The attached two-part opinion piece, so far cenzored (see at the end - enc.1) by "McGill Reporter", was provoked by a very questionable memo from Mr. B.Shapiro (April 24, 2002 - printed at the end- enc.2), which is reviving a devilish beast hidden inside anonymous letters. It only fuels a growing isolation between people in many social groups as representing the old Roman's motto: "Divide and conquer". This topic is like very hazardous waste and for such reasons it needs special care when handled. In the author's careful approach many issues are touched and you are invited to share your opinions for creating a more compact strategy to oppose some bad developments.

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Part  - 1

 

Two Latest Memos from the Principal

            Strange that Principal Shapiro tells us in his April 24th memo about an anonymous e-mail that it regarded "a member of faculty" and that it will "be disregarded by [his] office". Writing a public memo about something is not disregarding it.  

            Why does he notify so many student and staff members (over 20 000) of something that should have been treated as garbage? He also tells us that "the same e-mail was sent to a number of other individuals on campus".  Nobody from my department building - or even two randomly asked local managers who were ordered by a higher official to send this memo personally to over 400 people in their local places - had seen the mysterious e-mail.  It is ambiguous: Mr. Shapiro announces a decision about an issue that is not known by his subordinates and yet should never have been mentioned publicly in the first place.

            Intriguingly, we are told that the e-mail addresses "possible problems" and is "potentially defamatory".  Well, that whetted our appetites! Now, the whole community will pay attention, creating an overwhelming pressure on whom ever was targeted and perhaps preventing the target from having a fair hearing.  It also scares many professors, because dissatisfied students might use anonymous letters against them.  These letters are, as we have seen, actually read by the top officials.  They are getting attention.  They could therefore be a powerful tool, telling dissident academics, and not only, not to rock the boat. 

           

            The whole approach reminds a case not long ago when The Gazette, as usual supporting the establishment circles of McGill, published a defamatory anonymous letter from a medical faculty member, which caused the suicide of a hard-working research couple by carbon monoxide poisoning.  In the Gazette's letter their names were not mentioned either: just vague accusations that they had not provided full information about their research project for some patients. The University establishment did most likely not love them because they published too many papers without adding important names as co-authors, or got too many research grants.  Later, the public never had a chance to know who in The Gazette decided to publish the anonymous letter, or which McGill circles were interested in eliminating two very productive scientists, and who appointed as investigator for this case a person whose child is studying medicine at McGill.

                       

            Now, we do not need an investigation to see who is unethically mounting a new campaign.  In this context Shapiro's assuring words that "the author(s) of the e-mail should use [other] mechanisms" are only confirming his deeply rooted hypocrisy.  He does not seem to be ashamed of reading anonymous letters.  At his position and an assumed intellectual potential he should show greater discretion when it comes to publicizing the anonymous accusations.  It is especially important now that there is so much power concentrated in so few people, both globally and here at McGill.  Here, under Mr. Shapiro's direction, this centralized institution after many strategic purges is becoming more and more influenced by the corporate world; note the two well-networked female collaborators named recently as the new McGill principals, with Mr. Shapiro's support.  One of them(*) was recently directly involved in breaking a contract with one professor after his critical remarks about work of a big pharmaceutical company in her Toronto University.  These issues, if left unnoticed are only helping the circles that wants to control the cheapest university institutions for their profit-oriented research projects.

           

            McGill’s observer with friends   (or S.Poplawski if the anonymous-like form is not admitted by the Reporter)

                       

P.S. On May 2nd everybody at McGill received a memo from our Principal about "an Employment Equity study mandated by the provincial government" (enc.3), which will be carried in the fall.  This is obviously a late face-saving measure from someone wanting to improve his image after seven years of very different policies from these claimed now: "McGill has been a welcoming oasis where persons of all cultures, nations, colour and creed join together in an atmosphere of scholarship and knowledge.  It is through our inclusiveness that we are able to enrich our lives and those of our students by exposing them to a wealth of cultures, ideas and beliefs."(**)  These fine words are contrary to past actions and are now being used as a politically correct way of getting us to complete the government survey in the fall.  We are also expected "to reflect on our culture of inclusion and see it as a symbol of our renewal and growth" in this survey.  On the other hand, we should probably stop bothering the lost person finally trying to form his legacy in his twilight years.

