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John speaks with Alexandra Lysova about her time as an academic after the collapse of the Soviet Union, her journey to Canada, and the importance of open inquiry on college campuses.

Alexandra Lysova, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada. Her research career, spanning more than 20 years, focuses on intimate partner violence, including violence against men, women, and children. Having experienced limitations on freedoms in Russia, where Alexandra grew up, she has developed a heightened appreciation for democratic values and, at the same time, has become sensitive to limitations on academic freedom and freedom of expression in Canada and The U.S. Lysova has received the 2023 Leadership Award from Heterodox Academy for her persistent efforts to protect academic freedom, and she was also the recipient of the 2022 Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy.

Alexandra spearheaded the SFU Academic Freedom Group with the mission of “promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in research and education,” which now boasts 60 SFU faculty and staff as members. She also led her campus in becoming part of Heterodox Academy’s Campus Community Network in 2023.

Episode Transcript

John Tomasi: Alexandra Lysova, welcome to Heterodox Out Loud.

Alexandra Lysova: Thank you so much.

John Tomasi: It's lovely to have you on the show with us. So we're doing this remotely, you're in Canada today. So we're really interested to talk with you about your work on campus, which has just been exemplary in a whole bunch of different ways. But I just want to begin by talking a bit about you and about your life story. You're a professor of criminology. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up and how you ended up finding yourself becoming a professor?

Alexandra Lysova: Yeah, sure. I think my life story and my immigration to Canada from Russia explains a lot in my current interests in academic freedom, freedom of expression. I was born and grew up in Russia in the far east of Russia. So it's close to Vladivostok, which is on Sea of Japan. So it's very, very far away from Moscow and St. Petersburg. In fact, it's a nine hour flight from Moscow to Vladivostok or Trans-Siberian trail, train that takes seven nights, eight days or something like this. It's a very long, long way. I attended the university in Russia, Far Eastern State University in Vladivostok. And this is where I became interested in my topic of domestic violence. It was not discussed really as an issue. And I decided that this is something I'd like to do. So you studied criminology, did you call it criminology? No, criminology is a part of law in Russia. It's a very, very different discipline and area. So I did my bachelor degree or it's called in Russia diploma in psychology, in fact. So I looked into the dysfunctional communication within the family and I became very interested in particularly aggressive communication and violence. And the topic of violence was not really discussed as a social issue, something that weren't a societal response at the time when I studied. And I realized this is something I'd like to do. And the point is, this is where I realized that I want to be a professor. I want to study this, I want to teach this. How old were you when you realized that? first years of university, so 17, 18. In my first second year of the university, I realized that this is something I'd like to do. And, and then we, this is my life trajectory, what happened in the early 19s, when there was a collapse of the Soviet Union. And we had this brief moment of freedom, when we could discuss things openly. And I started to teach at the university after got my degree in the early 2000s. So that was time 90s, early 2000s was the period when I could teach freely, I could discuss different topics with my students. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I didn't feel any fear. Oh, I wouldn't think twice, criticizing the government just because there was that moment in life when we felt that there is this window of opportunity. And the Eneka collaboration with the Western researchers was very much welcome. This is how I had an opportunity to become a Fulbright scholar. In the early 2000s, in 2003 and 2004, I went to New York University in New York City, which I loved. And then I also collaborated with researchers in New Hampshire, University of New Hampshire, Murray Straus, a leading researcher in domestic violence, family violence area. So just to respond to your question, how what I'm doing today affected me, clearly my life in Russia and then what happened in 2005, six, seven and eight affected me tremendously. When I'm teaching and I'm feeling that the freedom is becoming limited and then we started to be worried about what we discussed. For example, at some point in my class on family violence and it was actually it was sociology of family. We've discussed the idea that women have the right to choose the time of having children or they make decisions not to have children. And then to my surprise, one of the students complained to the chair of the department that she felt very uncomfortable about discussing the issues of choice, that women have choice and this was sorry, was this at NYU or in Russia? No, no, no, it was in Russia.

John Tomasi: It was in Russia.

Alexandra Lysova: No, no. Yeah, it was in Russia. This is where I taught my class in Russia and somewhere in 2007 and eight, this is where I realized that something is changing after that, the moment and the period of freedom that we had and enjoyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, then somewhere after 2005, this is something started to change.

John Tomasi: I'm very interested in that period of 2007, but I'd like to just ask if you can go back a bit. I had an experience in 1988 when I'd just finished college and I was starting graduate school that a delegation of philosophers from Russia came to the program. I was at the University of Arizona. We had some conversations about political philosophy. This was in 87, 88, I guess. And I remember the conversations were really striking to us because the academics from Russia really felt they had to toe a party line. And they weren't able to have open conversations about politics. They really felt constrained. So you're talking about just that period just after a year or two later, from the Russian perspective of a student now, you were a student in Russia at that time, people were aware of the contrast of what it would have been like before in Russia? Can you say anything about the changes in Russia?

