The suspension of two professors at Université Laval (UL) for their remarks on vaccines against COVID-19 brings the question of academic freedom to the fore, as a law to better protect it has been adopted in June. This situation confirms the importance of it, believes the Minister of Higher Education, who invites universities to comply quickly.
Patrick Provost, professor in the department of microbiology-infectiology and immunology at Laval University and RNA specialist, was suspended for eight weeks without pay in mid-June because of remarks going to the against scientific consensus on messenger RNA vaccines Pfizer and Moderna.
A second biology professor, Nicolas Derome, was also suspended for eight weeks without pay, according to the daily. The sun, for very similar reasons. He did not respond to messages from To have to.
In a written statement sent to To have to by her office in response to a request for an interview, the Minister of Higher Education, Danielle McCann, believes that “these situations at Université Laval confirm that it was necessary to legislate on this subject”. She invites “Laval University and all the others to proceed as quickly as possible” to comply with the law adopted in June on academic freedom in universities.
“The Act provides that each university must, within one year, draft a policy and set up a committee to monitor the implementation of the policy and to examine complaints relating to academic academic freedom,” said- she. “The Act also specifies that academic freedom is exercised in accordance with standards of scientific rigor,” she adds.
Université Laval had not yet sent its reaction when these lines were written. For its part, the Interuniversity Cooperation Office declined to comment.
An “important test” of academic freedom
While some applauded the university’s decision, the Union of Professors and Professors of Laval University (SPUL) for its part filed a grievance to defend Patrick Provost.
“When you say something that doesn’t make sense at the scientific or factual level, it’s the colleagues who will rebuff heavily,” said in an interview with the To have to the president of the SPUL, Louis-Philippe Lampron, who is also a law professor at Laval University. When it is the university that sanctions, it seems very problematic to us”.
“They are handling this as a situation of idea theft or plagiarism and, for us, it is a diversion. It’s not a research integrity issue,” he says.
Without being able to comment on or confirm the case of Nicolas Derome, Mr. Lampron mentions that “the cursor is placed in the same place for any professor who would be placed in a situation similar to that of Patrick Provost”.
“In our case, before the adoption of the law, we were among the universities that had the most robust definition of academic freedom,” he says. This is broadly defined in the collective agreement and takes up the main elements of article 3 of law 32. of the grievance we filed,” he said.
Not all professors are protected by a collective agreement, hence the importance of implementing the law as quickly as possible in universities, believes Yves Gingras, scientific director of the Observatory of Sciences and Technologies at the University of Quebec in Montreal and who sat on the Cloutier Commission on academic freedom.
He is delighted with the reaction of the Minister, who invites the universities to act quickly to comply with the law, in particular by setting up a committee to hear complaints.
“When you’re unionized, the union must agree to file a grievance, which was the case in this case,” he says. But some unions refuse to defend the teachers”. “There will be two doors open for union members, and only one door for non-union members,” he added.
Louis-Philippe Lampron, who is also a specialist in human rights and freedoms, is not aware of a situation like that of Patrick Provost having been dealt with before the Administrative Labor Tribunal. “So that would be a first,” he said. This is an important test of academic freedom”.