In a decision released last month, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario fully vindicated Dr. Nancy Olivieri against complaints filed by the Hospital for Sick Children in April 2000. HSC alleged Olivieri failed to provide an appropriate standard of care regarding patients receiving the Apotex drug deferiprone (L1).

Faculty members at the University of Sudbury in Northern Ontario voted overwhelmingly in favour of union representation in a December vote conducted by the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

The Dalhousie Faculty Association was notified in early January 2002 that a provincial conciliator has been appointed to assist with resolving negotiations between the association and the university.

"It is better to write for oneself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self." I was reminded of this delightful Cyril Connolly quip on learning a professor had been disciplined for a letter to the editor of the local newspaper questioning the accuracy of a report that UCCB President Jacquelyn Scott had published "numerous articles and books" (Bulletin, November 2001).

Congratulations to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for its report on American academics whose response to the Sept. 11 attacks was insufficiently jingoistic. Confusing the Taliban by adopting some of their own political values — ideological conformity, unquestioning acceptance of state policy — is a stroke of genius.

The December issue of the Bulletin contains an article entitled Agency Denounces Academics for Anti-War Sentiments. The agency is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, founded by Lynne Cheney and Joseph Lieberman. The agency published a list of more than 100 faculty members accused of failing America.

Rather than merely expressing his emotional response to the cartoons in the November 2001 issue, Professor Clive Seligman (Cartoon Use Criticized, Bulletin, December 2001) should explain why violations of fundamental rights and freedoms in Bill C-36 and the hegemony of the WTO are not in any way analogous to terrorism and dictatorship.

In the December Bulletin Professor Claude Daley complains that, "Under the guise of protecting academic freedom, it (the Olivieri Report) will make contractual agreements with businesses more difficult." He continues, "My ability to enter freely into legal arrangements with potential sponsors will be compromised, resulting in a loss of my real academic freedom."

Last month's President's Column chronicled the ravages of underfunding to our universities over the last 10 years and the redirection of partially restored funds away from core institutional academic operations. Levels of tuition fees and student debt were categorized as at "the breaking point."

Finance Minister Paul Martin tabled the government's first official budget in nearly two years in December, doling out billions in new defence and security spending to combat terrorism.

Students in Ontario are reacting with alarm to news that the provincial government is considering the deregulation of undergraduate tuition fees for at least one university in the province.

Machine learning and the academic journals associated with this rather specialized area of technological study are unlikely candidates for controversy. However, last fall the discipline vaulted into relative notoriety with the mass resignation of 40 members of the editorial board of The Machine Learning Journal (MLJ) and their migration to the competing Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR).

The Retired Academics and Librarians of the University of Toronto (RALUT), in collaboration with retiree associations at Ryerson and York Universities is planning to hold a meeting of all such Canadian associations as part of Congress 2002 (formerly the "Learneds") on May 31 in Toronto.

After six months of negotiations and with the help of a provincial conciliator, members of the Association of University of New Brunswick Teachers have ratified a new collective agreement. The four-year contract, retroactive to July 1, 2001, covers the union's 600 members in Fredericton, Saint John, Bathurst and Moncton.

The federal government's new rules for hiring academic staff have generated some conflict.

Part-timers at Wilfrid Laurier University ratified their first contract in December.

Four former University of Toronto professors lost a certification for a class-action suit against the university for back pay and pension adjustments.

Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education is a collection of essays that attempt to explain how post-secondary educational institutions contribute to the process of socialization in a modern industrial capitalist society. Liberal ideology is embedded in the curricula of colleges and universities, as teaching and learning are centred on the principles of merit and equality of opportunity.

This compilation of texts reflects and re-interprets women's lives from a feminist perspective. The papers range from a feminist examination of the design and placement of public washrooms to the blues music; from an exploration of gendered violence in the brutal murder of a young woman to the deconstruction of the story of a 19th century West Indian slave; from Freud, and from Dorothy Parker to teen magazines; and from Central American revolutions to questions of legal ethics and reproductive rights. In all cases these articles make vivid and compelling connections between community and academe, between women's lives and the society we live in, between women's realities and women's hopes for the future. The reader will experience and appreciate the delightful diversity of topics and depth of knowledge displayed in the works of these young female scholars.

Dying and death in a society reflect the material and social conditions of that society. For example, dying and death come frequently and early in life in a society where there is widespread poverty. In contrast, dying and death typically come late in life in a more developed society such as Canada at the beginning of the 21st century. How we live influences how and at what age we die. Similarly, dying is both a personal experience and a social role given shape and meaning by social practices and cultural definitions. The bereaved grieve and mourn in both personal and social terms and the meaning assigned to dying and death is both personally and socially constructed. This book is written for students who wish to learn about dying and death, for practitioners who work with the dying and the bereaved, for the dying and the bereaved themselves, and for the general public.