Howard Pawley was elected president of the Harry Crowe Foundation at its directors meeting in October. Pawley, a former president of the University of Windsor Faculty Association and former premier of Manitoba will head the charitable foundation set up to undertake research and education on issues of freedom of academic expression, institutional autonomy and independence of university research.

Brenda Gallie, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, was elected vice-president of the foundation. James Turk, executive director of CAUT, was elected as secretary and Gordon Piché, an associate executive director of CAUT, was chosen as treasurer.

Other directors of the foundation are Arpi Hamalian, a professor of education at Concordia University in Montreal and former president of the Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d'université, Jon Thompson, chair of mathematics and statistics at the University of New Brunswick, and John Hoddinott, associate dean of teaching and research at the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta.

The directors announced plans to hold a public conference on academic freedom next October in Toronto.

The Harry Crowe Foundation, established in 2003, is named after the tenured professor at United College (now the University of Winnipeg) whose dismissal became CAUT's first major academic freedom case. The foundation puts charitable giving to work for research and education about academic freedom and related issues in post-secondary education.