and total destruction of an advanced society?]

R2P can and should be used as the basis for action in Syria. Although the 2005 agreement contemplated a Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention, member states surely did not intend that urgent humanitarian responses would be hostage to vetoes unreasonably exercised out of self-interest by one or more of the permanent five Council members. The very purpose of R2P is that we should all protect innocent lives without reference to purely national interests or crass political gamesmanship. [Wow. Mr. Rock is giving us a lesson on "crass political gamesmanship", and using the allegation to circumvent UN checks on war. It's just amazing.]

Just this summer, a blue ribbon group of Americans co-chaired by Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, and Richard Williamson, former Sudan envoy under President George W. Bush, urged the inclusion of R2P as a key element in American foreign policy. Their bipartisan recommendation, based on rigorous analysis [of the kind displayed in this article?], answers those who advocate inaction because mass atrocities abroad “do not engage America’s national interests”. Albright’s proposal, like R2P itself, puts our response ["our" response? US = Canada?] to mass suffering and killing on a higher plane than conventional power politics.

I'm all for putting "mass suffering and killing on a higher plane than conventional power politics", but, forgive me for saying so, I just don't think that trillion-dollar war machines controlled by "power politics", freed from the nuisance of UN constraints, are instruments that can help achieve this "higher plane".

I'm also having some trouble taking Mr. Axworthy and Mr. Rock seriously here. I mean their logic is impeccable as always, but maybe some university-funded independent research on the "cause more harm than good" idea in actual war zones would be in order? After all, there are enough field areas to study. 

The final words in the article are about "our" war against Syria:

President Obama is right in looking to Kosovo as a model in Syria. It's now up to friends, allies, and all those who seek a world of justice to urge him on, and to offer their support.

When the students wanted to get faculty approval for an activism course at the University of Ottawa, they proposed the course code "SCI 1984". The course code was not allowed, and the course was only allowed to be given a single time in 2006, but it now seems the proposed course code was foreshadowing the immediate future of the institution, as it was about to embark in the Allan Rock experiment.

The Globe and Mail published some critical responses to the Axworthy-Rock piece, such as (LINK):

Here we go again. An atrocity is rashly and prematurely blamed on a sovereign government, forming the pretext for a “humanitarian” intervention, violating international law, so the West can illegally and one-sidedly intervene in a civil war to replace the “rogue” government with a more “Western-friendly” one. Do Western leaders honestly think we are this naive?

Michael Pravica, Henderson, Nev.

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Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock only remember Responsiblity to Protect when it seems likely to contribute to regime change desired by the Western powers, and when UN-supported intervention is unlikely (Intervene In Syria? Look To The Kosovo Model – Aug. 27). To the credit of our own government, Canada has not supplied arms to either side. The goal should be a negotiated peace, not exacerbation of the bloodletting.

Edwin Daniel, Victoria

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The use of R2P requires UN Security Council agreement before military intervention can be authorized. Mr. Axworthy and Mr. Rock dismiss this requirement by suggesting that UN member states “did not intend” that urgent humanitarian responses be held hostage to vetoes by a member of the Security Council. But, of course, this is precisely what the UN’s founders did want, otherwise there would not have been a UN.

They go on to argue that the bombing of Serbia in 1999 is the model to be followed for resolving the Syrian dilemma. Yet NATO’s unilateral intervention in Serbia was done in clear violation of the UN Charter and a violation of international law. It is now clear that intervention had little to do with humanitarian concerns and everything to do with giving NATO a reason to exist.

