Last week saw a slew of universities “announce” their plans for the summer. Some of them appear to be treating it as a strategic exercise in getting one over on competitors (“look how open we are!”), but with one or two exceptions, this exercise is probably a misreading of the situation: pretty much everyone is going to be massively online/remote for the fall. Going remote, to be clear, is a good thing. I know that some people like making distinctions
One of the most extraordinary moments last week in the run-up to the Senate non-confidence vote on Western President Amit Chakma’s tenure was the publication of an opinion piece in the Western News – the official organ of the university, no less – entitled, “Nothing personal, but it’s time to go”. Written by two professors in the English Department, it is a rhetorically excellent savaging of President Chakma. Read it, it’s worth it. Although well-written, I was particularly struck by
Last Friday, Western’s President Amit Chakma barely scraped through a non-confidence vote following his decision to take pay in lieu of administrative leave when he started his second term, a move which pushed his pay to $967,000 last year. The story has resonated widely across academia, so it seems worth a couple days of blogs to unpack some of the issues With specific respect to pay, the real issue seems to be what to do with this “leave year” that
Yesterday I talked about ways universities can generate economic growth, and I promised to offer an example from Southwestern Ontario. Southwestern Ontario has been in the news a lot recently due to its deteriorating economy, not least through the efforts of Western professor Mike Moffatt. More recently, the Globe’s Adam Radwanski penned a feature article on what southwestern Ontario can learn from such economic revivals as has happened in the US rust belt. Radwanski’s argument is a long one, but the bit
I’m sure many of you saw Western President, Amit Chakma’s, op-ed in the National Post last week, suggesting that Canadian universities need more government assistance to reach new heights of excellence, and “own the podium” in global academia. I’ve been told that Chakma’s op-ed presages a new push by the U-15 for a dedicated set of “excellence funds” which, presumably, would end up mostly in the U-15’s own hands (for what is excellence if not research done by the U-15?). All I can
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