Amr El-Orabi said that on November 19, he told Professor Gary Dunphy that he was leaving his lab, prompting Dunphy to yell, “Get the fuck out of the country.”

When El-Orabi asked if there was anything else the professor would like, Dunphy replied, “Yes, your death.” El-Orabi captured the exchange on tape.

Since the incident was first reported by Global News earlier this month, several prominent students, including a student Senator and a SSMU equity commissioner, have called for Dunphy’s firing.

No one employed by McGill agreed to be interviewed for this story, citing the confidentiality of the university’s ongoing investigation into the matter.

El-Orabi’s story began last May, he says, when he noticed Dunphy taking an unusual interest in his religion barely a week after registering for McGill.

“In the first week or something he asked what religion I am,” El-Orabi said on the phone from his home in Cairo. “It’s not that I did mind the question – but it doesn’t work like that in Canada, you don’t ask people what religion they are.”

Soon, Dunphy’s curiosity turned into mockery, El-Orabi says. During a meeting between the two later in the month, the student’s phone began buzzing with a pre-recorded Muslim call to prayer, a song that rings out five times a day across the Islamic world.

When Dunphy heard this, he gave his opinion on how Muslims worship, El-Orabi says. “‘I don’t see the point of you going down on the earth where people can walk with their socks, and your asses flying up in the air,’” El-Orabi remembers Dunphy saying.

El-Orabi says he was offended by the comment, but did not respond at the time.

“I didn’t give it that much attention in the beginning I thought it would fade out with time,” he says. “Whenever he brings up religion or culture, I dismiss it.”

But as the summer wore on, Dunphy’s comments become more inflammatory, El-Orabi says.

The professor did not limit himself to religious or cultural insults, according to El-Orabi: “There were personal things; he would call me names. We were in the middle of a conversation about work. He called me an insufferable bastard in the middle of the conversation.”

The abuse continued into the fall semester, El-Orabi says. While El-Orabi was a TA in one of Dunphy’s courses, the professor openly questioned his graduate student’s sexuality.

“He said that people in [the] downtown campus – because I was going back and forth between two labs [at Mac Campus and downtown] – they think you’re gay because you don’t interact with girls that much,” El-Orabi recalls.

“I didn’t know what to say.”

The alleged harassment began taking a toll on El-Orabi. “He was visibly depressed,” says his former roommate, who asked not to be named. “He mentioned to me that he found it difficult to focus on his studies because of the harassment at school.”

“He would say this professor was making his life a living hell.”

On the advice of a friend, El-Orabi began recording his interactions with Dunphy.

“There were long recordings of what sounded like the rants of a mad man,” his roommate says.

Other students have remarked on Dunphy’s sometimes bizarre conversation topics, especially during his office hours.

Evan Henry, student Senator for Mac Campus, who took a biology course with Dunphy in fall 2010, previously told The Daily that Dunphy once said during office hours that he “likes suing people” – a remark that Henry acknowledged may have been tongue-in-cheek.

Another student, who asked not to be named, told The Daily that Dunphy proposed dropping a “neutrino bomb” on the Middle East in order to kill a large number of the region’s residents in 2009.

The student was attending Dunphy’s office hours to discuss an exam, when the professor brought up the Middle East.

“At one point while talking about how screwed up the region is, he remarked that maybe we could drop a ‘neutrino bomb’ on the area,” the student wrote in an email to The Daily.

“The point of a neutrino bomb, he explained, was that it killed people but preserved such priceless artifacts as books or buildings.”

El-Orabi’s tipping point, he says, came in November, when Dunphy’s comments about Islam became harsher.

“Finally, I couldn’t dismiss what he was saying. He started cursing the prophet and calling him names. This hurt my feelings,” El-Orabi says.

“He said, I remember it crystal clear: ‘Muhammad was an asshole and he was married to a whore.’”

A few days later, El-Orabi went to Dunphy’s office and told the professor he was leaving his lab.

Dunphy lashed out at the student, raising his voice to say, “your biggest and only problem with me is that you put your goddamn god before my asshole god….All I wanted you to do is do your damn thesis but you got some fucking stupid idea in your head and everyone has to be like you…Don’t ever think for a minute that your culture is the be all end all.”

Dunphy also accused El-Orabi of “cyberstalking” during the confrontation, and threatened to press criminal charges against the international student.

El-Orabi says Dunphy was referring to the student’s Skype profile picture at the time, a thumbnail image of a hand with its middle finger extended.

“He thought it was directed at him, but it wasn’t,” El-Orabi says. “That image had been on my computer for months.”

“To me it sounded like someone trying to intimidate me with my ignorance about the law. I contacted my friends, and everyone was laughing, because if this picture was a breach of any law, most of the people who used it would have been in jail for a long time.”

In a five-page written statement he made the next day on McGill letterhead, El-Orabi says that Ian Strachan, associate dean for graduate students in the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and another professor told El-Orabi he should not stay alone that night because of Dunphy’s threat. El-Orabi’s roommate was out of town, so he stayed with another friend on the night of November 19, he says.

El-Orabi began planning to leave Canada immediately. “I had a reservation to go on vacation in December – I contacted my airline, and I changed the reservation to the earliest date possible, the 29th of November, ten days after this happened,” he says.

When his roommate returned to Montreal, they tried to convince him to stay.

“I was playing devil’s advocate and I really wanted Amr to stay,” the roommate says, “so I said to him, you know, ‘Maybe [Dunphy] just said that in the heat of the moment.’ But [El-Orabi] told me that he had to take that seriously, and he didn’t feel safe. Knowing that nothing would happen to the professor, he told me he did not feel safe in the same environment as someone who said those words to him.”

The day before El-Orabi left, he says he emailed Stachan to ask for a meeting. “He told me that the case was closed,” El-Orabi says. “I asked for the outcome of the case, and he refused, he said, for confidentiality reasons.”

Back in Egypt, El-Orabi exchanged emails with McGill’s ombudsperson, Spencer Boudreau, who recommended that El-Orabi file an official grievance with the University. On February 14, he did.

“They tell you to summarize in bullet points the grounds of your grievance,” El-Orabi says. “So the grounds of my grievance was cultural and personal and religious offences, that’s point one. Point two was intrusions on my privacy by asking about my sexuality. And point three was the threat.”

After candidates presented their platforms, as well as the committee chairs of the upcoming referenda questions presented, candidates were asked a series of questions, which were previously submitted in writing to Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Colby Briggs.

The question period was most heated in regards to the question: “Budget cuts are coming, how will you ensure that PGSS members still have access to essential services in harsh economic times and how will you ensure the PGSS executive stays united rather than playing a damaging game of thrones?”

PGSS Equity Commissioner Gretchen King, one of the candidates running for VP Internal Affairs Officer and the only candidate hoping to unseat an incumbent executive, stated in regards to the question: “I think that again it shows a disengagement of the members because there is nothing specific [in ‘the game of thrones’]. It seems fictional and it doesn’t speak to the reality of the situation when there are serious grievances being brought by members about collective oppression and harassment.”

“The current executive takes their positions for granted as suggested by the fact that several nomination statements, including that of the Secretary-General, were not even available on the PGSS website until after the April 17 husting,” she added.

