Offended by Offence

Stuart Soroka, the 2010 Programme Committee Chairperson for the CPSA, had a message posted on the Women’s Caucus listserve before it was moderated (see Email from Stuart Soroka – January 4 on the Ethics page of this blog).  In this message, Soroka assured members of the Women’s Caucus that my paper was transferred to a poster session because it “did not easily fit into a panel with other papers from the REIPP [Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics] section”.  He goes on to point out that the “the committee approved of the decision (as the committee must approve of all section heads’ decisions for CPSA conferences)” and that “the charge of any unprofessionalism on [Kiera Ladner’s] part is, to be frank, wholly unfounded”.

While “the charge of any unprofessionalism” could very well be without merit (it was merely noted that Ladner “seems to have left herself open to a charge of unprofessionalism”, and this suspicion was based on Ladner’s previous inability to be objective about my work on aboriginal policy), there are a few things that should be mentioned in response to the committee’s decision about my proposal’s lack of “fit” within the REIPP section.  I have been told that the CPSA, in the past, has been concerned about placing me on a panel with other scholars who study aboriginal politics out of fear that my ideas could create a hostile reaction (a circumstance that was realized at the 2008 conference).  The creation of the REIPP section has exacerbated this problem because it has tended to move presentations about aboriginal peoples and aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations out of more traditional academic sections (comparative politics, Canadian politics, etc.), and into a section that is influenced by an “identity politics” orientation.  Therefore, the idea of “fit” could have more to do with trying to avoid conflict than with academic considerations.

Second, it seems odd that the CPSA would not want to have a proposal concerning research ethics and aboriginal peoples, aboriginal epistemology, etc., discussed in a formal panel.  The CPSA devoted a section of its report on research ethics to “Research involving Aboriginal peoples”, and the second draft of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans’ chapter concerning “Research Involving Aboriginal Peoples in Canada” has just been released for scholarly consideration.  Brock et al., in their letter “Racism, chilly climate, our responsibility and the discipline”, even suggested that a “major CPSA *Plenary on Responsibility Difference and the Discipline* might be productive” and “would attract a phenomenal attendance and would generate the kind of constructive professional debate we desire within the CPSA, and would be a mentoring opportunity for graduate students and junior faculty” (the people recommended for the plenary, however, did not come from a wide range of perspectives and were largely supportive of the existence of different “ways of knowing”). 

Past CPSA sessions also have sparked considerable interest in these topics.  The panel that Albert Howard and I participated in with Sandra Tomsons in 2009 was packed and led to a lively, but restrained, discussion.  Kiera Ladner’s proposal last year entitled “Decolonizing the Discipline: Respecting Indigenous Knowledge & Using Indigenist Methodologies” was also accepted.  The abstract for this presentation was as follows:

“Since Columbus was discovered, knowledge of the Americas and the peoples who lived there captured the minds and imaginations of some of Europe’s greatest political philosophers: More, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Spencer, and Engels, to name but a few. Despite the fact that Indians of the Americas have occupied the imaginations of the world since the time of ‘discovery’, Indians have not occupied the imaginations of modern political scientists. Political science has ignored Indigenous political traditions and studied contemporary Indigenous politics only from the vantage point of the western-eurocentric tradition. Simply put, most have been unable to escape their paradigm paralysis to understand the politics of the ‘other’ on its own terms or as separate from the western-eurocentric experience. In so doing, political science has perpetuated a western-eurocentric understanding that virtually denies ‘others’ a voice within the discipline. This paper draws on the theoretical undertaking of my dissertation and updates the uncirculated paper presented at UofA (the abstract of which led to a heated exchange at CPSA). It engages the discipline’s construction of the Indigenous and argues that it is necessary to understand the ‘other’ not from the vantage of the western-eurocentric intellectual tradition as this readily perpetuates misunderstanding but from the vantage of their own intellectual and political traditions. It argues that proceeding as such enables a trustworthy post-colonial/decolonizing understanding of Indigenous politics within political science and that the effect of such a paradigm shift has the potential to be of great benefit to the discipline as a whole not just the study of Indigenous politics”.

