Human Rights Tribunals Appointing University Deans...

It seems breathtaking in the scope of its arrogant determination that the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, agreeing to hear the claims of a female academic who insists she was hard done by, concludes that it has the authority and the right of deciding whom a university should appoint as a dean.

To begin with, the claim by Professor Emily Carasco that she was unfairly passed over for consideration of Dean of Law at University of Windsor appears to have little basis in reality.

How can there possibly be any real trust in the veracity, professionalism, capability of an academic who plagiarizes work, claiming it to be her own, and when she is discovered to have done so and taken to task over it, claims herself to have been a victim of racism?

She contends that her candidacy for the position of Dean was demolished through the ill will of a highly respected academic of impeccable professionalism.

It isn't all that difficult to claim that one has been a victim of bigotry, and to insist that this and not one's own failure as an honest and clear scholar lies at the crux of the matter. When, in fact, her own lack of scholarship and integrity led to her candidacy failing the grade. Yet the Ontario Human Rights Commission responds with righteous alacrity to any claims of racism, however bogus in nature.

A reasonable person might assume that all the facets involved in the case would be examined - and the knowledge that plagiarism disqualified an academic from being awarded an elite position in academia was the reasonable conclusion, and not a trumped-up charge of racism - but might be surprised that the Commission would assume otherwise.

The University of Windsor now faces a rather awkward situation where academic malfeasance can be overruled as a causative of disqualifying a candidate for departmental head, and where, because a disqualified candidate can call upon the Ontario Human Rights Commission to judge the situation in terms of purported racism, their decisions can be overturned by an outside authority.

And it is evidently legal under a section of the Ontario Human Rights Code, which empowers the tribunal to make such an order in compliance with the Act. This outright interference in the decision-making authority of a university to elect to a hierarchical position of scholarly influence a candidate of choice is beyond absurd; who is more qualified to make that decision, the university or the tribunal?

Academic freedom is not, obviously, guaranteed or untouchable, but can be breached to advantage an individual who claims racism when none exists, and where scholarship itself is the question and has been found wanting.