Book Review

Canada and the United States

Academic freedom in Canada, as Michiel Horn sets forth at the beginning of this comprehensive, meticulously researched history, has rarely been a "burning question" (p. 3) for university faculty or administrators. Indeed, apart from some occasional specialized interest from historians of higher education or from those exploring the difficulties faced by radicals and socialists in universities prior to World War II, academic freedom has elicited only cursory attention from the Canadian historical community. Horn's history draws upon a vast array of sources assembled from university archives across Canada, with the exception of the Catholic universities of Quebec. This book traces, from the earliest conflicts between faculty members and college boards of governors in the 1860s, down to the physical expansion of universities and proliferation of faculty in the 1960s, the distinctive context in which Canadian university teachers secured a modicum of academic freedom.

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Three concepts, according to Horn, influenced definitions of academic freedom in Canada. The first, mediated through the influence of American research universities after the 1870s, was the German research ideal by which professors were free to teach and publish. This, however, had only a marginal impact on the Canadian university environment before 1914, given the lack of research schools. The second, and more influential idea, was the British tradition of linking academic freedom to professorial self-government and academic free speech. The third, a response to the distinctively North American practice of university government, by which professors were subject to academic hierarchies appointed by governing boards composed of business and professional people, sought to assert, by codifying procedures under which faculty could be dismissed, the autonomy of the professor.

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