Politics in the ivory tower

Came across this story last week and I've been meaning to highlight it, as I think it raises some interesting discussion points about the potential for political interference in Canada's universities, or at least how the fear of that potential may be driving university decision-making.

Recently Stephen Owen, formerly the Liberal MP for Vancouver-Quadra, was hired by the University of British Columbia as vice-president, community and external relations. During the hiring process, the hiring committee expressed concerns about whether Owen’s political career may prove detrimental to the university’s relationship with Canada’s Newish Conservative government.

Mr. Peets said concern that Mr. Owen's appointment could sour relations with the Conservatives “was an immediate and obvious thought in almost everyone's mind” during the hiring process.

“You are hiring a guy for government relations who is from a party that is not in power and that should be a concern,” he said. “You worry that if you hire someone from the opposition side that they may have burned some bridges with the government side and the government relations thing may not work well for them.”

It may be a pragmatic concern certainly, although its rather unfortunate that a candidate’s politics should have to be an issue. Owen invited the committee to contact members of the other political parties to discuss Owen’s political career, and whether or not it may prove an impediment to his new potential role.

UBC took him up on the offer, and Conservative godfather and former campaign director John Reynolds was among those contacted to ask whether appointing a Liberal MP to the VP’s role would be a “problem” for the university. Since Owen got the job I guess Reynolds gave him a pass, although one wonders what would have happened had Reynolds said it would be a problem.

When reached for comment by CP, Reynolds comments were a little odd:

“I am a private individual and I got nothing to do with the party,” he said.“I don't decide with the Conservative party who spends money and who doesn't spend money. I am not involved with that end of things at all. I don't think this was done at all or had anything to do with funding whatsoever. It's not (Mr. Owen's) job — his job is community relations.”

John Reynolds has nothing to do with the Conservative Party? Believe that and I have a bridge to sell you. He also has nothing to do Ottawa mayoral races of parole board appointments.

Anyway, while one hopes that no government would let politics enter into decision-making around things like grants and research funding, we do also live in the real world. And the potential for abuse is certainly there:

The last Conservative budget was the first to bypass the peer-reviewed process of federal granting councils by directly funding seven research institutes to the tune of $105 million in matching dollars.

“That is what has a lot of people in the academic community really concerned,” said Mr. Robinson, whose association represents about 55,000 academics ranging from librarians to researchers across the country. “No one is questioning that these institutes weren't deserving, but there are a lot of deserving institutions and the question is how do you decide which one? Do you make a political decision or an academic decision? We would argue that, for a whole number of reasons, it has to be an academic decision. We can't have political interference in the academic world.”

It seems an unfortunate path to be going down, where universities feel they have to vet potential hires for political compatibility with the government of the day. There needs to be a separation of politics and academe, with government setting the broad outlines, goals and mission of a program and non-political learned experts vetting applications and allocating the funding to specific institutions.

Remove the potential for political interference and testing candidates for political purity won’t be necessary.

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Quadra is getting interesting...fall by-election?

Long-time Liberal MP Stephen Owen announced today he will be vacating his seat in Vancouver-Quadra at the end of the month to take an academic post at UBC.

Owen had already announced his intention not to run again so that’s not a surprise, but with Owen resigning with no general election in the offing it does set the scene for a very interesting by-election, and one that will be very important for both the Liberals and the Conservatives.

While the riding has been Liberal for some time (John Turner ran and won there as PM) and Owen carried the riding handily in 2006 (by some 12,000 votes over a high profile Conservative candidate, Stephen Rogers) it’s has been Conservative in the fairly recent past and it’s a riding that the Conservatives, and others, view as poachable. Often described as “tony”, while it includes UBC it also has Point Grey and it’s a wealthy and highly educated riding.

The Liberals already have a candidate selected in the riding in Joyce Murray, a former provincial environment candidate that ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in New Westminster-Coquitlam in 2006.

According to the Sun the Conservatives don’t have a candidate yet. John Reynolds, the former Conservative MP, campaign co-chair and current lobbyist (who I guess is banned from the Conservative war room) is touting businesswoman and BC Cancer foundation chairman Mary McNeil as a star candidate, but unless she gets an appointment (or they pull a Cutler) she’ll face a challenge from UBC professor Deborah Meredith, who has a lot of old Conservative backing in Senators Pat Carney and a bbq-less Gerry St. Germain, plus the past candidate and even everyone's favourite reformer, Deborah Grey.

So before we even get to a by-election it looks like a rather interesting battle for the Conservative nomination, with some Conservative titans battling it out in the backrooms. We’ll have to watch and see how it plays -- or isn’t allowed to play -- out.

And when we do get to a by-election the results could be quite telling. Even though it is currently a Liberal riding, a by-election win in a riding the Conservatives are targeting would be a big boost, and getting Murray into parliament would be great. For the Conservatives, a win in an upper middle class riding like Quadra (and taking it from the Liberals) would help boost their desire to portray themselves as a new kind of CPC.

Let the campaigning begin. The only question is when will Deceiven’ Stephen pull the trigger? He has six months from July 27^th. There’s also Jean Lapierre’s riding in Quebec to be filled, the clock is ticking there too...

P.S. No matter who wins in Quadra the odds look good that the HoC will be gaining another female MP, and that's a good thing.

UPDATE: Dan raises a highly plausible conspiracy theory.

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