Fascinating Canadian Story on "Academic Freedom"

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a fascinating story (subscription required) on Dennis Rancourt, a quondam physics professor at the University of Ottawa who has, for some time, been disputing his dismissal from the university before an arbitrator. Rancourt argues that he was dismissed for his political views. The university suggests that he was dismissed for numerous departures from his proper academic duties--among them, hollowing out an offered course from the inside, transforming it from a course in physics to a course on how science relates to "power structures," a move he called "academic squatting"; inviting ten-year-old twins to sign up for a course, and then assisting them in grieving the university's refusal to register them before a human rights commission as age discrimination; promising all his students in one class an A before the class started, more or less as a protest against the usual pedagogical norms of grading; and so on. While he was at it, he called a black law professor who wrote a report for the university its "House Negro." As it often does around Rancourt, protracted litigation ensued. His Wikipedia page is here; although it is one of the more self-serving entries I have seen there, it does contain useful links. Stanley Fish wrote about Rancourt here, and has an amusing discussion of him in a forthcoming book on academic freedom.

I was inclined to think Fish made too much of the Rancourt case, since Rancourt is so clearly an extreme case. On the other hand, I never would have dreamed that it would take as long as it has to resolve his dispute with the university, or that as many silly rulings would result along the way. Rancourt's case seems to me to do two things. It shows just how badly academic freedom can be distorted and misdefined, especially when its meaning is extended and politicized beyond all recognition. And it shows how damaging the involvement of both labor law and human rights commissions has been in Canada for a proper understanding and treatment of academic freedom. A couple of the figures quoted in the Chronicle story suggest that labor and human rights law have strengthened "academic freedom" in Canada. They have done nothing of the kind, unless you have an absurd definition of the term.