U of O executives spontaneously develop psychological evaluation capabilities

The dean of the Faculty of Science, University of Ottawa, Mr. André E. Lalonde, has sent physics professor Denis G. Rancourt a letter stating that:

“The University of Ottawa has developed some concerns regarding your physical and mental well-being. Would you kindly advise if you require or may require accommodation measures under the Ontario Human Rights Code?

Should accommodation measures be necessary, please provide us with information which sets out what accommodation measures are needed.”

See letter HERE. (Click “PDF” in the left column.)

The “University of Ottawa” means the Board of Governors but in this case we can take it to mean the university’s top executives and the dean himself, presumably.

UofOWatch notes that this newfound capability to perform psychological evaluations on the fly could be put to significant use for the betterment of humankind and in optimizing the management of the university…

Whereas it is difficult to remove tenured professors from their positions without actually demonstrating some deficiency, university executives could be removed via simple votes from the Board once cumbersome mental issues or operational deficiencies are surmised.

Accommodations could be made for some deans. For example, they could be asked not to make comments to the news media concerning delicate issues, or to show their communications to superiors and to university legal council before sending them off, or simply to let the executive manage their faculty labour relations issues. To be fair, maybe this has already been implemented in some faculties?

It is worth asking how and why it was the University of Ottawa that has lead the way with this breakthrough in executive development, so that other institutions of higher learning might follow suit.

The possibilities for improved academic performance, given this hitherto undisclosed and underused ability to detect neural damage, are endless.

[Photo credit: University of Ottawa.]

Note: Dean André Lalonde appears to have developed the habit of taking down all of his personal web pages that UofOWatch has linked to its posts. UofOWatch will make every effort to mitigate this web rot problem.

RELATED LINKS
YaYa comments the situation...

Politics and ethics are not physics – say U of O physicists

Physics professor Denis Rancourt was assigned to teach the 4th-year physics project course (PHY 4006) this fall. Each physics professor individually supervises one or more such projects in one of his (rarely her) areas of research.

Rancourt proposed the topic “Politics and ethics in the physics profession”, corresponding to one of his research areas.

Well, this caused quite a stir.

Although a professor’s topic selection has never previously been questioned, the project course coordinator, Professor Peter Piercy, decided that he could not decide and gave it to the Departmental Curriculum Committee (DCC).

Rancourt pointed out to the then chairman, Professor Richard Hodgson (retired in June), that the DCC did not have jurisdiction over course deliveries by individual professors. Nonetheless, the chairman scheduled a meeting to discuss Rancourt’s project. The DCC was split and decided it could not decide. Its members recommended that the question be brought to Departmental Council.

Rancourt pointed out to the new chairman, Professor Bela Joos, that the Departmental Council also did not have jurisdiction over an individual professor’s course delivery, because of a thing called rights, responsibilities, and academic freedom.

Joos agreed that neither the DCC nor the Departmental Council had jurisdiction here, but then argued, as follows, that all professors who teach PHY 4006 needed to approve Rancourt’s project:

“The proposed project is neither physics nor science, so is not, in my opinion, acceptable. PHY4006 is the collective responsibility of Physics Faculty members. We have to ensure that the course fulfills its mission, that the projects are of comparable value and level of difficulty, and that the evaluation is fair. So, if a contentious project is proposed, we, as a group have to make a decision on it.”

(Let’s democratically vote that slavery is OK…)

Rancourt then pointed out to chairman Joos that this was a load of crock that had nothing to do with the Collective Agreement or established academic rules and that courses don’t have unwritten “missions” (see long version elsewhere).

The chairman responded:

“I stand by my earlier comments. PHY4006 Physics Research Project is a physics course in a Faculty of Science. It is common sense then that the project has to be physics, as a discipline of science and not social science. […] The course title says it all. The course description simply specifies that it has to be a project in a research group within the department as opposed to anywhere else in Ottawa or the country. Finally, your approach is not collegial. This is group teaching.”

Group teaching or group think?

Rancourt next appealed to the dean of the Faculty of Science, Dr. André Lalonde, so that the dean might remind the chairman of this thing academic freedom and the rules and all that.

The dean only answered after being confronted in a meeting to do so, and his written reply was clear enough: “I support the opinion of the Chair of the Department.” The dean also repeated the stuff about this being a physics course, despite there being no such “physics content” restrictions in the rules.

In contrast, the physics profession officially recognizes that physicists can legitimately do research, as physicists, in areas that include: arms control; World Wide Web, internet; environmental regulations; social and economic systems; social organizations; anthropology; research in physics education; science and society; science and government; etc.

