DEMONSTRATION AT THE OFFICES OF GARY GOODYEAR - PROTEST ATTACKS ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM

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Thursday, June 18, 2009
11:00-11:45am
Gary Goodyear's constituency office
1425 Bishop Street N, Unit 3, Cambridge Ontario
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Van leaves downtown Hamilton 9:30am and returns 12:30pm - please email for details.

-Against political interference by government in the legitimate autonomy of SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)
-Against McCarthyist silencing of critical voices on Palestine/Israel
-Against the Conservative Party's attack on Canada's critical and artistic communities and institutions
-For academic freedom, and freedom of speech around Palestinian rights
-For fully funded post-secondary education
-For Goodyear's immediate resignation

The Political Action Committee of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, local 3906 (representing over 2,400 precarious academic workers at McMaster University) as well as Faculty4Palestine, a pan-Canadian network with over 400 members in over 40 universities and 10 colleges, is asking concerned members of the academic, labour and social justice communities in Southern Ontario to join us in demanding the immediate resignation of Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear at his Cambridge, ON constituency office at 11am on
June 18th.

This protest comes in response to the minister's unprecedented interference in academic freedom last week when he personally called the president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) (the main funding body for academic research in Canada) and demanded they reconsider their funding of a peer-reviewed conference at York University titled "Israel/Palestine: Mapping models of statehood and paths to peace," a demand to which the SSHRC president, in part, acquiesced.

SSHRC's funding of projects like this conference are the result of a rigorous and well-established "blind" peer-review process in which at least two highly qualified specialists examine and evaluate each funding application (without knowing who submitted the application) to ensure the highest degree of quality. This peer-review meets or exceeds all global standards for academic integrity and has helped Canadian researchers gain international recognition.

While there are significant problems with the individualist "academic capitalism" approach the SSHRC funding system tends to promote, the principle of academic freedom that this system represents is a central pillar of the Canadian democracy that the Conservative Party claims to be exporting (militarily) around the world.

This interference by a federal minister in the peer-reviewed process is an unacceptable threat to the principle and practice of academic freedom and to the democratic project of the university as a space for critical reflection on society, immune from political intimidation.

It comes hot on the heels of other Conservative measures to undermine freedom of expression in Canada, especially on issues related to policies of the state of Israel which are clear violations of international law (eg. settlements in occupied territories, the apartheid wall). These include the arbitrary and unilateral stripping of funding from the Canadian Arab Federation for their
stance against Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the refusal to allow British MP and outspoken advocate of Palestinian human rights George Galloway to enter the country.

It is clear that Harper's contempt for democratic dialogue in Canada, and the Conservatives' targeting of critical voices on Israel and in defense of Palestinian rights, must be challenged.

Indeed, the Conservative agenda to silence free expression on issues of contemporary importance, and to submit all critical expression to the hypocritical and arbitrary scrutiny of a fundamentalist interpretation of "Canadian values," is intimately linked with the same party's commitment to the outdated and globally discredited neoliberal agenda that aims to drastically reduce federal funding to the arts and university sectors or to use federal funding and policy to shape these sectors to serve corporate, rather than public interests.

The Harper Conservative's ideological crusade to submit every aspect of Canadian society to the dictates of the free market necessitate the silencing of the critical voices which would challenge this backwards vision of the future. Harper's attacks on academic freedom cannot be separated from his attacks on public sector workers, his eagerness to gut medicare and other aspects of the social safety net, his drive to deregulate telecommunications and other industries, his pathological addiction to the ecologically catastrophic oil sands project, his moves to privatize water and other "natural resources," his internationally condemned free-market cowboy approach to indigenous rights, his sneering antagonism towards efforts to address systemic racism, sexism and homophobia in Canadian society, his unconstitutional abuse of the Security Certificate program and tolerance for secret trials, his reprehensible attacks on immigrants, refugees and those without status, his complete acquiescence to the worst aspects of the Bush doctrine of racist continental "security," and the zeal with which he cuts social programs to fund an increasingly deadly and imperialistic Canadian foreign policy.

Join us, then, in demanding Goodyear's resignation.

For more information on Goodyear's McCarthyist approach, please see the following Globe and Mail article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/goodyear-questions-mideast-forum-funds/article1175909/

For more information about the planned demonstration, please contact Max Haiven at the Political Action Committee of CUPE local 3906: 905-865-3075, politicalaction@cupe3906.org or Mary-Jo Nadeau at Faculty4Palestine: faculty@caiaweb.org.

CALL FOR ACTION: Support academic freedom! Challenge these attacks on academic conference!

Write to Minister Goodyear. Tell him that you object to a second peer review, and ask him to account for his actions.

Tell him you support the call for his resignation
(see http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2009/10/c4859.html)
He can be reached at GOODYG@PARL.GC.CA