PUBLIC MARKS from McDonna with tag upei

by Jim Day, for the Charlottetown Guardian, 20 November 2007 A political science professor at UPEI was dumbfounded to learn that a subject of his own research was a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb. “That surprised me as much as anybody else,’’ Henry Srebrnik said of revelations that George Koval likely helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own. Srebrnik, who has for many years been researching the Kovals for a project on American Jewish Communists, said the family belonged to a popular front organization, as did most American Jews who emigrated to Birobidzhan, a Siberian city that Stalin promoted as a secular Jewish homeland. Srebrnik believes Koval likely didn’t feel he was doing any damage in his role as a spy to help the Soviet Union build its own atomic bomb. The Kovals belonged to an organization called ICOR, a Yiddish acronym for the Association for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union. George Koval’s father served its Sioux City branch as secretary, noted Srebrnik. Srebrnik has just finished a book on the Canadian Jewish Communist movement that he hopes will be released in the spring. He has published four or five articles on the weightier subject of American Jewish Communists and hopes to eventually compile a book.

Charlottetown Guardian - Sept 21, 2007 Metamorphosis: an academic's version HENRY SREBRNIK Many readers will recognize the opening sentence of Franz Kafka's 1915 short story 'The Metamorphosis': "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug." We all realize this is a metaphor for one of our worst nightmares: that suddenly everything one has been has disappeared, and one is, inexplicably, someone entirely - and horribly - different. The rock group The Talking Heads gave voice to this same fear in their 1981 song 'Once in a Lifetime': And you may find yourself Living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself In another part of the world And you may ask yourself Where is that large automobile? And you may tell yourself This is not my beautiful house! And you may tell yourself This is not my beautiful wife! Kafka's narrative brings to life our dread at being cast adrift and cut off from others. I was thinking of "Metamorphosis" recently in regard to what I've seen happening at our University of Prince Edward Island, where a - dare we call it Kafka-esque? - policy of mandatory retirement at age 65 has been in effect for the past dozen or so years. It holds true even for those who have had relatively short careers and therefore fairly meager pensions. They have been put out to pasture while still able to teach and write just as well as - indeed, perhaps better than - professors who are 20 years their junior. The university's inflexibility has resulted in grievances brought before the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission by a number of faculty who have been forced to retire. Some, for financial or personal reasons, have managed to return to teach as part-time 'sessionals', lowly paid contract workers with no job security, whose courses can be cancelled at the last minute. So perhaps an academic version of the Kafka story would begin like this: "One morning, as (fill in with the name of a famous academic, for example Benedict Anderson or Samuel Huntington) was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a sessional. No longer teaching at (fill in with the name of a well-known university, say Cornell or Harvard), he was now hustling for courses at (Siberia U., Boondocks College, etc.), pleading with an administration for teaching. He was told he could only teach a course if 10 students were to sign up for it." We all get the picture. It's a shame that UPEI has come to treat its loyal faculty, people who have devoted their professional lives to the institution, in such a callous manner. Henry Srebrnik, a professor of political studies at UPEI, will be approaching the age of mandatory retirement in a few years.

Just a note on Dr. Henry Srebrnik’s opinion piece in Friday’s Guardian regarding the forced retirement of faculty at the age of 65. As a student I have seen this first hand and it is absolutely heartbreaking that UPEI carries on such an age discriminatory policy. There are amazing professors who care deeply about their students and who have an unparalleled love of teaching and depth of knowledge who are forced to retire and in some instances are lost to other universities either somewhere else in Canada or abroad. For such a quickly growing university with enrolments seeing an all-time high, why must they continue this policy? To have the best professors one can imagine going overnight from full-time academic and member of the UPEI community to a sessional teacher who has to scramble to get 10 students in a class so it won’t be cancelled is unacceptable. UPEI must change this policy.

