Feb. 25, 2009 - Issue #697: Shout It Out Loud
Issues
And the SSHRC goes to ...
Harper budget attempts to control academic research
Have you heard about the country that is so focused on the promotion of its government’s own ideology that it refuses to fund university research into anything else? Wondering what kind of government would do such a thing? Well, Stephen Harper’s for one.
The 2009 federal budget released by the Harper Conservatives last month—and heartily endorsed by the Ignatieff Liberals—announced “new funding” of $17.5 million over the next three years for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and $35 million each for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). These three arms-length government agencies are the key bodies responsible for administering government funding of academic research activities.
The idea, according to the budget document, is that this money will be used to fund additional doctorate- and masters-level scholarships for students in the arts, social sciences and humanities. The catch, however, comes in the line in the budget document that says “[s]cholarships granted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will be focused on business-related degrees.”
In other words, funding for students in fields like fine arts, music, sociology, English and political science will be sacrificed in favour of those students working on MBAs and commerce degrees.
The budget does not specify that only the new scholarships will focus on business-related degrees, it simply says “scholarships”—essentially changing the mandate and focus of SSHRC by way of a budget document.
If a government announced that it would only fund left-wing or socialist graduate students, you can bet that the outcry from the media and commentators would be swift and deafening. This announcement, however, has yielded almost no coverage in the mainstream media or from public commentators. What backlash there has been seems to be coming almost exclusively from academics, which the Conservatives are once again able to dismiss as self-interested malcontents.
It is important to point out that the issue here is not with business-related studies per se, and nobody is denying that these are valid and important academic pursuits. The issue is with gutting other funding for the sake of promoting fields of study which tend to support and disseminate a neoliberal economic agenda that reinforces Mr Harper’s own beliefs.
SSHRC is one of the only places in Canada that funds research and scholarly activity in the arts and humanities without attaching any strings whatsoever. Researchers who receive SSHRC funding have not historically had to deal with the limits and attempts to predetermine findings so often imposed by corporate funders.
In addition, corporate funders and foundations have historically steered away from funding the arts and humanities because of what they perceive as a lack of “commercial application,” opting instead to fund “economically viable” research in business and engineering faculties.
The end result of this policy, of course, would be that now both government and corporate sponsors will ignore the needs of grad students doing the kind of research that has historically contributed so much to the quality of life, culture, the quality of government, democracy, the public good and the economy in Canada.
The clear implication of the wording in the budget document is that there is no value in scholarly work being done outside the business realm—an implication that has been contradicted by numerous studies conducted as to the social and economic importance of the arts, culture and humanities. Once again, Stephen Harper has made it clear that in his mind artists and social scientists have absolutely nothing to contribute to the greater good in Canada—continuing the attack he launched against arts funding before the most recent federal election.
Campaigns against this move have popped up on Facebook and on the website of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
Organizers are asking people to sign a petition demanding that the federal government remove the offensive sentence from the budget, but to date most of those responding to these campaigns have been academics.
One aspect that seems to have been completely lost in all of this is the fact that contrary to the spin job the Conservatives have been doing this is neither new funding nor increased funding.
Buried on page 270 of the federal budget document is the other half of the story: the government will actually cut $147.9 million in funding from the operating budgets of the three agencies. The cuts will be achieved by “streamlining” and bringing programming and funding in line with the government's stated scientific and research priorities. The math’s not difficult: $147.9 million in cuts minus $87.5 million in “new” funding equals a net cut of $60.4 million.
This size of cut to the already-stretched funding councils, combined with a clear attempt to redefine the mandate and priorities of the councils, suggests that the government’s end-game here is to control, for ideological purposes, what kind of research is being done in Canada’s universities.
This should be of concern not just to academics, but to everyone in the country who values arts, culture, diversity of thought, democracy and academic freedom. If it concerns you, call your MP and sign one of the on-line petitions—tell them you won’t stand for veiled thought control. V
Ricardo Acuña is executive director of the Parkland Institute, a non-partisan public policy research institute housed at the University of Alberta.
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