Thursday, April 01, 2010

Project Hero - reply from Joyce Green


I sent a letter to the professors at the University of Regina who signed an Open Letter to U of R President Timmons in regards to its Project Hero program. That open letter can be found here: .

This is the reply I received from Joyce Green, Professor of the Poli-Sci department at U of R:


Dear Mr. Van Lane:

Thanks for your note; we appreciate the support.

We are aware of several facebook groups, some of which appear to have the same creator, an individual involved with the Conservative and Saskatchewan parties.

Our position is as follows:

The letter we signed was intended neither to criticize individual soldiers, nor to deprive or deny anyone of financial support to pursue post-secondary education. The criticism was directed against one scholarship program, the “Project Hero” program, and not at any other support for, or scholarships targeted to, veterans or their families. We note that the federal government can and does provide for education assistance for families of soldiers, and thus, there is no policy need for Project Hero. The benefits provided under the "Children of Deceased Veterans Education Assistance Act C-28" provides for educational expenses. (Please consult Veterans’ Affairs Canada for more information.)

At issue here was our perception that “Project Hero” was designed for essentially partisan political purposes, as a way of using the Universities, as institutions, to endorse Canada’s current military presence in Afghanistan. As the “Project Hero” program requires the Universities themselves to bear the costs of the tuition waivers it offers (in contrast to privately or externally funded scholarship programs, in which the costs are borne by third parties), it requires the Universities to treat one particular subset of students as different from all others, including those students who are children of wounded soldiers, as well as the children of any number of other risky and honourable professions.

This compromises the political neutrality of the University; at its worst, it potentially makes the institution into a cheerleader for the policy of whichever government happens to be in power. It is our view that a distance should be maintained between universities and governments (whether conservative, liberal, or social democratic), and that this program compromises that distance, making it that much more difficult to have open and unconstrained conversations in our universities about Canadian foreign policies.

Sincerely,


Joyce A. Green
Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan S4S 0A2
Canada

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