James Bissett, Ottawa, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia

A New Perspective on the Activism Course

by Philippe Marchand
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To understand what some student journalists are now calling "the Rancourt saga", we need to remember where the whole debate started: the creation of the controversial "Science, activism and society" course (SCI1101) in 2006. The course was given once in Fall 2006, with prof. Denis Rancourt as a facilitator and coordinator. It was an elective course graded S/NS (satisfactory/non-satisfactory), not counting towards the specific requirements of any university program or towards the students' grade point average. Over 100 students were registered and some guest lectures attracted more than 400 participants.
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Having attended the various 2006 committee meetings dealing with the approval of SCI1101/1501, I have witnessed many objections to both the proposed content and pedagogy of the class. Many professors opposed the idea that students could decide the content of the class. Others pointed out that an "A+" student might be disadvantaged by an "S" grade on his/her report. Some used a slippery slope argument: "What would happen if all classes were like this?" On June 11, 2007, the University of Ottawa Senate ruled that only the Senate - rather than a professor, department or Faculty - could allow a class to be graded S/NS.
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I am now a first-year doctoral student at the University of California - Berkeley. As I learned more about my new campus, I found a completely different approach, on the issues discussed above, than the one prevailing at the University of Ottawa.
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In the early 1980s, Berkeley introduced the DeCal system ("De" stands for Democratic Education). DeCal courses are facilitated by undergraduate and graduate students. They allow students to go outside the bounds of traditional courses and offer more "practical" or "current" content. Of a total undergraduate population of 25 000, over 4000 students are enrolled in around 150 DeCal classes every semester. Current DeCals include: "Batman as American Mythology", "The Life and Legacy of Tupac Amaru Shakur", "Student Power: Organizing and Activism", and a journalism class offered by editors of the student newspaper.
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Any student can start a DeCal course. All they need is a professor to sponsor the course and the authorization of this professor's department. DeCal courses are worth 1 to 3 credits and undergraduate students are allowed to take up to 16 credits of DeCal as part of their electives. All the DeCal courses are graded pass / not pass (P/NP), which is exactly equivalent to S/NS at U of O. At Berkeley, undergraduate students have the option to take up to one-third of their total units as P/NP grades.
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After decades under that system, the catastrophe imagined by some University of Ottawa administrators did not happen. Berkeley has maintained a high reputation among public universities in North America and internationally. I am not arguing that any university should copy the DeCal model, but rather this shows that there is no contradiction between providing high quality education and giving flexibility for students to take a more active role in their education and go outside the traditional classroom box.
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Philippe Marchand

U of O alumni in Physics

Graduate student in Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley
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Editor’s note: In particular, Professor Tito Scaiano (Chemistry), in a letter to The Ottawa Citizen, mused that society would fall apart if we allowed the S/NS grading system. By contrast, labour law Arbitrator Michel G. Picher ruled that the choice of the S/NS grading system was within the purview of a professor’s academic freedom. The new U of O Senate rule on S/NS was passed in secret (under the pretext of clarifying an old text) while a policy grievance on the matter was being arbitrated. The professor’s union complained in writing about the underhanded passing of the new rule.
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[URL links were inserted by UofOWatch.]

[Photo credit: Pawel Dwulit; April 18, 2006, Faculty Council scenes and President’s closed door reception aftermath.]

VP-Academic Robert Major explains gender equity and representative democracy

In a recent issue of the student newspaper The Fulcrum U of O VP-Academic Robert Major explained gender hiring equity at the U of O: “But is it that appealing for women to be working 24 hours, seven days a week as the president does? These jobs are time-consuming. Women have family issues and many personal responsibilities.”

So we learn that President Patry has a 168 hour work week. This may explain the President’s recent written decision to refuse sign-language interpretation services to hearing-impaired hopeful participants of the Ottawa Cinema Politica, a film and discussion series offered by the University as a service to the community?

In the same week, VP Major explained one of the finer points of university democracy to graduate student Severin Stojanovic.

Stojanovic was first told in writing by the Secretary of the University Pamela Harrod that neither the University Senate nor its Board of Governors had jurisdiction to intervene when a dean repeatedly violates his faculty’s By-Laws in running (chairing) the Faculty Council. Stojanovic therefore asked the Faculty of Science Dean’s direct supervisor, Mr. Major, to intervene.

