By Honor Brabazon and Vincent Wong
The article ‘Constitutional boundaries of faculty associations: The political line in the sand’, published in the Commentary section of the September–October 2025 CAUT Bulletin, is the latest in a series of attempts to stifle democratic debate and political engagement in Canadian faculty associations. The commentary appears to have been precipitated by the recent motions passed by over 20 Canadian faculty associations to, variously, affirm their commitment to academic freedom; oppose Israel’s systematic attacks on Palestinians’ academic freedom and right to education; and push their institutions to uphold preexisting legal obligations to avoid complicity in serious violations of international law, for instance by divesting from companies with ties to genocide, illegal occupation, and other serious human rights violations.
In what follows, we use the commentary as an opportunity to alert fellow faculty members to common tropes used to stifle debate within and amongst faculty associations, which can be situated within a broader campaign in the US and Canada to discredit antiracist scholarship and organizing on campuses as well as the disproportionately racialized faculty who do this work.
1. Using empty signifiers like ‘divisive’ and ‘controversial’ to signify danger and foreclose debate
The authors of the commentary argue that faculty associations can only debate what political position to take on selective issues, which they mainly identify as those that are not ‘divisive’ or ‘controversial’. They argue that ‘divisive’ discussions are dangerous for our faculty associations, saying that ‘[t]hese positions have often alienated those members who are not engaged with these issues and isolated those who disagree’, and that ‘adopting controversial views’ divides the membership and thus ‘weakens the unions’ solidarity in addressing working conditions’—claims for which they provide no empirical evidence.
They also fail to define what constitutes a ‘divisive’ issue, even though this distinction is central to their argument. Do they consider a motion to be ‘divisive’ if 25 percent of members object to it? Ten percent? One percent? By definition, any motion or position that does not have unanimous support is ‘divisive’ and ‘controversial’. Further, if it were sufficiently ‘divisive’ and ‘controversial’ to be unpopular, such a motion would not survive a democratic vote. So what does this really mean?
The authors do not say—and for good reason. Terms like ‘divisive’ and ‘controversial’ are floating signifiers that are frequently being used to selectively shut down debate and action on certain topics, most notably discussion of, and advocacy against, racism and colonialism on campuses—particularly through the anti-CRT campaign in the United States. The designation of ‘divisive’ or ‘controversial’ is deployed to generate fear that merely discussing these topics will cause harm, even though no evidence or clear criteria are provided. This, in turn, forecloses opportunities for debate and accountability around racism and colonialism and discredits antiracist and decolonial teaching, research, and advocacy.
The authors’ argument also ignores that a faculty association can alienate and isolate members by deciding to not take a position or by preventing democratic debate about whether to take a position. Not taking a position can also cause harm and potentially lead to legal repercussions if the position would help fulfil an association’s duty of care—for example to members facing racist harassment—or other legal obligations. Ironically, if a faculty association were to adopt a formal policy of avoiding ‘divisive’ positions, its next act would be to rescind such a divisive policy! Further, far from ‘weaken[ing] the unions’ solidarity in addressing working conditions’, the democratic process of developing and discussing ‘controversial’ positions has been shown to increase member engagement and deepen community and solidarity within and beyond faculty associations—indeed, the ability to engage in these democratic processes is fundamental to the work unions do.
The authors further suggest that taking positions on ‘controversial’ issues might compromise certified faculty associations’ ‘legal duty of fair representation, which requires them to represent all members in good faith without discrimination[,] […] by acting in a discriminatory fashion in supporting the views of some members over others’. However, in Canada, the duty of fair representation only regulates a union’s representation of employees in their relationship with the employer. It plays no role in regulating a union’s conduct except in how it bargains, deals with grievances, and participates in the administration of a collective agreement in a given workplace. Even in relations with an employer, the duty of fair representation does not require the union to satisfy all members. That standard is impossible. The duty of fair representation only requires that a union’s decisions not be made in a way that is discriminatory, arbitrary, or in bad faith—and discriminating against someone has a very narrow meaning in law. Taking an action that someone does not like or a position that someone disagrees with does not come close to meeting that bar.
