Board of Directors 22 October 2019

Mark Mercer, Ph.D. (Saint Mary’s) Jonathan Withey, DPhil

President
president@safs.ca
Janice Fiamengo, Ph.D. (Ottawa)
fiamengo@uottawa.ca
Andrew Irvine, Ph.D. (UBC)
andrew.irvine@ubc.ca
Steve Lupker, Ph.D. (Western)
lupker@uwo.ca
Clive Seligman, Ph.D. (Western)
seligman@uwo.ca
Peter Suedfeld, O.C., Ph.D., F.R.S.C.
(UBC)
psuedfeld@psych.ubc.ca
Robert Thomas, MLIS (Regina)
robert.thomas@uregina.ca
Dean, Faculty of Science and Technology
Lincoln Park Campus
Mount Royal University
4825 Mount Royal Gate S.W.
Calgary, AB T3E 6K6
Dear Dr Withey,
I am writing as president of the Society for Academic Freedom and
Scholarship (SAFS), an organization of university faculty members and
others dedicated to the defense of academic freedom and the merit principle
in higher education. (For further information, please see our website at
www.safs.ca.)

Frances Widdowson, Ph.D. (MRU)
fwiddowson@mtroyal.ca
Past Presidents
Clive Seligman, Ph.D. (Western)
Doreen Kimura, Ph.D. FRSC (SFU)
It has come to our attention that an international geography field school
entitled Sustainable Europe, to be offered in Spring 2020, has been
cancelled. The field school was to have been led by Mark Hecht, MSc, an
instructor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Mount
Royal University.

John J. Furedy, Ph.D. (Toronto) The cancellation raises questions of both academic freedom and due
process.

Your letter to Brian Sevick, MSc, the Chair of Earth and Environmental Sciences, gives as a
reason for the cancellation that “there is no longer support for offering the Sustainable Europe
field school.” You come to this conclusion “after consulting with full time faculty in
geography.”

Scheduled field schools are as a rule cancelled only for reasons such as illness or low
enrolment. What, then, would lack of support by professors consist of and how would it
constitute an academically sound reason for cancelling a field school?

Mr Hecht has received some media attention in the last month after his article “Ethnic diversity
harms a country’s social trust, economic well-being, argues professor” appeared in the
Vancouver Sun on 6 September. Can you clarify that Mr Hecht’s views on social trust and
immigration played no role in the decision to cancel the field school?

PO Box 33056 Quinpool Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3L 4T6, Canada; e-mail: safs@safs.ca
Academic freedom is central to the mission of a university. Academic freedom enables
professors and other members of the university community to conduct research as they see fit
and to draw whatever conclusions they believe their research supports. Only if members of a
university enjoy academic freedom can they be concerned exclusively with discovering the
truths of their subject.

Academic freedom also guarantees that professors and other instructors may make publicly
known their research and the results they draw from it. Only if members of the public
recognize that researchers at a university enjoy academic freedom can they trust research
coming from that university. Otherwise, they will reject it as having to conform to an official
view.

If Mr Hecht’s views or his disseminating them played a role in the cancellation of the field
school, then Mount Royal has violated Mr Hecht’s academic freedom and compromised its
academic mission and its usefulness to the public.

We respectfully request that you respond to our letter. With your permission, we will post your
response along with this letter on our website.

Sincerely,

Mark Mercer, PhD

President, Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS)
PO Box 33056 Quinpool Centre
Halifax, NS B3L 4T6
president@safs.ca
http://www.safs.ca/

Professor, Department of Philosophy

Saint Mary’s University
923 Robie Street
Halifax, NS B3H 3C3
mark.mercer@smu.ca
http://professormarkmercer.ca/
http://www.smu.ca/academics/departments/philosophy-faculty-and-staff.html

Cc: Tim Rahilly, PhD, President and Vice-Chancellor

Lesley Brown, PhD, Provost and Vice-President, Academic
Brian Sevick, Chair, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Mark Hecht, MSc, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences