One of the biggest controversies in recent years centered around the aborted hiring of a staff member at the Faculty of Law whose position would have included teaching responsibilities. Many UTFA members were understandably concerned that the hiring was blocked because of political disagreements over the applicant's published views towards Israel-Palestine.
I remain concerned that both the current leadership and CAUT focused too much on that particular hiring controversy rather than the question of how to treat positions like that at the Faculty of Law and other positions on campus that include a mix of administrative and teaching responsibilities. Some such positions at the university, like trainers in the co-op program, are considered staff. Many positions with such a mix of administrative tasks and teaching are considered faculty and are categorized as teaching stream appointments. These employees are academics, are UTFA members, and are governed by the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) that provides them with academic freedom. It would be a threat to our association and a serious problem if the university arbitrarily opted to treat all such blended administrative+teaching positions as staff.
About twenty years ago, UTFA successfully fought to have instructors at the campus writing centres classified as faculty. We need to return to such discussions, and gain greater clarity over what positions warrant the academic freedom protections of the MoA, and what positions are predominantly staff (whose standards of protection are defined elsewhere). Such a discussion was completely overlooked in 2020-2021 even though it should have been a primary focus of UTFA's.
We also need to discuss with Simcoe Hall some unclear clauses in the new university donations policy to clarify when alumni and donor feedback is part of the "normal" hiring and promotion procedures.
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