An agreement between York University and BlackBerry co-founder Jim Balsillie’s think tank to create a joint school of international law gives the outside body an alarming degree of control over academic matters that is unheard of in Canada, warns the executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

The contract, signed last August by York and the Waterloo-based Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), would subject the choice of 10 research “chairs” (experts) — and plans for their research — to unanimous approval by a five-person steering committee that would include two CIGI appointees.

“York has given away the store; no self-respecting university would ever give veto power to a third party over who it can and cannot hire,” said James Turk, whose group represents professors across the country.

The deal raised such concerns among professors at prestigious Osgoode Hall law school, where part of the program was to be based, that York has changed that provision and now will administer it across the university at large if a Senate committee approves the plan next week, said York vice-president Patrick Monahan.

He said the concerns prompted York to bolster the protection of academic integrity with a sweeping new “protocol” meant to ensure that academic freedom will reign supreme in what Monahan said he hopes will become “a leading cluster of scholars in international law.”

“There was a constructive discussion of these issues at the law school and we have tried to address those concerns. I can say no one has veto power over York and there is no restriction to academic freedom,” stated Monahan, noting it is not uncommon for the choice of high-level research chairs to be reviewed by a committee.

The new protocol, signed by York and CIGI on Feb. 10, promises “the promotion and protection of the academic freedom of individual researchers and teachers … including the freedom to pursue research that may criticize the parties or a financial contributor.”

Moreover, both sides are hammering out a plan for what to do if the steering committee can’t agree on a short list, Monahan added.

“The short list will then be referred to an independent peer review panel of scholars who are at arm’s length from CIGI and York. Once the short list is approved, the university will have complete control over choosing the chair.”

But Turk said CIGI should not be involved in hiring at all.

The program will take in some 20 PhD students in such fields as international trade and finance, international environmental law and intellectual property law, and is to be funded by $30 million from Queen’s Park, a matching $30 million from Balsillie and up to $3 million from York. Two-thirds of the faculty and students would be based at CIGI’s new Waterloo campus, the other third at York.

CIGI is no stranger to controversy in its partnerships with the ivory tower; in 2008 it set up the Balsillie School of International Affairs with the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University. But in less than two years the universities fired the first director, scholar Ramesh Thakur, for what an inquiry later found was his resistance to CIGI’s role in the school’s affairs.

Fred Kuntz, CIGI’s vice president of public affairs, said that is not why Thakur was dismissed and CIGI has no reason to want to influence researchers or their research.

“We’re not a lobby group; we’re here to advance the discussion. We’re a non-profit registered charitable organization that has no official point of view on anything except that good governance is a good thing.”

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Kuntz said it’s not surprising that controversy can arise over partnerships “that are a more recent phenomenon; they’re culturally a new kind of collaboration, but if they’re done right and in a way that protects academic freedom, they’re a good thing.”

History professor William Bruneau, of the University of British Columbia, has studied academic freedom and called it “truly alarming for a university to let a five-person committee rule the roost over hiring” — but noted the new protocol “looks promising.”

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