UBC prof felt pressured to be silent
Weeks before the start of the academic year, the University of British Columbia is in damage- control mode, first accused of failing to explain the sudden departure of its president and now for failing to keep its powerful board of governors in check.
As questions persist over what led Arvind Gupta to step down one year into his term, UBC faculty members say they have lost confidence in the chairman of the university’s board of governors amid allegations he tried to silence a professor who had speculated publicly about the reasons for Gupta’s departure.
“There’s no issues management happening. It’s like a runaway train,” said Lesli Boldt, president of Vancouver- based consulting firm Boldt Communications. “What was one issue — which was why did Professor Gupta resign? — has suddenly become four issues.”
The crisis began on Aug. 7 when UBC issued a press release announcing a “leadership transition.” It said that Gupta, a computer science professor and former chief executive of Mitacs, a non- profit dedicated to building partnerships between academia and industry, had resigned to “return to the pursuit of his academic career.” The vagueness of the release led to speculation on social media: Why would someone brought on as president with such fanfare suddenly leave, especially when he was beginning to implement his “five- point vision” for research and innovation and had told the campus student newspaper this spring his job was “really fun.”
One of the more provocative theories came from Jennifer Berdahl, a business professor specializing in leadership studies. In a blog post, Berdahl speculated that because Gupta — “the first brown man to be UBC president” — advocated for women and visible minorities, encouraged the less powerful to speak and exhibited the traits of a “humble leader,” he ultimately “lost the masculinity contest among the leadership at UBC.”
That blog post apparently did not sit well with the chairman of UBC’s board of governors, John Montalbano, who also serves as vice- chairman of RBC Wealth Management.
According to Berdahl, Montalbano called her to say that her blog post was hurtful, inaccurate and embarrassing to the board. “He said my post would cause others to question my academic credibility,” she wrote. “He also repeatedly mentioned having conversations with my dean about it. He also repeatedly brought up RBC, which funds my research activities, to say that people there were on damage control.”
Berdahl claims an associate dean and division chair later scolded her for hurting the university’s reputation.
“I have never in my life felt more institutional pressure to be silent.”
That led to an unscheduled incamera session of the board on Monday and a statement from Angela Redish, UBC’s interim president, that the university would investigate any alleged breach of academic freedom.