 

(*) - According to Mr.Pound the announcement abbout our new Principal was supposed to take place at the end of February or beginning of March. In fact it was done one week after the last edition of students" papers on April 15, 2002 with e-mail send to everybody directly from the Principals office.

(**) - Hooray! According to the quoted words froom this latest memo we are allowed to present our opinions and beliefs without being reprimanded.

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Part - 2

 

 

"Does the corporate world customize McGill or vice versa?"

 

            In politics as at McGill, the growing isolation between people in many social groups demonstrates the patterns of corruption creeping into various aspects of our life. It is our leaders who can hinder or promote society, so it is them we should first analyze.

 

            Mr. Shapiro is a good person corrupted by power: He was involved with Ontario politics as a deputy minister, and recently he has flirted with the financial spheres. Now, instead of promoting McGill as our society's best investment, he is selling us to corporate vultures. In this knowledge-driven economy, the corporate world needs universities more than ever, but is only prepared to support us if we are customized to its requirements and de-unionized. What it fears most is the fully independent academic(*) defending ideas anathema to the corporations.

 

            It is logical to assume that these corporations controlling our political elite have been pushing for bigger cuts in our educational and medical sectors, cuts that were made without consulting society and by politicians in the middle of their terms. The alternatives offered are profitable, privatized units that reject the best social achievements of the recent past.

McGill's present principal has promoted university privatization from the start, centralizing internal structures and finally trying to terrorize us with anonymous letters (c.f. his two last memos).  This gives us a different view of the "achievements" of two people connected with the corrupt entertainment and sport sectors:  Mr. Pound and Mr. Rabinovich, who in the middle of April announced the new principal, Mrs. Blum.  She was directly involved in breaking a contract with one professor at U of T after he criticized the work of a big pharmaceutical company.  Mrs. Blum has now been "elected" undemocratically behind closed doors.  Furthermore, she is also working with political institutions and big private companies.

Technically, it is too late for us to do anything, but if our concerns are raised, we can at least create more fertile ground for a future democratization at our university.

 

            What should we think about the editor of The Gazette who called this author place of work and forced his departmental Chair to reprimand him for writing about a conflict of interest?  He had criticized Jean Chrétien's appointment of Mr. Rabinovich to the post of CBC president and sent a letter before formal nomination.  Now Mr. Rabinovich is also a Chair of McGill's board, and was recently named chief of "a fascist institution" (i.e. the CBC).  Still he does not care.  Neither does anyone seem to care about his connection to entertainment giant Universal Studios before his appointment and how that was bought with his key position after it was transferred over two billion dollars to the US without paying tax.  And what of this: In 2001, this author made sarcastic remarks about Mr. Shapiro's Centraide campaign. The V-P Finance, instead of publishing his concerns in the McGill Reporter, contacted the same departmental Chair mentioned earlier and requested that the Chair intimidate him!  None of these methods should go without comment. To me, the best comment is to expose them.

 

            What we really need, in the university as in society, are honest and recognized with their achievements specialists(**) as our representatives, instead of political hybrids using their dirty connections and methods to convince society to pour more money into our budget.

We also do not need ministers who are appointed to positions in health and education merely because when shifted from different ministerial departments (i.e. in the Quebec government) they are docile and have been screened by the ruling corporations.

Unfortunately, here at McGill, Mr. Shapiro's policy of centralization instead of democratization simply benefits opportunists.  It stifles free thought and, I think, partly explains our falling MacLean's ranking and the growing difficulty of attracting international students.