At a Council meeting in April, the executive team moved a motion to censure King over her behavior at a previous hustings in February.

Rosalind hampton, one of the few students in attendance, told The Daily that the “current executive has done everything in their power to discourage and discredit King’s candidacy […] and to maintain the status quo.”

“The current executive takes their positions for granted as suggested by the fact that several nomination statements, including that of the Secretary-General, were not even available on the PGSS website until after the April 17 husting,” she added.

King, who is running against incumbent Michael Krause, focused on her plans to organize consultation fairs, workshops, and speaker series – pointing out Krause’s shortcomings this year in fulfilling those tasks.

In regards to the divided nature of the executive team, King also stated that she would ensure “professional development, contracts for executives and commissioners that could outline mandates, grievance procedures, and mechanisms for accountability. And people should receive more equity training so that the issues do not fester.” Conversely, Krause emphasized his accomplishments this year in terms of planning trivia nights, salsa events, and field trips.

Tensions also arose over a question asked in regards to the role of the current Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney, who is running uncontested for re-election. In terms of how he sees his role on McGill’s governing bodies such as Senate, Mooney stated his position is “more like a trustee,” emphasizing that his approach does not focus strictly on being a representative of PGSS. This notion was challenged by King, who pointed out that the Secretary-General is mandated to be a representative and that this was the result of a students’ advocating for such representation.

In regards to the low turnout of the event, the CRO wrote in an email to The Daily that despite efforts to publicize the event, “turnout still only represents a small portion of our member body – this seems to be the nature of graduate students.”

In an email to The Daily, Krause expressed a similar sentiment: “The low turnout is something we do have to work on. The issue is not only apathy, but also the timing of the husting/election. We are very late in the year and many people are having exams, have to grade, or finish up projects over the summer.”

King, who made a point to highlight the fact that she is the only candidate with a campaign blog, Twitter, and Facebook page, stated: “The lack of advertising of this election and the lack of interest by other candidate is a missed opportunity. From my point of view being out campaigning, I’ve had a great opportunity to hear from the members. I think it is a missed opportunity for the incumbents to engage the members […] There is a presence of my campaign on campus… it has peaked people’s interests’ and that’s what the value of a campaign is.”

While P-6 has been in effect since 2001, the municipal government amended the by-law last spring in the midst of the student strike. It began to draw particular attention after the annual anti-police brutality protest on March 15, when the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) used the recently amended bylaw to shut down and encircle the protest within minutes and give out $637 fines to all the participants. Since the SPVM began enforcing the ticketing provision of P-6, several hundred people have been kettled and fined under the bylaw.

A representative from QPIRG Concordia called P-6 “kafka-esque,” adding, “A lot of journalists [have been] saying ‘well it’s just a simple notice you have to give the police, I don’t understand what all the problems are’.”

“[One person] put forward the parallel of, how would journalists feel if they had to submit their articles to the police before they could be published, because we all know words have the potential to create just as much unrest as any demonstration,” they said, adding, “What I’m sure many here would agree would be a very kafka-esque, burdensome, bureaucratic procedure is just as burdensome and kafka-esque to peoples’ ability to assemble peaceably.”

An activist from Solidarity Across Borders spoke about why it is important for people to be able to protest peacefully without fear of being processed and ticketed by the police, particularly for those people who live precariously in Canada.

“There are plenty of reasons not to give your itinerary [to the police], and there are plenty of reasons to want to wear a mask, one of which is solidarity with people who can’t take to the streets because of their lack of status,” the activist said.

Since the amendment of P-6, the bylaw and other activist movements have become inextricably intertwined. April 22 is not just the anniversary of one of the largest protests in the history of Québec’s student movement, with hundreds of thousands of protesters marching province-wide in honor of Earth Day as well as against the Liberal government’s proposed tuition hike in 2012. It was also the day that Montreal’s municipal council was slated to hear a motion from municipal party Projet Montréal to repeal P-6, before the vote was postponed to the next day because of the number of other items on the council’s agenda.

Projet Montréal released a statement on its opposition to P-6 that quotes Alex Norris, municipal councilor from Mile End and author of the repeal motion. “Projet Montréal has always been reticent at the idea of making the right to manifest in public places more constrictive,” he said.

“We believe firmly that we should…repeal [municipal bylaw P-6], which was adopted in the midst of last spring’s student movement, which was drafted hastily and which plays with the democratic rights of the citizens of Montréal,” the statement concludes.

At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, the municipal council returned from a break and was then opened up to questions from the public. As the public question session approached, around 700 demonstrators gathered outside City Hall in protest of P-6. SPVM officers moved in to block off the entrance to everyone except people who were chosen by a lottery to be able to ask questions.

The crowd moved in on the officers, chanting, drumming, and bull horning just inches from their formation. After several minutes of noisemaking, police reinforcements arrived to push the protesters back and allow the people who had won had reserved their seats in the City Hall gallery.

“City Hall is supposed to be the house of the people,” said Norris in French at the meeting, “and tonight people who wanted to ask questions at this council were blocked entry by the police force. Is this something the municipal council will address?”

Harout Chitillian, the city council chair, responded that the council would “look into it.”

“That shouldn’t happen,” said Chitillian, “but it is the police force’s responsibility to make sure that everyone’s safe, and they have to be free to do their jobs effectively. If they have a concern about security, they have the right to act on it.”

Although the subsequent question period covered a wide range of topics, the most popular was P-6, so much so that many of the people towards the end of the list, all of whom had questions on the municipal bylaw, did not get a chance to address the council.

The first member of the public asked his question about P-6 of Louise Harel, who is leader of the official opposition party, Vision Montréal. Harel replied that it would be “irresponsible” to repeal the law without leaving behind some form of regulation.

“Before it was amended to its current version last year, P-6 has assured the security of the people. We have to go back to the P-6 of 2001,” she said in French. “There have always been regulations, and at times the regulations have been excessive. I was part of the student movement when there was a regulation that declared protests illegal, period.”

“We need some kind of regulation,” Harel added, “but we have to fix its implementation and go back to what it was in 2001 and what it’s been for the past twelve years.”

François Genest, a Montréal activist, was the last person permitted to ask a question. His, directed at Montreal mayor Michael Applebaum, focused on Projet Montréal’s motion to repeal P-6. In response, Applebaum said that the police were responsible for “judging when [P-6] should be implemented, and how.”

“Everyone has the right to protest, but the police also have the right to implement the law,” Applebaum argued,  “For me, there’s no question of repealing P-6. I support the bylaw, and I support the police officers who enforce it.”

Among the 25 who voted for the motion were all ten Projet Montréal municipal councillors. Vision Montréal, the official opposition, was split. Its leader, Louise Harel, had expressed her intention to vote for the motion, but had reportedly declared it to be a “free vote”, leaving party members the option to vote against it. In the end, several Vision Montréal members chose to vote against repealing the bylaw.

François Limoges, a member of Projet Montréal, delivered a rousing denunciation of the bylaw. “[P-6] has taken power away from the judiciary branch and given it to the iron arm of the state, which has a role, but not this role,” he said. “The government’s role is to legislate, the judicial branch’s is to interpret, and the police’s is to apply the law. The police cannot do all three.”

