Academia’s betrayal of its deepest values during the Covid-19 pandemic

Or, Academia has $#!? the bed during Covid

Jun 21, 2023

One of the biggest disappointments of the pandemic is how universities sheepishly followed bad government guidance when they could have put together teams of in-house free expertise to combat COVID and create mitigation systems. Terrible miss.

This is because uni admin has basically become miniature versions of bad governments. Bunch of eggheads pulling in big salaries for doing nothing but strategic planning.

You have all these engineers, public health people, ethicists, sociologists, lawyers, doctors, nurses, etc. and the best you can do is wait for [former Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena] Hinshaw to tell you what to do.

-- Ubaka Ogbogu

What are the deepest values of academia? Following the evidence seems to me to be at the top of the list. Engaging society with a deeply humanist perspective, valuing the marginalized, giving voice to the silenced. Honestly and thoroughly integrating decolonization, equity, diversity and inclusion into every aspect of their operations.

For administrators within academia, those charged with safeguarding the health and safety of large communities of students, staff and faculty, we can also talk about demonstrating the highest personal integrity, approaching their work with humility and a sense of care and service.

Most of all, academia should speak truth to power.

Some various ideas on all of this are here and here.

What did we see during the Covid-19 pandemic? Not much of any of the above, to be honest. What we mostly saw is brilliantly summarized in the opening quote by Ubaka Ogbogu. Sheepishly surrendering the truth to the demands of power.

Emmett Macfarlane puts a spotlight on the cognitive dissonance that all of this can have at the institutional level.

It is legit WILD how often my university shares research by its own faculty that explicitly shows why measures to mitigate COVID transmission remain vital - measures which the university itself has long abandoned. A university run by a public health scholar, no less.

I swear to god it's like living in a dystopian comedy.

Maybe the admin looks at a study like that and says "brain changes, huh? Well, maybe they're *good* brain changes. Anyway, time to create another new AVP position..."

Let’s just say that my own institution has a disease modelling research unit. As far as I can tell, they were never consulted about anything. And don’t get me started on CO2 monitors.

I’ve followed how the Canadian academic world has coped with Covid since summer 2021 when universities in Canada started heading back to campus, mostly with vaccine and mask mandates that they had to pushed and shamed into adopting. I’ve continued into Spring 2023, when they’ve pretty well completely abandoned any notion of being interested in protecting their communities. I have links to my relevant blog posts below, as well some additional links to relevant readings concerning Canada and beyond from the last couple of years.

These readings and lists are by necessity fairly selective. If any readers out there know of any articles that explore other contexts, please let me know in the comments of this post or at dupuisj at gmail dot com. Who knows, if there are enough, maybe I’ll do another compendium.

COVID science and post-truth policy at Canadian universities by Steve Wilcox / Canadian Dimension

In defending the decision to no longer require masks in classrooms, Alan Shepherd, the president of Western University, declared he was duty-bound to “follow the science.” “Once you’ve decided that you don’t need masks as you’re following the science, then you don’t impose masks just because,” said Shepard. “We’ve tried to have the lightest possible touch.”
Shepherd’s convoluted phrasing—“once you’ve decided you don’t need masks”—betrays the decision-based evidence making that university leadership has increasingly embraced throughout the pandemic. In contrast to Shepherd’s claims that he is following the science, researchers paint a different picture.
Consider the risk of Long COVID, which is now being viewed as both a cardio-vascular and neurological disease. Nearly one and a half million adults in Canada—five percent of the population—experienced symptoms three months after infection. Meanwhile, the Public Health Agency of Canada reports that “30% to 40% of people who weren’t hospitalized for their initial COVID-19 infection still report symptoms beyond 12 weeks.” Across all age groups, those who have been infected with the virus were found to be at increased risk of heart attacks, with those aged 25-44 the most pronounced with a 30 percent increased risk. And repeated infections further increase these cardio-vascular complications.

The Mask-Optional DEI Initiative by Matt Dowell / Bill of Health

Recently, I remotely attended a mask-optional, in-person meeting where campus leaders proudly proclaimed that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is my college’s “top priority.”
As a disabled faculty member who writes about disability access in higher education, I found myself considering how to make sense of such a statement — how seriously to take such statements, how much to care that such statements are being made. …
The rejection of masking during an ongoing pandemic by institutions of higher education and their leaders is clear evidence of how disabled people are regularly and purposefully excluded from full participation in colleges and universities. It follows, then, that necessary conversations about access — access in an ever-evolving sense, which anticipates and responds to the complex, changing, conflicting needs of disabled students, faculty, and staff — are not formally occurring and are unlikely to occur at these institutions.
Instead, colleges and universities are explicitly communicating a rejection of the ethical obligation to protect disabled, at-risk, and chronically-ill students, staff, and faculty, as well as disabled, at-risk, and chronically-ill family members and people in the larger community.

Dominant COVID Narratives and Implications for Information and Media Literacy Education in the “Post-Pandemic” United States by Andrea Baer / Rowan University Digital Works

Many people will likely think I am being unhelpfully pessimistic and cynical. Some of my fellow educators at the media literacy conference I attended may think it’s better to silence my voice, that information and media literacy need smiling faces, not masked ones. But from another angle, you could argue that “returning to normal” – giving up COVID mitigations in the classroom, at conferences, and elsewhere, promoting publications like the Cochrane Review (mentioned previously for its recent metaanalysis on mask mandates) as a perpetual gold standard for medical literature – is actually a much clearer example of nihilism. As people continue to be reinfected each year, sometimes more than once, many will die, and many more will become disabled. I find it far more hopeful and promising to adopt the attitude of groups like the People’s CDC, who are “building collective power and centering equity as we work together to end the pandemic.” We may have to live with COVID forever, but with better mitigations, education, and collective care, we can reduce COVID’s harmful long-term effects and build a more equitable society that cares for all.

When the University Hurts Part 2: On Performative and Inadequate COVID-19 Policies by Karuna Sinha with a conclusion by Girish Daswani / Everyday Orientalism

As a research-intensive university, one that prides itself on producing top-tier scientists and public health experts, UofT ignored expert advice in favour of cost-cutting measures or provincial decisions. As previously mentioned, the University’s EDI policy is simply performative; likewise, any form of equity work is seen as “dated and as alienated from the core business of the university” (Ahmed 2012: 63), which seems to be to generate revenue. Furthermore, by denying COVID transmission mitigation measures, UofT went against its stated goals numerous times, not only in the ways already discussed. Universities as institutions are supposed to nurture young minds and teach critical thinking. By ignoring something that has been proven scientifically and allowing those who have been entrusted into their care to get a disabling illness that is proven to cause neurological side effects, they work against both goals, proving the corporatization of the university above all else. The COVID-19 pandemic has, without a doubt, demonstrated which universities are truly institutions of higher learning and which ones are businesses first and educational institutions second. If the University of Toronto wants to continue to be a top-tier, top-ranked university, there is no excuse to not use its funding to properly support all its students and faculty not only in theory but in practice as well.

Canada’s universities and colleges are failing science by Amir Attaran and Jacob Shelley / Macleans.ca

All these Canadian colleges and universities, plus those we have not named, are acting as if there is not a pandemic happening, and vaccines are not the way out of it. Their stance is, to put it politely, anti-scientific for institutions of higher learning, palpably inferior to the world’s best, and fatal to the feel-good bromide that “good” Canadians care more for the health of their neighbours or community than “selfish” Americans.
Canada’s universities and colleges must know they are in the wrong, but lack the courage to behave differently, and instead offer spurious excuses for not making vaccination mandatory.
Western University President Alan Shepard is more vocal than most about why his institution refuses to implement a campus-wide vaccine mandate (despite the half-step of requiring students in residences to be vaccinated). He claims that Western is “very comfortable” encouraging but not requiring vaccination, because it has “gone as far as [it] can go legally.”
But as law professors, we see no truth in that. Every college and university already has a host of health and safety rules which employees and students must follow. A new rule requiring vaccination is perfectly legal, provided that limited exceptions are made to accommodate those having demonstrable, sound medical or religious objections. …
The risks would be much reduced if Canadian colleges and universities aspired to be the best in the world. Indeed they should all desperately want to be more like Berkeley, Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Stanford or the rest of the top tier. But aspiring to anything beyond mediocrity is not very Canadian, and come to vaccination, there are two possible explanations why:
(1) Canada’s institutions of higher learning do not really believe that it is important to be driven by science, so they are comfortable turning their backs on vaccination, or;
(2) Canada’s leaders, both in higher learning and in government, lack the courage to make difficult and controversial decisions during a pandemic, even if it puts lives at stake.
Which of these explanations do you prefer? The first has dreadful implications for Canada’s ability to make itself a science-led, high-tech, prosperous society when our global competitors are doing exactly this. The second shreds our national mythologies of being well governed and being humane. Either way, our colleges and universities are guilty of advertising to the world that Canada is not a serious place.

The failed justifications for refusing to impose a mask mandate by Emmett Macfarlane / Declarations of Invalidity

From an evidentiary standpoint, the President’s email wouldn’t get a passing grade if it were a policy memo.
Another thing the President’s message does is rely on the “public health guidelines” (the university has consistently fallen back on this empty talking point), as if the provincial health guidelines were satisfactory. But they aren’t. In fact, they’re essentially non-existent. The university is relying on a public health context that represents the greatest policy failure of our lifetimes.
In addition to ignoring the scientific evidence on transmissibility, risks, and efficacy of mask mandates, the President also ignores the social scientific evidence. Making a policy a “recommendation” instead of a “rule” sends a message to people that it is safe to not wear a mask when it isn’t. This is precisely why we have “coercive” policies around smoking, seatbelts, and other basic health & safety measures. People follow rules, and will avoid inconvenience when they perceive certain actions as unnecessary. In this important regard, the President fails perhaps the most basic leadership test imaginable.

The academy’s neoliberal response to COVID-19: Why faculty should be wary and how we can push back by Honor Brabazon / Academic Matters

Instead of discussing better Zoom learning techniques, we should collectively ask what teaching in the COVID-19 era would look like if universities valued education and research as essential public goods. For instance, what would emergency online teaching look like if we openly acknowledged that it was not an adequate substitute for classroom teaching and reduced both tuition and teaching and learning standards? This would alleviate pressure on both faculty and students and facilitate open conversations with students about the nature of education and the limitations of a tuition fee-based model. It could be supported by acknowledgements from administrations that faculty are not expected to completely reimagine and redesign their courses to suit the online format but merely to offer as much as they can of their existing courses online as a temporary stopgap measure.

Financial, political motives explain colleges’ COVID-19 reopening decisions by Sophie Eldridge, Danny Klinenberg, and Dick Startz / Brookings

In summary, we find suggestive evidence that institutional decision-making was informed by financial incentives in the fall of 2020. When schools, particularly private schools, derived a larger percentage of their core revenue from auxiliary services, the financial burden of operating online may have seemed too risky. Political influences also may have shaped public institutions’ instructional modes, with more in-person instruction in states controlled by Republicans. As the school year developed and vaccines rolled out, schools again had to make a difficult choice to reassess and determine their future operation mode, some incorporating these online systems and some leaving them in the past.

High-risk U of T community members face increased stress, sickness amid absent mask mandates by Alyanna Denise Chua / The Varsity

Two members of U of T’s disabled community — a student and a faculty member — spoke to The Varsity about the difficulties they have faced since the university lifted the mask mandate. Both have already gotten sick over the course of the fall term, and they recognize that they are at higher risk for death and hospitalization from COVID-19.
Karuna, an undergraduate student, was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease last January. She asked that The Varsity not publish her last name, because she fears employment discrimination from disclosing her condition. She currently takes immunosuppressants, which lower her immune system’s ability to fight off infections such as COVID-19. Last winter, Karuna was hospitalized after she caught the flu.
In an interview with The Varsity, Karuna said that navigating this fall term has caused her “great anxiety.” She “seriously considered” transferring schools or taking a break from her studies. “It felt as if I had to decide between my education and my health,” she said.

Pandemia: COVID-19’s heavy toll on the lives of academics by Richard Watermeyer / University World News

Institutional responses to the pandemic were also regularly compared to “disaster capitalism” and a sense that university leaders were utilising the crisis to push through corporate agendas.
Respondents, for instance, spoke of how the pandemic was being used by management elites in universities to justify the extension of their power base and corresponding marginalisation of academic staff from decision-making processes.
Equally, crisis conditions were discussed for legitimising exploitative work practices.
One academic said: “In my department, the ‘moral imperative’ of helping the COVID cause has been used to manipulate workers into accepting unreasonable demands in terms of workloads and deadlines. As a result, my well-being has deteriorated to the point that I have quit my job with nothing else to go to. I expect I am not alone.”
Across the board, respondents described their sense of feeling ever more vulnerable in a sector where job precarity is a systemic problem. Yet, crucially, pandemia was seen to represent the continuation of an existing downward trend for academics.

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