Alexandra Lysova: Yes, sure. I was too young in the early 90s. I was a teenager, but what I know from my colleagues and from my parents, of course, from my husband who's older than me. It's that time when there was no longer fear that something may happen to you. So yes, I think there was a tremendous change in the mentality of Russian people understanding that something very serious just happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And I think these freedoms, there was this period when there was a chaos, of course, and there was an economic crisis. This is something I remember really well. And I know many people emigrated at that time, and it was economic migration. So people wanted a better life in other countries. And yes, yes, there was a moment when I think there was this open borders and people started to travel and see different lives. And they realized that they can express things more openly because there was no immediate punishment. There was no that institution in place that would have some kind of, incur some kind of punishment on people. So yes, I do believe it was that moment. And I've lived that moment when I was a student in 1994. And then when I became a professor in 2002 and taught the classes at the university. So I remember that. We could discuss this openly.

John Tomasi: Interesting.

Alexandra Lysova: Yeah.

John Tomasi: So now, so now tell us about 2005 and 2007. What started? What started to change?

Alexandra Lysova: this is something started to change. Of course, Putin came to power in 2000. And I think this is an interesting moment because not that many people are aware, particularly in the West, that what we see today started to happen much, much earlier. And there was this very gradual change with the suppression of freedoms, not very public one, but at some kind of this kind of hidden way addressing certain individuals in their profession. And again, that incident that I had when students would bring up the issue that they don't think that women need to have a choice, and they don't even want to hear that perspective anymore. And the focus is on traditional values and traditional roles of women in the family. To me, it was very strange. I didn't still feel it as an atmosphere, but the way that it was treated as an incident, something that we needed, it was just a talk, nothing happened after that, but I just say, no, sorry, I need to explain that. This is part of what it is. This is part of this course. We have to describe different perspectives. Nothing happened at the time. But then what happened, it was serious, actually, incident in 2009. And in 2009, somebody called me and told me that they want to meet and talk to me. And that was the federal security services, former KGB. This is where I could not believe it's happening, because I'm just a professor at the university. I'm just teaching sociology to the students, and I do not have any access to any secret information or government data or anything like this. I'm just doing my research on domestic violence. Yes, I do have some research trips to the United States. As a Carnegie scholar, as a Fulbright scholar, Library of Congress, but it's a, it's, it's nothing, it's nothing secret. And, I was suggested that I take that and go to that meeting, because if I don't go to that meeting, this is where it becomes serious in Russia. We have two passports. We have one internal passport and one external one that allows us to travel. So that services, they, overlook, they, they decide on if they will issue the external passport to the person. It was serious. They would make maybe serious consequences. I decided to go. There were all kinds of questions. To me, there were strange questions that I behaved myself rude with them. I didn't like the whole idea that I had to be there. What I realized was that there is this case open on me, even though I didn't do anything wrong.

John Tomasi: And just for- Like a file.

Alexandra Lysova: A file. A file. Exactly. They have a file. I, in 2010, we left. We, we considered it, my husband and I were considering leaving Russia simply because of that. It's, it's very painful feeling when you had freedom at some point, and then you're losing it, you feel it, you feel it. And you don't want to get back to the internal exile that people developed in the Soviet Union. When you simply live in your internal world, you have several trusted people, and that's your life. And we didn't want that anymore. So when we left in 2010, we never returned, we never went back.

John Tomasi: And you went, I'm sorry, did you go to Canada?

Alexandra Lysova: Yes, we chose Canada. It's simply because I was accepted at several great schools in the United States.

John Tomasi: So you're on the international job market, looking at jobs in a number of places.

Alexandra Lysova: Yeah, but no, I actually didn't choose that path. For many of us, we know that it's easy to get to the graduate school again and then go to the job market. Yeah, particularly because I never spoke English all the time. So that was an issue as well. There are many, many barriers. So I got back to the university and as I understand it was very right decision. I appreciated it so much. And Canada, just because it's easier to immigrate in this country, the system of immigration is very clear. Yes. And that was the decision. So it was not economic migration. It was political migration. And this is where I address, John, your question is how is that my previous experience affects my position today? I do think that some of us who made this choice, painful choice, and it was difficult. We sacrificed a lot. We had full-time jobs in Russia. We had life there. we have still relatives there. We choose to go because we value freedom so much. And we don't want to imagine that my children will live under that oppression. And we left, right? And we are more sensitive to the limitations on freedom in this country now. And I'm surprised to see that my colleagues who are Canadians, most of them just people who grew up or were born and walk here, here, they just don't feel it. They don't see when there is this attack on freedom. And it happens in a very incremental way. So it doesn't just happen. Okay. And from tomorrow you do this. I think they would notice. But since it happens very slowly, you just add this to your job description. You just do a little bit here, more of that. You just say this and people say, why not? After all, it's a good concept. To us, my colleagues from former Soviet Union, I know even that woman, Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector, who wrote a book on her experiences in the West while time remains. She sees this as well. So for some of us who've seen the authoritarian regimes, totalitarian regimes, when we come to this country, of course it's a huge contrast. Of course we appreciate the freedom here, but when we're starting to lose that freedom, we feel it.