What Limoges dubbed the “iron arm of the state” was out in full force the first night of the municipal council, arresting one protester and ticketing at least one other, for spitting on the sidewalk. The second night, the SPVM issued at least one ticket, for $437, to a protester playing a drum outside the doors of City Hall for its excessive noisiness.

When the anti-P-6 motion failed, the small crowd watching the livestream inside City Hall expressed their discontent by forming a blockade at the doors to the council room. They remained there for several minutes, chanting and singing about P-6.

And just moments after the vote, anti-P-6 activists who had been following the debate on Twitter were already posting calls to action to continue resistance.

The meeting started with an address by incoming principal Suzanne Fortier. Fortier, who will take office in September 2013, praised the reputation of the university and emphasized her excitement about working at McGill.

The bulk of the session was taken up by the presentation of the Achieving Strategic Academic Priorities (ASAP) 2012 implementation progress update and the McGill University Budget for 2013-2014. The former had been postponed from a previous meeting on March 20.

Principal Heather Munroe-Blum announced that based on indexation calculation for 2011, the government estimated that the tuition hike for the next academic year would amount to 2.6 per cent for the 2014 year – instead of the 3 per cent previously cited by the government.

Provost Anthony Masi presented the projected budget for the upcoming academic year and focused on the financial challenges faced by the University. The biggest challenge that Masi referred to was the government-imposed budget cuts of $124 million for universities across Quebec.

Masi explained that McGill will end the current financial year with a $30-million deficit, since the University put the $19 million government cuts and the $6 million it did not receive – but had included in previous budget calculations – from rescinded tuition hikes, into its overall accumulated deficit.

In defense of the drastic cuts the University has been making to match government cuts, Masi told Senate that the University had predicted an “unsustainable” accumulated operating budget deficit of $43 million for FY 2014

The cuts will be implemented through hiring freezes and suspending job re-classifications; one-year wage freezes for labour units who accept it, with likely cuts in headcounts for those that don’t;  and voluntary retirements via incentive packages. The University also mentioned that there could be additional staff reductions depending on how many voluntary retirements come through.

Masi also referred to the controversy regarding the closure of the Education and Life Sciences libraries as provoked by budgetary cuts, and asked Senate to examine what the physical space of libraries should look like in the future.

Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures

Senate also voted to approve revisions to the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures proposed by Dean of Students André Costopoulos and Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures and Equity) Lydia White.

According to White, the revision was initiated to make the Code more “user-friendly” for students and staff, stating that “the current Code is very hard to follow.”

The review process started in 2010 under former Dean of Students Jane Everett, who formed a working group on the issue. In 2012, at the Principal’s request, White started chairing another working group to examine how the Manfredi report would affect the Code.

Among the changes made was the replacement in item 5 of the word ‘disruption’ by ‘obstruction.’ The rationale behind this, the official Senate document reads, is to introduce clarity since “it is easier to define obstruction than disruption, especially given the fact that the Manfredi report recommends a certain amount of tolerance for disruption.

The revision also states that disruption is no longer considered an academic offence

At the March 20 meeting, when the revisions were first presented, Senator Catherine Lu spoke against the proposed elimination of point 5c, which stated that nothing in the Article or Code shall “be construed to prohibit peaceful assemblies and demonstrations, lawful picketing, or to inhibit free speech. 

In response, White pointed to a newly-added article 4c, which states that no article in the Code “shall limit the rights guaranteed under the Charter of Students Rights.

The revised article 5 now reads “no student shall, by action, threat, or otherwise, knowingly obstruct University activities. University activities include but are not limited to, teaching, research, studying, administration, public service, scheduled events and activities.

Student Senator Max Zidel raised concerns over what he considered a “hierarchy” created by the article.

“Is the problem obstruction or unpeaceful obstruction…. [this] suggests that teaching, research, and studying are more university activities than dissent,” Zidel said.

In its revision to disciplinary hearings procedure, the working group also added a provision, 48c, which “allows a student access to relevant documentation in advance of any meeting”, which is currently not the case. Such a provision ensures that students and advisors have access to the same evidence as disciplinary officers prior to scheduled interviews.

In terms of academic offences, the revision changed and clarify the definition of plagiarism in the code, as it was previously inconsistent with the one found in the Regulations Concerning Investigation to Research Misconduct – a document outlining the University’s general framework for conducting research.

The story, first reported by Global News, pits Amr El-Orabi, a former Master’s student at McGill in Natural Resource Sciences, against Gary Dunphy, a professor at McGill who teaches mostly at Macdonald campus. El-Orabi left McGill last November before completing his degree.

Beginning last May, Dunphy allegedly insulted the student’s religion and once questioned his sexuality over the course of several months. During their final encounter, which El-Orabi recorded, Professor Dunphy allegedly said he wanted his student dead.

 “Is there anything else that you want from me now?” El-Orabi said as he left the professor’s office.

“Yes, your death,” Dunphy replied.

This prompted El-Orabi to leave McGill and return to Egypt a week later. In February, he filed an official grievance with the University, which has yet to be resolved.

Some students have called for Dunphy to be fired.

“I think that he shouldn’t be teaching here,” said Evan Henry, the student senator for Macdonald campus. “Islamophobia shouldn’t be tolerated, let alone death threats.”

“In my ideal world, he would be fired,” said Shaina Agbayani, one of SSMU’s two equity commissioners.

Agbayani also called on McGill to “recognize that hostility towards any student, even if it’s not a serious threat, is not an appropriate thing to happen at McGill.”

Dunphy has declined The Daily’s requests for comment, saying that McGill has asked him not to speak about the case until the official grievance process is complete.

Students at Macdonald campus – where much of the alleged harassment took place – have expressed shock at the charges brought against Dunphy. The small, rural satellite campus is home to a tight-knit community of students and teachers who rarely deal with major disputes or discord.

The Macdonald Campus Students’ Society (MCSS) is currently reviewing its own investigation into the matter and is expected to make the results public shortly.

“Mac campus is known for having smaller, more intimate classes,” said Irene Dambriunas, a U3 Environment student at Macdonald.

“You get to know your professors – they’re really easy to approach and easy to talk to. So in that way it was shocking that [Dunphy] would talk to a student like that – really shocking.”

Student opinion on Dunphy’s persona is divided, with some describing a caring, if eccentric, teacher, and others calling him a sardonic loose cannon.

“This case disturbs me regarding the reaction from the greater McGill community downtown,” Zachary Goldberg, a U2 Environment student, told The Daily by email. “I have taken the professor’s biology class and he was very professional and treated everyone fairly to my knowledge. The class was very diverse. I was friends with fellow students who were arab [sic], and I remember one of them expressed to me that they liked him in conversation.”

Dana Holtby, who has since graduated, took a biology class with Dunphy in second year.

“He was extremely helpful and understanding to me as an Arts student in a science class,” Holtby said. “He reassured me after a difficult midterm and even seemed sympathetic to the allophones in our class. When I expressed concern about an error I made on the [midterm] he assured me that I would be able to make it up on the examinations to come, and that he was sympathetic to mistakes as he knew that for many students in the class English was not the first language.”

Henry, who took a biology course with Dunphy in the fall of 2010, remembers the professor in a less flattering light.