Major replied by explaining in writing that it was OK for the dean to violate faculty By-Laws as long as Faculty Council members approved by voting down any complaints about such violations. He added that this was obvious; that the student’s request was “frivolous and vexatious,” with the entire Council in cc.

Dean of Science André Lalonde has repeatedly applied an ad hoc veto of Council member Stojanovic’s agenda item proposing that the possible creation of a second year activism course be discussed. A third attempt to hold a Faculty Council meeting without the Stojanovic agenda item is scheduled for Tuesday November 6th.

A student on-line petition calls for the forced resignations of Lalonde, Major, and Patry for their roles in barring the first year activism course.

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[Photo credit: University of Ottawa]

Lying and falsifying documents – All in a day’s work for U of O’s VP-Resources

You do what you have to do when it comes to suppressing the political freedoms of students.

Two physics graduate students at the University of Ottawa recently made the mistake of expressing their views regarding the pedagogical value of an activism course in the Faculty of Science.

Severin Stojanovic argued as a Faculty Council member that the possible creation of a second-year level activism course (SCI 2101) should be discussed at Council whereas Jean-Paul Prévost, having attended the first-year course (SCI 1101), explained the value of these courses to staff and student colleagues.

That was too much for several science professors who blasted the students. A certain professor Vladimir Pestov went so far as to ask the physics graduate chairman (now department chair Bela Joos) to bar the students from using faculty email lists and to consider ways that a case could be mounted to expel Prévost from the PhD program.

Joos faithfully forwarded these over-the-top complaints from Pestov to the dean of the Faculty of Science (André Lalonde) “for his information” without notifying the students. The dean’s office then forwarded these emails to VP-Resources Victor Simon, without written explanation and, again, without consulting or informing the students.

Simon, in turn, came down hard. He informed each student that he had received several complaints (in the plural) about their uses of university computer resources. He stated that their actions were in violation of the User Code of Conduct for Computer Resources, implying that they had been spamming the academy. He informed them both (individually) that if he received a single other complaint he would automatically cut them off from all computer resources.

The students individually responded by asking to see the complaints that justified such a severe reaction from a VP, no less. One of the students also independently filed a Freedom of Information request to obtain the complaints.

Simon proceeded to play a game of cat and mouse, showing only one partial complaint to each student and, eventually, after the Freedom of Information documents were obtained, reluctantly forked over everything he had.

In the final analysis, VP Simon had lied to both students about the number of complaints: There was only one document per student and none was a complaint made to his office. And he had falsified one of the interim documents, removing the Pestov attempt at collusion with Joos (to expel Prévost), presumably because Pestov’s words both incriminated two professors and made the student “violations” look insignificant in comparison…

All in a days work. Can’t have the societal implications of science discussed in the Faculty of Science: That would be subversive and counter productive.

The dedication of self-appointed university executives, willing to take the risks necessary to preserve “academic integrity”, is sometimes the strongest testament to the vitality of our public institutions of higher learning.

Epilogue: There is no policy at the University of Ottawa that protects students from intimidation by deans or executive officers – It is assumed not to occur. Meanwhile, the official complaints against the many professors who took it onto themselves to harass and intimidate the students for their communications are being deflected and resisted by both the dean of science and the dean of graduate studies (Gary Slater), while President Gilles Patry watches on.

RELATED LINKS
Documents posted by student JP Prevost (in PDF, takes a few minutes to download)
Documents posted by student Severin Stojanovic (takes a few minutes to download)

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[Photo credit: University of Ottawa]

It’s called transparency…

The dean of the Faculty of Science, University of Ottawa, Dr. André Lalonde, called Professor Denis Rancourt, to a forced June 20th disciplinary meeting, under the threat of dismissal.

The professor was convened under the Star Chamber paragraph (39.4.2.1) of the Collective Agreement. This type of meeting is on-the-record; a professor is bound to answer all questions, and the answers can be used against her.

Normally, this emergency mechanism is used only for grave acts or omissions such as related to sexual harassment. In this case, the professor is suspected of intending to offer a course, on his own time, that hundreds of students want but that the administration has removed from the professor’s workload.