John Tomasi: Yeah, that's very interesting. We find that among a number of our HxA members, people who've had experiences in the Soviet Union, for example, or in other repressive societies, have a particularly sharp awareness of how freedom gets lost. There's a metaphor we sometimes talk about. You probably know about water heating up and the frog not feeling it, but then eventually the water starts to boil. So tell us about the path that led you to Simon Fraser and your current job.

Alexandra Lysova: So I received my PhD in criminology at the University of Toronto. That's a wonderful university where I've met a lot of great people. I've attended so many different talks. I just love that atmosphere of being in academia where I could just go everywhere and just listen to all these things. So I considered my PhD as an opportunity to become part of Canada, part of the culture, learn the language, meet the people. I appreciate it so much. That's the best years. I love them very much. And I was very honored to receive several wonderful awards. One of them was a Trudeau Foundation award. And this award is for future leaders of Canada. So the one that is not a regular award, in some ways similar to Fulbright scholarship. So it's not just a research scholarship, scholarship. You go and do your research at university. It's more like you become part of that culture. You meet with different people. You become an ambassador of your own country in this new country. So it was amazing. And then since I've received my PhD in criminology, we have only one major school of criminology in Canada, which is at Simon Fraser University. And I was I was very, very lucky to become part of this school. I've always kept it in mind that this is the place where I would like to go. And once I applied for a job, I received a job here. So this is how I happened to be here.

John Tomasi: And you and you're you're an associate professor now, you've been through been through tenure, I think.

Alexandra Lysova: I did. I did. Yes, I'm an associate professor now.

John Tomasi: Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Of course, I want to talk with you about your some of the organizing work you've done that led to HXA recognizing with the Open Inquiry Award for Leadership this year. Let's just, before we do that, please tell us a little bit about your work. So you, you, you do a research on intimate partner violence and part of us been interesting about your work. I understand is that you've sort of widened the lens as to the kinds of, agents and patients who might be brought into that, that, that, that framework of thinking about intimate partner violence. Can you just say a bit, say a bit about your research?

Alexandra Lysova: Sure. I study intimate partner violence, broader family violence. I looked at some of the issues within the family violence as child abuse and particularly corporal punishment of children, but mostly I focus on gender issues and intimate partner violence in heterosexual relationship. And I've expended, thanks to Murray Straus, that researcher in the United States, whom I met as a Fulbright scholar, I've expanded the focus of my research from the traditional look at women as victims of abuse to women as both victims and perpetrators of abuse. And I've expanded my research to examine men not only as perpetrators of abuse, but also as victims of abuse. And interestingly enough, that when I met Murray Straus in the United States, because again, he was a leading researcher in this field, and he warned me not to do this work before I got tenure. And this was another frustration that I experienced at that time in the early 2000s, when I went to the United States, because I realized that even within the Western academia, there are limits. He experienced a lot of pressure from the ideological radical feminist groups who didn't appreciate the focus on male victims or expanded that concept of the victim. His tenure was threatened. He experienced all kinds of threats and challenges to his career because of his research. His colleagues did the same as well. Suzanne Steinmetz, one of one of the researchers who published the paper in 1977 on battered husband syndrome. She was threatened with a bomb at the at the waging of your daughter. So it went that that bad. Yes. And the point is that so I was introduced to the idea of wars within academia early enough. I knew that. Yeah.

John Tomasi: I'm just curious. So tell us a bit more about about intimate partner violence is perpetrated by women against men. How common is that? guess it's a minor slice, but can you just say a bit about that and also why it's so controversial to study it?

Alexandra Lysova: Yeah. So as it turned out now, it's good that in some countries we conduct studies, including Canada, conduct population surveys that allows us to look at how prevalent is violence perpetrated by men and victimization experienced by men and women. In Canada, we conduct a general social survey on victimization every five years since 1999, and the numbers are very close between men and women. There was a significant difference between men and women in 1999, and then it becomes the gap is getting closer and closer, and in 2014, there were more men in Canada, statistically significant, who reported to be victims of physical and or sexual abuse. And it's not even, it doesn't even include psychological aggression as we can think it's very prevalent form of abuse. We're talking about physical and or sexual abuse as defined by the criminal code of Canada. So it means that many men in Canada reported that they've been victim of one or more acts measured by the statistics Canada. So it is a very serious problem.

John Tomasi: Yeah. It's hard to believe. Yeah. Yeah. The numbers are really, the numbers that you just described are really, really striking. And to me, surprising. I don't work in this area. This is based on criminal cases, is there self-reporting by the male victims?

Alexandra Lysova: It's self-reported data. And this is where we see two different pictures of domestic violence or intimate partner violence. One is provided by the self-reported surveys. And this is where we see very close numbers in victimization between men and women. And this is supported by data coming from Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and other countries that conduct this type of studies, particularly in Western industrialized countries. And when we look at the police data, we see very different picture. Majority of the victims who report intimate partner violence incidents are women. In fact, 80% of them. So we trying to understand why we have this big gap and we see all kinds of explanations that women are more willing to call the police and men are just less likely to trust the police.