“I remember he had a very dry sense of humour,” Henry said. “This one time when I went to his office hours, he talked to me about how he likes suing people. He talked to me about that for a while.”

“‘I like to be in a lawsuit about once a year,’” Henry remembers him saying. “[It was] probably tongue in cheek, but I don’t think he was lying at all about liking to be in lawsuits.”

Henry says he learned about El-Orabi’s case when people shared it with him on Facebook. Since then, he and his fellow student Senators have been discussing the case in a private Facebook thread.

Asked what the Senators have been saying about the case, Henry said, simply, “That it’s horrendous.”

The McGill administration sent an email to students last Friday that referred to the incident without mentioning either Dunphy or El-Orabi by name.

“McGill takes allegations of harassment and threats very seriously,” the email read. “The University has carefully addressed the matter [...] We have no grounds, however, to conclude that anyone in the McGill community is in any way at risk in connection with this matter.”

In response, Agbayani said the McGill Media Relations Office (MRO), who sent the email, made her “really angry that McGill didn’t want to do anything to be held accountable for this.”

The cuts also mean that McGill will cut year-round 24-hour access to the McLennan-Redpath Library complex, Schulich Library, and the Nahum Gelber Law Library. CBC reported on Friday that the Education Library may also be closed.

This budget cut represents around six to seven per cent of the library’s annual operating budget according to Diane Koen, Associate Director of Planning and Resources at McGill libraries.

Uproar over relocation of Life Sciences Library

A Facebook page, “Save the McGill Life Sciences Library from closure,” has garnered over 1,250 Facebook likes in its first two days. The page alleges that the “90% certain” cuts, announced on April 8 by the Library’s Human Resources Director and the Trenholme Dean of Libraries Colleen Cook in a meeting with Life Sciences Library staff members, were both unannounced and unjustified to staff members.

“When we asked for details – how much the move is going to cost, how much money are you going to save – we were told that we were asking the wrong questions,” said Angella Lambrou, founder of the Facebook group and Liaison Librarian to the School of Nursing, who has been working at the library for 30 years.

“We don’t have any conclusive facts as to how she arrived at this decision,” she added.

Cook admitted that the allegation that the cuts were “90% certain” was “correct, literally” but should not be taken out of the context of the budget constraints.

Cuts, Cook said, had to be efficient, as there were “finite numbers of dollars.” She said that the Life Sciences Library was one of the least-used physical spaces on campus, based on a ratio of major users to the number of people who go to the library.

However, Dr. David Eidelman, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine sent an email to the Faculty on Friday, which read, “the Life Sciences Library is not slated for closure [...] as [a] rumour has suggested. I have not approved any such decision.”

Instead, Eidelman wrote, the [McGill] Library was considering the reorganization of services based on modernization in the face of financial realities.

A push toward modernization

The Life Sciences Library has a history dating back to 1823, making it the oldest medical library in Canada, a point of symbolism Lambrou finds difficult to miss.

“We have an incredible history that’s part of the University,” she said. “We support the most research intensive faculty and programs in the University.”

However, confusion remained as to the fate of the Osler library, a collection of rare medical books often seen as a companion to the Life Sciences library.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Dean Eidelman emphasized that the Osler library will not close. “Over my dead body,” he said.

“We may have to make special arrangements for access because it’s on the same floor,” he added.

Both Eidelman and Cook emphasized that the changes are not intended to affect the overall quality of the library, but rather a modernization, or reorganization, of facilities. Current stack space, they said, could be converted into study or small group teaching space.

“We are not trying to get rid of librarians,” Eidelman said. “That would be, in my view, a huge mistake.”

Confusion and miscommunication

The decision to close the Life Sciences Library seems to be mired in confusion.

When asked if the decision to close the Life Sciences Library was made suddenly or was in the works for a longer period of time, Cook remained unclear.

“I can say that we’re in deep, deep discussions with all the constituencies, particularly in medicine and dentistry, the primary user groups of that facility,” she said. “[There are] two realities: one is budget constraints, and the other is the realities of 21st century librarianship, where physical collections are oftentimes not as important as provision of study spaces, and the delivery of content in the most convenient form.”

Either side of the story –  be it that cuts were planned or a spur-of-the-moment decision – would be problematic, according to Lambrou.

“If it was [a long-running decision], then the situation is even worse than I thought,” she told The Daily. “If this had been planned, again, why were we not consulted?”

Eidelman also remained unclear regarding an explicit statement of support for the move and subsequent closure of the Life Sciences Library.

When asked how long the move has been planned, Eidelman highlighted the informality of current plans, in contrast to Cook, who said the cuts were 90 per cent certain of going ahead.

“I know that a few weeks ago I was asked informally, could this work, would this be a good thing [...] and the answer was yes, it might be a good thing,” Eidelman told The Daily. “As far as I know, no decision’s been made.”

“I did not receive a concrete proposal,” he later added.

Cook emphasized that final decisions would not be made without discussion. Eidelman agreed, and said that the Faculty of Medicine would be holding consultation as per its usual process, despite the current uncertainty surrounding the decision.

“I’m frustrated with the way that this happened, because it’s not the way I like to work,” he said. “The reality is, this is the right time to do the consultation.”

Eidelman added that he would have liked to have the consultation before the Facebook group appeared.

24-hour access to Redpath, Schulich, and Law to be cut

The Library will cut the year-round 24-hour access to the Redpath, Schulich, and Law libraries on campus. At the SSMU Legislative Council meeting on April 12, Cook explained that this access cost $600,000 a year, mainly from paying security and cleaning staff.

Cook emphasized that student help was paramount to keeping extended open hours. “[It depends] upon how much help that we have from the Library Improvement Fund (LIF),” Cook told The Daily in an interview. “The more they help us, or direct funds toward that purpose, the more hours we’ll be able to keep, and in more branches.”

The Library Improvement Fund (LIF) has been in place for the past fifteen years under the portfolio of VP University Affairs. This year, it had a budget of around $630,000 to allocate to special projects based on student input and committee discussion.

Although Cook stated that the LIF was not aware of the extent of the cuts prior to the Council meeting on April 12, VP University Affairs Haley Dinel acknowledged that the LIF committee had been discussing the possibility of shorter hours. “We  [at the LIF] were mildly aware,” said Dinel in an interview with The Daily.

The amount of student help is limited, however. “It’s unfeasible for the Fund to fund all after-hours access, because that would exhaust the fund for the year,” said Dinel.

Instead, the LIF has decided to fund 24-hour access for the Redpath, Schulich, and Law libraries for four weeks during the year – or two weeks each exam period – at a cost of around $233,000.

Koen suggested that this money be used to keep one branch – namely Redpath – open 24-hours throughout the year, but Dinel said the committee felt that priorities lay with opening up more space for exam time.

Incentivizing retirement

However, simply relocating the Life Sciences Library and cutting 24-hour access to the three libraries will not alleviate all of the pressure of the budget cuts. Cook explained that the Library has been forced to cut down on travel expenses, and the senior administration will take wage cuts of three per cent. Librarians, who are members of McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT) will see their salaries frozen.

The McGill Library will also be implementing a program for voluntary retirement in June, which will incentivize retirement for staff over a certain age. According to Koen, almost half of the support staff are eligible for this program.

