Canada’s main faculty association has set up an independent committee to investigate a series of clashes between the University of Ottawa and a senior tenured professor who was suspended last month and barred from the campus, apparently because of a grading dispute in which he gave all students in a class an A+ last spring after being refused permission to make the course pass/fail.
The professor, Denis Rancourt, is a noted physicist who has worked at the university for 22 years. He is also an activist blogger, particularly on issues of pedagogical reform and university governance. His advocacy of “greater democracy in the institution,” he says, could be the real reason why the university is trying to push him out.
Mr. Rancourt says he met with administration officials on December 10 and was given two letters, one placing him on administrative suspension and the other notifying him that his dean was recommending that the Board of Governors dismiss him. After he met with his union representative, the university police escorted him off campus.
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