Whose Academic Freedom?

SFU and the “teapot revolutionaries” of the PSA: Did anybody benefit from the strike?

“Here all one gets is [sic] teapot “revolutionaries” mouthing outworn slogans that are, I guess, a substitute for thought.”
- SFU Professor Doug Cole, 31 October 1969

BY ERIC HEATH
University Affairs Correspondent

When Simon Fraser University hurriedly opened in 1965, one of the centerpieces of its new approach to university learning was the creation of a brand new department that sought to intertwine several disciplines of the social sciences in a way that would open students’ eyes to new ways of thought. Intent on encouraging stimulating discussion, the PSA (Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology) Department was headed by Tom Bottomore, a Marxist sociologist from its foundation until late 1967, when disputes with SFU administration caused Bottomore to leave the University and return to his home in Britain.

The PSA department, under Bottomore, had been engaged in a quarrel with Simon Fraser’s administration throughout the 1967-68 school year.

The faculty and students within the department were desperately seeking to obtain greater autonomy in the appointment of professors within the department, and the granting of tenure to professors within it. Bottomore, in a letter of response to an article on the crisis written by Kathleen Aberle, described the system of government at SFU was “intolerable” since it went “without any effective representation of faculty or students”.

Even after Bottomore’s departure, the seeds of discontent within the university continued to sprout. Throughout the first half of 1968, disputes between PSA faculty and SFU’s administration continued much as before.

Then, on 9 April 1968, SFU President Patrick McTaggart-Cowan dropped a bombshell on the PSA department by circulating a memorandum that accused the PSA department of running itself into the ground.

The memo suggested that, among other things, students enrolled in PSA department classes were not allowed to pursue “free inquiry”, but were instead punished if they failed to “toe the line” of the left-wing radical though that permeated the department. Tensions boiled over in November, when a group of several hundred demonstrators occupied the administration building for three days to protest the hiring policies within the PSA and other departments within the school.

In the end, 114 students were arrested and fined, thus ensuring their place as martyrs to the cause of future PSA activists. Predictably enough, “Remember the 114” was a rallying cry at later protests. (It is interesting, though, to anyone critically assessing the results of this protest, that on 29 November a student-run vote was held to gauge support for these actions. Out of 6400 students registered, 3609 voted, with over two-thirds denouncing the occupation.)

By this time, McTaggart-Cowan had reached the end of his rope, and had been replaced as President (on an interim basis) by Kenneth Strand, an American economist. Not surprisingly, the PSA department was horrified at his appointment, and even more outraged in the summer of 1969, when the “interim” label was removed from Strand’s title, which went against an earlier agreement.

Shortly before Strand had been named President, the PSA department had been put under trusteeship, following the resignation of its chairman, Robert Wyllie, and the subsequent disagreement between the department and administration on finding a replacement. Though the chair of the trusteeship described its purpose as a means to "undertake supervision of the administration aspects of the PSA" until some sort of orderly decision-making constitution could be arrived at, PSA faculty saw it as an insult to their goal of self-governance.

On 9 September, the outraged PSA faculty sent a letter to Strand outlining four demands, which called again for the dissolution of the trusteeship that had been imposed in the summer, as well as reiterating their demand for greater autonomy in appointment and tenure decisions.

A week later, Strand replied in a memo to all faculty, denying the demands of the department. The stage was then set for the most disruptive action, again, in the name of academic freedom. Calls for a PSA strike were becoming louder and louder. On 23 September 1969, the PSA plenum held a vote on the subject of such action. The results were overwhelming; of the nearly 750 ballots that were cast, fewer than 40 were opposed to a strike.

Over the next several weeks, both faculty and students of the PSA department staged numerous demonstrations; the most prominent of which was a strike by nine PSA faculty members, starting on 24 September.

On 3 October, President Strand suspended these faculty members, citing "abuse of the trust of the students" who had paid and registered for the courses that were not being taught. Rather than teach within the confines of Simon Fraser University, many of the striking faculty arranged for off-campus "teach-ins" on a variety of radical subjects.

Though popular support for the faculty members on strike faded quickly, the university was faced with a major dilemma. They had approximately fifteen hundred students registered for courses that were not being taught. As a stopgap solution, "make-up" classes were created, starting in the middle of October. Though they were obviously not going to be as comprehensive as full-semester courses, the replacement classes were created in order to give those students who did not want to have their studies disrupted a chance to gain the education that they had paid for.

The introduction of these courses in October gave rise to a brief renaissance in student protests during the PSA crisis. Between 14 and 20 October 1969, several of these classes were disrupted or cancelled by picketing PSA students, angered that "scab" classes were set up in the wake of the faculty strike.

Former archaeology professor Roy Carlson recalls one of these protests: "I put on two [mid-semester replacement] classes for them, and these were the ones that were...invaded by students wearing armbands just like the brownshirts of the Nazis."

After professors began to tire of such antics, an injunction was sought and obtained to prevent further such disruptions. By the end of October, the fervour had largely died down, and the fallout was to begin. The striking faculty members had done great damage to their careers, the university was again censured by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and almost a full semester's work for many students was in shambles. Remember, though, that the PSA crisis was borne, supposedly, out of the desire for freedom in academia.

If one looks beyond the bickering, politicking, and power struggles that went on, one must not forget that student parity and the quest for open-minded discussion in the classroom were at the heart of the PSA crisis.

What, then, were the results for students? As PSA professor (and striking faculty member) Kathleen Aberle stated, "over 2000 [students] risked their degrees, credits, bursaries, or places in graduate school, in their lengthy struggle" during the crisis. But did they?

Let's look at the facts:

- Approximately 1500 students were registered in PSA classes in the Fall 1969 semester;

- When the strike vote was held in the PSA Plenum, 700 votes (not 2000) were cast in favour of the action;

- Though the margin of votes was overwhelmingly in favour of the strike, it does not nearly approach Aberle's statistic;

- Over 700 of these students re-registered in make-up classes in October (many of which were interrupted by picketers);

Archaeology students, who were hesitant members of the PSA in the first place, and who distanced themselves from the PSA during the crisis, still had classes interrupted, though they were already complaining that due to their affiliation with the PSA, they had to spread out their courses so much that their main body of study was affected negatively.

Aberle's claim that "2000 students" voluntarily risked their academic careers for the PSA's cause seems like more of a desperate attempt at rationalizing her faction's power struggle. An editorial that ran in the Peak newspaper on 26 November 1969 stated that PSA's actions were such that "only its radical students were ready for [them].... And, even in that delicate situation, PSA students made little, if any attempt to involve the non-radical PSA majority in the decision-making process."

In the end, academic freedom and student parity seemed to have little to do with the bulk of the PSA crisis.

Whether or not the initial charges by McTaggart-Cowan in 1968 about the lack of academic freedom within PSA classes was justified or not, many hundreds of students were unjustly denied of the education that they had paid for by the actions of the striking PSA faculty and students in 1969.

The freedom of an organized minority severed the freedom of many innocent students looking to gain an education. Those students did learn something, however. They learned that any group acting in any interest can quickly subjugate it to their own interest. And they learned it the hard way. []

Eric Heath is a fourth-year student in the History Department at Simon Fraser University, and irregularly comments on student politics.