The College Fix

It has his permission to share his information with reporters

Is Thompson Rivers University refusing to explain why it suspended and banned Derek Pyne from campus because the economics professor hasn’t consented, or regardless of whether he consented?

The British Columbia school switched its argument last week, as power transferred from its interim president to a new permanent president, Kamloops This Week reports.

Pyne put a target on his back last year when he noted most of his colleagues in the department had published in so-called predatory publications – pay-for-play journals with low quality standards.

The university ordered him to get a psychological examination because faculty, staff and students were allegedly “afraid of him,” and it banned him from campus even after the examination provided no medical grounds for his ban.

It ordered him to stop communicating “defamatory and insubordinate statements” about the university by granting media interviews about his situation.

On his first day on the job last week, President Brett Fairbairn told reporters that the university would violate the province’s “freedom of information and protection of privacy legislation” by disclosing the rationale for its sanctions on Pyne:

“I like transparency as much as the next person, I appreciate it when people call for transparency, but when people call for the reasons for a personnel action to be shared, they’re really asking for the university to break the law and we’re not going to do that,” Fairbairn said.

That contradicts last month’s explanation by Christine Bovis-Cnossen, the interim president.

Responding to concerns by Canada’s Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship that Pyne was being punished for exercising his academic freedom, Bovis-Cnossen said the university can’t divulge “personal information” about Pyne “without his prior written consent” under the law.

Pyne responded an hour later, giving Bovis-Cnossen his permission to disclose his information to the Canadian Association of University Teachers and the university’s faculty union: “Thus, when reporters ask you, you no longer have to give qualified answers about your co-operation with the CAUT investigation.”

President Fairbairn, who is earning 27 percent more than his predecessor with a $287,000 compensation package, comes to TRU with relevant baggage.

As provost of the University of Saskatchewan in 2014, he fired a tenured professor, Robert Buckingham, for “criticizing budget cuts at the university,” according to Kamloops This Week. He resigned as provost following student and staff protests, while Buckingham was reinstated.

Pyne got good news a few days after Fairbairn changed the university’s position on its silence: He’s being allowed to resume teaching.

The CBC reports that the university said he’ll return next month. Pyne has already met with human resources and a dean but claims the university “still owes him two weeks’ pay and his union has filed a grievance on his behalf.”

Read the Kamloops and CBC coverage.

h/t Inside Higher Ed

MORE: Prof banned after noting ‘predatory’ publishing of most colleagues

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