Over the last few months, a large number of American post-secondary institutions have adopted official positions on institutional neutrality. Very recently, an email was sent out to all faculty and staff at Simon Fraser University (SFU) by the President indicating that she and other senior administrators would refrain from "...taking public positions on topics unrelated to the business of the university, including partisan matters and world events." The letter also explained that "....universities need to be a place where people can freely engage in academic inquiry, share ideas, learn from each other, disagree constructively and peacefully protest." The entire statement is now publicly available.

In this symposia session, we will go over the statement from the SFU President, and discuss what it means for the institution and for making progress across Canada. 

This session will be hosted via Zoom. Please email Andy Sellwood at andy_sellwood@hotmail.com if you would like to attend.