Preface from A Place of Liberty
hese essays are all, in one way or another, arguments for the reform of university government in Canada. Some of the essays approach their subject historically, others analytically; most are a little rhetorical. One essay examines a single element in university government, the Senate; another examines the relation between Church and University as it holds only in one province; another gives a history of the professional association of university teachers in Canada; two essays deal with academic freedom and tenure. Most of the essays state or imply a view of the university as a unique community, and several, apart from the two closing essays, state or imply the kind of reform that the authors would like to see. All the essays, and the three appendices, have been written especially for this book.
Although there has been no attempt to elaborate or state a single party position by way of conclusion, all contributors agree on a few cardinal considerations upon which any reform of university government and administration should turn:
1. The judgment of the academic staff should influence all decisions made by or on behalf of universities.
2. The powers and authority assigned to lay Boards by charter in Canada are inordinate and inappropriate.
3. The dichotomy between scholars and administrators should be eliminated as far as possible.
4. All such changes (and other changes needed to bring the universities to full maturity) should be given permanent legal status by amendments to current charters.
There may have been reasons in the past for the anomalies that make such reforms necessary but they are no longer valid. It has been clear to scholars for some time that change in the structure of university government is not only desirable but urgently needed. The need should now be obvious to anybody whether inside or outside a university, even though the solution may be less clear. This book is not in the first place addressed to scholars in universities; it is addressed to the general public. Education can tempt anybody into emphatic expressions of opinion, no matter what his background or training. All the contributors to this book are members of universities; our lives and fortunes are identified with our universities. We therefore wear our academic credentials as tokens of good faith rather than as the privilege of expert witnesses.
Popular talk about a “crisis in the universities” encourages journalists and politicians to speak with passionate intensity, but there are no signs that the crisis has yet been defined or correctly analysed. There is today a mass movement towards wider university education. This may be a good thing. But governments are treating it as inevitable, which is not quite the same thing. Since governments will have to pay for expansion, they will probably become importunate about what they want. When it comes to paying for pipers, the accident of having money to commission music was never any proof of musical knowledge or guarantee of good taste. Universities must be effectively governed so that they can preserve their life, their existence, and their reason for existing. That is why we feel the urgent need for revised and vigorous university government.
Every single university in Canada is in certain details different from every other. In writing about Canadian universities collectively, we are forced into a certain amount of generalization. The generalizations are necessary, not irresponsible. A writer can write only about what he happens to know well; much of his knowledge must be home-knowledge, or at least his home-knowledge will tend to provide the analogies for whatever he discusses. It should be clear, however, that individual essays in this book are not, and are not intended to be, analyses of or attacks upon the particular university to which the writer happens at present to belong. Those who are good at finding heads to fit caps are at liberty to do their own field work. These essays are intended to refer, as best we can and as far as we can collect definite knowledge in areas both complex and recondite, to the state of university government in Canada as a whole. Of course there will be universities and Boards who will be able to say confidently of this or that detail or consideration, “this is not true of us.” I should hope so. But that does not disarm the whole argument. Whatever strictures this book brings altogether, they probably do not all apply to any one university; but the several strictures are numerous enough, widespread enough, and serious enough to deserve patient scrutiny.
Our concern is for the good health of universities. Universities are communities of a unique kind best understood by those who have lived and worked in them for some time. The dangers of well-meaning but wrong-headed intervention, both from inside the structure of university government and from outside, are strong and manifold. If the public at large is not informed of such matters, there is serious danger that the universities may suffer grave damage in the next few years. The only chance of healthy survival is responsible self-government of the universities by the university communities, a relation of intelligent goodwill between the universities and the various representatives of “society,” and, on the part of strangers, a genuine respect for the integrity of the academic world.