John Tomasi: I wondered about males' shame and whether they'd be willing to report these things.

Alexandra Lysova: So that's part of the story.

John Tomasi: Yeah.

Alexandra Lysova: And that's a very major part of it. And then, of course, they're so ashamed and embarrassed to acknowledge that they don't even actually acknowledge, they don't call themselves victims. That's another big stigma for them and barrier for us to, first of all, to measure violence. And then, of course, for the social workers and other professionals to work with male victims. And I believe that, unfortunately, we have still a very steady rate of domestic homicide, just because many of the issues of men go unreported, undetected, and untreated. So those who experience depression, those who live in toxic, violent relationships with their female partners, they do not even look for help, because they do not even call it as a problem. And then it's too late, and then it escalates to something as bad as when homicide can happen in the relationship. It's a very serious issue, and I think what we, and particularly what I'm interested in, and what I argue, is that we need to look at the complexities and nuances of all of this issue. We cannot just pretend only violence against women exists, because we're not in a good position to help all the victims and prevent domestic violence, domestic violence, which is our goal, reduce the number of violent incidents. And I see how ideology can threaten that or limit our perspective. This is why, but again, when I discussed it with Murray Straus, I knew that it's a very controversial topic. Many people simply not ready to look at this issue from this perspective, but I believe it's limited only to this area. I knew there are some other areas in criminology, in biology, in some other areas where controversy It's hard to discuss them, but I believe it's just limited to the specific areas. But now with DEI, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion framework, it looks like it expanded to all higher education. And that bothers me a lot. It came out, I was known, I knew that very well this issue, but now it's just out there and affects everyone.

John Tomasi: The work you describe doing, your research work, it just reminds me of, it makes vivid to me what we think the university is about and what research is about, which is in part discovering things that are not known and learning new facts about the world that are maybe hidden from you. And one of the important functions of the university is to have people in a position in our society to engage in those explorations, to boldly go and think about things in new ways. That sounds exactly what you were doing. So I understand that you won the Sterling Prize a year ago, which is given in support of controversy. Can you say a bit about that award?

Alexandra Lysova: Yes, this is- I love the name.

John Tomasi: I love the name of the award, the Sterling Prize in support of controversy. Sounds very heterodoxian.

Alexandra Lysova: Yeah, this is an excellent award. And I knew about this award well before I went to Simon Fraser University. In fact, it was part of the reason why I really wanted to get in here. I knew about this award. I knew my studies are controversial. I didn't get a job I wanted because of the topic. I had another appointment in mind. The point is the topic was controversial as I've learned later. And that's the price we pay for doing what we think is important. As you just mentioned, this is the role of academia. We examine the gaps. We follow the data. we do not choose what is convenient to study or not convenient. We simply follow the data and we see if it's needed, if it's a gap that needs to be filled in order for us to provide better services for victims of violence and prevent future incidents. This is what we do. Yes, it sounds unpleasant for some or inconvenient or somewhat else, but it's something what we do. This is the research. So this award is amazing because it supports the research which is controversial and at the same time ethically sound and it's a good scholarship. The other thing is that somebody mentioned to me when I received this award that particularly for people from outside of academia is that they say why do you even need it? We believed academia is about this type of research. You don't have to award just one researcher for her research or his research, because isn't it the academia about it? And I needed to agree that, unfortunately, it looks like it's not about it. And I'm glad we have this. I'm glad we have good applications. I'm on the committee right now of this award. We have good applications every year. We encourage people to submit their work and consider the controversial aspects of the work and celebrate it, not to be be afraid not to stay away, but celebrated.

John Tomasi: Yes. And I'm just curious, that Sterling Award, is it awarded, who designates the award? Is it from Simon Fraser or is it across Canada?

Alexandra Lysova: So everyone can participate in this award. We give priority for people from SFU, but in 2019, for example, it was given to Steven Pinker and I attended his lecture, his inaugural lectures, award lectures. So it was great, so it can be given to any individual. And this is the private endowment. So it's former professors from the university who believed so strongly in controversy that they established this award. And it's hugely celebrated within SFU, which I appreciate a lot.

John Tomasi: Nice, nice. And these awards are often symbolic, right? They're symbolic of a gap, a perceived gap in the existing culture of a university, for example. But they're also symbolic of a desire and a recognition of the importance of controversy and of scholars who are willing to shake up what's given and what's assumed by presenting new data, new information, showing things that are hidden that need to be seen. So that's extremely interesting. I'd like to talk with you about your work now for the campus community and be also, you know, As you all know, I'll just remind our listeners that the Heterodox Academy gives a series of awards every year. We call them the Open Inquiry Awards. And this year we gave the 2023 Open Inquiry Award for leadership to Alexandra. And that's an award given to a person who shows exceptional ability and energy in providing leadership at their university and beyond for issues of open inquiry. And so I'd like to talk with you a little bit about that, and as I understand, in 2022, about a year ago, I think in October, maybe September, a year ago, you and I think three colleagues or four colleagues, four colleagues, started the SFU Academic Freedom Group. Can you just tell us a little bit about that group?