A number of assertions put forward by Ladner still need to be analyzed and debated (for some reason, Ladner did not produce a paper fleshing out this abstract).  What are the “Indigenous political traditions” to which Ladner refers?  How do we “understand the politics of the ‘other’ on its own terms”?  And what is a “trustworthy post-colonial/decolonizing understanding of Indigenous politics within political science” and how will this “be of great benefit to the discipline as a whole not just the study of Indigenous politics”?  Once again, we seem to have the contradiction of saying that there should be a “different” understanding that only the identity group can have (i.e. it cannot be evaluated with universally accessible social scientific methods), yet this “understanding” must be accepted by all as a benefit to political science.

Ladner’s proposal was included in a workshop on “‘Race’, Racism and Anti-racism as Political Science: Framing and Re-Framing Relationships”, which also included presentations on “Race, Empowerment and Crisis Management: Black Political Leadership and Hurricane Katrina” and “Beyond Racial Exceptionalism: Explaining the Convergence of Mixed-Race Census Categorizations in Canada, the US and Great Britain”.  Interestingly, the two latter presentations are very dissimilar from Ladner’s and do not really concern epistemological matters.  Ladner’s presentation, in fact, would have “fit” much better with the presentations of Tomsons, Howard and myself, but, for some reason, Ladner was not included on our panel, which largely concerned epistemological questions.  Therefore, “fit” appears to be a very subjective determination of the programme committee.

It should be noted that unscholarly responses to work critical of the prevailing “aboriginal orthodoxy” have been occurring for quite some time, and so it should not really be surprising if this is continuing in my case. Radha Jhappan, for example, stated publicly that “fundamental racism” formed the basis of Tom Flanagan’s book First Nations? Second Thoughts even though no evidence was provided to sustain this accusation. Similar problematic conduct occurred when Flanagan’s book was awarded the Donald Smiley Prize. The chair of the jury, Gurston Dacks, quit when he was outvoted, displaying contempt for a process that he had agreed to participate in (rejecting it only when he lost the vote).  Joyce Green has noted that the political science community was “fractured” because the jury’s decision “implicated us all in rewarding something that many of us felt was deeply wrong” (Marci McDonald, “The Man Behind Stephen Harper”, The Walrus, October 2004, www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/the-man-behind-stephen-harper-tom-flanagan/5/).

Green’s comments reflect the deep problems that exist in political science with respect to the study of aboriginal peoples and aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations.  What is meant by saying that someone’s scholarship is “deeply wrong”?   Shouldn’t political scientists be concerned about the quality of the arguments and the amount of evidence that is being put forward to support them?  Unfortunately, the characterization of Flanagan’s work in moral terms has prevented a comprehensive analysis of his arguments.  Postmodern political scientists feel justified in dismissing Flanagan’s arguments as reprehensible, when engaging with them would help us all to more fully understand aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations.  One does not have to agree with arguments to critically analyze them; avoiding opposing viewpoints because one dislikes their preconceived implications, however, is anti-intellectual and is harmful to the academic integrity of the discipline of political science.

When double checking how the list of women attending the 2008 Women’s Caucus’ meeting was represented on the minutes (Kiera Ladner, who is now helping to vet proposals for the 2010 CPSA  conference, played a prominent role in this meeting but was not recorded as being “present”), it was discovered that these minutes have been removed from the CPSA Women’s Caucus website (www.cpsawomen.ca/lucheon/index.htm).  Fortunately, I was able to retrieve a cached version from November 2009 and have made a PDF and posted it on the Ethics page of this blog.

As I am not included in the correspondence about these matters, I have no idea what the removal of the minutes means.  Is there now concern, after over a year, that making unsubstantiated allegations about the expression of “overt and blatant racism” is at best unethical, and at worst libelous?  Or perhaps it is the fact that not recording Kiera Ladner as being “present” at this meeting (a fact publicized two days ago on this blog) might result in a questioning of the professionalism of this body? 