Most science and technology schools see a benefit to their graduates having been exposed to professional ethics and the social impacts of their work. No such course exists in the physics curriculum at U of O.

Rancourt has filed a grievance against the U of O in order to rectify his removal from PHY 4006. The letter of the grievance is posted HERE and the full grievance with letter and supporting documents (84 pages) is posted HERE.

Rancourt informed members of the physics department about the grievance. Professor James Harden responded to all physics professors this way:

“Denis, The tone of this sounds like do things my way or there will be a lot of trouble for everyone. The closing comment "I hope this helps us to reconsider and discuss these important issues" assumes that your pet issues are automatically "important" to all. Many don't feel that way. Moreover, this sort of confrontational approach to the situation strikes me as distinctly selfish and lacking collegiality. Just my opinion. Jim”.

All other physics professors were silent.

READ THE FULL DETAILS IN ALL THEIR GLORY HERE.

Afterthought: A little birdie told UofOWatch that if Rancourt’s project had been “Military technology and weapons systems” (PACS 89.20.Dd) then the chairman and dean would not have had to “ensure that the course fulfills its mission”.

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WEB ROT RECOVERY

Faculty of Science dean: Andre E. Lalonde

RELATED LINKS
Are Physicists Smart? 80% of physicists work for the military
Chomsky on the technical intelligentsia
Noble on peer review

U of O President confirms that VP-Resources lied and falsified, and agrees

The UofOWatch entry of July 21st described a mean-spirited affair in which U of O’s VP-Resources Victor Simon lied and falsified a document in attempting to justify his illegitimate reprimands and threats to two students who had dared to express their views on an academic matter, using campus email lists.

The students next individually wrote to President Gilles Patry to complain and to ask for reparations (rescinding the threats, apologies, etc.).

In his answers, the President confirms that Simon lied since he confirms that Simon provided “all documents” (only one, which is not a complaint to Simon’s office) whereas Simon had claimed several (in the plural) complaints addressed to his office.

In his answers, the President states that Simon indeed removed a paragraph from a document (that the student was entitled to see in its entirety under the Freedom of Information Act of Ontario). The President confirms that Simon did this without informing the student. The President goes on to “explain” that this was justified because the paragraph in question was not something the university wanted to act upon…

Hello?

The President put it this way: “The University did not consider taking any action regarding the final paragraph of the complainant’s email and it was on this basis that Mr. Simon did not include that information”.

The paragraph in question is highly incriminating for its author, Professor Vladimir Pestov, who suggests fabricating a case to remove student Jean-Paul Prévost from his PhD program of study, following the student’s first and only communication on an academic matter to a relevant academic unit email list. The paragraph in question de-legitimizes Pestov’s message and damages the credibility of his motives. Contrary to the President’s statement, it is entirely “relevant to the allegations concerning [your] misuse of University resources.”

The President concludes “I am satisfied that this matter was dealt with appropriately.”

The President also states to both students that he “has decided that the letter [Simon’s unfounded letters of reprimand and threat] is entirely appropriate and I will not take steps to retract it.” The President thereby goes on the record to condone and reinforce Simon’s original intimidation and harassment, and copies Simon to the entire exchange.

That’s how University Inc. (universities are legal corporations not answerable to the Ministry of Education) is run: By an unelected corporate executive that in practice answers to no one and that makes day to day self-preserving decisions about students’ lives without an oversight committee or an appeal process. There is no independent ombudsperson on campus and there is no policy that admits that the executives can mistreat students.

But it’s not over until the fat lady sings.

Epilogue: This means that, as it stands, both students are effectively barred from using the academic email lists for their legitimate committee work and collegial participation in university affairs, to the extent that their views will not be acceptable to the first enlightened academic who will scream “spam attack”.

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]

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]

Did the dean lie? – Profs’ union doesn’t want to know

Has anyone never lied? Is everyone a liar?

Back in September 2005, as part of his critical pedagogy method, Professor Denis Rancourt made a bold open invitation to his students of the first Activism Course:

“I am looking for irate or frustrated or angry or discouraged or depressed graduate or undergraduate students to be interviewed live on The Train, CHUO 89.1 FM. I want to counter the plastic smile Apathy-U marketing campaigns … with some gritty reality about student life.” (The invitation to all students still stands.)

The then dean of the Faculty of Science was clearly annoyed and immediately asked for “explanations”. The dean then initiated a disciplinary process claiming he had received a student complaint about the radio invitation.

