Group slams university for examining race of professor

HALIFAX — A group of Canadian professors is speaking out against a Halifax university’s handling of a residential-schools course imbroglio, saying the race or ethnicity of a professor should not be a consideration when assigning a course.

Mount Saint Vincent University found itself embroiled in controversy after assigning a course about Canada’s residential schools to a non-Indigenous professor. In response, the school called a meeting this week between Indigenous faculty and staff and the professor assigned to the course to determine a way forward.

But the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship said in a letter Monday that the decision to call a meeting undercuts university collegiality and academic integrity.

Mark Mercer, president of the society and a philosophy professor at Saint Mary’s University, said it’s up to the Mount’s history department to consider a professor’s expertise and perspectives. He said these matters should be judged on academic grounds alone. “The race or ethnicity of the professor is not an academic ground and, thus, should not be a consideration,” Mercer said in a letter to Elizabeth Church, vice-president academic and provost at the school. “The idea that only Indigenous scholars can teach topics involving Indigenous People is false and pernicious. Mount Saint Vincent University should clearly and forcefully repudiate it.”

A university spokeswoman said Monday the school had received the letter and that it’s under review. She said the Mount would be responding directly to the group.

On Friday, Church said the university has been actively recruiting Indigenous faculty, with the search ongoing for additional Indigenous professors. “What we’ve tried to do is listen to the different perspectives and really try to understand how to move forward in a way that is respectful and thoughtful,” she said.

Critics said only Indigenous Peoples have the lived experience to understand the complex and cumulative ways they’ve been discriminated against, and that they should teach their own history.

Despite the outcry, Sherry Pictou, a women’s studies professor at the university who is Mi’kmaq, said she has “full confidence” in Martha Walls as both as a historian and an ally to the Indigenous community. Furthermore, she said the work of decolonizing “cannot fall just on the backs and labour of other Indigenous academics.”