Open Letter on SEoT to UBC-V's Provost.

Dear Andrew,

I note your memo on SEoT for UBC-V instructors that was relayed via my department.

In that memo is the suggestion that there is valuable data to be collected on the transition to online delivery – emergency remote teaching. There may indeed be data waiting to be harvested, yet this instrument  was not designed to do that task.  

The individual option for instructors that you have provided is problematic. One of my colleagues recently shared their thoughts via a department list serve raising concerns about the implications for a faculty member to not use this term's records – wondering out loud how that would be interpreted and understood in reviews if others did include them.  

The data you are looking for on the transition could have been rolled out in a way that left evaluation of teaching off the table. The technical modification of those forms is not that complicated (or at least that is what I have been told by the technicians previously). 

At this juncture, where so much is in turmoil, so many of us with family, friends, associates affected adversely by the pandemic and it’s spill over effects, it seems that running yet one more evaluation during this time takes on the appearances of an act of unkindness.  As instructors we have been asked, and many of us have taken a lead on encouraging others, to act with compassion. We have made modifications, accommodations, and allowances. We have worked to pay attention to our students' needs. 

For example, in one of my courses where we are reading an ethnography and viewing a film of working in a food processing plant one student explained that they couldn’t get past the first page of the book. They were surprised at their response – I excused all of the subsequent assignments. Another wrote apologies for missing a virtual class from their phone as their parent was being admitted to an emergency room.  Another had given up their rental accommodation because economic uncertainty due to the pandemic and our virtual class fell on their moving day. And on these stories go. In the best times I work out alternative projects or other accommodations, but in this case asking these students to continue to do make-up work strikes me as an act devoid of compassion. The harm caused by continuing the SEoT, however valuable the data may be for you, outweighs any perceived benefit.

I am compelled to urge my own students not to complete these evaluations as I can find no importance in doing them at this time.  Furthermore I encourage my colleagues not to facilitate or support the implementation of SEoT either.

With warm regards,

Charles

Aligning with UBC's Indigenous Strategic Plan - guidelines for academic units

UBC's new Indigenous Strategic Plan contains 8 goals and 43 specific action items.  I have discussed the implications and importance of this plan at the level of the overall university, this commentary looks at specific actions items that academic units and departments might focus on. I am doing this from the vantage point of my own department, Anthropology at UBC-V.

Our department describes it self has having a caring, inclusive 'culture.' 

This underlying context should set the department up for a strong and effective engagement with implementing the Indigenous Strategic Plan. It doesn't however, address the historical complicity that anthropologists and anthropology have had with colonial dispossession of Indigenous peoples.

Anthropologists have a long history of 'collecting' Indigenous belongings under problematic contexts. The core data and substance of anthropological theory making of anthropology has been built out of Indigenous knowledge and tradition. Our department at UBC has a long history research in Indigenous communities and, more recently, with Indigenous communities. Any action moving forward should reflect an awareness of our departmental and disciplinary history, our need to redress our past, and a reworking of our practices and policies to reflect the future oriented vision of the Indigenous Strategic Plan.

Among the strategic plan's action items are at least ten that a department might have some capacity to act upon and effect local changes over.  I label these 'potential areas of growth.'  There are three additional action items that UBC Anthropology has already met or exceeded.

This year the department of anthropology at UBC-V set up a special working group to identify ways of realigning and improving departmental practices and policies to bring them into compliance with the TRC's Calls to Action.  As part of this process the department is holding a workshop Monday March 9th (open to faculty, staff, & graduate students) to identify three priority areas to work on in the coming year. This summary and grouping of action items is prepared as a resource for the workshop.

The action items from the Indigenous Strategic Plan are listed below under two headings. The numbers beside each item corresponds to the action items' number in the plan.

Potential areas of growth

2. Ensure that all faculties and cross-university strategies identify Indigenous engagement and the advancement of Indigenous peoples’ human rights as a specific strategic area of focus and commitment.

