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School's out for Piper

UBC's ex-president on the APEC mistake, corporate cash and other controversies.

Stanley Tromp 2 Oct 2006TheTyee.ca

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Former UBC president Martha Piper

[Editor's note: This follows on Friday's profile of incoming UBC president Stephen Toope. Read that article here.]

When Martha Piper took over as UBC president from the controversial David Strangway in 1997, she stepped into the centre of a political tornado: the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference held at UBC. Police used force and pepper spray against non-violent protesters, who objected to the presence of dictators such as Indonesia's President Suharto.

Piper complained directly to the prime minister for violating his agreement to allow student protestors to be visible to the leaders, and also lodged a complaint against the RCMP for its "oppressive conduct."

After the APEC launch, things could only get better. During her term she was widely praised, even revered in some quarters. The Globe and Mail enthused, "Ms. Piper has become Ottawa's favourite English-speaking university president. When she knocks on doors, they open; when she calls those with power, they phone back."

She was hailed for trying to raise UBC's global profile, for her fundraising, for being somewhat more accessible to students and the public than the man she replaced -- for instance, starting a UBC annual general meeting where she took questions from the floor -- and for her expressed stands on academic freedom.

Yet AMS President Kevin Keystone told me he regrets that Piper's many travels left her little time to meet directly with students, leaving them "feeling disconnected" from her (a complaint often raised against Strangway, too).

Piper takes a contrary view. "One of the first things we did was appoint a vice-president for students. I held students breakfasts once a month, and I said that at any event we held at the Norman MacKenzie house [UBC president's mansion], there must be a student presence. We built more student residents. But most importantly, we put students in our vision statement, which I think was the first time a university had done so. There are a lot of pieces to that puzzle, and we still have work to do."

String of controversies

Several controversies have marked her reign as well, beyond those mentioned in Friday's article (unauthorized tree-cutting on GVRD land and the 2004 Maclean's scandal).

UBC's surge of high-priced housing construction has raised concerns from its civic neighbours.

Last spring, Canwest reported (again, as in 2001) that some UBC researchers had breached ethical rules of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) -- rules that are meant to help ensure the protection of volunteers in studies. CIHR officials were so concerned about UBC's "institutional weaknesses" that they talked about freezing funding to all UBC researchers.

UBC's 1995 exclusive marketing contract with Coca-Cola slumped, with UBC being able to sell only half the drinks that it had contracted to by 2005. UBC spent less than eight per cent of the Coke deal's profit on UBC disabled-access projects, despite Strangway's 1996 written promise that "almost all" of it would be spent on these. As well, suspicion lingered on whether dozens of UBC water fountains had been removed so students would be induced to buy more bottled water from Coke machines.

It was not always clear how much Piper knew of all these subjects. On her leadership style, she said, "You have to delegate to deans and vice presidents. UBC is far too complex to control in one office. But the buck stops in the president's office."

Piper doesn't believe Maclean's magazine rankings are too powerful, and yet: "I think rankings are here to stay. We must have our own sense of purpose, and we can't determine our course of action by those rankings. But rankings are rankings, and I think anyone who tries to fight them is in a losing battle."

On the criticism that UBC is becoming too commercialized, she replies, "We're criticized either way -- if we do nothing to transform the economy through research findings, we're called too ivory tower, but if we do transform the economy, we're criticized as too commercial." As well, Piper "absolutely believes" that two-way academic traffic can build democracy in other countries, citing UBC's ties to North Korea and Darfur, Africa.

Some regarded Piper as a champion of academic freedom. For example, in 1995, Strangway closed down UBC's political science department graduate program after a report claimed to find systemic racism and sexism within it. Three years later, Piper wrote to the department head to apologize, saying the report was flawed and the allegations discredited, and that the closure had been "inappropriate."

Regrets?

Is there a competitive war ongoing amongst universities to hire the best faculty? "That's the means to an end," she replies. "Quite frankly, I think UBC has been doing well on that, and we just hired a Nobel Prize laureate. It's always an issue, because you're only as good as your best students and faculty, and I think once you have that core resource, the question is 'what do you do with it?'"

Does she ever regret that APEC was held at UBC?

"I would have had no difficulty with APEC being held on our campus IF -- and this did not happen -- the leaders had allowed themselves to be addressed by the academic and student community. If it was only seen as a venue, it should have been held downtown. If they approached us to hold APEC again, and there was no way for students and the public to interact with the leaders, it would not be appropriate."

Is it alright for UBC to have ties to nations with poor human rights records?

"We have students here from all over the world. It's very important we reach out to all countries -- because the best way to address human rights abuses is through education and research. We have ties to universities in Asia, Africa, the Middle East. We have to make it clear the universities are places for free expression and that they can't be controlled politically."

Of the 2004 Maclean's story in Canwest, she say "It was incorrect in saying we were manipulating sizes. But it was correct in saying we were looking at class size and finding they were bigger than at many other universities. And the question I posed was 'why was that?" Many of our students complained about class sizes. I think that's the power of using rankings as an indicator -- of learning some things you wouldn't have known otherwise, and then ask 'can we do better?'"

'Curiosity-driven' research

Asked if UBC suffers from commercial pressures, or can less afford "pure" research today, she replies, "I don't believe that for a minute. If you look at our research funding, less than 20 per cent of it is funded by industry, and 80 per cent by non-profits and government. The vast majority is curiosity-driven and peer reviewed. I don't think that's going to change. And I think there is a role for applied research supported by industry so long as it comes with requirements of what we will do or not do for industry."

(For example, in 2003 the Canadian presidents of EDS, General Motors and Sun Microsystems announced one of the largest donations ever made to a Canadian university -- $240 million to UBC -- as some students outside screamed protests and bared their breasts. The gift included some 500 software license agreements for engineering and design software and 65 workstations for a new high-tech lab.)

With some UBC professors busy creating their own companies, might they have less time to help students?

"We have very clear rules on how much time they can spend on that, and who owns what intellectual property. I think we're very much in line with universities around the world. And my own sense is that the public very much wants to see the results of this research that they have supported through the public purse. So most of the commercializable research has started as very basic research. It's not a bad thing at all that Michael Smith of UBC, a Nobel Prize winner, has a company. He's turning his research into an asset for the public and the economy."

Big payout

Piper left the campus with a widely-criticized and unprecedented $700,000 farewell allowance from UBC. The Pipers have found a house in Vancouver to live in, and for now she plans to attend Oxford University for a sabbatical. (She has a Ph.D. in epidemiology and biostatistics from McGill University; she also, like Toope, taught there.) "We'll see what happens after that. I may want to write, maybe do more scholarship, or find other issues or causes."

Asked if she had any advice for the incoming president, Piper replied merrily "Just dream big!"

Stanley Tromp is a Vancouver-based journalist and regular contributor to The Tyee. Read his previous stories here.

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