Research & Learning
focussing on our core mission
Fascination with how the world works drove me into the academy. As I child I was outdoors a lot - my childhood home backed on a ravine with a salmon creek running through it. I spent hours there exploring. I built a treehouse in a large spruce tree and spent even more hours sitting in the top of the tree reading. Everywhere I went I asked questions and watched what was happening. No surprise, I guess, that I ended up with a profession focussed on watching people and asking them questions.
Part of research is being able to do the work of collecting, amassing, and evaluating information. Just as important is the sharing of it. For me I write, produce films, and teach. All of this is supported by UBC and the people of BC through tax dollars, research grants, tuition, and private donations. This is an immense privilege. At the same time it is also a civic duty that involves being willing to do research that may offend those with power in government, business, or civil society. At times those who support research focus on the privilege over the duty.
Academic Freedom and Research
Governments and members of the public are more and more focussing on the instrumental utility of university research. They want results. They remind us of our privilege. They demand we produce the goods. This often leads to universities going full court press on how useful we are in society. Communications units prepare news releases about trendy new technologies, spinoff companies, and policy research immediately useful for business.
At the same time research that seems outside the narrow ‘build the economy’ framework is ignored. Worse, this kind of research is sometimes targeted by politicians and members of the public as being wasteful and/or ideologically driven. The underlying ‘make it count for the economy’ ideology ultimately trivializes research as an adjunct to industry. It ignores the fundamental body of research, and diversity of approach, that is essential in creating the conditions for a functioning economy in the first place.
This necessitates strong institutional support for diversity of research. It requires the continued defence of academic freedom, without which research becomes rendered into technology development.
This is no where more important than in the classroom where instructors must have the freedom to teach without interference within the confines of their disciplinary commitment to scholarship. Choice of pedagogy, choice of content, choice of method of instruction must be in the instructor’s hands. Attempts to intervene in the classroom to regulate how and what is taught is fraught with negative potentialities. Yet we are witness to many attempts in North America to reach into the classroom and force teaching and learning to comply with political ideologies (from all parts of the spectrum). Such an approach degrades the university.
We have a duty to uphold academic freedom in research and teaching. We can not leave it to administrators (who often prefer us to be quiet), nor can we let social forces within and outside the university dictate how we engage in our subject matter expertise.
Our administration can support university teaching by being more proactive in sharing a wider view of what constitutes research in the university. As faculty we can acknowledge our colleagues who do work we might not care for or appreciate, as their work is just as vital as our own work. As learners we can pause before we criticize our instructors and reflect on knowledge imparted that might unsettle us. Together we can celebrate the diversity and difference of our multifaceted university community.