In the nature of things, emeritus professors are likely to contribute historical recollections to the debate, but I want to offer a reminder of a hard-won achievement that now seems at risk, the solidarity among faculty in the social sciences, humanities, and physical sciences.
I defer to brilliant writers and teachers like Sean Kane when it comes to the case for the downtown colleges and for a unique student-teacher culture in the Humanities. During my years at Trent, from 1971 to 1990, I often differed with Sean and I was often allied with colleagues from the physical sciences in my concern about the standing of faculty research among Trent's priorities. Coming, as I did, from an American graduate institution, I was sometimes unsettled by the extent to which certain influential colleagues in the humanities and social sciences dismissed the intellectual stimulus provided by a faculty oriented to their academic peers as well as to their students. The scientists were more likely to see this point.
We fought together, first, to preserve and enhance research funding, both internal and public, replacing a soft tradition of sharing evenly with a demanding practice of competitive standards. Those changes saved NRC funding on at least one notable occasion, when the rationalizers attempted to cut off the "unproductive" small centers. We combined, second, to back the recognition of research through the Faculty Research Award, an important symbolic balance to the outstanding Symons Teaching Award program. And then, when the University was under strong pressure to economize by eliminating several science programs, among other things, the faculty association's steady move toward unionization depended on inter-collegial unity. In negotiating the financial exigency clause of the first contract, in recognizing and protecting the appreciably lower teaching loads in most of the science disciplines, in addressing questions of patents and consultancies--all primarily of interest to the colleagues in the sciences--we stood together and built a foundation for the successful and productive phase beyond the "Founders' Trent."In assessing costs and benefits, all segments of the Trent faculty should weigh the cost of breaking down this foundation. "In union there is strength," is a cliche that most of us can only utter in ironic quotation marks, but I nevertheless propose it for prayerful consideration on both sides of the Otonabee.
David Kettler
-Professor Emeritus, Political Studies/Cultural Studies
-Chair of the faculty association (ATS->TUFA) during the two year-process of unionization and the negotiation of the first collective agreement (1979-1981)
-Scholar in Residence, Bard College, Annandale, NY