Alexandra Lysova: So the tensions were growing and something was happening. Some of us felt it, some of us stronger than others, and I felt it in exactly 2020. And that was a very difficult moment when you feel something's happening, but you cannot still say what it is when the department started to issue some kind of political statements on the websites. whatever incident happened in the university, if it's a person of certain identities involved, that becomes an issue and everybody just again puts more statements on the websites of the academic institution or academic units. And I challenge some of this within my department. I've realized that it's just me and then it was one more colleague, so just two of us out of a huge group of people. I realized that it's something that needs to be challenged and it was very scary in the beginning. And what happened from 2020, I've started to look at and notice some individuals online whenever I attended, and this is where I started to attend more of the university meetings, all kinds of consultations, all kinds of events to discuss policies, regulation, or anything that came from the university. And I've noted the names of people who would ask brave questions. And so I've sent this email saying, you don't know me, but maybe we can meet and discuss what's going on. Maybe we share similar concerns. And this is how that first meeting happens in October 2022 with three other people. We all met and we realized that we're all having very similar experience with the concerns we share. Something's happening that it's contrary to academic mission of the university. And this is how we started our small group.

John Tomasi: Had you discovered Heterodox Academy at that point? Were you a member of that?

Alexandra Lysova: Yes, absolutely. I remember it really well. And that was at that desperate moment at the end of the 2020 when within our unit, people insisted on putting the statements on the website. And early to 2021, this is where I said I needed help. I went online and I looked for all kinds of organizations that I would get more knowledge. and this is how I find out the first one probably got, I got his heterodox Academy. I never heard about this before. I didn't hear it from anybody. I joined immediately online, immediately and that was such a resource of hope, of knowledge and I immediately shared it with my colleagues and they joined too because I simply emailed and saying, please, you see this resource, that is helpful. This is where I've attended several meetings online, different talks. it helped me understand what was happening. So it was very early in 2021. And then I've also joined some other groups like Academic Freedom Alliance and FAIR and some other groups that I realized that I needed help and I needed resources and knowledge.

John Tomasi: And it was- These are all our allied groups that are interested in reforming. Of course, HxA has the distinctive approach of building from the inside, using insiders primarily, but these are all our, as you know, our friends and allies.

Alexandra Lysova: And I think I've learned from them actually from your website as well because you're referring to this or mentioning sometimes the groups that very similar in mind. And yeah, so it was very, very helpful. And as a group, again, we decided at the time that we want to grow, we want to do something. We want to do something, not just to sit here and discuss how we all feel bad about what is happening. So next month, actually in November, we already created the Canvas page. This is our university software system combines everybody. So we created a page and this is how we started adding members and communicate with each other. We've shared the sources there. We have different pages. We've announced events. So this is how we decided to organize ourselves. And then very quickly, what we've decided to do was that we will do a letter campaign. So since we don't want to be silent and we didn't want to feel afraid, we've realized that as a group, we can just start writing those, providing that feedback that the university asked us to provide. And since each one of us was very scared, we were very scared and people are scared. And I remember I once, I asked several people, what are you scared of? You change your professor. Because when I started asking these questions, I was pre-tenured professor. And I realized that, but I couldn't wait. That's another problem. You can't wait sometimes. You see that this initiative is going very fast, is developing. Once you get your tenure, it will be too late. This group already will be here, or it will be this policy in place that it's very difficult to fight back then. You need to do it now. Sometimes it's an issue of timing.

John Tomasi: Yeah, it's sort of striking to us that, and I think across the profession and across heterodoxy academy, people have tenure presumably to protect their academic freedoms, precisely is that they can speak out and approve their own institutions. And yet people often don't use their tenure that way. They sort of use it as a job security rather than an opportunity or feeling the responsibility to step out and to stand forward to make the universities better. You know, one of the things that you do, I wanna talk about the letters, but before we did that, I'm just really struck by a strategy that I perceive running through a lot of the work you've done. One of the things in time, I'm curious if you see it this way too, You seem to me to be pretty masterful at taking language and documents that the university commits to for its own independent reasons, and then holding them to that, their own words and their own ideals. And for example, when you launched the SFU academic freedom group, before you started your Heterodox Academy chapter, which we'll talk about also, but when you launched that group, you quote from the SFU faculty association's collective agreement, and I'll just read what you quote from them in your announcement. You quote them as saying, quote, the right to investigate, speculate, and comment without reference to prescribed doctrine, as well as the right to criticize the university, the association, and society at large. Those aren't your words. Those are the other words from the collective agreement. And I find I've been detecting a similar strategy with a lot of other work you do, including the letters on faculty hiring that we'll be talking about. I'm just curious, is that a strategy that you were very self-conscious about doing? Or how did you come to that approach?

