Reviewed by Percilla Groves
The Rain 4:2 (Summer-Autumn 2006): 3
For an eager reader of David Lodge and other writers whose novels explore the feudal world of academe, what could be more enticing than a book set precisely in that arcane space, and especially a book in which many of the characters exist not only in the mind’s eye but can be viewed in the living flesh in my own workplace, Simon Fraser University? Hugh Johnston’s commissioned history of SFU, Radical Campus: Making Simon Fraser University, has many of the qualities of a page-turner novel: unusual characters, strife and conflict, plus unpredictable plot twists.
Before even opening Radical Campus, depending on one’s perspective one might find the very title disquieting, provocative, or offensive. The University seems now to be keen to capitalize on the latest definition of “radical” offered in the newest Oxford English Dictionary: “1988: ‘Radical’ no longer has rebellious or left-wing connotations but means wonderful or remarkable.” (Some might even say “innovative”.) As one who finds the “repurposing” of words for branding purposes simultaneously entertaining and disgusting, I found the title amusing. My friend, a charter student and an early Peakie, who uses the word in accordance with an earlier OED entry—“any thorough political and social change; representing or supporting the extreme section of a political party; hence, in more recent use (orig. US) left-wing, revolutionary”—was initially convinced that the book would be a rewrite of The Troubles of the late sixties and could scarcely bring himself to open it.
Johnston’s book is much more than a reprise of the sixties and seventies at SFU. His history places the university in the context of world events, and tracks its story from the tabling of the Macdonald Report which convinced WAC Bennett, then premier, to fund the creation of the university, up to the end of Pauline Jewett’s presidency in the late 70s. His characters include student politicians of all persuasions, professors who left careers both world-renowned and non-existent to come to Burnaby, and bureaucrats both bumbling and brilliant. Even the nameless minor players in the photos are intriguing—grim-faced parents concentrating on a convocation ceremony while clearly aware of the protest signs waving over their heads; the student in the background of a photo of an occupation who now turns up in a Google search as a self-described neo-conservative; another individual in the same photo whose cowboy boot rests on a coffee table, which might be considered reprehensible except that a few pages earlier President Ken Strand is also depicted with his feet on the furniture.
Within its nine chapters are the answers to many questions which will have puzzled people interested in universities and in Simon Fraser University in particular. Why, for example, were so many professors among the charter SFU faculty hired from other countries? Johnston explains that at the beginning of the 1960s no more than seventy-five doctoral degrees were awarded in the humanities and the social sciences each year in the whole of Canada. With many new Canadian colleges and universities opening at close to the same time, much hiring had to be international. There was no choice and no conspiracy. The book also raises new questions. Why, for example, are fewer than one hundred of the twelve thousand plus current undergraduate SFU students from other Canadian provinces (a fact which came out during the recent controversy over the establishment of an independent international college on campus) whereas on opening day in 1965 fifteen per cent of the students were Canadians from outside British Columbia?
Though not explicitly stated, a theme running throughout the book is that notions initially deemed unthinkable and/or unworkable may become commonplace and mainstream by the next generation. Given that SFU’s official fortieth anniversary slogan is “Radical by design”, it is both comic and disturbing to read that the initial reprimand from SFU President Ken Strand to the chair of the PSA (Political Science / Sociology / Anthropology) Department, in the series of struggles that lead to ruined careers for several professors and CAUT censure for the university, related to PSA’s use of the adjective “radical” to describe itself in a job advertisement. Another facet of the PSA dispute involved that department’s decision to involve students in decisions of faculty tenure, renewal and promotion. Even though there may be cynicism among current students about whether the course evaluations they complete at semester end carry huge weight in deliberations about faculty promotions, it is now accepted in most North American institutions that students will be asked to evaluate their professors and that their ratings cannot be completely ignored. One demand of the organizers of the famous occupation that led to 114 arrests was that students be given transfer credit for equivalent courses taken in community colleges, a procedure now so much a part of the established system that the colleges employ advisors to guide students into the courses required for university admission with advanced placement, and students are able to enroll in courses at various universities and colleges simultaneously for transfer credits.