6. Complete a public report on the findings of an institution-wide study that identifies UBC’s participation in the implementation of Crown colonial policies.

14. Provide Indigenous peoples who are engaged in research with equitable and timely compensation that recognizes the significant value of their participation to the research process and outcomes.

15. Undertake a university-wide curriculum review to ensure Indigenous histories, experiences, worldviews and knowledge systems are appropriately reflected across faculties and programs and are fully compliant with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action

17. Provide equitable and timely financial compensation to Indigenous people who support the Indigenization of curriculum.

21. Dedicate spaces for Indigenous students, faculty and staff to practice and celebrate their cultures.

23. Implement an Indigenous procurement strategy which prioritizes the provision of goods and services from Indigenous businesses and vendors.

25. Develop an Indigenous representative workforce and advancement policy, which identifies targets for annually increasing Indigenous faculty and staff on both campuses.

27. Integrate competence in teaching Indigenous content and working with Indigenous students and colleagues into all university job descriptions.

38. Review all university policies and operational practices to ensure they support the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ human rights, and the equity and inclusion of Indigenous students, faculty, staff and community members.

Meeting or exceeding

13. Co-develop research protocols and community-specific ethical research guidelines with interested community partners to ensure students and faculties are approaching research opportunities with communities in a respectful and formalized manner. This includes the imperative of free, prior and informed consent and protocols on the ownership, control, access and possession of Indigenous data.

16. Ensure all academic programs, undergraduate and graduate, include substantive content in at least one course which explores Indigenous histories and identifies how Indigenous issues intersect with the major field of study of the faculty.

18. Partner with Indigenous communities locally and globally to develop accredited post-secondary Indigenous knowledge programs that can be delivered in communities and on-campus.

Final remarks at my last full meeting of the UBC Board of Governors.

In 2016, when I ran for election as a governor I argued that it was time for a change in how the BoG responds to faculty members. It is time for new faculty voices, different voices from what were accustomed to. In fact, we very often never ever heard from our representatives once they began their terms on the board.  Deliberations at the board level had become shrouded behind a veil of secrecy and subterfuge. I have no strong opinion on the palace coup that precipitated a particularly rocky period of UBC governance aside from the fact that the machinations around it revealed a culture of secrecy and cohabitation between a corporate oriented and controlled board and a layer of university administration that found democratic practices distasteful.

Before beginning my term on this board I had only twice before attended a board meeting; once as a student activist when we really got no further than the top of the stairway in the old admin building. Then once more as a faculty member participant in a UBC Clean rally when we took our protest from the street into this board room. From the vantage of this table with three years behind me I believe that I can say with some confidence that while minor changes can be made, real power lies in the streets.

The democratic reforms that have been made on this board derived from the pressures of faculty from units and departments across this campus who said that’s enough and were willing to put their personal lives and careers at risk to say so. The climate emergency declaration came after thousands of students took to the streets, demanding that their elders stop squandering their future. The current Indigenous plan that is moving forward is here also due to the work of community activists over the decades refusing to allow colonialism to forever shape our future.

I firmly believe that a diversity, not of the superficial, but of the fundamental, experiential, life, and perspective –is critical to being able to address our democratic responsibility governing this public institution. When I joined this board there was no real diversity of life experience or perspective at this. This is not a criticism of the individuals as it was the government that put most of you here. But from the vantage point of a Indigenous person, born in BC, a working class northern BC’er, this was a table populated by those more familiar with corporate board rooms than world I am from. The boards of public institution are best when they include broader cross section of people – union leaders, social activists, community organizers and yes some lawyers, accountants, and business people. It will be interesting to see where this board takes UBC over the next few years.  

There is, of course, much to acknowledge in the every day operations of this large institution. I have appreciated the opportunity to meet the individuals charged with making the daily decisions that keep this large vessel moving forward. There is much to commend them for in their care, concern, and commitment. While I may disagree with the overall course taken, I understand and appreciate the reasons why.