Discussion continues in earnest nearly two months after Carleton’s Commission on Inter-Cultural, Inter-Religious and Inter-Racial Relations on Campus released its report. Several campus groups have released letters expressing both support and opposition to the report.
On Nov. 16, seven members of the commission addressed a letter to commission chair Landon Pearson requesting their names be removed from the report.
“Each of us raised concerns about the mandate and/or operation of the Commission during its deliberations,” the letter read, citing issues with “the lack of a sound theoretical foundation” underpinning the commission’s understanding of diversity.
The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) and the Carleton University Academic Staff Association (CUASA)’s Equity Committee each released letters as well, criticizing the commission’s report.
Both letters criticized the fact that only two groups, the aboriginal and Jewish community members, were specifically mentioned in the report, as well as “a series of methodological issues” with the research underpinning the report, according to the GSA letter.
CUASA also raised concerns about the report’s implications for academic freedom and open dialogue.
“Our concern is that the goal of social inclusion, while laudable, not become a reason for the exclusion of sometimes critical ideas which are consistent with the goal of academic freedom,” the CUASA Equity Committee response read.
The inter-cultural report recommended a clause in the CUASA collective agreement, that outlines the rights and responsibilities of faculty employees in their roles as teachers, be included in students’ course outlines. The report also called for a new mechanism “for students who wish to raise concerns about academic responsibility and ethics.”
Jennifer Evans, chair of the CUASA Equity Committee, said classroom discussions should not be subject to undue criticism from the administration.
“As we say in the Equity response to the Commission Report—due care must be given to ensure professors and students are given the space to explore topics and ideas without undo [sic] criticism from the administration,” Evans said via email. “This goes to the heart of what a university is.”
The GSA open letter called for Carleton president Roseann Runte “to withdraw her support of this problematic document.”
English professor and Senate representative Jennifer Henderson took up this issue at a Senate meeting Nov. 30.
“A study into intercultural relations on campus [has] no obvious and necessary reason to go straight to professor-student relationships,” she said.
“I felt that the report assumed that that relationship is antagonistic and positions students as if they should be watchdogs over professors and I wanted to reframe [the issue] to say that, in fact, professors and students at Carleton are allies in defending academic freedom,” Henderson said.
However, reaction to the report remains mixed. A group of 22 Carleton professors have also released a letter in response to a previous open letter posted on the web-hosting service Weebly in November and signed by Carleton students, faculty, and others.
The original Weebly letter took aim at the perceived bias and flawed methodology of the report. The later response from the 22 professors criticized “a strong anti-Jewish strain” in the Weebly open letter.
They said that if the research methodology was flawed, signatories of the Weebly letter must respond similarly to the recommendations for aboriginal and Jewish members of the Carleton community. Their support for aboriginal staff, students and faculty coupled with their criticism for the focus on Jewish members is evidence of their bias, according to the letter.
Tom Sherwood, an adjunct professor at Carleton who added a note to the response from the 22 professors, wrote that “the situation of Jewish students [at Carleton] is not being well addressed.”
“I’m suspicious of people piling on with their own agendas and wanting to make aggressive statements,” Sherwood said.
Sherwood is a member of the President’s Diversity Advisory Committee, formed by Runte to “continue the reflection and ongoing review of the relations among cultures, religions, and races,” on campus, according to a statement.
Sherwood said while he finds value in the ongoing dialogue, he believes that aboriginal and Jewish students at Carleton need more attention than others.
“There are times when there are special problems with special populations . . . let’s deal with them. Let’s not find an excuse not to deal with them,” he said.
