CAUT has established an independent committee of inquiry with an expanded mandate to look into alleged violations of academic freedom and faculty rights in the department of medicine at Dalhousie University and the university-affiliated Capital District Health Authority.

Replacing a committee established by CAUT in March 2003 to look into the situation of one clinical faculty member at Dalhousie-Capital Health, the new committee will consider the originating case as well as a wider range of allegations and issues.

"The situation in the department of medicine at Dalhousie and Capital Health raises serious questions about faculty rights and academic freedom well beyond those that were initially brought to us," said James Turk, executive director of CAUT. "We asked the original committee to expand its mandate to consider the additional cases and issues, but committee members said the amount of work required was beyond what they could undertake.

"They told us they felt it would be best if they resigned so that a new committee could look at the whole issue. Because they were an independent committee, CAUT had no choice but to accept their resignations."

The newly-announced committee of inquiry will be chaired by Dr. Allan Sharp, dean of science at the University of New Brunswick. Sharp holds a BSc from McMaster University and an MSc and PhD from the University of Waterloo. He has taught in UNB's physics department since 1975 and served as department chair before being named as dean in 1999.

Joining Sharp on the committee will be Dr. Bernice Schrank, professor of English language and literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Schrank holds a BA from the City University of New York and an MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin. She serves as editor of the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. Schrank is a former chair of CAUT's Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee and one of the most experienced faculty association grievance officers in the country.

The third member is Dr. David L. Sackett, Professor Emeritus of clinical epidemiology and biostatistics at McMaster University. Sackett was the founding chair of his department, physician-in-chief of medicine at Chedoke-McMaster hospitals, head of the division of general internal medicine at McMaster, professor of clinical epidemiology at Oxford and founding director of the National Health Service R&D Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford. He was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2000, appointed an Officer in the Order of Canada in 2001 and was an inaugural member of the Community of Distinction at McMaster in 2003.

The committee's terms of reference are:

• to investigate allegations of violations of academic freedom and faculty rights in the faculty of medicine at Dalhousie University and in the department of medicine at the Capital District Health Authority which is affiliated to Dalhousie University,
  
• to determine whether there were breaches of or threats to academic freedom,
  
• to determine whether there were breaches of medical research ethics and clinical ethics,
  
• to determine whether tenure was inappropriately denied to faculty in clinical departments,
  
• to determine how universities can protect the academic freedom and other rights and privileges of university faculty who hold positions at affiliated health care centres, and
  
• to make any appropriate recommendations.
  

Under CAUT guidelines, independent committees of inquiry are completely autonomous.

"The committee determines the content of its report, and the first CAUT will learn the content of that report is when it's published and released to the public," Turk said.

As a procedural matter, the former committee will destroy all material it acquired during its investigation and the new committee will gather its own information and reach its own decisions based on its own investigations.