Alexandra Lysova: I think partly. This is something that was informed by some people in the Soviet Union who to develop special instructions for people how to survive. And they would use the strategies. They say, use the language, go after the letter of law. I know it didn't work in many cases, but sometimes it did. When people complain in prisons about their conditions and they follow the letter of the law, they constantly refer to the policies because they have many policies inside, how people should be kept and what kind of discipline it should be. So just do this. And then they have to respond somehow. So the response may be different, but this is the best you can do in that situation. So partly I had this in mind that this is the way we have. And again, and I remember, John, as we talked with people from the Heterodox Academy when we just considered our application, I remember the advice was not to threaten our careers, not to damage our professional paths. and this is something we are clearly aware of. We don't want them. Nobody wants that. So we've just realized there are other ways, there are very nice, polite, professional ways of making your case without jeopardizing your career. And again, the university, this is their policy, do all these consultations with the community and why not to use it? So this is the best strategy we have and it works. It works. When we use a language from the collective agreement, which is the main document right now, defines our work. Yes, this is a very strong language we have on academic freedom, and I'm sure other institutions have the same. People just need to read that language, and then apply it and refer to the language and say, we just follow the letter of the law. We just follow our document, it defines our work at the university. Moreover, we discovered more. For example, we have the British Columbia University Act, which is the main document that defines the work of the University of BC University Act. And the Article 66 says, a university must be non-sectarian and non-political in principle.

John Tomasi: Yes, you quote that in your statement. I'm really struck by that as well.

Alexandra Lysova: That's well, and the point is that, how I've learned about this, One of our members just mentioned to me, oh, did you by the way know about this? And I had no idea. I didn't even know this policies exists. So what we do at this point is that we carefully read the policies, the documents within the university, and then we apply them. And simply we find many, many contradictions with the new policies that they develop right now. For example, when they use very vaguely defined, not defined actually terms of equity, diversity, inclusion in relation to research. And that's a very recent example when we prepared a big letter, our feedback to the proposed policy on research excellence awards. And the policy was full of this very vaguely defined language. As if somebody went through the policy and just added here, and then you have to make sure that equity, diversity, inclusion is applied to research. And here and then everywhere, even within the definition of research excellency, it was the commitment to certain values of equity, diversity, inclusion. So what we did, we wrote that letter, simply asking questions, would you please define what it means? Because we don't have any defined terms anywhere within the university. And the only paper that mentions this never was approved in Senate. So it's not a policy. You cannot refer to something that can change. So we simply, and again, we're not lawyers. We don't have lawyers among us. It's just something that we, as reasonable people, we simply follow this logic and we ask these questions. And to our joy and we're very happy. And now in the most recent revised policy, all the language related to equity, diversity, inclusion was removed. So it's all about research right now, research excellence. It's just remarkable.

John Tomasi: And is this the equity compass? What was that initiative?

Alexandra Lysova: Equity Compass is a separate initiative coming from this office, EDI office, or DEI as you call it in the United States, established last year. So what we realized that that office produces these papers, Equity Compass, and then it was People's Plan, and there are some other papers. And then what happens, the trick is, then the university refers back to them and build their policies based on these documents. but these documents like Equity Compass was never approved by Congress, sorry, by Senate. It was never approved by any board within the university. We don't know how that can be used in the next documents. So that is why when we question this and when we ask very specific questions, for example, how are you going to measure equity, diversity, inclusion in relation to research? Are you going to ask the specific questions about the demographic characteristics of the candidates for the research award, very specific questions. How are you going to do that? What if people are unwilling to reveal their demographic information? And then how do you decide based on demographic, you decide who will get the award in research and excellency? And then it turns out these simple questions then bring everything to the point then people understand that it's just doesn't work. They can't address these questions. Yeah, it's an assumption.

John Tomasi: Yeah, there's an assumption in universities that by, at least in the part of some administrators, that by just having those rules and making those requests for information of a certain sort, people will just comply to it without actually challenging the premises the way you've been doing. Yeah, we have an idea at HXA, as you know, with our campus communities, that there are often more than one university at every university. And the question is, which of those visions of the university will gain strength and gave currency in the culture of the university. And I think it's so interesting when you would, as you know, when we talk about our communities, we have sort of two watchwords for our communities, think organic and think porous, porous means try to create events and create an organization, a group, a faculty group that is open to new members, that's open, that's a place where people can feel free to come and join them because they share the principles of open inquiry, whatever their own political ideologies might happen to be, and being organic means to be from that place. And I see you throughout your work, your group's work, quoting from the documents and sort of pulling out these lines, you're sort of highlighting one aspect of Simon Fraser that could be the more dominant one, or it could be the unspoken one that eventually drifts into oblivion and it's forgotten. But your group's helping to keep it, trying to keep it bright. But I want to know about this wonderful letter of yours that I've read several times about the faculty hiring and promotion. So there were some guidelines put out about faculty hiring and promotion. One of the maybe the key, maybe the linchpin of every university's identity is who is allowed to come in and be part of the faculty and who gets promoted and who's asked to leave. So these questions about membership are fundamental to the identity of what the university will be. And so can you tell us a bit about what the faculty hiring and promotion initiative was like and what your letter tried to bring out in it?