The charge, therefore, is insubordination.

The meeting was cancelled by the dean before its official start, after 45 minutes of intense negotiation, because Professor Rancourt would not sign away his right to tape record the meeting. The meeting has the full force of labour law where all on-the-record proceedings are public.

Bad habits are hard to break: Dean Lalonde has also recently cancelled a public Faculty Council meeting, after two minutes of proceedings, because community members would not stop “harassing” the tenured and publicly-funded council members by taping the proceedings. Three community members present have since been served with trespass notices informing them that they will be prosecuted if found on university property in the future.

To be continued…

Allergic reaction to activism in the Faculty of Science, University of Ottawa

“A vital lesson of the last century is that it is dangerous for scientists to focus exclusively on their technical work and leave it to others to decide the associated moral and political issues.” (Jeff Schmidt, author of Disciplined Minds.) Science professors at the University of Ottawa have not learned this lesson.

Although a first-year-level Science in Society course was created in 2006 (after an 11-month and 16-committee meeting battle) it has now been removed from the professor who developed it, under the pretence that “it did not follow the curriculum.”

Those involved in the battle to save the course know that the real reason is that the course was critical of both the role of corporate science in society and the role of the corporate university in sustaining the present technology-based economy of global exploitation. Those involved know that the real reason is that proposed solutions included activism and resistance rather than servitude and compliance.

In the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa one cannot teach independent thinking or the virtues of opposing power. That science serves power is the only allowed lesson.

This unwritten law of corporate science education is being most clearly illustrated in the present battle to create a second-year-level Science, Activism, and Society course, supported by a petition of 300 students and community members (1% of the student population).

After the Undergraduate Program Committee (Science) trashed the course without offering any rational explanations or any feedback to the professor proposing the new course, beyond asking him to retract his request, a student Faculty Council member tried to advance it as an agenda item for Faculty Council (Science).

The dean of the faculty promptly vetoed the agenda item, thereby breaking the Faculty’s own By-Laws. When the student member objected, citing the By-Laws, he was intimidated and rebuked, giving rise to official complaints of unethical behaviour against fourteen professors to date.

Another student was intimidated and directly threatened when he met one-on-one with the Secretary of the Faculty (Science) who had offered to clarify the dean’s procedural “justification” for the veto.

Yet another student suffered a similar fate when he wrote a public letter of support for the Science in Society project. Records appear to show that two professors conspired to attempt to have this student removed from the PhD program for his crime.

To date, two Faculty Council meetings have been closed down by a dean who refuses to hear student and community member concerns. On April 5th the Council room was cleared using security guards after only 20 minutes of deliberation. On May 22nd the dean shut down the Council meeting after only two minutes because observers refused to stop videotaping the public proceedings. Both events were reported in the Ottawa Sun newspaper.

Student Faculty Council member, Severin Stojanovic, is filling a judicial review of the broken rules next week, given that the VP-Academic and the President have officially sided with the dean’s illegal veto. Notably, the illegal agenda was also “democratically” approved by eager-to-serve Faculty Council members (35 for, 1 against) at the April 5th meeting.

That’s a lot of resistance for a simple agenda item that would have opened the floor to “discussing the possibility of a second-year-level Science, Activism, and Society course…”

Science professors at the University of Ottawa have not learned the lesson and appear not to have studied history, but they continue to be treated to an excellent example of science, activism, and society. There is hope.

Responsible Intervention versus Executive Incompetence in the Faculty of Science

Fifty-two of the 150 or so professors in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa have taken things into their own hands and signed a letter to the dean signalling alleged abuses of professional behaviour perpetrated by professor of physics Denis Rancourt, such as:

-“harassing his colleagues with unsolicited open letters,”
-“undermining [the] climate of freedom, responsibility and mutual respect […] of the university […] for nearly two years,”
-“being counterproductive ‘in promoting and enhancing the University’,”
-“hindering and impeding the proper democratic functioning of the Faculty,”
-“constantly distorting the facts when he presents them,”
-“knowingly turning [assigned courses] into courses which do not accomplish their initially intended functions,” and
-“[showing] no regard for the academic freedom of others, as he deliberately defies the measures adopted democratically by his peers.”

