Readers of the Bulletin or visitors to the CAUT web site already have a sound grounding on the subject of the neo-liberal agenda and the associated galloping privatization of Canadian universities. Most people could doubtless hold forth at some length on the pressure to commercialize based on their own experience of what H.T. (Tom) Wilson in No Ivory Tower terms "values in practice."

In describing the expansion of a commercial culture within Canadian universities, Wilson bemoans the "speed of the (institutional) mirroring and imitating (of U.S. practices); the lack of concern for careful adaptations, the lack of competing models..." (p. 114) I couldn't agree more, yet that is precisely my principal complaint about this work: so much is happening so fast that prompt publication is essential if one is to serve one's readers and the "cause."

This work is not a timely contribution. Although published in 1999, the acknowledgment is dated May 1997 and, judging from the bibliography and the text, the most recent research materials actually used appear to have been published in 1994. While there is a reference in the concluding paragraph to a 1996 report to the Ontario government and one paragraph devoted to Dr. Nancy Olivieri's continuing saga in the penultimate chapter, my judgment still holds.

In consequence, chapter three ("Implications on the North American Free Trade Agreement") offers anticipations rather than the evaluations which today's reader might be looking for. This is a work of reflection based on the author's lengthy experience. There are no notes (source or explanatory) provided and almost no numbers provided to document the size of any of the changes mentioned.

Wilson's approach is one of sketching in broad strokes -- whether it is in giving us his explanation of the role of the public sector and of universities in the U.S. and Canada or the current neo-liberal "values in practice" and their expressions as applied to universities -- with almost no specific details. As neo-liberalism is a one-size-fits-all program, perhaps the intent was to allow the readers to supply their own from local experience.

Nonetheless, most of us tend to be aware only of those parts of this elephantine process that are nearest to our "touch" and, unless aided, may not perceive the increasing intensity with which the ground is shaking as another herd thunders down upon us with the newest threat to intellectual freedom.

This work does not directly empower. Several key reports, identified only by the name of their authors in the text, cannot be matched with a bibliographic entry. One intriguing point for which this reader longed for a citation was that American business school deans regard MBA training as a threat to the U.S. economy. (p. 111)

If you are tearing your hair out over what to do about intellectual property policy, performance indicators and soft drink contracts, inter alia, you may at best encounter a few passages addressing these briefly. Of course, you can't simply look it up, as there is no index.

One leitmotif which seems inconsistent with Wilson's insistence that the U.S. experience is not to be regarded as the norm (p. 57) is his notion that Canadian institutions are not merely complementary to those of the U.S. (pp. 23, 113), but that maintenance of that complementary is an indispensable objective of our endeavors. He speaks of American institutions as an "integral culture outgrowth" of U.S. experience. (p. 41) Ours, however, are complementary. Call it what you will, but the point is well taken: distinctive patterns are being ruthlessly uprooted in an unexamined way.

In lieu of examples, we have throughout two mantra-like strings repeated. The first aptly summarizes the neo-liberal agenda and the other its expression within universities. In one variant of the latter, Wilson speaks of individuals hired to "actively pursue private sector funding and the harassment of alumni while they help create what amounts to a system of internal contracting and marketing based on fees, rents, taxes, 'prices' and other charges within universities." (p. 29) These refrains recur frequently in the book and, to the author's credit, they recur in one's perceptions after the book has been put aside, each time one encounters a new local manifestation of these tendencies.

The merit of Wilson's account is that he has provided us a meta-narrative, in some ways not unlike Thorstein Veblen's The Higher Learning in America (1918), a book which Wilson acknowledges as having provided him inspiration. Veblen was the master of the meta-narrative, generally without any empirical evidence. Yet, his work lives and resonates. To cite but one randomly chosen passage from Veblen's work:: "...the university is after all a seat of learning, devoted to the cult of the idle curiosity, otherwise called the scientific spirit. And stultification, broad and final, waits on any university directorate that shall dare to avow any other end as its objective." (p. 128)

The heart of Wilson's argument is summed up in the titles of chapters four and five: "Why the Private Sector Can't Be Trusted" and "Why the Public Sector Can and Must." In the former chapter Wilson unmasks the sophistry of those supporting privatization. He cautions that "in the long run private sector performance of public sector functions is almost always more costly to the taxpayer" and reminds us that revenue collecting and general taxation are a "far better way of financing necessary and indispensable" public sector functions. (p. 78) Chapter five might have been titled "Why the Public Sector Can, Must and Doesn't," as both those who govern and those governed have accepted much of the rhetoric of the minimal state. Wilson tells us that "universities must therefore make a stronger case to the general public." (p. 91)

Universities, however, speak with many voices. It is up to each and every one of us and our students who still believe in the public interest to speak out in diverse fora -- certainly not just to each other -- as often and as forcefully as possible. We must make common cause and not just defend our interests. Wilson concludes with a chapter on "The University that is Needed." That is surely worthy of debate, but given our present circumstances, one would have wished for a conclusion devoted to "The Democracy that is Needed: What We Each Can Do to Achieve It."

Myron Frankman is professor of economics at McGill University.