Koen expressed concern over how the voluntary retirement program would affect operations in the library system. “How do we operate with fewer people? We can’t replace them [because of the budgetary constraints],” said Koen. “We need to keep serving our students, our researchers, our faculty, and ensure that the collection is top-notch, because that’s the backbone of what we do and how we support our users.”

Cook warned SSMU Council on April 12 that if not enough of the $1.8 million cuts was recouped by the retirement package, “there are many people who are not job-secured who might have to be laid off.”

Originally scheduled to be held at the Y-intersection, organizers moved the event to the Macdonald Engineering basement in the face of the cold and wind. The event drew approximately ten people, most of whom were members of the organization itself.

At the teach-in, members discussed groups at McGill alleged to be involved in military research, pointing to three in particular: the Shock Wave Physics Group, the Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and the Institute of Air and Space Law.

The Shock Wave Physics group (SWPG), part of McGill’s Mechanical Engineering department, was discovered by a previous incarnation of Demilitarize McGill in 2006 to have ties to the U.S. military.

The Daily reported in January 2007 that a professor with the SWPG, David Frost, co-authored a paper on thermobaric explosives in which the acknowledgements state that the work had received partial funding from a program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a division of the U.S. Department of Defense. At that time, Frost denied to The Daily that he had ever received direct funding from DTRA.

At the teach-in, members of Demilitarize McGill outlined the history and usage of thermobaric explosives. The bombs, according to group members, are a technology that proved useful to the U.S. military starting in 2001 in the war in Afghanistan, when the military used them in caves to fight the Taliban.

According to members of Demilitarize McGill, the University may still have ties involving research on thermobaric explosives. Information on current research, however, is difficult to attain, they said, and usually comes to light only after publication of academic papers.

Members described their recent attempt to glean some of this information from the University’s administration, filing several Access to information (ATI) requests under Quebec law. However, the University soon responded by serving 14 students with a “Motion to be authorized to disregard requests.”

According to the University, ATI requests are an “abusive” means of disrupting University affairs.

“With the recent legal action taken against 14 students for the right to refuse their ATI requests, McGill has effectively sent the message that they don’t want this kind of thing being discussed,” Cadence O’Neal, an organizer with Demilitarize McGill, told The Daily by email.

The organization purposefully held its teach-in at the same time as a hearing involving University ATI requests went on at the Quebec Access to Information Commission.

Ultimately, however, the transparency the group seeks with its ATI requests is one tactic for a long list of goals. Discussing transparency regarding military-related research at the teach-in, members of the group acknowledged that while transparency is the first step, their long-term aims are more far-reaching.

Kevin Paul, an organizer with Demilitarize McGill, ultimately noted the anti-war bent of the group.

“For me, personally, it goes beyond transparency to doing whatever is possible to disrupt and end military research at McGill,” he said.

According to a story by Global News published on Wednesday, Amr El-Orabi came to Montreal in May 2012 to study Natural Resource Sciences at McGill, but alleges that he soon became the victim of harassment from Professor Gary Dunphy.

“He would make fun of my beliefs, he would make fun of Muslims and how they do their prayers, and he would do that in front of me,” El-Orabi told Global News from his home in Cairo, which he returned to four months ago.

Dunphy also allegedly called El-Orabi a “homosexual.”

When El-Orabi told Dunphy he was leaving his lab, the professor lashed out, yelling “Get the the fuck out of this country.”

As El-Orabi left Dunphy’s office, he asked the professor, “Is there anything else that you want from me now?”

“Yes, your death,” Dunphy replied. El-Orabi shared a recording of the conversation with Global News, which posted it online.

During the recording, Dunphy accuses El-Orabi of hacking into his Skype account and threatens to press criminal charges against the student.

Later on the recording, Dunphy alludes to longstanding tensions between himself and El-Orabi over religion.

“Your biggest and only problem with me is that you put your goddamn god above my asshole god. It’s your philosophy that ‘you must respect me and I don’t have to respect you,’” Dunphy says on the recording.

“I want to respect the Arab world – I can’t when you insist that I have to do things your way,” Dunphy says later.

In an interview with Global News, Morton Mendelson, outgoing Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) said, “The idea of a death threat against a student is disturbing. It’s something that the university would take very seriously.”

On Thursday, following his last lecture of the semester in the Stewart Biology building, Dunphy was asked to expand on allegations that he makes on the recording regarding “cyberstalking” by El-Orabi. Dunphy declined to comment.

A group of students met outside Dunphy’s classroom this afternoon. One of the protestors, wishing to remain anonymous, said Dunphy’s outburst was part of a pattern.

“McGill has a problem with institutional racism,” the protestor said. “People like him shouldn’t be in a room with students teaching in any educational institutional – those people should be fired.”

An hour into the lecture, protestors entered the classroom, in which there were only three students. One protestor held a sign that read “Racism @ McGill Has to Stop! Racist Profs Out!”

“It’s nice to see so many people – why don’t you sign up for my entymology course,” he told assembled media and protestors.

Putting his lecture to an end, Dunphy refused to comment, as his case is still the subject of an official grievance procedure. “My employer has asked me not to until this thing’s through,” he said. “You’re not getting any more than that, my friends.”

A former student depicts Dunphy under a different light as a kind, tolerant teacher.

“I was shocked to hear this story,” said Dana Holtby, who had Dunphy as a biology teacher in second year but has since graduated. Dunphy “reassured me after a difficult midterm and even seemed sympathetic to the allophones in our class. When I expressed concern about an error I made on the [midterm] he assured me that I would be able to make it up on the examinations to come, and that he was sympathetic to mistakes as he knew that for many students in the class English was not the first language.”

Still, Holtby added, “such behavior is completely unacceptable and I would hope for a more concrete reaction from administration.”

The administration would only say that a student filed a grievance to the Committee on Student Grievances, a Senate committee arising out of University regulations,  specifically the Charter of Student’s Rights. The Committee, with its nine voting members – four students and five professors – has final authority within university jurisdiction and is  “empowered to order such final or interim actions as it sees fit” for appropriate redress.

Protestors followed Dunphy to his car in the Stewart Biology parking lot, chanting “Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Racist profs have got to go!”

Speaking to reporters, Dunphy conceded that there was “wrongdoing on everybody’s part.”

After removing the protestor’s sign placed on his windshield, Dunphy told The Daily, “I don’t have any feelings for the [allegations].”

The Natural Resources Science departmental chair, Professor Jim Fyles, refused to comment.

“This is a case that is been taken up by McGill administration trough the normal grievance procedures, and I cannot comment on it” Fyles said in an interview with The Daily.

McGill Director of Internal Communications Doug Sweet said the administration is also unable to comment.

“No comment, because this is the subject of a grievance,” Sweet said.

A previous version of this article stated that multiple death threats were made. In fact, El-Orabi accused Dunphy of making a single  death threat.

The Engineering Undergraduate Support Fund (EUSF) will provide an extra $200,000 per year to the Faculty of Engineering. Simon Zhu, president of the EUS and one of the fund’s creators, wrote in an email to The Daily that the Faculty of Engineering expects a budget cut of approximately 3 to 5 per cent.