2. Ignoring that all collective bargaining is ‘political’
The authors argue that faculty unions ‘should avoid adopting political positions’, particularly those that are ‘extrinsic’ to ‘improving working conditions’. Yet collective bargaining is inherently political because it redistributes power, challenges excessive managerial control, and addresses working conditions that are themselves shaped by legislation, funding decisions, and broader social inequalities. Workers cannot separate their workplace reality from the political forces (e.g. housing, immigration status, racism, public funding, and policing) that determine their safety and (in)ability to participate in collective action. Demanding that unions take no position while employers and governments act politically entrenches existing power imbalances and maintains the status quo. Collective bargaining is a democratic process through which workers assert their interests in a deeply political world. For instance, if the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had not advanced anti-racist resolutions at the first Canadian Labour Congress in 1956 to challenge white nationalist immigration policy (resolutions which themselves were attacked as divisive and political), then non-white faculty might not exist in Canadian academia today. If student unions and faculty associations around the world had not passed motions to divest from South African apartheid, then that regime would not have been dismantled when it was.
3. Misreading faculty association constitutions
At the end of the article, the authors state that ‘the political line in the sand’ is determined by the faculty association’s constitution: ‘Together, these principles argue that a faculty association should avoid adopting political positions unless expressly authorized in its constitution…’. This argument is based on two flawed assumptions. First, it assumes that everything in a faculty association’s constitution is not divisive, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has ever attended a faculty association meeting.
Second, this argument assumes that anything beyond a narrow understanding of the working conditions of faculty in that one association is outside of the association’s constitutional mandate. This is simply false. Faculty association constitutions typically include mandates to, for instance, ‘advance the shared interests of the Association and its affiliates’. This is true of unions in other sectors and is based on the well-documented fact that the conditions that affect workers in one workplace extend far beyond that workplace. Unions’ involvement in politics, even when ‘controversial’, is a fundamental principle of unionism that is recognized in labour law internationally and affirmed by Canadian courts. In Lavigne v. OPSEU, for example, the Supreme Court recognized that participation in political, economic, and social debates in the broader society is fundamental to unions’ work. Moreover, in Altman v. Faculty Association of Simon Fraser University, the BC Supreme Court expressly rejected the argument that the faculty association’s divestment motion was invalid because it was inconsistent with the association’s mandate. Again, unions, including Canadian faculty unions, have a long tradition of taking positions on ‘controversial’ political issues, often making significant contributions to historical change that has benefited their members and other workers around the world, as outlined above. Likewise, members of Canadian faculty associations have benefitted tremendously from the struggles of academic and other workers here and elsewhere.
4. Reading antiracism as censorship of ‘diverse views’
The authors’ commentary continually frames the positions that faculty associations have taken as ‘opinions’ or ‘viewpoints’, arguing that associations are ‘discriminat[ing] between the viewpoints of their members’ and valuing ‘an individual opinion’ over ‘the diversity of opinion among its members’. This characterization suggests that faculty associations have been arriving at positions by taking a poll of their members’ individual views on an issue, as if the association were choosing its favourite colour based on which colour the majority of its members preferred. However, faculty associations have been asking members to vote on specific positions using the criteria in the association’s constitutional mandate, not based on their ‘individual opinion’ on the broader issue.
Further, the authors’ concern that an association taking a position devalues the ‘diversity of opinion amongst members’ again mimics tactics that right-wing politicians are using in the US to attack antiracist education and scholarship. Framing antiracism efforts as preventing a ‘diversity of viewpoints’ legitimizes and normalizes racist viewpoints while portraying those pushing back against racism as aggressors who are trying to take something away from others.
Nothing in the motions faculty associations are passing requires members to change their personal opinions or even suggests that this would be desirable. In fact, the point of the motions is to protect academic freedom and diversity of opinion, which are unattainable when academics are experiencing anti-Palestinian and other racist harassment and being doxed for expressing their opinions and doing their research, or when all their universities and libraries have been blown up. Academic freedom and diversity of opinion are advanced when faculty associations take clear positions in support of academic freedom everywhere and against racism in all its forms, even when this is deemed ‘controversial’.
5. Hiding substantive objections
The authors’ defence of not taking a position is a thinly-veiled argument against certain positions. The authors claim they are not arguing for ‘political neutrality’, citing the concern that ‘political neutrality is impossible to achieve as it serves to maintain existing power structures’. And yet, if unions refrained from taking positions in political, economic, and social debates—which, again, is a widely-recognized part of their constitutional mandate—they would lose a principal avenue for challenging those existing power structures, and by extension fighting for a more just and fair world for their members to work in, and for their union to negotiate in. Moreover, the tactic outlined above allows those who disagree with the outcome of recent democratic debates in faculty associations to foreclose future debate when it suits them by selectively labelling those issues ‘divisive’.
In sum, we hope this analysis provides tools for Canadian academics to recognize and think critically about the common tropes being used in attempts to prevent faculty associations from taking bold antiracist and decolonial positions in fulfilment of their mandate and in the long tradition of solidarity amongst Canadian unions and faculty associations.
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