A grievance settlement between UPEI and its faculty is being described as a “victory” by the faculty association, but it is being described as “not a substantive change” by the university. The issue centres on who owns intellectual property, the ideas and research being carried out by the professors and researchers at UPEI. Wayne Peters, the president of the UPEI Faculty Association, says the university has agreed to include the faculty association in all third-party funded research contracts and grants that could lead to the development of intellectual property. “This grievance was never about who owned the (intellectual property) in the first place, that was not the primary issue,” Peters told The Guardian. “The issue was more about the union’s involvement in processes like this as the sole and exclusive bargaining agent for its members.” The initial grievance centred on a decision by the university to enter into discussions with ACOA regarding a research project that affected the faculty association’s collective agreement, without including the union. The university maintained it had ownership of the intellectual property. The faculty association felt the university had side-stepped the union, which has been in place for the past three years. “The big victory in this for the union is that there is a very strong recognition by the university of the union’s role in representing its members on issues that are clearly part of the collective agreement and intellectual property policy is one of those issues,” he said. But Katherine Schultz, vice-president of research and development at UPEI, described it as an “evolving” process as the university and the union work through its 100-page collective agreement, signed three years ago. She admits it will allow the faculty association to have a greater role in the “internal discussions.” “But it’s not a substantive change in the way our researchers work with partners in the community, with the private sector, with government agencies,” she said. Schultz said it will have no impact on the students. Peters said the faculty association can now “rewrite history” because it can now review all 100 contracts signed between the university and private funding partners since 2004. It also remains unclear now as to who would benefit if an idea is commercialized. For example, if a researcher finds a cure of a deadly disease like cancer, who benefits? Peters maintains it would be the faculty member while the university says it’s difficult to answer that because it could be several partners, from funding partners to faculty members to the university. Last year, the union walked off the job trying to secure its first agreement with the university. The intellectual property grievance was filed in 2005 and was not part of last year’s dispute.

Almost hidden under the furor of the recent provincial election and the Stanley Cup playoffs, the City of Charlottetown quietly announced recently that it had paid off the remaining $3-million capital debt of the CARI project at UPEI. At the time the project was announced for the new rinks and swimming pools, I suggested building the complex on the UPEI campus might not be the best location because, in time, the university would control the complex and hence own it. The spin doctors for the project, which included then-city finance chair Clifford Lee, indicated Cornwall and Stratford were on board for the CARI complex, making it one big happy family. The business plan, as outlined by Cliff Campbell in his presentation to city council, suggested the project would be a revenue generator for the city and, at worst, a revenue-neutral project. The fundraising effort, spear-headed by Eugene Rossiter, was expected to raise something like $3 million but came up short. I guess the city missed a decimal point in the translation because last time I looked the goal stalled at $300,000. Regardless of which way one flips the figures, UPEI president Wade MacLauchlan has a $24-million-plus rink/pool facility on campus which cost the university slightly more than $2 million, quite a coup for the university president.

He says: "At UPEI you will find the highest-quality people and programs. And a calibre of student and university life that is second to none. We are proud of UPEI's hallmark as a student-centred university. Students are at the heart of everything we do."

Few professors have been willing to take a stand and those who do risk censure or unpopularity. Just over a year ago, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island made his overcrowded History of Christianity class a stunning offer: He would give a grade of 70% to anyone who stopped showing up for the rest of the semester and didn’t bother to complete any of the course work. About 20 students took him up on the offer and the veteran academic was ultimately forced into premature retirement by an embarrassed administration.

In their recent edition, UPEI Student newspaper The Cadre published the budget for the Student Union. Surprise surprise we see that Ryan Gallant, the SU President and local Liberal party hack has been throwing students' money around like you wouldn't believe. Wasting thousands of our dollars on travel--incidentally, his pal Neal Gillis had posted on his blog that Ryan was off on a drinking "bender" in Calgary for 8 days over Spring break. On top of this, Gallant is paid a salary for 12 months of the year to be the Student Union president. For a guy who does nothing but stroke his ego for 8 months of the year, I find it offensive that I'm paying him throughout the summer months in addition to the school year. What prompted the Cadre to publish this information? An act of retaliation. Gallant and his SU cronies have made a rather public attempt to silence the Cadre and to keep the newspaper under their thumb. I stand by the Cadre in their attempt to become independant of the SU.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "staff at the Cadre, the UPEI student newspaper, are fighting a plan to be taken over by a campus group, the Independent Student Media Society." The story, dated March 22, 2007 is available here. The plan involves cutting the number of staff at the Cadre from twelve to six, and reducing frequency of publication from twice a month to once a month. Cadre Editor Rob Walker remarks, "They're going to essentially just take the Cadre name and the money."

"We still run the property," MacLaughlan says, "and we're not in the business of deliberately inviting people to be insulted to the point of causing an outrage."

photo image of H. Wade MacLauchlan

UPEI President Wade MacLaughlan says publishing the cartoons is "an invitation to trouble. "We still run the property," MacLaughlan says, "and we're not in the business of deliberately inviting people to be insulted to the point of causing an outrage." This has to be one of the most pathetic examples of craven capitulation I have ever heard of. What a great way to tell Islamists that rioting and murder get results. Unbelievable! The only reason I'm aware of this blatant instance of fear induced censorship is because of an anonymous blog named DontAxe. The site contains a number of readings and background documents on the UPEI cartoon issue, and is well worth a look.