Grievance Victories Tabulated: From dean Christian Detellier’s “class attack” to chemistry-chair Alain St-Amant’s enthusiasm for exposing the “truth”…

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The web site rancourt.academicfreedom.ca about the Denis Rancourt case at the University of Ottawa has recently published a chronological summary of all twenty five (25) labour law grievances filed by Rancourt against the University and their outcomes to date >>> HERE.

The grievance and settlement process is exceedingly slow. However, outcomes for some grievances from 2005 and 2006 and one grievance from 2007 have now been determined.

All the grievances assumed by Rancourt’s union have lead to arbitration rulings or settlements or outcomes in favour of Rancourt: Six (6) straight victories >>> see HERE.

• Dean Christian Detellier’s 2005 “class attack” against the first activism course (see December 2005 YouTube video HERE) resulted in a Memorandum of Settlement in which the University expressed regret for the Dean’s in-class outburst.
  

• In 2005 dean Christian Detellier falsely alleged the existence of a student complaint about Rancourt’s CHUO 89.1 FM radio show (The Five O’Clock Train) and used this to pursue a contrived disciplinary attack against Rancourt. The University retracted all of its written allegations and its disciplinary venture.
  

• Dean Christian Detellier formally forbade Rancourt and all professors in the Faculty of Science from using the Satisfactory/Non-Satisfactory (S/NS) grading method in their courses. A Memorandum of Settlement resulted in which the dean’s instructions were withdrawn and the University de facto admitted that the Dean could not violate academic freedom in this way.

• In 2006, the University disciplined Rancourt for his 2005 activism course. The case went to labour law arbitration. The arbitrator sided with Rancourt and a professional and independent legal analysis of the arbitration Award was entitled “Teaching Science through Social Activism is Protected by Academic Freedom, Arbitrator Rules.” See also the UofOWatch report HERE.

• In 2006 the University constructed two more bogus disciplinary campaigns against Rancourt: One about a complaint from teacher assistants regarding a professional criticism made by Rancourt and the other involving unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism from the U of O Jewish Student Association against an invited speaker and professor in Rancourt’s 2005 activism course. By Memorandum of Settlement, the University was required to effectively remove and declare void all documents in its disciplinary campaigns.
  

The disciplinary campaigns had been formally condoned by both former VP-Academic Robert Major (now retired) and former VP-Research Howard Alper (currently the Chair of Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council).

• In 2006 Department of Chemistry Chairman Alain St-Amant participated in many unethical and unprofessional communications (news media, blogs, and emails) against Rancourt and those who supported the activism course. Rancourt’s grievance against St-Amant’s abuses pressured the new dean André E. Lalonde to intervene: He met St-Amant several times, instructed St-Amant to stop, and sent Rancourt a letter (2007.Nov.06) of assurance that St-Amant's behaviour had and would stop. This significantly curtailed St-Amant’s enthusiasm for “setting the record straight”.
  

Interestingly, in relation to the latter point, St-Amant made a complaint to dean Lalonde against Rancourt. Although the dean never initiated discipline against St-Amant for the chemistry chairman’s quite remarkable and extensive contributions to the “truth”, the dean did initiate a disciplinary process against Rancourt on the basis of St-Amant’s bogus (and incomprehensible) complaint against Rancourt.

During the latter disciplinary process, Rancourt insisted that the required investigatory meeting be recorded and asked to be told by the University in plain language what he was being accused of by the University. Rancourt asked the dean if the accusation was for “unethical behaviour” of the type for which the dean had been obliged to intervene regarding St-Amant. The University immediately dropped its discipline charge without ever clarifying what the discipline was about; despite Rancourt insisting that the disciplinary process foreseen by the rules should follow its course (to prove his innocence).

You can’t even be disciplined when you want to be!

[Photos, top to bottom: Christian Detellier, Alain St-Amant, Andre E. Lalonde, Robert Major, Howard Alper.]

U of O Apologises for Dean’s 2005 Outburst

In a classic case of a hierarchical institution’s suppression of an employee’s rights and freedoms, the University of Ottawa continues a campaign against Professor Denis Rancourt based on bogus disciplinary investigations and unfounded disciplinary charges.

To date this has included a dozen or so charges that have all been overturned, dropped, or grieved. Grievances typically take two years to be judged. Several of the early charges and their outcomes were reported HERE and HERE. The first grievance arbitration hearings were reported HERE. Some of the ancillary pettiness is described HERE.

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It is therefore important to report the cases as they are concluded. The present report gives the final outcome concerning a dean’s 2005 in-class intervention that was at least partly motivated by Israel-Lobby sentiment: LINK.

In September 2005, at the second class of term, Dr. Christian Detellier, dean of the Faculty of Science, University of Ottawa, barged into physics professor Denis Rancourt’s Physics and the Environment course to cancel the class and supposedly to save the students from a perceived threat of great harm from being exposed to activism and to a democratic pedagogical method.

There was strong student protest against the dean’s action (SEE LETTERS), which lead to the class immediately being reinstated, as reported in the media: HERE and HERE.

Rancourt formally grieved the dean’s in-class intervention on October 12, 2005, thereby requesting an apology addressed to him and to all the students who were subjected to the disruption and an assurance that the university would take steps to avoid such outbursts by its executives in the future.

The grievance was followed by several contrived disciplinary attacks against Rancourt which were later dropped by the university despite Rancourt’s requests that they be pursued in order to clarify their merit.

The university fought the grievance for two years but then offered a settlement at the last hour, just before the hearings for another grievance case with Rancourt were about to commence. Had the university not settled, the dean’s in-class intervention would have been part of the investigation that was about to start on November 5, 2007. Consequently, the circumstances, impact, and nature of the dean’s in-class tantrum would have been more fully investigated and judged and could have had more significant bearing on the second case.

The university first tried to propose a secret settlement with a non-disclosure clause but this was flatly rejected by Rancourt’s union (the APUO) after Rancourt intervened. The dean’s in-class intervention had been a public display and the apology needed to be public.

A more suitable settlement text was negotiated between the university and the union. Rancourt rejected this text because it was not a strongly enough worded apology; it was not directed to the students, who suffered most of the consequences of the dean’s actions; and it did not present sufficient guarantees that this could not reoccur.

Despite Rancourt’s objections, the APUO ratified the settlement and justified their position to Rancourt as follows (in a letter from APUO’s president Atef Fahim):

“the Executive [of the APUO] felt that the employer’s statement reflects a commitment about interventions in the classroom that is beneficial to members generally, and does not imply that Prof. Rancourt’s specific situation justified intervention. It felt that the employer’s acknowledgement strengthens academic freedom. Clearly the employer is acknowledging that the classroom intervention was wrong. The employer’s statement is an admission of wrongdoing and a statement of regret over what they have done, and should be considered an apology.”

It appears we must conclude that the settlement is as close to justice as it is possible to achieve in the university context in practice. It also appears that deans don’t apologise to students.

It is interesting to contrast this settlement with the dean’s initial comments to the media that he “followed proper procedure” and that “a few, I can’t name you a number, but a few” students had complained about the course. The recent arbitration hearings established that there had only ever been a single student complaint and that the dean’s action was not based on this student complaint. Did the dean lie?

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Back in 2005, at the third class of term, when the course (which was popularly known as the activism course) was reinstated and allowed to proceed as planned by Rancourt, a student asked dean Detellier if he had learned anything from the events which his actions had precipitated. Detellier replied that it was too soon to tell and that he would answer this question later. The dean never did answer the student’s question. Maybe now it would be possible to formulate an answer?

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[Photo: Detail of a 20-metre wall poster made by the students of the 2005 course at an end-of-the-year party.]