What’s Wrong with Canadian Universities

In the summer of 2001, I took early retirement from Toronto’s York University. After a 29-year career as an academic, I walked out the door from a senior position in one of Canada’s leading departments of political science in Canada’s leading metropolis.

The immediate cause of my departure was the poisonous effect on university life of two prolonged and bitter strikes at York—a two-month faculty strike in 1997 and a three-and-a-half–month strike by graduate student teaching assistants in the winter of 2000/01. Five and a half months of picket lines in three years was enough to drain the enjoyment out of academic life. Worse was what the conflicts revealed about how academics, academics-in-training and administrators react under stress. In crisis mode, universities are revealed as deeply dysfunctional institutions. Academic communities are very delicate constructions. Pull out a thread or two and the entire fabric can unravel with astonishing rapidity. Looking ahead...