British Columbia Civil Liberties Association | 22 September 2003 | For Immediate Release

BCCLA Condemns SFU Hiring Policies as Discriminatory

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is calling on Simon Fraser University to abandon closed hiring practices which favour women in selecting Canada Research Chairs (CRCs). The Association is concerned that the policy unfairly discriminates against men regardless of background and especially against visible minority candidates who are currently under-represented at the faculty level at SFU.

SFU's new policy "will allow non-advertised searches … for all Canada Research Chair positions where the Dean and the Department are able to develop a pre-advertisement list of strong potential female candidates." The new policy also creates "goals" for awarding new CRCs to hire a specific number of women.

The BCCLA is not opposed to SFU making special efforts to recruit qualified women and other visible minorities as part of faculty at SFU. The Association is supportive of such efforts but only on the condition that hiring is based on merit and occurs as a result of open hiring competitions.

BCCLA Executive Director Murray Mollard explained: "Our worry is that the so-called goals will be de facto quotas and that many well qualified candidates will simply not be considered by SFU under this new policy. The irony of course is that a policy that supposedly promotes equality will undermine it and create serious unfairness to interested job candidates in the process. We would expect an institution of higher learning like SFU to be committed to an open hiring process that would ensure that the best qualified candidate, male or female, is chosen."

The Association also notes that one primary reason why SFU has had difficulty in appointing female candidates in its first set of CRC appointments is that many of the CRCs have gone to outstanding senior SFU faculty in the sciences in order to avoid their own faculty being raided by other universities offering CRCs. Senior science faculty are disproportionately male.

The Association had met with SFU officials and had written SFU expressing our concerns. SFU responded with a two sentence letter indicating that our "concerns will be brought forward when the program administration is next reviewed."

A copy of our letter to SFU and SFU's new policy is available on the BCCLA website at: www.bccla.org\othercontent\03waterhouse.html.

 

British Columbia Civil Liberties Association
425 - 815 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
V6C 1B4

E-mail: info@bccla.org
Web: www.bccla.org
Tel: 604-687-2919
Fax: 604-687-3045

The BCCLA is a non-partisan, autonomous charitable society that is member/donor based.
Please call 604-687-2919 to inquire about supporting the BCCLA.