 

            Let us picture Germany in the early 1930's when the identity of a good nation was gradually destroyed by a cancerous power growing from inside. Today, many of us are scared of globalization, but de facto we are passive and cannot in practice control these processes any more than the Germans could control fascism 70 years ago.  We can compare their previously strong unions with our infiltrated MUNACA/MUNASA/MAUT, which represent a few thousand employees.  At McGill we have a few hundred electricians, cleaners and plumbers affiliated with the big external unions that have shown how difficult it is to be pushed around by McGill.  They are still able to get much better contracts with respect to their working hours, but the majority seem to be so infiltrated by Mr. Shapiro's administration that any proposal to join them and become stronger together is paralyzed by fifth columnists. (Many from us look passively on as these small groups are cornered in very expensive courts by the administration to scare the majority.)

It is reminiscent of the1930s, when the ruling party was influenced by Big Industry asking for more cheap natural resources and more armaments deals.  The industry sharks demanded easier trade and the abolition of restrictions to the flow of cash. (Before free trade agreements, this was meant to encourage wars.)

Today, we are indoctrinated by the belief that we merit a certain standard of living. It is promoted as the highest human value by a gang of corporations, with the media and Hollywood playing the role of Propaganda Ministry.  It makes us subconsciously less sensitive to the suffering of people in many poor countries involved in conflicts caused by our desire for cheap raw materials and free access to new markets.  We do not want to look deeply into the root cause of many problems, one reason being that we all want the cheap oil that supplies our economies.  Most of us, encouraged by the mass media, want to acquire more and more; some will even become vicious when their standard of living is imperiled.

The mentality of a growing margin of people has become so unhealthy that they go on killing sprees at the work place when they are laid off: They are infuriated by a decrease in their standard of living!  It seems that our claimed super-civilized Western societies are breeding the most nasty and unreasonable terrorists!  Cases such as this can be correlated with a growing rate of mental disorders that two years ago cost Canada alone $16 billion.  Of course, the media do not want to discuss this, and instead promote sensationalism or racially put down other cultures.

In this environment, the majority of our fellow citizens sit in front of globalized tubes or browse through colorful magazines:  This is how their innate objections to social injustice are neutralized. There are things they are meant to ignore.

 

            Back to Germany: There was criticism at first and the newspapers were open. Party activists were not yet killing; they were "contacting" relatives or calling editors, factories, offices and universities to let them know their opinions were being noticed.

They passed "friendly" remarks about unpatriotic employees interrupting the smooth growth of the national economy.  It was enough, as at first the weakest personalities were contacted and later not too many dared to resist the growing unethical pressure.

 

            Today instead of fascism we have consumerism. It allows our motivations to be controlled by those at the top.  Both "ideologies" are egocentric at their core: While extreme nationalism teaches that loving your nation is ultimately in the individual's interest, so consumerism and materialism teach that individual interest is paramount.  This divides us and makes us more easily manipulated by those who are united in defense of their privileged positions and who are obsessed with the creation of a new ruling class educated in the most expensive universities.  One step in this process is the creation of an elitist educational system, through increased privatization, which Mr. Shapiro seems so intent on.  Lawyers occupy the top corporate and political positions, together with the medical or management establishment, who will be ever more reluctant to have statistical research done on the social profile of students from law, medicine and MBA programs.  This sort of corruption goes so deep into our political and financial lives that even the corporate press has started to write about it.

However, it worries them because more people stop voting and this entirely ruins the legitimacy of their carefully masterminded position in this corrupted system. Cynicism hurts them more than the worst terrorist attack, which actually helps hide the gains obtained from controlling the masses.

 

            Now, at McGill, we see i.e. an influential local manager just before retirement who cannot say "no" to an order to send a very questionable memo dealing with an anonymous e-mail.  She is paralyzed to suggest mailing this questionable memo by the principal' office itself, as it was done earlier?

Why is Mr. Shapiro behaving differently in this case? Is he checking and enforcing a blind loyalty, as the Germans did?  Seeing that the local manager did not resist this order, one can only imagine how much more difficult it will be for younger employees to resist unethical requests in the future.  Here we could wish to see the local McGill manager being inspired by a retiring IOC member with his revelations about dirty Olympic deals that cleared later many things, or by an aged British institute chief Dr. A.Pusztai with his uncensored information (on live TV in 1998) about GM food that helped Europe to ban these products there: Those on their way out like to dish the dirt.

