The University of Ottawa’s Wellness Week, which aims to help students and staff mind their own mental health during a self-declared mental health crisis, falls well short of a useful response to mental health concerns.
Then again, a recent University report promises a ‘cross-university wellness strategic framework’. If such a framework is going to work, more faculty and departmental solutions are needed because a multiversity of some 41,000 students is too large to effectively resolve personal health problems.
Hence my proposal: the University of Ottawa must afford professors, departments, and faculties more autonomy to foster personal relationships between faculty and student. Such an enterprise notably requires giving professors and faculty administrators more ‘free’ time. This time may foster the relationships necessary to create a collegial, supportive environment.
The University’s best method for providing professors and faculty administrators with this mythic free time is to push against creeping government demands. The managerial welfare state, obsessed, in some sense, with accountability, requires more and more information from universities that it funds.
These demands cause pressure to abound for professors as much as for students. ‘Publish or perish’ is alive and well at universities. New professors must work harder than ever to produce articles and books so that they may have job security; established professors may face pressure from their faculties to annually publish.
The University of Ottawa, which recently signed a strategic mandate agreement with the Government of Ontario, is one of many across the country that now depends on government funding approval, which is now indexed to measurable performance targets: an indication that learning and teaching are being reduced to numbers. We might understand these figures, but they do nothing for wellness.
Wellness Week and the University’s recent mental health review is a poor substitute for the care that students can receive if these pressures are relieved. This argument, of course, proceeds on the assumption that the relationship between professor and student fosters wellness.
I’ve experienced such relationships in my former faculty, the Faculty of Arts, where I could speak with the Dean or the Vice-Deans with relatively few hurdles to clear. Granted, during these times, I was privileged to be a member of the University Senate—and an active member at that. More locally still (and divorced from my senatorial duties), my department head (English) was almost always available for a chat. Professors gave of their time and expertise, which engendered the feeling that one’s ideas and character are being noticed. This feeling goes to the heart of my point.
These conditions and my experience begs the question: how can university administrators foster wellness and impose the need to meet metrics that satisfies government?
Saint Paul University, the old University of Ottawa, offers some answers. It teaches a far smaller group of students of roughly 1,000. Small size fosters closer community because students and administrators come into more regular contact.
I’ve had the pleasure of conducting extensive research on and taking a course at Saint Paul. I got the sense that everyone knew everyone; the school’s lore was, moreover, just around the corner. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who still own the University, until very recently maintained their house just beside the University.
Imagine having that closeness and rapport with professors and with a University’s owners.
Contrast that idyll with the multiversity. The University of Ottawa spends increasing time and effort placating faceless masters. There’s nothing new in this situation: the Oblates sold most of their university to its present incarnation to avoid submitting to government. Even so, in 1965, when the universities split, the Oblates dug in. They claimed that the University of Ottawa was not secular; it was non-denominational.
This difference is slight, but crucial, for the Oblates were claiming the existence of a soul in the University, one able to assist students and faculty with their mental health. A non-denominational university leaves open the question of faith, or mystery, while not attaching to any imperatives. Faith and mystery exhorts students and professors toward discovering values that go beyond the strictly rational. This was the spirit of Oblate education and they fought for it in the 1960s.
Central administrations won’t cure the wellness issue, and neither will events that responsibilize individuals for their health.
The University community will instead need to take stock of its beliefs, and departments and faculties must be leaders in this regard. Shared purpose must flourish, but the means for that flourishing are not flashy. The old adage of university education, that it is ad studentum et orandum—for study and prayer— evokes the remedy. Scholars must have ample time for introspection because introspection allows us to better teach and to more efficiently learn.
Some of my neighbours put handwritten signs of encouragement up in their windows. Online stories and videos frequently attest to neighbours’ generosity at a time when uncertainty reigns and people are more isolated than ever. Such charity relies on personal kindness muted in recent years by partisan politics and growing consumerism.
The economic woe we currently face is a most urgent sign of these uncharitable forces. A social and global need to profit trickles down into our lives, just like Dwight D. Eisenhower warned it would. We now need to spend to keep a service economy alive.
A global economy has been here to stay for (arguably) centuries. It is a historical phenomenon whereby great gains are made for a few over great distances. Great losses, however, also encumber trade at a time when physical goods are less and less economically relevant. Commodities still represent the backbone of the global economy, yet the World Trade Organization reported that 75% of GDP in developed countries derived from services. This statistic means that developed economies rely on virtual exchange. An intangible product is rendered into tangible cash.
