<OT> Linguistics and Intellectual Freedom at Concordia

[Linguistics Student Association]

Dear Linguist or Cognitive Scientist:

As President of the Linguistics Student Association, at Concordia
University in Montreal,  I am
writing because I believe that recent events involving  the
Linguistics program at Concordia University would be of
interest to you. Martin Singer,
the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science and Provost-Elect of the
University has suspended admissions to
our program for 2004/2005, and cut resources and courses to be offered.
These measures were taken in response to a letter dated Dec 17, 2003 to
the Dean and a
meeting with the Dean on Dec. 18, 2003 where linguistics faculty
proposed that Concordia form a new
Department of Classics and Linguistics by splitting these two units from
their current administrative home in Classics, Modern Languages and
Linguistics (CMLL). The Dean's response came in a message dated March 9,
2004.

Typically, such measures are taken  to
enter a process leading to a closure of the
program. These measures come despite the fact that we are a very
successful program, in fact, the fastest growing program in our
Department (Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics-CMLL). We have 145
Major and Honours students with just 3 full-time faculty. Our recent
students are placed in employment positions and prominent graduate programs
across the continent, including McGill, UBC, MIT, Stanford, NYU, Toronto.

The Dean has received letters from the Linguistic Society of America and
the Canadian Linguistics Society describing the scientific and social
importance of linguistics as a field. We would like you to write to the
Chairman of the Board of Governors about the importance of Linguistics
generally, and if you know anything about us, the Concordia Program
specifically, which is being portrayed by the Dean and by the CMLL Chair
as in "disarray" and "dysfunctional", despite the fact
that the faculty all are active researchers (each has a SSHRC grant and
they regularly attend conferences), the fact that we have one of the
highest retention and  graduation rates in the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences, and the fact that our students are successful.  Please
see our
webpage at http://alcor.concordia.ca/~lsa/ which describes our talk series
and our upcoming undergraduate conference.

Because the Dean will soon be Provost, and because he has not responded
to any of our requests for information over the past three weeks, we find
it necessary to go directly to the Rector and the Board of Governors.
We are also concerned about the composition of
the committee the Dean has appointed to advise him on the future of
linguistics at Concordia--we believe that four of the five members are
potentially in conflict of interest by serving on the
committee, an opinion shared by the
University Ombuds Office. In addition to two Vice-Deans, the members
include the chairs of English, French and CMLL. A sixth member, an
ethnolinguist from Anthropology may also be on the committee, according to
verbal comments made by the Dean. There is no representation of the
Linguistics faculty or students.

We request that you send either an email message to Rector and Vice
Chancellor Frederick Lowy at

FREDERICK.LOWY at concordia.ca

or a letter to Alain
Benedetti, the Chairman of the
Board of Governors  at the address below,
and copy the Linguistics Student Association,
as well---an electronic version is fine for the
copy: lsa at alcor.concordia.ca.
Since the Board will be meeting in ten days, time is of the essence--fax
it if possible.

Address for letter:

Alain Benedetti
Vice-Chairman
Ernst & Young, LLP
CP 4500
Succursale B
Montreal QC H3B 5J3
Canada

telephone 514 875-6060 x 4329
fax 514 871-8713

Telephone calls, either during office hours or left as voicemail to
Alain Benedetti will also be useful.

Our specific, immediate  goals are to reverse the decision to suspend
admissions, to implement  the schedule submitted
by our faculty members for next year,
and to find a long-term solution to the administration of the linguistics
program that recognizes the importance of linguistics, especially in the
context of Quebec and Canada. In order to achieve this, we would like to
see two of the linguistics faculty and one student on the committee.

You may be shocked to hear that the course
Structure of a Native American Language, proposed by our faculty for the
2004-5 schedule, has not been included in the published schedule. This
course has been taught in the past, but was replaced
with  courses that have never been offered. This decision was made
unilaterally by the CMLL Chair, a Spanish professor, and accepted by the
Dean, despite vociferous objections of the linguistics faculty.

In addition to harming linguistics students by reducing course offerings
and faculty resources, we find that these measures hurt students in allied
fields like psychology, TESL or biology who need linguistics courses for
graduate study in, say, speech pathology. By not supporting a healthy and
growing program, these measures also harm the job prospects of young
scholars from your own programs who may be seeking employment.

If you want more background on the situation here, please see the
following link to an article in Concordia's independent paper,  The Link:

http://thelink.concordia.ca/article.pl?sid=04/03/30/196250

You can also see a report in Concordia's Thursday report about
faculty  particpation in a $2.5 million SSHRC grant:
http://ctr.concordia.ca/2003-04/mar_4/index.html

There is also a brief discussion of issues of intellectual freedom in the
Hour:
http://www.hour.ca/news/brief.aspx?iIDArticle=2816



Sincerely,

Tom Erik Stower
President,
Linguistics Student Association




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Linguistics Student Association
Concordia University
Hall Building H-661-3
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~lsa
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