Our soon-retiring Mr. Shapiro instead of doing the same is only souring relations at McGill when he advertises these e-mails rather than discarding them.

 

            Remember that there are weapons in our university already being methodically used against us, as a small clan, well-networked with external powers, treats us like garbage by reviving the tradition of anonymous letters.  It is done methodically to distract our attention from the changes we are meant to ignore.

 

            McGill's observer with friends (or S.Poplawski if the anonymous form is not admitted by the Reporter).

(*) – Professors are enjoying one of the most protected jobs in the world: Tenure positions with paid sabbatical breaks every seven years, what makes them theoretically "untouchable" and the corporate world does not like it.

(**) - It was not NASA that discovered Wernher vvon Braun (creator of German V-1,2 rockets), but it was he who made it possible to create NASA with an unlimited budget.  Investment in Microsoft did not occur before Bill Gates; he caused it. Apart from some controversial aspects of their lives, they will be remembered as gifted and hard-working people who obtained financing by making their projects acceptable and easy to understand.

 

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                  enc.1

                         

                        An open letter to the "McGill Reporter" .

                        The second page of all your issues has the words: "We welcome letters and opinion pieces from members of the community".

                        In the past, when I have written to your paper for publication, I have had a relatively honest and constructive communication with you. Your procedures were explained and I was given helpful advice on modifying my texts. Unfortunately, this policy seems to have been drastically changed since a new Principal, Mrs. Blum, was appointed on April 15 and since a new McGill Reporter editor was soon after appointed.

                        I have had no answer to the text attached below (or on http://www.geocities.com/slavekpop with a title "Two Memos from the Principal"). I delivered it in person, and made several e-mail inquiries to see if it would be published. They have been ignored. This kind of treatment is unacceptable and it seems to me that this new editorial policy is consistent with McGill's fall in the MacLean's ranking and with the way our new principals are still "elected" -- behind closed doors and via an undemocratic selection procedure.

                        Sincerely,

                        S.Poplawski

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                        enc.2

                         

                        To: Colleagues and Students

                        From: Bernard J. Shapiro

                        Date: April 24, 2002

                        Subject: Anonymous e-mail

                        An anonymous e-mail making serious allegations regarding a member of faculty was received in my office on Sunday, April 21, 2002. The same e-mail was also sent to a number of other individuals on campus.

                        This approach to addressing possible problems is totally unacceptable and this e-mail will, therefore, be disregarded by my office although it is, in fact, potentially defamatory.

                        The University has well-established processes for dealing with conflicts. The author(s) of the e-mail should use these mechanisms if they wish to bring such matters to the attention of the University.

                        I wish to add only that the University is committed to excellence in teaching, which it monitors in a number of ways including a systematic review of the course evaluations each year.

                        BJS/mc

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                        enc.3

                         

                        To: McGill Community

                        From: Bernard J. Shapiro

                        Date: April 16, 2002

                        Subject: Employment Equity

                        This year all Quebec universities and institutions will be embarking on an Employment Equity study mandated by the provincial government. A number of years ago a similar study was instituted in accordance with the Federal Contractor’s program. The provincial legislation differs from the Federal Contractor’s program and will therefore require that we re-survey all faculty and staff. As a participant in this provincial study McGill will begin the survey process this coming fall.

                        I view our participation in this process in a very positive light. I believe that this study will give us a better insight into ourselves and allow us to reflect on our diversity. For many years McGill has been a welcoming oasis where persons of all cultures, nations, colour and creed join together in an atmosphere of scholarship and knowledge. It is through our inclusiveness that we are able to enrich our lives and those of our students by exposing them to a wealth of cultures, ideas and beliefs.

                        This equity study will provide us with a clear understanding of our ever-changing community. I urge you to

                        welcome this opportunity as I do, to reflect on our culture of inclusion and see it as a symbol of our renewal and growth. Please take the time to complete this simple survey when you receive it in the fall. All information as it pertains to individuals will be kept confidential. Further information about the study and the survey will be sent to the community in the coming months. If you would like further information please contact the Department of Human Resources and speak with the Employment Equity Coordinator at 09990.

                        Thank you in advance for your participation and cooperation.