jessisays

Foreign Affairs is axing a $5-million program that funds Canadian studies abroad even though the department was told two years ago the program generates $70-million a year for the country’s economy.

The Foreign Affairs budget cut to Canadian studies programs for foreign scholars is being broadly criticized as a short-sighted exercise in false economy that will damage Canada’s international economic and political ambitions.

The “Understanding Canada” initiative, which began in the 1970s, was a $5-million expenditure that gave grants to foreign scholars to teach courses or hold special academic events about Canada in foreign countries.

It’s that old problem about Quebec. Somehow people there manage to shake a bit loose from the rigid corporate-imposed mindset that has gripped North America in recent decades, convincing us that we as a society must cut back on things — like university education and old age pensions — that were somehow affordable in days when our society was a lot less rich.

The Quebec students, more attuned to the outside world, have figured out that this self-denial has more to do with dogma than with some new reality allegedly necessitated by the global economy.

How else to explain the fact that many northern European nations manage to keep university education easily affordable — even free in Scandinavia — while managing to compete very effectively in the global economy?

The Norwegian embassy in Ottawa confirmed yesterday that, in addition to free tuition, Norway provides a stipend to cover much of a student’s living expenses. (Of course, Norway is blessed with ample oil reserves — almost as blessed as Canada.)

The Scandinavians — and the Quebec students — consider higher education a public good, essential to democracy.

Many Scandinavian countries demonstrate their commitment to this concept — and to genuine global community — by even offering free university tuition to foreigners, including North Americans. We reciprocate by treating foreign students like cash cows to be milked relentlessly, charging them tuition fees roughly three times the Canadian rate.

Now there’s the spirit of global co-operation!

“If feminists really cared about equality, they’d be addressing all the inequality that faces men. Like, why do feminists only care about breast cancer and not prostate cancer? Why aren’t feminists advocating for single dads? Why won’t women sleep with me when I’m a really nice guy and I’ve made a particular effort to be nice to them, particularly? Until feminism can answer that, I’m afraid I don’t really see it as being legitimate.”

This is the last bastion of the misogynist’s argument – their self fancying checkmate, if you will. What these people are basically saying is that, despite the overwhelming evidence of entrenched sexual, physical and ideological oppression of women, the only way feminism can really be fair is if it first identifies and solves all of the ways in which the patriarchy also oppresses men.

To be more specific, women who agitate for their own liberation are only allowed to do so once they’ve fixed all the things that make men sad, thus making them stronger and even more powerful.

Bill C-31 gives the government the power to detain refugees — including women and children — with no judicial oversight. It discriminates against asylum seekers based on their country of origin by allowing the minister to designate so-called “safe countries” and to deny refugees from those nations the right to appeal. Above all, the bill empowers the minister to deport legitimate refugees — even after they have become permanent residents — simply on the minister’s say-so that they will not face danger if returned to their home country.

Not only does this bill run contrary to the tradition of humanitarianism so many Canadians are proud of, it returns Canada to the days when racism and xenophobia were part of our official immigration policy.

…

By instilling fear instead of promoting compassion, Bill C-31 asks Canadians to turn our backs on those who need our assistance, and to forgo our core values as a just and open society. This is a bill that all fair-minded Canadians should reject.

Our government certainly has the right to design a refugee-determination system that would screen out illegitimate claims. But such a system must be tempered with compassion for asylum seekers and respect for the Charter of Rights and international law.

Today there is a fundamental conflict between academics and administrators. Teaching, research, and scholarship have as their overriding purpose making public new ways of thinking or recovering forgotten old ways. Professors are as competitive as anyone else, and they enjoy making discoveries and introducing superior insights. They see the university as a means to that end.

[…]

If you wonder why universities are expensive to operate today, follow the money to the administrators and their support persons. I doubt that students come to university to enjoy the fine work of well-paid under-provosts and senior associate directors. They are more likely to find whatever educational value exists in the underpaid work of part-time sessional instructors.

Here’s a suggestion. Maclean’s annually rates Canadian universities and colleges with all sorts of measures. They should add a measure of administrator-to-student ratios.

Money spent on administration cannot be spent on academic programs. How does U of C stack up against Mount Royal, the University of Alberta, or UBC? There would be a measure that would mean something.