This omission in the Women’s Caucus’ minutes, in fact, led me to be much too charitable about Kiera Ladner’s behaviour last year.  As I stated in the following comment on Janet Ajzenstat’s blog “The Idea File” on November 22, 2008: “It should be noted that this letter [to Canadian Political Science Association members] does not concern the conduct of either Joyce Green or Kiera Ladner, two political scientists were originally mentioned in relationship to the events that transpired… The people to whom this letter refers are those unidentified members of the Women’s Caucus who were in attendance at the June 6 meeting and stated that my presentation expressed “overt and blatant racism” (according to the Women’s Caucus’ minutes, neither Green nor Ladner were present at the meeting [emphasis added])”   (http://janetajzenstat.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/from-fierlbeck).

If the Canadian Political Science Association really wants to repair the damage caused by its affiliate, it should demand that those present at the 2008 meeting either substantiate their accusations that “overt and blatant racism” was expressed in my presentation, or a retraction should be posted on PolCan for all members to see.  But since the CPSA seems reluctant to take a principled stance against this clique of its membership, this remedy is likely to remain elusive.

On December 10, 2009, Dr. Keith Banting, the President of the CPSA, sent me a letter responding to a complaint that I had made to the Board of Directors (this letter is available on the Ethics page of this blog).  For those unaware of the events that transpired last year, a number of members of the Women’s Caucus of the CPSA posted anonymous allegations on the their website that “overt and blatant racism was expressed” during a “panel on aboriginal politics”, and that “similarly offensive behaviours” had occurred at “previous CPSA meetings” (http://www.cpsawomen.ca/lucheon/index.htm.  The examples given of “offensive behaviours” were that members were called “squaws” and “similar offensive language was used”.  There was even a “discussion of whether this was ‘hate speech’ under the criminal code”.  Although I was not named on the website, I was specifically mentioned in discussions on the Women’s Caucus listserv (see the letter from Joanna Quinn posted on the Ethics page), and I was identified as the person being complained about on Janet Ajzenstat’s blog “The Idea File” (http://janetajzenstat.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/harvey-mansfield-on-canada/). 

Although there has been no substantiation of the “overt and blatant racism” that I supposedly expressed, a letter was submitted by Kathy Brock, Joyce Green, Kiera Ladner and Malinda Smith to the CPSA Board asserting that “the CPSA needs to address racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia”, as well as “scholarship…which suggest[s] that racism must be protected by academic freedom”.  They also obliquely refer to the fact that “similar views [to a "junior woman scholar"] have been expressed by senior male scholars (and in one case have been awarded)”, without any elaboration of what these “views” are or if/how they are racist or responsible for promoting a hostile environment (see the “Racism, chilly climate, our responsibility and the discipline – Brock et al” on the Ethics page).  These assertions, along with discussions that occurred on the Women’s Caucus listserv (see “Women’s Caucus emails” on the Ethics page on this blog), led to a motion requesting the CPSA to “create policy concerning (1) speech that promotes hatred or creates a hostile environment; and (2) the consequences of such speech. In particular, we would like guidelines concerning professional conduct during the Annual Meeting (for panels and all other formal and informal sessions). These guidelines should include instructions for session chairs, participants and discussants. We also request the establishment of protocols for registering complaints and a process for their resolution”.

Dr. Banting’s letter tells me that there is currently nothing that can be done about the remarks legitimized by the Women’s Caucus since the CPSA does not have a complaints procedure in place for investigating individual members (although such a procedure will be discussed by members in June after the CPSA’s Committee on Professional Ethics releases its report).  My concern, however, is not so much the actions of individual members, but the fact that they are using the Women’s Caucus – an organization that is affliated with the CPSA – to make anonymous and unsubstantiated allegations.  Although the CPSA may not have the authority to police the behaviour of its members, surely it has the capacity to ensure that its affiliates are conducting themselves in an ethical and professional manner.  The actions of the Women’s Caucus of the CPSA, in fact, seem to condone libel.  Why doesn’t the CPSA rein in its Women’s Caucus?  Is it afraid to “offend” the postmodern sisterhood?