Alexandra Lysova: Yes, so what happened is that some of us serve on appointments committees and we've noticed in our department, we have many, many, we present many departments within the university. And we've noticed that chairs of the departments or chairs of the appointments committees cite or refer to those guidelines developed several years ago by a group of scholars, never vetted, never, it was again, it was, again, what I'm surprised is you don't know what the status of this document. What is this? What kind of guidelines is it? Who approved those guidelines? And those guidelines are on the faculty relations webpage And departments refer to them, and they follow them. And they say, oh, maybe it says that we have to include a land acknowledgement as a statement in the beginning of the letter. And then it also says that we have to talk about the commitment to decolonization and all these other political concepts. And some of us started questioning this and saying, why are you referring to this document? And they say, oh, just because it's on the webpage the faculty relations, probably we have to follow it. That's another thing, John, that you've just mentioned when people feel they have to do something when they, in fact, they don't have to do this because it's not the formal document. It's just some guidelines and people cannot just simply say, oh, we don't do that because it's not a formal document. Once we notice it, we realize this is a problem and we've prepared the feedback. when we specifically focused on the requirement of the political views from the candidates. Then we found out that, of course, the BC University Act clearly says that university is non-political. Since we couldn't find the case law that will clearly indicate what it means, because it looks like people don't know exactly what it means, we looked at the BC Human Rights Tribunal cases, And we found that they understand political belief very broadly. It's not just a certain political party. It's a much, much broader believe in certain things and positions. So we've talked about this. We found that on our collective agreement, we have two articles, articles four, no discrimination in relation to employment. The parties will not discriminate based on one of the characteristics of political belief. And then employment equity, again, Employment equity is that ensuring that no individual is denied access to employment opportunities for reasons unrelated to ability or qualifications. So we just use the university documents. And in that letter, we just indicated that what is in this guidelines may not be consistent with the laws and policies of the university. And the good thing was that those guidelines were removed from the website. And what we suggested to use instead is another document which is called discrimination in the hiring process prepared by the human rights office at our university. And that one is based on the human rights code that clearly says no one can be discriminated based on gender, sex, ethnicity, and then political belief as well. In BC, this is part of the protected characteristic. Yes, and so we're happy because now, and I'm serving on the appointments committee and my colleagues serving on the appointments committee. And I just, when somebody wanted to refer to those old guidelines, I'm saying, first of all, they're no longer there. And second, it's called discrimination if you want to select only women or only people of certain. It's discrimination. Let's look at that document prepared by the discrimination and hiring process. So we were very happy to see this change.

John Tomasi: And so that's a fascinating example of how simply being organized on the campus with having more than one. It wasn't just you by yourself doing it. There are always lone people who can do these things. But when a group gets together, they can share the burdens of their research. They can support one another. They can give each other some spine, perhaps, to say, you know, are you seeing what I'm seeing? I'm seeing this too. And now let's find a way to express that in ways that they can understand. And so I think implicit in what you're saying, in a lot of what you're saying, is this ideal that's still very powerful within university culture, which is an ideal, a certain idea of academic self-governance. If rules and policies are being encouraged or imposed on the faculty hiring, for example, a standard check on that is the question of whether the faculty actually approved these rules written in those ways. And one of the things I think your group is finding is that often it was not the case that these rules have been vetted by that standard. And when a group tries to impose something like that on a campus and on faculty doing hiring, they're putting themselves at odd with a very basic feature of academic self-understanding, which is that we govern ourselves to some significant degree, someone else is intervening and taking up that prerogative of faculty membership. Another point you haven't mentioned that really struck me in your letter is you say that the guidelines have very little to say about academic excellence. Can you say a bit about that?

Alexandra Lysova: Yeah, this is an interesting element. We see it not only in this hiring and retention guidelines, we see it in the, very recently, it was, what was it? It's a few research, it's a few research strategy. And very recently, we drafted another letter and went, oh, yeah, that was a position for the, we also provide feedback on the description of the position for the associated vice president research, for example. There was no mentioning of academic freedom or research excellence on the description of the position that will be associated with present research. It's a lot about equity, diversity, and inclusion. So what we do is that we constantly remind the university that the function and the mission of the university is the academic mission. And the academic freedom is our primary focus value of the university. And we are glad to see that our president and some of the administrators mentioned this in their meetings right now, in their presentations, they explicitly say that because we several times in the different meetings ask that at some point, I actually asked the very direct question to the president. So what is the mission of our university is an academic mission or something else. And she confirmed this academic mission. So it's, we, basically what we do, and I joined Senate for that. And in Senate, we asked this question as well, because it's all on record. And we encourage our group members, heterodox community members, to join all kinds of administrative positions, boards, committees, Senate, board of governors. So we are there to ask these questions. And we see that it's working. And you're absolutely right. It looks like we, as a group, the first function of the group is to reduce fear or eliminate fear. I think that was the first goal we worked on. And it helps tremendously to simply meet, to simply meet somewhere outside of the university, in a bar somewhere, so we can actually talk to each other from different departments. And I remember first meetings, and this is something that I've noticed when we celebrated the first anniversary of our group, that in the first meetings, we all talked about fear. How, and somebody said, oh, I have three kids, I have four kids, I'm worried about my job and I'm the only provider. So people really worried. And even though the question was, what are you worried about? Why do you think they will be fired? Because you ask the question and people rationally understand that it's not the case. It's just this culture of suppressing, even asking the question, which is great for administrators. They like when people are silently sitting there and just agree to everything. And so that was the first thing to simply understand that we self exactly as you just mentioned we governing we are working there this is our place and we have it we need to ask this question if it's not us there is nobody else here to do that and it was again great for me to notice that in the in the one year anniversary of our group we didn't talk about fear anymore everybody talked about different strategies next letters, next steps. We overcame that. Yeah. So it's great to be, as a group, realize it. And then what do we do? An important strategy we use is when within this core group of five of us, we draft the letter, the next one, we post it in Google Doc for the entire group. And everyone, everyone puts their comments there. And this is how we discuss things. And this is how we engaged people in the process and then people write their names. We write their names and this is how we exercise our right. They're no longer afraid. All our names are known to the administration and we're no longer afraid. So that's a great point kind of to develop that, I don't know, this brave attitude and to engage more people. And the attitude that you seem to be, the tone of your letters are striking because they're kind of hard edged in a certain sense that that you're being very explicit about things you're not seeing that you wish to see more of, for example, not seeing references to excellence when they should be referenced.