In the referendum, 67.5 per cent of undergraduate students supported the EUSF, 25.3 per cent opposed the fund, and the remainder abstained.

 Zhu also addressed student concerns surrounding transparency on how the funds will be spent, as well as concerns on the quality of Teaching Assistants (TAs).

Some of the concerns, Zhu said, regard the operation rather than the creation of the fund. He said that the fund incorporates measures to address the issue of transparency, such as having the faculty annually issue a report describing how EUSF money is allocated.

Students were also concerned about the tendency for student fees to exist indefinitely. “While I personally think there is a ton of long-term potential for this fund, the last thing we want is for McGill to find an ‘excuse’ to under-fund the Engineering faculty because the EUSF is providing an extra $200,000 per year,” wrote Zhu.

The EUS felt it necessary to set an expiration date of two years for the fund, which aligns with the projected time frame of the budget cuts from the government. To continue the fund past this two-year time frame, another referendum would have to be initiated.

Zhu pointed out that student leaders did not want the fund to become a burden on students instead of McGill’s responsibility.

“I wholeheartedly agreed [with these concerns] but also acknowledged the unfortunate and disappointing reality of our university’s financial situation, which required immediate action,” Zhu wrote.

Zhu also noted that the EUSF extends beyond the authority of the present EUS fee in that it will provide financial resources for student services, such as TAs, lab technicians, and various support staff.

The creation of the EUSF was inspired by the Engineering department’s existing Equipment Fund, which requires full-time students to pay a non opt-outable fee of $50 per semester. This fund, Zhu said, has been in effect for the Engineering Faculty over the past twenty years.

However, the EUSF committee will be smaller than that of the Equipment Fund, a change Zhu sees as for the better.

“A smaller committee will remove any potential for politics, since each department will be vying for this fund, empower students to make decisions while still maintaining perspective […] with the help of the Associate Dean and Director, and also make it easier to schedule meetings,” he said.

The EUSF’s committee will consist of the President of the EUS, the departmental presidents, the Director of the McGill Engineering Student Center, and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education.

Demonstrators were invited inside the CSM building, where two representatives of the EABC spoke for their cause in front of the CSM board.

“We want a free education for all children from the kindergarten to university without regard to their migration status,” Romina Hernandez, spokesperson of EABC – which is part of migrant justice group Solidarity Across Borders (SAB) – said in French. “It is still a problem in Quebec that thousands of children can’t register for schools, even if they are born here, because their parents are afraid of deportation. Children that are able to attend a $6,000 a year private school, might never get their diploma because of missing documents.”

This was the second time the EABC had visited one of CSM’s monthly meetings. In February, the CSM responded to the demonstrators that they also thought it was important that every school-aged child in Montreal attended school.

“It is not favourable that children stay at home, don’t learn French, and cannot integrate himself or herself in a Montreal school or Quebec society,” Daniel Duranleau, president of the CSM, said in French.

The demonstrators were told to come back this month with a detailed plan of how the CSM could implement their demands. At the March 27 meeting, the EABC prepared and presented a detailed plan of action to the board.

This plan of action asked the school board to open the schools for every child in Montreal without looking at the legal status, in the same way as Toronto does. Students there only need to provide proof – such as bills or a lease – that they live in Toronto in order to attend school.

Many other countries already recognize the right for all children in all situations to go to school. In the United States, for instance, there is a law that prohibits schools from rejecting a child based on their migration status. In addition, 12 states provide financial aid for non-status children.

The plan of action also asks the CSM to take action with the Ministry of Education in order to ensure that children can keep their permanent code – which uniquely identifies all students that go through Quebec schools – after graduating without any information exchange between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Immigration.

The CSM did not accept the plan of action, however, and were unclear about their actual legal rights in the situation. They said they were unsure what the financial situation would be if the approximately 2,700 non-status children in Montreal suddenly started attending school.

“We in the board completely agree that the best place for a child in Montreal is the school,” said Duranleau in French. “We make the choice to continue our work to meet your claims considering the temporary permanent code. However, the notion of law in Quebec could present a problem in our proceeding.”

After the meeting with the CSM, which once again failed to produce any clear solutions, many demonstrators were upset. They argued that both the board’s mission statement and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which Canada has signed – gives the board every legal right to make an immediate change.

The EABC announced that they would take a more aggressive approach at the CSM’s next meeting on April 24. “They have to realize how urgent the situation is, with hundreds and thousands of children staying at home, isolated, without contact to other children. They are unable to develop their skills, talents, and realize their dreams,” Hernandez said in French. “People don’t need to be afraid of us, we [the immigrants] are here to help build and develop this society.”

A cache of around 400 documents, most of them from the past six years, provide a look at the inner workings of McGill’s department of Development and Alumni Relations (DAR), including detailed profiles of the University’s top donors, and proposal for partnerships with some of the world’s largest companies.

The documents, made available yesterday by McGillLeaks, are a sampling of the daily traffic between University administrators and researchers working for Alumni Relations.  They chronicle the trips of senior administrators abroad and their meetings with potential donors and partners from across the world.

The leaks depict an administration that is eager to make inroads with new economic partners such as Canada’s growing oil and gas industry and willing to go to great lengths to foster its relationship with its donors. The anonymous group McGillLeaks sent the documents from the SSMU Internal account to all SSMU members on Monday night.

The email, sent around a quarter to 9 p.m., contained a link to troves of documents obtained by the group from anonymous sources. McGillLeaks released similar documents more than a year ago containing donor and corporation profiles, correspondence pertaining to corporate funding, and industrial partnerships.

In their latest email, McGillLeaks stated that they received “hundreds of University documents, many marked confidential or strictly confidential pertaining to McGill’s corporate funding efforts.”

“In March 2012, we released to the public about one third of the documents in our possession. McGill University took legal action that delayed our release of the other documents. These focus on McGill’s fundraising activities in the oil and gas, mining and financial sectors,” the email continued. “We are pleased to now make public these remaining documents…”

McGilllLeaks wrote that their objectives are to provide “a clear account of corporate university’s inner workings,” “supplying accurate information on the university’s relationship with the private sector,” and to create “transparency within the university.”

SSMU President Josh Redel and SSMU VP Internal Michael Szpejda sent an email shortly afterwards apologizing for the mass email. “It was done so without the knowledge or permission of the SSMU VP Internal,” the message read.

They also noted that “no personal information beyond your McGill email is stored in MailChimp” – SSMU’s mass email server.

On Monday night, Redel told The Daily that he would notify SSMU’s lawyer of the situation. He clarified the next day that the VP Internal account was not hacked. In fact, SSMU’s MailChimp account was accessed by someone with knowledge of the password.

“We changed all the passwords [... and implemented ] a new IT policy to make sure that we rotate passwords more often and also work on communication in the passwords and whatnot, how we store them and all that,” Redel said in reference to new security measures.

Redel said that they have received a “decent” amount of emails responding to the incident. “The most unfortunate thing about this is that like in this software people have the option to remove themselves, so we’re seeing a lot of people unsubscribe from the listserv. So that’s an unfortunate fallout,” he said.

Vice-Principal of External Relations Olivier Marcil told The Daily in an email that the University was “aware that confidential documents belonging to the University and containing personal information were stolen and published on the Internet without our consent.”