The American response to a complete loss of demand for services tells the tale. Most American companies haven’t failed, nor are they going to, even if they have drawn down massive amounts of credit. The Federal Reserve Bank has been printing money to buy stakes in pressured sectors, which prevents a meltdown. The American government issues debt on its citizens’ behalf to cure the cyclical ills of a round-trip system.
Supporting major economic indices likes the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, or the NASDAQ gives the illusion of security. The economy can’t tank if investors are confident. Their cash is flowing through the stock markets’ services — services like the exchanges themselves, which have made tidy profits in this latest crisis. The NASDAQ, for example, reported a 2020 Q1 profit of $247 million. Reasonable earnings, given the economic distress.
Subject-citizens don’t feel these joys. Their economies are much smaller and probably more fulfilling. International and national media emphasize a big picture. Market data skews toward macro-level analysis. The learning curve toward understanding micro-level data about companies and economic policy is steep. A sign in one’s window, or the willingness to help make personal protective equipment, is a much better manifestation of our real economies.
A real economy is felt because it manifests in the home. The greek and latin word, oeconomica, refers to the management of resources. It also refers to the management of our households, where houses are considered the pillars of society. This broader reflection of societal health does consider wealth, but it also acknowledges the emotions that truly constitute each household. The Greeks framed these exchanges in governmental terms:
Right administration of a household demands in the first place familiarity with the sphere of one’s action; in the second place, good natural endowments; and in the third, an upright and industrious way of life. For the lack of any one of these qualifications will involve many a failure in the task one takes in hand.
Of such administrations there are four main types, under which all others may be classified. We have the administration of a king; of the governors under him; of a free state; and of a private citizen.
Of these, that of a king is the most extensive, yet at the same time the simplest. A governor’s office is also very extensive, but divided into a great variety of departments. The administration of a free state is again very varied, but it is the easiest to conduct; while that of a private individual presents the like variety, but within limits which are narrowest of all. For the most part, all four will of necessity cover the same ground.
– Oeconomica II.i, author uncertain (Loeb Classical Library no. 287)
Oeconomica is thus as political as it is economic, for each citizen knows their place in relation to their house and their city. Certainty exists in these local bonds. Relationships with kings and governors are more distant, and focused on the creation of currency and supervision of markets.
It is much more difficult to comprehend the web of relationships that create our society today, but the principles laid down in Oeconomica still teaches us a lesson. We turn to numbers flashing across tickers and speculate about their meaning. We do the same in national and provincial elections. Yet the tangible economy refers to our neighbours’ lives within the city.
I am reminded of those lives everyday as I walk my dog. Their care for me and mine for them isn’t part of our economic narrative, yet it is the bedrock for productive exchange when the global economy contracts. This municipal exchange doesn’t pretend to great wealth; it is indexed to our ability to appreciate one another, our skills, and our services.
My research interests are off the beaten track. Deep dives into little-researched or little-known fields are my preferred method of coming up with unique and engaging ideas that challenge our perception of modernity as a unique historical period. My point of departure is invariably that ideas from the past continue to influence all facets of our society.
English Literature
My poet of choice is Andrew Marvell, but I am branching out in the seventeenth century. My summer 2020 writing project examines Andrew Marvell’s onetime patron, the Lord General Thomas Fairfax, whose interest in heraldry seems to have rubbed off on Marvell’s great poem, ‘Upon Appleton House’. This project has led me to read Fairfax’s own poetic efforts alongside Ben Jonson’s and Mildmay Fane’s poems.
Another literary project that crosses into law is a more in-depth reading of Edward Coke’s decisions against literary commentary of his time regarding law and royal government. This idea, however, is as yet unpolished. Stay tuned!
Law
Canadian legal history is a fascinating and under-explored aspect of our national life. It is a major part of my research interests. Drawing on my seventeenth-century training, I explain modern Canadian legal issues with reference to a much longer view sometimes stretching back to medieval law. This depth of knowledge is helpful because practical solutions that depart from cultural norms cause a ripple effect that can upset existing institutional checks and balances.
My current research focuses on the historical importance of equity in public law. Public law is a new(ish) field of nineteenth-century extraction. It is used to govern the relationship between subject and state. Before public law took hold, the state’s interaction with subjects often played out in private law disputes brought in special courts or on special forms of pleading, which included equity. The modern relationship between public law and equity is little-explored because contemporary jurists put up far too rigid walls between types of law.
Somewhat predating this interest in equity, I am also interested in law’s reaction to religion. This thorny issue has been done to death; I focus on law’s self-referential quality. In short, law is a belief system that demands adherence in some way similar to a religion. (Indeed, Western law inherits Roman rules through Catholic canon law.) Manifestations of this interest vary in my publications.