The Simon Fraser Student Society brought together 200 faculty members and students from across Canada in April for a major conference on academic freedom and the public interest.
In his opening speech, CAUT executive director James Turk told delegates that academic freedom is essential if universities are to fulfill their role in society.
"Universities have a responsibility to be places (sadly, too often the only places) in a democratic society where there can be critical appraisals of ideas, actions, policies, products, processes and theories unconstrained by conventional wisdom, powerful interests, accepted knowledge, dominant paradigms, custom, habit or tradition," Turk said. "But universities cannot be such places without academic freedom."
He said academic freedom is something that applies to teachers and researchers that means the right to lecture, comment, debate, research and publish without fear of retribution, discipline, discrimination or eventual termination of employment because of exercise of this right.
Citing famous attacks on academic freedom which galvanized faculty to action, he described academic freedom "as a great achievement but one that is never secure."
He said academic freedom is always at risk. "It can only survive if we use it and defend our colleagues' use of it, regardless of who is challenging them."
David Suzuki, retired UBC geneticist and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, stressed the importance of academic freedom and the threats posed by the growing influence of the corporate sector in university research.
University of Toronto professor of medicine Nancy Olivieri highlighted her struggle with corporate, university and hospital interests that attempted to compromise her ability to inform her patients and the scientific community about the results of her clinical research - resulting in seven years of conflict, before being vindicated late last year.
David Healy, professor of medicine at the University of Wales, produced a dramatic presentation on the growing practice of pharmaceutical companies ghostwriting academic articles that appear in major medical journals.
Panel presentations explored issues such as revitalizing critical communications, educating educators in a democratic society, public intellectuals and dissent, avoiding pharmaceutical industry takeovers of university biomedical research and the history of the university and academic freedom.
The student union took delegates on "The Resistance Tour" - a walking tour of the campus highlighting the high profile struggles around academic freedom at SFU in the 1960s and 1970s that resulted in CAUT censuring the university on two separate occasions.
"It is heartening that leadership in this important conference came from the students," said Ian Angus, professor of humanities at SFU and one of the conference speakers. "Their hard work, clarity about the issues and commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression bodes well for our future."