American Association of University Professors president Jane Buck spoke to CAUT Council delegates about a just-released special report by AAUP on the risks to academic freedom and free inquiry posed by the government response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The 26-page report, published in the November/December issue of Academe, calls for more freedom of inquiry and openness in academic settings.

CAUT recently welcomed two new member associations from Ontario, Brescia Faculty Association and the Ontario College of Art & Design Faculty Association, as well as the Saskatchewan Association of University Teachers.

Kudos to McGill student Jesse Rosenfeld for refusing to submit his essay for an electronic plagiarism test (Bulletin, Nov. 2003). In refusing, this second-year student demonstrates more wisdom and common sense than many tenured academics who have signed up for such educational nonsense as the Turnitin service designed to ferret out plagiarists.

The reversal of Professor David Noble's selection to the J.S. Woodsworth Chair at Simon Fraser University should be an alarm bell for academic faculty in Canada. A president leading his vice-president academic and the dean of humanities to terminate an already concluded peer selection process for a scholarly chair is unacceptable. This top-down reversal violates the very basis of the university - academic excellence and freedom to inquire.''

The latest round of Canada's Copyright Act reform is "not off to a good start," says Ken Field, chair of CAUT's intellectual property working group.

On behalf of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, I would like to congratulate you on your election as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and as of Dec.12, Prime Minister of Canada. We look forward to working with you to improve the state of post-secondary education.

Nationwide week of action highlights issues facing contract staff.

Nearly seven in 10 Canadians believe that today's tuition fees are keeping qualified people from getting a university or college education, according to a public opinion survey commissioned by CAUT.

Academic staff unions and associations from around the globe have unveiled an ambitious project designed to counter the increasing commercialization and globalization of higher education.

According to a survey conducted from 1990 to 1992 of 20 universities across Canada, men and women are almost equally represented in the per course contract academic workforce (Rajagopal, 2002). Similarly, a 2001-2002 Statistics Canada report showed that almost 50 per cent of the non tenure-track limited-term positions in universities and colleges were held by women (CAUT, 2003).

More focus on the importance of post-secondary education to Canadian society, a need for increased, stable and predictable funding to support post-secondary education, and improved student aid were the key recommendations coming out of a recent policy forum sponsored last month by the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

CAUT brought together grievance officers from faculty associations across Canada for the association's first annual senior grievance officers workshop Nov. 7-9 in Ottawa.

The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis adopts an ethnomethodological viewpoint to analyze how the murder of women by a lone gunman at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal was presented to the public via media publication over a two-week period in 1989

Canada's Blacks are trailblazers and innovators

Canada: The New Millennium Series highlights our nation's accomplishments through highly-informative original articles by leading Canadians

In 1925, a British Columbia Royal Commission insisted that: "The development of a united and intelligent citizenship should be accepted without question as the fundamental aim of our schools." According to the leaders of the day, school systems were not simply social organisms set up for individual enlightenment but also ones meant to unite the citizenry in its political project. The authors of The Erosion of Democracy in Education allege that recent educational changes in Canada are eroding this belief and, by extension, damaging the quality of our democracy.

CAUT has joined the equity rights organization, Egale Canada. "Egale has done important work in promoting justice and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people and their families," said CAUT executive director James Turk. "Given CAUT's historic commitment to equity and the present context of debate on sexual orientation and legal equality, it made sense to join this national advocacy group."