Gender issues

May 2018, Vancouver BC Jody Wilson-Raybould’s story has triggered memories of professional trauma for me, like watching Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony last fall triggered memories of sexual trauma for many women. The way Wilson-Raybould has been treated represents a pattern of pressure applied to women who dare assert their professional independence, voice, and decision-making power. Most cases just aren’t made public. Wilson-Raybould and I were each welcomed to our professional appointments (as Attorney General of Canada and as Montalbano Professor of Leadership Studies: Gender and Diversity at UBC’s Sauder School of Business , respectively) with publicity and fanfare that celebrated diversity and the goodness of the White men who put us there. But when those men realized they couldn’t control how we carried out our professional duties, everything came crashing down. Each of us got in trouble for exercising our right to make independent judgments in our professional capaci

I attended the Harry Crowe Foundation ’s conference on Free Speech on Campus in Toronto last month. There was a great line-up of speakers who shared data, history, legal arguments, and general principles on academic freedom and free speech at universities.  A consensus was that academic freedom, freedom of expression, and social justice reinforce one another. James Turk from the Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University and former Executive Director of CAUT said, “Social justice is not possible without freedom of expression, and genuine freedom of expression is not possible without social justice.” Momin Rahman from Trent University concluded, “Equity and academic freedom are mutually reinforcing.” Samir Gandesha , Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, pointed out that “Insisting on too strong a distinction between free speech and academic freedom might open up the door for institutions to try to regulate who can and who cannot speak.” Here