John Tomasi: But they're put in a very gentle way. You just kind of very, very in a very matter of fact, very thorough way, document the claim, show the resources that the university is bound to follow, but you don't do it confrontationally. I mean, there's sort of a gentle confrontation, I might say, in what you do, because it's so persistent and it's so clear. And yet it's not just for the sake of controversy. We often say at HXA that we don't want the perception of attacking universities. We want the reality of changing them. And our mission, we sometimes say, is that we're trying to elevate universities from within using the idea of faculty governance, using strategies that you guys are pioneering in many ways. I mean, for example, a little detail you mentioned a few minutes ago that really struck me that I'm gonna be passing on to my colleagues is that you said that you sometimes ask questions of clarification from university leaders in far that you know they're taking minutes, that they're just being recorded. You know, it's a way to sort of cement and make public what the response is, in part because you're asking questions that need to be answered, that have a correct answer about the university's own policies, and yet without the questions being asked, they may be allowed to drift off and to drift off into other directions. Can you say any more about, so we have a campus community network, we're now at 51 colleges in the U.S. and in Canada, we're growing in Canada, it's a real focus of ours, we've had a lot of really interesting members, organized campus communities across Canada now, we're probably going to other Canadian universities, have you been communicating much with other campus communities in the network in Canada or beyond?

Alexandra Lysova: Yes, we did. We did. We contacted several campuses. I know some campuses reached out with questions. And in fact, it's not only in Canada. I've received emails from the United Kingdom and from some other provinces. So people are interested. They're asking questions how to join, how to make sure we prepare an application that will be supported. And yeah, so it's a network. And again, I really would like to thank you for this wonderful initiative, for this important organization. This is really important for us. And again, it was important for me. It was a life saving actually in early 2021, when I simply needed support to understand what's going on and needed resources and simply to know that there are people who think this in the same way as I do. And it's not me who's crazy, but it's just something that concerns many people. And it was so important and now it is important. And when I go online, when I read about other institutions. I learn so much from them. I actually see when people actually post the policies they managed to establish in their places or the talks they had. I kind of have the separate file for that just because I'm seeing this is what we're learning, this is what we're doing next. So exchange of ideas, knowing that there are many of us and there are many of us in Canada. I'm so happy to hear this and I hope that for the next, for our events, we can actually get together with some campuses, the one that's not far from here, University of British Columbia, Okanagan. So we can communicate. And I know all these people actually, just because we recently had a meeting with all Canadian heterodox campuses. It's really important.

John Tomasi: Yeah. We know about each other. That's great. Well, let me just conclude by thanking you for joining the podcast. You know, bringing our members together into communities is one of the main initiatives that HXA has been working on over the past year. We just launched this we launched this network just in January in 2023 and we're now we're now up to 51 campus campuses with communities and we plan to open many more. But you know it's been an experiment all along the first year the experiment will continue but our idea from the beginning was the the hope was that members like you would rise up you and your colleagues to start finding ways to to use your own local knowledge of your university, their personalities, your own stature, people who know you on the campus and respect you. They know you're a serious player. You're not just hectoring them. You're actually guiding them gently, but firmly in better directions. And you're doing just exactly what we hope our communities would do. And we're looking forward to learning more from you as you go on to continue to learn and continue doing your change work. Thank you so much for taking time to be on the podcast. Thank you for all the work that you do. I hope I'll see you at the HXA annual conference in Chicago next summer.

Alexandra Lysova: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And I also wanted to thank all my wonderful colleagues who work with me. Again, it's just a group of us, particularly a core group of us who are working very, very hard and investing a lot of our time and energy in doing this. And the entire group, which is about 60 people right now. So again, thank you so much for making it happen. and thank you to all my colleagues who we work together.

John Tomasi: Thank you, Alexandra.

Alexandra Lysova: Thank you.