>I think all North American academics should be aware of this
>travesty of academic freedom and human rights.
>
>Paul Phillips,
>Economics,
>University of Manitoba
>
>------- Forwarded message follows -------
>Date sent: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 15:07:59 -0800
>To: (Recipient list suppressed)
>From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Complaint about violation of academic freedom
>in hiring by SFU
>
>March 26, 2001
>
>To: Jim Turk, Neil Tudiver (Fax 613-820-7244)
> Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT)
>From: David F. Noble (phone 416- 778-6927/ Fax 416-778-8928)
>Re: Complaint to Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee about a
> violation of academic freedom in hiring by Simon Fraser University
>
>...her firm had been retained by SFU to do
>a reference check on me. Since BC law requires employers to
>obtain a candidate's permission before consulting any reference,
>she was calling to ask me to give her permission to talk with four
>people... agents of activities or
>enterprises which I had publicly criticized. (Linda Harasim, director
>of the SFU Virtual U project, and Stan Shapson, York
>VP/Research, as avid promoters of both corporate-academic
>partnerships and online education, and Steven Feinberg,a
>statistician and former York VP, as an advocate of academic-
>industrial ties and, in particular, of the U.S.- based International
>Space University which I helped to keep out of Canada). The fourth
>person, Sheila Embleton, a linguist, now holds Michael Stevenson's
>job as York VP/Academic... I told her that the list was unambiguously
>political in that it included my political adversaries and antagonists
>and that I could not give her permission to consult them...
Big, big mistake on David Noble's part. To say that your potential
employers cannot talk to X provides those in the bureaucracy who want
to halt the process with an excellent procedural excuse to do so.
Truth to tell, I also think that David Noble's fear of "Digital
Diploma Mills" is relevant to his professional qualifications, and in
my view at least shows gaping holes in his ability to construct a
logical argument. His central point is that one's instructional
materials are one's own intellectual property that should *never* be
shared or distributed unless someone pays you a healthy sum, and that
the coming of the internet to the university is the same process of
deskilling as that laid out in _Labor and Monopoly Capital_.
I reread Noble's "Digital Diploma Mills" this morning, and found
myself in a sea of phrases and sentences like:
"...technology is but a vehicle and a disarming disguise....
"...the historic plight of other skilled workers...
"...technology is being deployed by management primarily to
discipline, de-skill, and displace labor...
"...the new technology of education, like the automation of other
industries, robs faculty of their knowledge and skills, their control
over their working lives, the product of their labor, and,
ultimately, their means of livelihood...
"...teachers as labor are drawn into a production process designed
for the efficient creation of instructional commodities, and hence
become subject to all the pressures that have befallen production
workers in other industries undergoing rapid technological
transformation from above...
"...once faculty and courses go online, administrators gain much
greater direct control over faculty performance and course content
than ever before and the potential for administrative scrutiny,
supervision, regimentation, discipline and even censorship increase
dramatically...
"...once faculty put their course material online... the knowledge
and course design skill embodied in that material is taken out of
their possession... The administration is now in a position to hire
less skilled, and hence cheaper, workers to deliver the
technologically prepackaged course.... Their services are in the long
run no longer required. They become redundant...
"...the use of the technology entails an inevitable extension of
working time and an intensification of work as faculty struggle at
all hours of the day and night to stay on top of the technology and
respond, via chat rooms, virtual office hours, and e-mail, to both
students and administrators to whom they have now become instantly
and continuously accessible...
"...behind this effort are the ubiquitous technozealots who simply
view computers as the panacea for everything, because they like to
play with them...
"...none of this is speculation..."
washing over me. It wasn't pleasant. It wasn't persuasive. And it
seemed to indicate a very different attitude--an immoral
attitude--toward education and the diffusion of knowledge compared
to, say, what Charles Vest was able to get his faculty to agree to in
their Open Courseware Initiative:
1. What is MIT OpenCourseWare?
The idea behind MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is to make MIT course
materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate
and graduate subjects available on the web, free of charge, to any
user anywhere in the world. MIT OCW will radically alter
technology-enhanced education at MIT, and will serve as a model for
university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age. Such a
venture will continue the tradition at MIT and in American higher
education of open dissemination of educational materials, philosophy,
and modes of thought, and will help lead to fundamental changes in
the way colleges and universities engage the web as a vehicle for
education.
MIT OpenCourseWare will provide the content of, but is not a
substitute for, an MIT education. The most fundamental cornerstone of
the learning process at MIT is the interaction between faculty and
students in the classroom, and amongst students themselves on campus.
2. What course materials would be available on OpenCourseWare?
MIT OCW will make available the core teaching materials that are used
in MIT classes. Depending on the particular class or the style in
which the course is taught, this could include material such as
lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists, and assignments for
each course. More technically sophisticated content will be
encouraged.
3. In what format will the course materials be placed on the web?
The MIT OCW website will be coherent in design but flexible enough to
accommodate many different types of courses, lectures, seminars, etc.
The design and searching capabilities will help users locate
materials by discipline and subject area, type of materials, name of
individual faculty or author, and type of instruction.
4. How does OpenCourseWare differ from other types of web-based
education, including distance learning?
Many individual faculty at MIT and other universities already use the
web extensively to make standard course materials available to their
students. Some colleges and universities now require a website for
every class. But, to a large extent, these websites are designed for
and access is provided only to the students of these institutions.
MIT OCW is an unprecedented institutional effort of a much broader
magnitude, as the goal is to provide the course materials free and
open to the world. Nothing of this scale has ever been attempted
before.
MIT OCW is not a distance learning initiative. Distance learning
involves the active exchange of information between faculty and
students, with the goal of obtaining some form of a credential.
Increasingly, distance learning is also limited to those willing and
able to pay for materials or course delivery.
MIT OCW is not meant to replace degree granting higher education.
Rather, the goal is to provide the content that supports an education.
5. Who will use OpenCourseWare and what are the potential benefits?
The materials on the OCW site will be open and freely available
worldwide for non-commercial purposes such as research and education,
providing an extraordinary resource, free of charge, which others can
adapt to their own needs. Some of the anticipated benefits are:
* Faculty at colleges and universities around the world can use
the OCW materials to develop new curricula and specific courses.
These materials might be of particular value in developing countries
that are trying to expand their higher education systems rapidly.
* Individual learners could draw upon the materials for
self-study or supplementary use.
* The OCW infrastructure could serve as a model for other
institutions that choose to make similar content open and available.
* Over time, if other universities adopt this model, a vast
collection of educational resources would develop and could
facilitate widespread exchange of ideas about innovative ways to use
those resources in teaching and learning.
* Within MIT, OCW would serve as a common repository of
information and a channel of intellectual activity that would
stimulate educational innovation and cross-disciplinary educational
ventures.
6. Are faculty required to participate in MIT OCW?
Participation of MIT faculty in MIT OCW will be voluntary, although
judging by the number who already actively utilize the web as part of
their teaching, we expect that within 10 years, over 2000 MIT courses
will be available on the MIT OCW website. Resources will be available
to provide teaching assistants and professional production support
for developing and maintaining the MIT OCW website. MIT will commit
to the continuous support of the MIT OCW educational environment.
