Modes of University Government

Abstract

University administrative officers and members of the legal profession are nowadays being brought into relationships over a whole range of matters which in less complex and more tranquil times were of little or no joint concern. In an earlier age, universities could and did exist in a state of considerable detachment from and ignorance of many aspects and points of law. That former state of ignorance is rapidly being reduced by ever more frequent consultations with our solicitors, and by growing involvement with arbitration panels, courts, and regulatory bodies of one kind or another. Some of these bodies, it would appear, are having as much difficulty in fathoming the peculiar nature of a as are academics in discerning their particular modes of ratiocination and operation. If anything is clear, it is that we are certainly going to become better acquainted with one another: universities with the law and law with the universities. Any dialogue which has as its aim the fostering of better understanding of the problems now becoming matters of joint and urgent concern, and of the immediate or potential import of an emerging series of judicial rulings pertinent to the management of affairs, will be of increasing value and even necessity. But how do universities manage their affairs? What do we mean when we speak, rather vaguely, of university government? The term itself is not one I am particularly comfortable with, even though it has been in common use for ten years or more. Like many other new coinages, its appearance and quick adoption into ordinary parlance signified, if in an obscure and confused way, some profound changes which were beginning to overtake the university; it pointed to incipient disputes about its nature, its constitution, and its role in the contemporary world. What in effect was being signified was the dissolution of an older and unchallenged order of things; and the importation of new models or analogies (in this case, the political) in terms of which to cope with what was happening. This dissolution of older reality has proceeded apace, and with increasing velocity, over the last decade. One of its chief consequences has been the inability of the to contain and resolve within itself a number of conflicts, some now of major proportions. No society can endure without adequate conflict resolution mechanisms. It is this very failure of conflict resolution mechanisms which brings us into the courts and before labour relations boards, and therefore into contact at many points with the legal profession. In so far as the term university government is supposed to connote the existence of a community capable of managing its own affairs, it is to a significant