The Ontario legislature has passed the Ontario College of Art & Design Act, giving the college the right to grant the degrees of Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Design, in addition to its four-year diploma in art and design

Products carrying the McMaster University name or logo must meet labour standards set out in a new code of conduct unveiled by the university in July

In April 2002 retired professors Ursula Franklin, Phyllis Grosskurth, Blanche van Ginkel and Cicely Watson achieved a landmark settlement with the University of Toronto in their claim for lost wages and retirement income resulting from systemic gender discrimination in pay

Maureen Shaw, past-president of the College Institute Educators' Association of British Columbia, was elected president of the National Union of the Canadian Association of University Teachers at the NUCAUT convention in Vancouver in June. Brian E. Brown (Windsor) was elected vice-president, and Don MacGillivray (University College of Cape Breton) was elected treasurer.

The University of California has accepted a $40 million settlement from Andersen Worldwide, SC, one of the defendants in a class action suit launched by investors who lost billions in the high-profile meltdown of Enron Corporation.

On Aug. 30 the B.C. government quietly posted a discussion paper on a new private training policy framework on its website.

Disciplining Dissent: The Curbing of Free Expression in Academia and The Media will be the focus of a national conference CAUT is co-hosting Nov. 1-3 at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa.

This is a book about a distinctive methodological approach inspired by one of Canada's most respected scholars, Dorothy Smith. Institutional ethnography aims to answer questions about how everyday life is organized. What is conventionally understood as "the relationship of micro to macro processes" is, in institutional ethnography, conceptualized and explored in terms of ruling relations. The authors suggest that institutional ethnographers must adopt a particular research stance, one that recognizes that people's own knowledge and ways of knowing are crucial elements of social action and thus of social analysis. Specific attention to text analysis is integral to the approach. Institutional ethnography is remarkably well suited to the human service curriculum and the training of professionals and activists. Its strategy for learning how to understand problems existing in everyday life appeals to many researchers who are looking for guidance on how to take practical action. At the same time, the highly elaborated theoretical foundation of institutional ethnography is difficult to deal with in the brief time most students are in the classroom. The authors successfully tackle the issue of teaching and applying institutional ethnography. Campbell and Gregor have been testing out instructional methods and materials for many years. Mapping Social Relations is the product of that effort.

Readers anxious about the loss of civil liberties under George W. Bush will find ground for their fears - and suggestions for activism - in The COINTELPRO Papers. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall's exposé of America's political police force, the FBI, reveals the iron fist hiding beneath the velvet glove of "compassionate conservatism." Reproducing many original FBI memos, the authors provide extensive analysis of the agency's treatment of the left, from the Communist Party in the 1950s to the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s. Ward Churchill's substantial new preface to this edition, Volume 8 of the South End Press Classics Series, updates the cases of several incarcerated Black Panthers and analyzes the events at Ruby Ridge and Waco, as well as the wars on drugs and terrorism. Churchill makes a compelling argument that U.S. law enforcement has become thoroughly militarized, with devastating consequences for all those who work for social justice.

For those wondering why Bill Clinton could pardon billionaire white-collar fugitive Marc Rich but not Native American leader Leonard Peltier, important clues can be found in this classic study of the FBI's counterintelligence program against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Written by a key AIM member and one of its most knowledgeable supporters, Agents of Repression, features one of the best histories of the FBI siege of Wounded Knee. The 1973 attack resulted in Peltier's imprisonment. The book also provides a well-written synthesis of the FBI efforts against the Black Panthers. This edition, Volume 7 of the South End Press Classics Series, includes a new introduction examining the cases of Leonard Peltier and Anna Mae Aquash and the infiltration of AIM by the FBI. While the FBI seems a less flagrantly violent organization now than in the 1970s, twenty-first century readers will learn why America's political police force remains a threat to those committed to fundamental social change.

The impact of new educational technologies on academic work is a contentious issue on university campuses across Canada. As the November 2001 CAUT conference on online education revealed, there is a range of opinion among faculty union members in Canada and the United States about the impact and meaning of technology in higher education.

Technocratic neoliberalism is becoming a danger around the world. Corporate efficiency (or what is called that) and competent management (or what tries to pass itself off as that) modeled on private enterprise (or what is misleadingly described as such) are hailed as the solution to underdevelopment, dependency, bureaucratization and even to problems in environments and institutions such as schools and universities which were designed with a purpose in mind quite different from profit-seeking business-enterprise.