The original letter of complaint is posted HERE. (It’s worth the read.)

The Dean of the Faculty of Science, André Lalonde, promptly initiated a formal disciplinary investigation, since he is bound by duty to do so when presented with such compelling evidence of wrong doing.

Obvious questions arise.

Why did the dean not notice these grave breaches in professional behaviour, occurring during two years, until one third of the professorial staff needed to risk speaking out and spell them out in writing? What of the harm done to students in that period?

What about the other two thirds? Were they not harassed by the open letters? Have they not been reading the CANWEST editorials? Are they being so irresponsible as to not take action to preserve the ‘academic integrity’ of their Faculty?

Why did these 52 colleagues of Rancourt write this letter anonymously and under the cover of a formal complaint? Is tenure not enough protection to express one’s criticisms directly? Should additional safeguards be developed?

The dean feels compelled to preserve the identities of the 52 professors making their legitimate effort to improve the functioning of the university. How can the community celebrate the contributions of these brave professors to protecting student welfare if these professors are not identified?

U of O Watch will report the evolution of this dossier, using advanced investigative techniques, and will continue to attempt to answer these questions…

End note: The students who suffered Prof. Rancourt’s “courses which do not accomplish their initially intended functions” had THIS TO SAY, AND THIS, AND THIS, AND THIS.

U of O Removes Activism Course – Prof Files $10M Grievance

Physics professor Denis Rancourt filed a $10 million grievance on May 18th against the University of Ottawa for alleged violation of academic freedom, executive interference, sustained harassment, slander, and misfeasance, by the President, Mr. Gilles Patry, the VP-Academic, Mr. Robert Major, and the Dean of Science. The first-step required mediation attempt is to be scheduled before the end of next week.

This followed workload attributions where Prof. Rancourt was removed from all three first-year courses that he developed, including the controversial SCI 1101 Science in Society activism course, and from the popular Cinema Politica series that he organizes, and given only final-year and graduate physics courses.

The full text of the grievance is posted HERE.

Student and community member supporters have formed the Freedom of Expression Committee (FEC) to rectify the situation. The FEC campaigns are described on THIS web site.

The FEC is calling for the resignation of Patry, Major, and dean André Lalonde and has initiated an aggressive petition campaign. The petition can be reviewed and signed electronically HERE.

Age Discrimination at U of O – Human Rights Complaint Served

Ten year old twins Douglas and Sebastian Foster were expelled from a course at the University of Ottawa, half way into the fall 2006 term, after being admitted as special students, paying fees, receiving their student cards, and having demonstrated their ability to succeed in the course.

They filed separate human rights complaints that were served to the University of Ottawa last week by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

The original November 2006 filing was front page news in Ottawa and attracted international media attention; being covered by several daily papers in Europe, Africa, Australia, and North America.

A support group of fellow students was formed and many details, including the original human rights claim statement, are posted on this site.

They continued fully participating in the SCI 1101 Science and Society course to the end, wrote the final exam, and the professor has reported that they have passed the course.

Students sue U of O for not providing TAs

During the 11-month and 16-committee battle between students and the university to have the first activism course approved for September 2006, the university promissed that a workgroup pedagogical method could be used and that teacher assistants (TAs) would consequently be provided. Instead, a formula of one TA per 50 students was used, corresponding to grading assignments rather than leading workgroups.

After the students exhausted all other means, five students sued the university to recover part of their tuition costs because TAs would not be provided. The action is supported by the more than 300,000 Ontario student member Canadian Federation of Students.

This was extensively covered in the local media and the ongoing campaign is described on this site. The first Ontario Superior Court of Justice-imposed settlement conferences are being held this week.