Four UBC faculty members and graduate student initiate litigation to compel university to ‘refrain from political activity’

Four UBC professors and a recent PhD graduate student have filed a lawsuit against the university alleging official land acknowledgments done by UBC, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) hiring requirements and academic units' statements regarding Israel and Palestine violate UBC’s duty to “be non-sectarian and non-political in principle” under section 66 of the University Act.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday to the BC Supreme Court, seeks three orders demanding the university remove “assertions that UBC lands are ‘unceded’ from its website, internal guidance documents and official communications on behalf of UBC,” remove “adherence to EDI values and requirements to require applicants to make EDI adherence statements as a condition of applications for faculty positions” and retract “the political declarations made in April of 2024 and February of 2024.”

The five plaintiffs are UBCO philosophy professor and former Vice-Chair of UBC's Board of Governors Andrew Irvine, PhD graduate Nathan Cockram, UBCO political science associate professor Brad Epperly, UBCV political science professor Christopher Kam and UBCO English associate professor Michael Treschow.

The petition outlines that UBC’s land acknowledgements and the declaration of UBC lands as unceded are encouraged by university administration and do not give staff or students the ability to disagree or argue against them. “In this sense, UBC’s declarations that UBC lands are unceded is authoritatively and prescriptively political,” reads the petition.

In February 2024, UBCO’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies passed a resolution calling for the university at large to issue several statements condemning Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza. In April 2024, the UBC Okanagan Senate adopted a resolution condemning the “perpetration of genocide … in this case the occupation, siege, and invasion of Gaza by the state of Israel” and the “violent attack on Israeli nationals and Jewish persons undertaken by Hamas on 7 October 2023.”

The lawsuit takes issue with both of these moves, calling them “nakedly political.” The lawsuit, however, did not mention the public statement UBC issued in 2022condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The lawsuit also comes at a time when Palestinian human rights activists on campus have issued renewed calls to UBC to break what protesters say is its silence on genocide and scholasticide in Gaza; groups have also demanded UBC divest from companies they say are complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses and cut academic ties with Israeli universities.

The litigants’ petition additionally alleges that the application process UBC uses to hire faculty members requires applicants to agree with “EDI political principles.”

"UBC imposes and/or requires application processes for hiring faculty members and criteria for hiring or appointing faculty members that require applicants to express agreement with/adherence to, fidelity with or loyalty to diversity, equity and inclusion doctrines and ideologies 'DEI' or 'EDI,'" the petition reads.

The applicants also highlight how some job postings, like on UBC’s department of Psychology website, include EDI and encourage applicants who would further such initiatives.

The applicants' central position is that UBC is pressuring students, staff and faculty to adhere to certain “political positions[s] advanced by the University,” or risk losing opportunities — all in violation of the University Act.

In a press release, the Canadian Constitutional Foundation said it was providing “assistance” to the litigants, and that “UBC Administration has no business espousing political ideologies based in critical theory or any other political ideology.”

In a statement to The Ubyssey, UBC Media Relations Director of University Affairs Matthew Ramsey wrote, “The university is aware of the petition and will be reviewing it in the coming days. Given it is before the courts we have no other comment at this time.”

The UBC Faculty Association and five plaintiffs' counsel did not respond to The Ubyssey’s request for comment by press time.