You will likely recall the Azarova affair at the University of Toronto, which I first wrote about back here. It has now risen to international prominence because of Masha Gessen’s piece in the New Yorker, the Canadian Association of University Teacher’s (CAUT) censure motion and an increasingly successful boycott U of T campaign.  To summarize: early last August U of T’s law faculty, while hiring a new Executive Director for its International Human Rights Program, began employment negotiations with Dr. Valentina Azarova. She is a) not a Canadian citizen and b) reasonably well-known for work on international law as it pertains to Palestine.  In early September, an influential and active alumni member found out about these negotiations and during a routine call with an Assistant Vice-President (AVP) in the Advancement Office, mentioned that Azarova’s published works with respect to Israel was causing concern amongst some members of the Jewish community.  The AVP called the Dean of Law, Ed Iacobucci and suddenly concerns about the length of Azarova’s immigration process emerged and negotiations ceased.  The Selection Committee alleged improper influence, the Dean denied it, and within a week or so the drama was all being played out in the pages of The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star.

Originally, the University asked an ex-University President, Bonnie Patterson, to investigate the events leading to the affair.  After concerns about the independence of the process (the Terms of Reference had Patterson reporting to the VP Human Resources, who was also being investigated), the whole thing was junked.  A new process involved hiring the former Supreme Court justice Thomas Cromwell, who reported to President Meric Gertler. Cromwell produced his report a few weeks ago that largely absolved Iacobucci of blame, and unfortunately it took me until this past weekend to actually read it.  

My thoughts mainly revolve around how different this report might have looked if it had been by a university administrator instead of a judge.  These two lenses lead to different conclusions.

Cromwell’s report begins with a useful and detailed blow-by-blow account of the entire affair.  It highlights the following:

• The position was meant to start in September 2020, with in-person presence required as of January 2021.
• Despite time being of the essence and the permanent position being vacant since September 2019, the hiring process did not start until April 2020.
• The shortlist ended up having two foreign nationals and a Canadian permanent resident. Upon an interview, the latter was determined not to be qualified for the position.
• Azarova was told she was the preferred choice by the Faculty’s Assistant Dean, and negotiations for the position began on August 11. Among Azarova’s requests was that she be allowed to spend summers working from Europe.
• Iacobucci was concerned at least as far back as mid-August that Azarova looked “too academic” for what was supposed to be an administrative position (despite the teaching duties and the admin title, this position did not involve tenure).
• For reasons which defy easy explanation, it took the Law Faculty about three weeks to get its ducks in a row in terms of how to handle the immigration process.  Basically, it would take three months to get through the rigamarole of formally dealing with Government of Canada procedures, but that Azarova could get a start on her work on a temporary independent contract.  This ruse is technically illegal, but U of T (and I would assume many other universities) use it all the time because really, who’s ever going to know or care?
• Upon receipt of the call from the AVP on September 4th, Iacobucci asked his Assistant Dean, who had been leading the process, for a briefing on both the candidate and the situation. He came to focus on two things: the technical illegality of what was being proposed (which he refused to countenance), and the fact that Azarova had requested to spend 20% of her time in Europe (which for him indicated that she was not serious about her administrative duties). As a result, Iacobucci ordered a stop to negotiations which, given their advanced state, was tantamount to a rescindment of the offer. Though, Cromwell notes repeatedly, since no official letter had been sent to Azarova, there was “no offer in a legal sense.”
• Iacobucci then tried to convince the selection committee to re-interview the other candidates to meet a September hiring deadline, which they predictably refused.

Now on the basis of this, Cromwell reasons that since a) the process had got to the point where the September deadline wasn’t going to be met without engaging in illegality, and b) the Dean had also expressed discomfort with Azarova’s desire to spend summers away from campus (because it was indicative of an academic mindset rather than an administrative one – a view which is deeply fascinating in and of itself, but need not detain us here) long before the donor call came in, it cannot be inferred that the donor call was the deciding factor.  Others might conclude that the emphasis on immigration was merely a pretext, but Cromwell would not.

All this is very well argued.  But it is a legalistic perspective rather than a managerial one.  Anyone with a managerial perspective looks at the same evidence and asks what in hell could Iacobucci have been thinking?

If the actual problem was that Azarova was the best candidate but spending summers in Europe was unacceptable, then what a decent manager does is say “I’m sorry, we can’t offer you that.  Are you still interested?”  The last thing they do is terminate the search, particularly if time is of the essence, which it allegedly was. 

(In fact, when Azarova asked if her request for time in Europe was a factor on September 10th, the Assistant Dean denied it was the case, even though Iacobucci had very clearly declared his misgivings to the Assistant Dean personally on the previous weekend and in an email on September 8^th.  Why would the Assistant Dean deny something like this?  Presumably because it would have been very awkward if Azarova had responded with “I’ll drop that request”).

Similarly, if the actual problem was that the preferred candidate could not arrive by a rapidly approaching deadline, then what a decent manager does is ask whether the deadline is a real one or an artificial one, and whether there are any means of speeding up the process.  Now, one can imagine a particularly punctilious manager rejecting an extra-legal solution on the speed question (which Iacobucci did), although given how frequently U of T uses that solution, it raises questions.   

But competent managers do not neglect to ask the question about how firm a deadline is particularly when there are no other candidates who could conceivably be hired in time to meet said deadline.  And the Dean never asked anyone.  In fact, most people seem to have been under the impression that September was a nice-to-have rather than a must-have (and indeed, given how long it took the university to get its act together on the contract, it is hard to see how anyone could have believed otherwise).  Iacobucci seems to have made a half-hearted attempt to get the committee to look at other choices from the existing pool, but this was grasping at straws: he knew perfectly well that Deans do not get a do-over on hiring committee decisions on pretexts this flimsy.

So, what happened is that Iacobucci, alone among those involved in the hiring process:

• chose to take Azarova’s negotiating position on working conditions as evidence of unfitness for the job;
• chose to veto a well-used work-around of immigration rules;
• chose to treat September as a hard deadline for filling the position;

and acted accordingly in the full knowledge that all of this would be interpreted in light of the donor call, (which by that time was not a secret in the faculty).  This resulted in the position remaining unfilled to this day and subjection to CAUT censure and boycott.

One can, like Cromwell, choose to accept an explanation for each of these choices that does not involve donor influence.  What one cannot then do is to look at these choices and say, “this is a decision made by a competent academic manager”.  You must choose. 

Either way, there should have been consequences.