True Discernment

A fourth Christian college is under scrutiny from the country’s largest university teachers’ federation for alleged restrictions on academic freedom, but the school’s president says the probe is biased and its outcome likely pre-determined.

“It’s not an open-ended inquiry into the truth because it begins with a definition that is self-fulfilling,” said Hubert Krygsman, president of Redeemer University College, a school with 950 students in Ancaster, Ont.

“It’s a definition of academic freedom that says it cannot be faith-based. So by definition any faith-based approach strikes them as contrary to their definition. All of the other findings are really fodder for their own beliefs. It certainly an attempt by whatever public suasion they might have to give Christian schools a black mark.”

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) told Redeemer last fall it would investigate possible abuses of academic freedom. As reported in Tuesday’s National Post, CAUT has undertaken investigations into three other small Canadian Christian universities in the past 18 months, all initiated by CAUT on its own, without complaint or outside trigger. All found a stifled academic environment.

A group of academics associated with secular and religious institutions is asking CAUT to stop its inquiries into Christian schools. A petition, which has been circulating for two weeks, calls the investigations unwarranted and invasive, and accuses CAUT of bullying schools into co-operation.