“It’s the second time that McGill has had to deal with this type of incident. The police are investigating and we are doing our best to limit dissemination of the documents in question,” he continued.

In 2012, following the first leak by the anonymous group, Marcil released a statement to The Daily saying that the actions were ”an attempt to hurt the wellbeing of the University, and hurts individuals whose only intent is to support our students and professors. We deeply regret this invasion of their privacy.”

In a letter to the PGSS Board of Directors obtained by The Daily, Salamon and King alleged that some members of the PGSS executive routinely engaged in “sexual harassment, psychological intimidation, and discriminatory behaviour.”

The meeting was the culmination of a year-long conflict between members of an executive team where mistrust and divisions run so deep that officers regularly record each other’s public and private conversations without prior knowledge.

“It seems as if that these days, everybody is recording things. […] I feel like I need to practice what I’m going to say,” a member of the executive told The Daily.

The hostility pushed several members – including Salamon – to seek external help.

“People are extremely upset. […] We see each other every day and it has been getting worse and worse every day,” the same executive added.

For nearly an hour, several executive officers argued with Salamon over the validity of his claims.

According to Salamon, an officer on the executive team exposed themselves and masturbated in front of him and another executive officer after a meeting in June. “I was appalled, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe anyone would do that, especially in front of someone [they] didn’t actually know very well,” Salamon told The Daily.

The executive officer in question said they only removed their pants.

“We were drinking, we were socializing. It was not PGSS business […] there was some consumption of marijuana by some people, and during that time, I did remove my pants, that’s true, but I never exposed myself, I never took out my genitalia,” they said.

The executive further alleged the claims were fabricated in response to disagreement that erupted between the two over a motion to censor Salamon at Council.

“I was willing to entertain alternative solutions to a censor motion, […] during this meeting [Salamon] stated ‘I will retaliate’ if a censor motion was brought forward, stating that [he] would accuse me of sexual harassment…”

For Salamon, the June incident marked the beginning of a series of inappropriate sexual conducts from the same executive member, including making sexual advances at Salamon prior to the team’s departure to the executive retreat in Mont Tremblant and sexualized comments that were uttered toward another PGSS member who sat on one of Salamon’s committees.

“We’re talking about ten months of discomfort. […] I feel so uncomfortable. I’ve been bullied throughout this term,” Salamon said.
Other members of the executive team also made additional sexualized comments toward Salamon, he said. In one instance, an executive officer asked Salamon why he had not considered sleeping with the executive officer who had allegedly exposed themselves.

In another instance, Salamon alleged that another member of the executive team threatened to reveal his relationship with a member of Divest McGill before an endorsement vote on the divestment campaign. According to Salamon, the threat was made in an attempt to sabotage the campaign. The allegation was denied by the executive officer in question at yesterday’s meeting.

Salamon is currently on a leave of absence, citing hostility with his co-workers.

“I think the contribution of students to the total costs of student education is extraordinarily modest,” she told SSMU Council at that meeting. Such a comment would not be out of place nowadays.

Ten years later, as she prepares to pass the baton to Suzanne Fortier, Munroe-Blum’s term has seen recurring themes surrounding issues like university funding and labour negotiations, constituting an overarching shift in the University’s top priorities that will have repercussions for a long time to come.

Munroe-Blum began her term with the explicit goal of unfreezing tuition rates to allow for increases, while at the same time lobbying for additional funding from the Quebec government. She quickly went to work to achieve these goals.

In her second year of office, Munroe-Blum oversaw the privatization of international tuition, which allowed for significant increases in rates up to 8 per cent a year, and petitioned the Quebec government to lift its former freeze on rates for in-province students. Despite widespread student mobilization against tuition increases since 2012, Munroe-Blum has continued to push for their implementation, and most recently has started a campaign against $38 million in budget cuts imposed by the Quebec government.

Privatization of tuition fees continued in 2009, with the Desautels Faculty of Management MBA program. The administration turned down provincial budgetary subsidies in favour of charging its own tuition rates, which were raised to $29,500 at the time. This engendered a 1,663 per cent hike for in-province students – a move that sparked outrage amongst the Quebec community.

Munroe-Blum has also overseen significant changes in University and administration structure. In 2004, she personally drove a significant restructuring of McGill’s Board of Governors (BoG). In the name of efficiency, the BoG’s body was cut in half, from 45 to 25 members. Student voting seats went from four to two, with the non-voting seat reserved for the SSMU President eliminated. Today, there is one undergraduate seat which is appointed by SSMU. This voting seat is usually held by – but not reserved for – the SSMU President.

Seemingly innocuous changes, such as the implementation of the Principal’s Task Force in winter 2006, led to frustration within the student body – questions directed at the administration involving contentious issues such as the eviction of SACOMSS (Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students’ Society) from its former setting often met the deflective statement, “The task force is looking into it.”

The privatization of university resources has been another source of controversy: from the renaming of the Faculty of Music in 2005 due to a $20 million donation from businessman Seymour Schulich to debate over the University’s involvement in investing in 645 publicly-traded corporations, including 14 directly involved in tar sands, Munroe-Blum has been accused of pushing priorities oriented toward a more business-friendly model.

This falls in line with other conflicts, including tensions with labour unions such as  the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) and Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE). MUNACA went on strike during the Fall 2011 semester, eventually ratifying a collective agreement with the administration at the end of that year.

Ultimately, Munroe-Blum’s term has been characterized by several overarching narratives, often perceived as oriented toward the administration rather than the student body. Certainly, not all reforms have been for the worse – such as the creation of the Arts & Science degree in 2004, among other new programs – and a mere half-page cannot begin to cover the lengthy reforms undertaken during her term. But as students face steeper fees for fewer services and hostility from the administration on a variety of issues, it remains essential to question, critique, and challenge the initiatives taken by the administration over the past ten years.

The $10,000 grant funds a political theory fellowship in which students meet to discuss seminal liberal texts under the guidance of libertarian theorist and McGill professor Jacob Levy. Undergraduates receive $500 for their participation in the Fellowship over the course of the year; graduate students get $750.

Over 200 American universities receive funding from the Foundation. The grant application page of their website reads, “the Foundation focuses its grantmaking on a select number of programs it believes are best positioned to support principles of liberty and long-term prosperity.”
Levy and several students interviewed by The Daily are adamant that the Fellowship – officially called the Research Group on Constitutional Studies Student Fellowship – meets the highest standards of academic freedom.

Byron Taylor-Conboy, a Master’s candidate who describes himself as a “progressive, left-leaning social democrat” said, “one of the reasons why I thought [the funding] was acceptable in this situation is that there was no sort of constraints on what we could talk about.”
Jake Bleiberg, U3 Political Science, echoed this. “In being exposed to those texts, you’re certainly getting a liberal perspective on the world. But I don’t feel as if there’s a political push behind it,” he said. “I think we’re looking at the books in the same critical way you would in a class.”

While all of the students contacted by The Daily thought the McGill Fellowship in question was free from overt interference on the part of the Foundation and were happy to be a part of it, some felt that Koch grants were symptomatic of larger problems in academia.

“I think the Koch brothers have been an example of using big money to privilege certain views, which I would say is anti-democratic,” said Isaac Stethem, who graduated last semester and has been a Fellow for two years.

