In the past five months, the academic staff at Carleton University have been the miner's canary in the debate over the meaning of tenure at Canadian universities. The decision in December to close several of our language and literature programs carried with it the prospect that tenured faculty would be targeted for dismissal in May 1998. This threat confronted the Carleton University Academic Staff Association (CUASA) with the most serious challenge in our 22 year history. I am happy to report that this conflict has finally ended in a satisfactory settlement. What follows is a brief account of how we got there and the lessons that we learned along the way.

Carleton's Special Situation