Professor Rancourt pointed out his right to see the student complaint. The dean claimed that showing any part of the student complaint would identify the student and stated that he was therefore dropping the entire process and removing all related letters and documents from Professor Rancourt’s file.

Professor Rancourt insisted that no letters or documents be disappeared and grieved to see the student complaint. The grievance process showed that a separate student complaint about the radio invitation did not exist. The dean produced the only student complaint ever received about the Activism Course, a student complaint about course content, method, and use of language – all concerns that the dean was pursuing separately but now without the use of a student complaint.

An obvious case of “complaints musical chairs”...

At this point, Professor Rancourt filed a new grievance that the dean had lied in order to justify a baseless disciplinary process. Disciplinary processes are tedious and stressful and the same dean initiated three other bogus disciplinary actions (all unrelated to each other; that were either dropped or successfully grieved) within the same two-week period.

Does one detect a pattern? Does the term harassment come to mind? Would this have happened if Professor Rancourt was not promoting activism and was not critical of the institution and its methods?

On these questions, the professors’ union (the APUO at the UofO) is unclear or undecided at best: You see, lying involves intent to make a false statement and intent is difficult to prove. One cannot read a person’s mind so one must rely on the documented circumstances. That the “separate” complaint was about the radio invitation appears to be false but did the dean realise it was false? He could have simply misinterpreted the student complaint to be about the radio invitation…

The grievance that the dean has lied was recently evaluated by the executive committee of the union and has not been retained by the APUO, effectively leaving no other legal recourse to obtain arbitration.

In the words of the executive of the union: “The dean read what he saw in a certain way … it may also be part of a pattern. However, this is difficult to show. It seems as though the dean is dancing close to the line but, it is difficult to prove lying … Maybe it was an attempt by the dean to be deceptive, but the complaint could be open to interpretation … An accusation of lying is serious and requires strong evidence.”

It’s called the preservation of class interests…

Voila.

RELATED LINKS:
YaYa Canada on lying in academia...

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[Photo credit: University of Ottawa]

U of O’s Patry weighs in to defend academic freedom

Orwell would be proud…

No U of O president has ever made a public statement to denounce Israel’s immoral and brutal (now 40-year) occupation of Palestine – a strangle-hold that can only be characterized as a genocidal impoundment under severe economic and civil liberty restrictions, including regular military violence against civilians and state-sanctioned political executions; not too unlike Canada’s own treatment of indigenous peoples, that has also not been denounced by U of O presidents.

Indeed, university presidents in these times rarely take stands of principle but mainly promote an institutional image and congratulate their corporate donors.

Yet U of O’s President Gilles Patry recently felt compelled to speak out against the threat to academic freedom posed by a UK University and College Union (UCU) resolution to encourage and study a possible boycott of Israeli universities.

The president’s statement parrots similar statements made by US university presidents, thereby giving deep integration an academic dimension.

The president’s “argument” is that boycotting Israeli academia (that has been complicit in the occupation) can only move one away from a resolution. That would be true if Israeli academia were visibly and significantly opposing the occupation rather than collaborating with it.

Patry has hauled out the convenient myth that tenured professors, by virtue of their academic freedom, naturally fight injustice and side with the oppressed. It follows, in Patry’s fairy tale scenario, that limiting academic freedom of association and collaboration (not of research and expression) with a boycott would only hinder progression to a more just world.

This is analogous to arguing that, given the myth of economic trickledown, the economic boycott of South Africa only frustrated an inevitable progression towards more democracy.

Notable exceptions notwithstanding, academics serve and legitimize power, are true to their class, and make students into obedient employees that accept and defend the logic of systemic oppression. This is what makes the UCU and its resolution so extraordinary. (It must have been hijacked by activists, as apologists have explained. Or maybe it’s the ‘Colleges’ component?)

Media bias and U of O’s affiliation with CanWest notwithstanding, Patry’s statement is either ignorant or disingenuous and politically motivated. I believe it is mostly the latter, in which case it will not matter to its author that it is wrong. If there is a movement in North America for university executives to denounce the UCU then to not join this movement is to invite Israeli lobby contempt. To join is to make points with the Israeli lobby and its parliamentary allies.

“Canada’s University” knows when to l*ck *ss.

RELATED LINKS:
Gabriel Ash – Why Boycott Israel?
IHRNASS-Executive - In Support of Academic Freedom
Jason Kunin – Supporting CUPE’s Israel Boycott
Steven Rose – Why Pick on Israel?
Tanya Reinhart – Why Academic Boycott

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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.