One of the most enjoyable qualities of the book is Johnston’s remarkable ability to capture the emotional aspects of diverse moments in the university’s history. During the official opening ceremonies for example, while Lord Lovat, the Scots head of the Fraser clan, was lionized on the ceremonial stage, a postman from North Dakota, an actual descendant of the fur trader Simon Fraser, sat unacknowledged in the audience. The mind boggles at what he may have been thinking. Another touching passage described Gordon Shrum, first chancellor of SFU and the individual who took it from a glint in the eye of WAC Bennett to an enrolling institution within two years, reminiscing in an oral interview conducted long after the fact that the day he had to fire Patrick McTaggart-Cowan, the long-time friend that he had hired as the first president of SFU, was the saddest of his life. Johnston puts this into a context with a wry comment that Shrum had by that time in his life been through two divorces and the battle of Vimy Ridge. Few of the more overtly comic SFU stories have been included (possibly a decision based on legal advice), but the tale of Shrum’s reaction when student leader Jim Harding kissed his feet (literally) at the 1970 convocation ceremony represents the spirit of those less predictable times.
Johnston used traditional archival research methods in the preparation of the book, and acknowledges the current staff of the SFU Archives who assisted him in locating sources and the staff of the past who had the foresight to save materials and interview key players at a time when the university was so new that few seemed to understand that it would ever have a history. (In the mid 70s, shortly after collecting many of the oral histories which Johnston used extensively, SFU’s first archivist resigned to return to the US. The position remained unfilled for nearly two years.) Could a detailed history of the post-millennium years at SFU based on the written word ever be composed? Probably much of the most fascinating current detail lives only briefly in voicemails and in emails protected by privacy legislation, but the data files of various mail lists like SFUFA-Forum (an electronic discussion space for SFU faculty) may be a rich source for the next generation of historians ready to probe the voluminous responses to, for example, the Pet Policy, and to contemplate the contrasting lack of correspondence in the same venue about academic initiatives like the writing and numeracy requirements introduced in Fall 2006.
What could have been added to the book? With a few exceptions, the voice of the ordinary student, assuming such a creature exists, is absent. For future researchers it would be interesting if the University Archives could consider ways of preserving something of the lives of such students, for example, oral histories taped with students chosen at random each year, or personal journals maintained for a semester or two with the understanding that these writings would be placed in the Archives. Support staff voices are also missing. Events around the formation of the SFU Faculty Association and of TSSU, the Teaching Support Staff Union are described fully, but AUCE, the support staff union which preceded CUPE as the bargaining agent for clerical, library and technical staff on campus is given less than a paragraph.
The end of history predicted in the early 90s by another historian, Francis Fukuyama, continues to elude SFU, along with the rest of the world. Spring 2006 saw the SFU Board of Governors signing a letter of agreement for the establishment of an Australia-based private international college on the Burnaby campus. Prior to the signing of the agreement concerned faculty, staff and students attended meetings called by administrators to explain and defend the proposal. (Among the reasons for concern was that the chair of the Board of Governors of this college was one Trevor Flugge, pictured on the internet in an article about refugee resettlement scandals wearing a randomly buttoned shirt and wielding a large pistol.) Comparing and contrasting these gatherings with the meetings of the early days described in Radical Campus is tempting, but suffice it to say that the Spring 2006 attendance did not rival that depicted in a photograph of a 1968 Freedom Square outdoor rally addressed by the president, and that the presentations of the 2006 event are linked as streaming video from the SFU web site.
Who should read Radical Campus? Former and present SFU students, staff, and faculty, of course. University and college administrators. Social historians. Union organizers. Graduate students setting out on their first job hunts. Organizational behaviour classes. Academic curriculum planners everywhere. Radical Campus should be required reading for everyone with the goal of changing the system, any system. It will be shelved with the professional literature in my office, next to Jane Smiley’s Moo, another book I recommend to anyone who asks “What is it really like to work at a university?”