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Rancourt fired for Israeli stance
Denis Rancourt was recently fired from the University of Ottawa for granting all of his advanced students an A+. In a recent turn of events, Rancourt posted a statement on April 10 arguing that his forceful dismissal from tenure was caused by his critical stance against Israeli’s bloody suppression of the Palestinians.
Rancourt argues that the University President and a member of the Board of Governors either suppress debate on Israel, or openly support Zionist organizations. These same people are the ones that ruled to aggressively expel him from campus. Key sections of Rancourt’s statement are printed below, followed by his personal call for support. I urge you to read on:
I was fired by the University of Ottawa on March 31, 2009. I was fired under the false pretext of having arbitrarily assigned high grades in one course in the winter 2008 semester. All relevant documents have been made public at http://academicfreedom.ca/.
In order to fire me the university had to dispense with due process. In the words of the professors’ union’s lawyer, my dismissal was “both a denial of substantive and procedural rights […] and a contravention of the basic principles of natural justice.”
I have paired this teaching profile with a strong research effort, receiving throughout my entire career some of the largest research grants in the Faculty of Science. I have one of the highest scientific impact factors (h-index) in the entire Faculty, with an h-index of 25. To put this in perspective, my present scientific impact factor is more than twice that of the dean of the Faculty of Science, 40% higher than that of the present chairman of the physics department, 80% higher than that of the present chairman of chemistry, and more than twice that of the previous chairman of physics. In 2008, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) reviewed my research and renewed my grant through 2013. Such research success had been expected, because I started my university career under the prestigious NSERC University Research Fellow program, following a national competition among newly sponsored university professors. In 2001, after I obtained the largest NSERC Strategic Project Grant ever obtained in the Faculty of Science, to study boreal forest lakes for five years, the university put out full-page-width advertisements […]
It appears that among the real reasons for the university’s attempts to discipline me since September 2005 and for its recent most harsh actions against me under President Allan Rock’s mandate might be the administration’s opposition to my political views about the Palestine-Israel conflict, which, starting in 2005, I have expressed in articles, on radio, in my blog postings, at public venues, and in my classes. In September 2005 the dean cancelled my Physics and the Environment course following a complaint (regarding an email comment about Zionism), channelled through the university’s Canadian Studies Institute director Pierre Anctil to the VP-Academic. A complaint against an invited speaker in the course, Professor Michel Chossudovsky – who spoke about Middle East geopolitics, from the Jewish Student Association then gave rise to a sustained but failed attempt to discipline me. In 2006 I invited two Canadian-Palestinian speakers to address the class in my Science in Society course. This was followed by a damning January-2007 editorial in The Ottawa Citizen and I was subsequently removed from teaching all the first-year courses that I had developed. The Ottawa Citizen is a CanWest newspaper and its director is a member of the university’s Board of Governors.2 CanWest Global Communications Corporation is a staunch advocate and supporter of Israeli policy. In 2007 I criticized the university’s official position on the academic boycott of Israel on my UofOWatch.blogspot.com blog. The repression against me intensified when new university president Allan Rock, a staunch supporter of Israeli policy,3 arrived on the scene in July 2008. I was disciplined for the UofOWatch blog with an unpaid suspension in September 2008, by a decision of the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors (EBOG). The latter suspension was followed by many more severe actions against me (see below) and is being used by the university as an argument in my dismissal.
To read the full statement click HERE
Matthew Brett is the Canadian Dimension weblog manager. The views expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent his own. Read more by Matthew Brett.
See the TV-Ontario interview (26 minutes) at:
http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/component/content/article/28.html
Do sign the on-line petition at:
http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/component/petitions/?view=petition&id=4
Many media links are collected at:
http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/
#1. Posted by Denis Rancourt in Ottawa on April 18th 2009 at 6:18pm
Rancourt was NOT fired because of his anti-Israeli stance. He was fired because; a) he taught a subject which was in no way related to the course title, Physics and the Environment and b) he gave every student an A+ which is meaningless both to the students and to the future employers or universities of those students.
#2. Posted by Joe Wallach in Ottawa on April 19th 2009 at 4:59pm
A) is completely false and way out there… He hasn’t thought Physics and the environment since 2006 and he didn’t give all A+‘s there and the university doesn’t even touch anything close to that in justifying his dismissal.
B) A university should be about learning, not programming and about grades and employment. It’s about developping how to learn and developping how to think and developping how to act (as in action) in this society. A+‘s as meaningful in why they were given to students and to everyone.
Yes, he was fired mostly for his political views. A+‘s or getting rid of grades is done in many many places accross North America and is an absurd reason to fire a professor for. The Pedagogical method is valuable and backed by many researchers.
#3. Posted by Daniel Cayley-Daoust in Ottawa on April 19th 2009 at 7:33pm
Denis Rancourt is trying to exploit the human rights community by pretending his dismissal is due to his views on Israel. He has refused to answer basic questions about his true relationship with Allan Rock. Google ‘rockourt’ if you want to facts about this case.
#4. Posted by Michael in The Truth on April 20th 2009 at 6:10pm