Radical Campus tells the story of the founding years of Simon Fraser University (SFU), one of the younger post-secondary institutions in western Canada. As in several other histories of Canadian universities, Johnston brings the insider perspective of someone who has spent over thirty years in SFU’s history department. However, unlike insider university histories like the history of McGill (MacLennan, 1960) or the history of the University of Toronto (Friedland, 2002), Johnston has the advantage of either knowing personally or interviewing a number of people who played a major role in the founding of the university. In terms of approach, university histories tend to fall into two categories: vast tomes attempting to be comprehensive, or studies of single faculties, departments, or other constituencies of the university community (e.g. women students). Johnston tells the story of SFU a different way by telling the story of the university's early years in detail, a story that he aptly describes as “A Succession of Crises.”
Focusing on the “charter” years of SFU has proved to be a fruitful approach, as it allows Johnston to focus on an era in which his university was called “Berkeley North,” after that American hotbed of radicalism. Johnston opens by discussing the vision of founding Chancellor Gordon Shrum, who built and opened the university in 1965 on Burnaby Mountain in two years after being appointed to the task by British Columbia Premier Bennett. That the university buildings were established so quickly may be impressive but Shrums's recruitment of the charter generation of faculty members is more significant. If universities are often institutions with considerable inertia, this was a rare time when a single person was able to shape a university in a definitive if short-lived way. Little of the chancellor's vision has survived the 1970s: the governance system he established was challenged and most of the charter faculty have retired. But the interdisciplinary approach he championed remains a distinctive part of SFU's identity.
The story of how quickly the university was established is interesting though it would seem that this rush to get the university open had serious consequences. Governance was not well thought out, the registrar's office was a fiction, and the campus was not quite finished. It is clear that Johnston admires Shrum for achieving what had been thought impossible: creating the “instant university.” There are suggestions and hints here and there that the flexibility and ad hoc nature of SFU's establishment was partly the reason radicalism thrived there. In some ways, the administration was simply busy getting the institution off the ground and thus missed some developments that a more established university might have suppressed. As the title implies, Johnston considers SFU a radical institution. Though there was only one serious confrontation involving the police, Johnson shows how radicalism manifested itself in other ways, such as in institutional practices and outlook. Here one could see an education faculty that wanted a pass/fail system to eliminate competition from the learning process, professors who encouraged students to take on unusual projects, and, in one department, students having a strong voice in faculty appointments. There was also a lively artistic scene with exhibitions and theatre performances, though these later declined in importance as such activities became decoupled from academic programs. Part of SFU's distinctiveness lay in its unconventional academics, both in process and substance. Further development of this kind of radicalism would have fleshed out Johnston's radical thesis to a greater degree.
The definitive radical “moment” of SFU occurred in 1969, mere months after the uprising at Berkeley where students and police clashed. Though Johnston builds to this moment for much of his book, it is important to emphasize that the radicalism was mostly concentrated in a handful of departments – the sciences were noticeably status quo in their politics – with the Politics, Sociology, and Anthropology (PSA) department garnering a particularly radical reputation. This faculty was known for its unconventional practices, though some of these – such as giving course credit for participating in protests – were merely rumour. As Johnston tells the story, unusual methods combined with leftist politics of the faculty and students to cause “…probably the most notorious conflict on a Canadian campus then or since” (p. 293). The PSA affair was certainly the most tumultuous occurrence at SFU and Johnston does well to spend considerable time on it. In essence, a number of PSA faculty were up for tenure renewal – a new and relatively untried process at SFU – and failed to be granted full tenure for various reasons, such as lacking academic achievement or political radicalism. For a small core of radicals in the department, there was no question that it was political persecution. In response, some of the faculty and students of the PSA department took the unprecedented move of going on academic strike. Many classes were cancelled for weeks and eventually a core of protestors locked themselves in SFU buildings. The intervention of the police ended the occupation of the building but did not end the crisis.
This affair is the most interesting aspect of Johnston's book because it explores a number of contentious issues. On one level, there is the worrying willingness of the administration to involve police rather than attempt to negotiate with the protestors. On another level, there is a very clear contest in university governance. A number of people in the PSA department wanted departmental autonomy in hiring and promotion – perhaps to promote a radical approach in pedagogy and politics – while the university advocated a more centralized approach. Further, there is an interesting tension between SFU and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). CAUT censured SFU for several years as a result of the latter’s poor handling of this issue and mishandling of tenure, one of the first times that tenure disagreements caused such unrest. Johnston does well in pointing out the layers of conflict and the different actors involved in this particular crisis.
Student marches, strikes, and police presence on campus are certainly exciting and unusual at Canadian universities, but Johnston also spends some time discussing other aspects of what made SFU radical. Though Chancellor Shrum left the university in 1969, his vision of interdisciplinary studies, of academic exploration and experimentation, stayed. SFU was one of the first Canadian institutions to have a Women's Studies department, and it had an innovative Computer Studies department: such experiments were nurtured under the grab-bag of the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies. The department of Fine and Performing Arts also had the interesting idea of encouraging non-credit artistic work, which blossomed for a few years until the department was hit by budget cuts.
Though Johnston's book is focused on the development of one particular university, he does mention some broader developments in both the academy and Canadian society. During the 1960s, the Canadian academy was still in its infancy. The handful of graduate schools then operating produced insufficient Ph.D.s to meet the growing demand for faculty. Further, certain mainstays of contemporary academic culture were still being organized: many people were still uncertain about the parameters and requirements for tenure, a relatively new concept. Student radicalism – epitomized by the group “Students for a Democratic University” – was also flourishing, albeit unevenly, across Canada. Though Johnston alludes vaguely to SFU’s radical image in the Vancouver press, the public perception of radicalism could have been developed significantly given that SFU radicalism is the ostensible focus of his book.
One can also sense a hint of nationalism in some elements of SFU’s story. There is the Chancellor’s preference for a Canadian architect to design the campus and the half-hearted hope of recruiting more Canadian-educated faculty. These asides showing how nationalism expressed itself in the academic context are certainly worthwhile. That said, connections to broader educational history – with the exception of the tenure issue – are rare and this is a weakness of the book.
The production values of the book are quite good. There are quite a few black-and-white photographs though these vary considerably in value. The best are the photos of student protests and other similar reportage from the student newspaper, The Peak, and the architectural drawings of the campus, which help the reader better understand its mountain-top geography. Rather less relevant are the numerous posed photographs of professors and administrators; while it is interesting to see some of the people involved, these do not add a great deal to the analysis and could have been omitted in favour of newspaper photographs, perhaps from extra-campus sources. The index (15 pages) and bibliography are both fairly well developed and are to be commended. The endnotes will prove quite useful to future scholars as Johnston has thoughtfully deposited his original interviews with the SFU archives.
Bruce Harpham
University of Western Ontario