Asked if he would be comfortable seeing a Koch grant at every Canadian university, Taylor-Conboy said, “Of course not.”

“I think it’s problematic, a massive private investment in universities, and we see it increasing now,” he went on. “I think it opens the door to a curtailing of intellectual thought and academic freedom.”

“Everything is dirty money. Anything we do now is dirty money – dirty money circulates in the system. So to say, ‘Oh, you know, this Koch Foundation money is dirty money,’ – maybe that’s correct, but the problem isn’t just the Koch Foundation, it’s the system.”

The Koch brothers have been explicit about the ideological control they try to wield over the organizations they fund. In 2007, David Koch told the libertarian journalist Brian Doherty, “If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding. We do exert that kind of control.”

Presented with the quote, Levy countered that the McGill Fellowship was too small to merit such interference. “There’s one important part of that quote that you read, which is ‘a lot of money.’ […] $10,000 grants to universities aren’t like that,” he said.

In recent years, the Kochs have been in the spotlight for aggressively funding right-wing political causes. Greenpeace called Koch Industries, the brothers’ multinational corporation involved in various industrial and manufacturing activities, a “kingpin of climate science denial,” for spending more than ExxonMobil to fight against climate change legislation between 2005 and 2008.

In 2004, David Koch co-founded the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which recently has been involved in financing Tea Party groups and organizing anti-Obama rallies across the U.S.

Doherty has said that Charles Koch’s goal in entering political activism in the 1970s was to tear government “out at the root.”

“Do I worry about what other causes donors give to? Not as a rule,” Levy said. “I’m concerned about how they interact with their educational and university grants.”

• • •

The Foundation has no say over which students are admitted to the Fellowship, Levy says. Levy picks the Fellows himself, based largely on “the number and range of high-level courses in political theory, political philosophy, jurisprudence, and related fields, and the grades in those courses.”

Levy, who is listed as a guest lecturer on the website of the Koch-funded, libertarian Institute for Humane Studies, declined to show The Daily examples of his grant applications to the Koch Foundation, citing McGill’s donor privacy rules.

In an interview, he said the application consists largely of telling the Foundation what books he plans to assign. In the past three years, Fellows have read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, and The Federalist Papers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. This year, students are concentrating on Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Each book is a touchstone of liberalism.

Levy receives no money from the grant. He has been on sabbatical for four of the six semesters that the Fellowship has been in place at McGill. “This is teaching I’ve been doing in my spare time,” he said.

At the end of each year, Levy writes a report to the Foundation: “I say we met this many times, we successfully covered this many books, and for the students who are graduating, I say, here are the things that students are going on to do.”

The Foundation does not appear to be concerned with the Fellows’ ideological orientation, even if they are dramatically at odds with that of the libertarian Kochs. Mylène Freeman, one of the McGill students elected to Parliament as an NDP candidate in 2011, was a Fellow in the group’s first year at McGill. “I was happy and proud to include her accomplishment prominently in the year-end report I send to the Foundation of the impressive things our students go on to do,” Levy wrote in an email.

• • •

Last year, an employee of the Foundation visited McGill and sat in on one of the Fellowship’s discussions.

“Professor Levy mentioned beforehand, ‘just act the way you would normally act,’” Bleiberg said.

Still, when the employee – Stephen Sweet, Program Coordinator for Marketing and Recruiting at the Foundation – stood before the group and mentioned grants and internships that the Koch Foundation offered, some of the more left-wing Fellows bristled.

“At least one or two members asked questions that had to do with the ideology behind the group, or the principles tied up with it,” remembered Stethem.

“There were a good number of people last year who identified as part of the radical left,” Bleiberg said. “Someone tried to ask whether or not [the Koch Foundation was] open to employing people who really disagreed with them. I think he got a sort of non-answer to that.”

“[The Koch Foundation employee] was very directly challenged and from a radically different position. I don’t think the people who felt they had something to say to him tried to say it gently.”

Bleiberg said he saw this as evidence of the Fellowship’s academic freedom. After all, despite the testy exchange, McGill’s grant was renewed at the end of the year.

Levy says he intends to apply for the grant again this year.

Questions focused mainly on budget cuts and the recent protest protocol, as well as the reputation of McGill on the whole as an international institution. Munroe-Blum took the interview as an opportunity to reiterate the fact that the administration is trying its best to preserve academic quality throughout the cuts. She said that the administration has been lobbying the government against the cuts, and that its top priority is to get fair funding. She said that the government cuts are keeping universities “hostage,” and that this was the wrong way of going about cutting government spending – which she felt was important in light of the government’s deficit.

Speaking about the changes at McGill during her tenure, Munroe-Blum said that she thinks the biggest transformative factor has been globalization, motivating universities across the world to do research that “makes a difference socially and economically.”

She felt that democracy is currently in “full bloom” on campus, and she was happy that McGill is such an outspoken community. Student protests, she said, have not necessarily been bad for McGill’s reputation, and when asked about the new protest protocol, Munroe-Blum said that she was proud that McGill had seen “more demonstration in the last 24 months, of all kinds.” She felt that the new protocol managed to support the safety and sense of well-being of students and professors.

The McGill Daily (MD): McGill is the only university thus far that has decided to cut so drastically and immediately. Other universities are either dipping into their capital budgets, waiting on new directives, or counting on the promised $1.7 billion reinvestment. Why?

Heather Munroe-Blum (HMB): [McGill] dominantly delivers programs by our tenured professors, the majority of Quebecois universities run on a very different model, which is very much a chargé-de-cours and part-time student model. There’s no question that it costs more to run a research-intensive, graduate student-intensive university, with a range of professional faculties, and that is our mission […] Our credit rating is a credit rating that Quebec depends on. Quebec borrows money on our credit rating.

Le Délit (in French): Since the quiet revolution Quebeckers have been fighting against deregulating tuition fees, however, you have said that we have been treating tuition fees as a “vache sacrée,” that we have been giving this struggle too much importance. How can you say that McGill is part of Quebec but still have this view?

HMB: I don’t believe that professors should say things they don’t believe, and I look at the different data, and I see that in my first years here a frozen, low tuition fee, did not get accessibility, and it did not build quality. We don’t want American tuition fees here, but I think that it’s very important to be honest about what builds educational strength and what creates degree completion.

MD: The police have been especially heavy-handed with demonstrators this year. Do you think they could have had different tactics?

HMB: I don’t think I need to tell the police or the government how to run their circumstances. I was very surprised last spring that a range of universities in Quebec did not stand up for the right of students to attend their classes. And I did express this in the context of the university system.

MD: When we came in, you asked us “where are the women?” Do you consider yourself a feminist, and if so, what does this mean for you, and how does that translate into university policy?

HMB: I never thought of myself as a feminist or not, but I did hear my mother every day saying, education is the source of all things good. She believed very powerfully in that, and [she] lectured my brothers every day on how to treat women. That was the culture I grew up in. […] I saw in the days after [my appointment as Principal], how powerful it was, not just to women and girls, but to visible minorities, to older men who were immigrants, that McGill, this traditional university that everyone had seen as far off and untouchable, was suddenly open. And it was really a dramatic example, for me, of the power of symbols.

— Correction appended April 5