The elephant in the (class)room: The debate over Americanization of Canadian universities and the question of national identity

Abstract

Focusing primarily on the period from 1968 to 1970, this essay analyses how a campaign led by two Carleton University professors, Robin Mathews and James Steele, to defeat “Americanization” in Canadian universities, morphed into a crucial nationwide debate. Ultimately, it will find that regardless of academic or social rank or citizenship, all participants in the debate relied on one common idea to support their arguments and criticize their opponents: that of the ‘colonial mentality’, or the notion that Canadians unquestionably accepted their country as subservient to the United States. Ultimately, this paradoxical usage of postcolonial themes represented an underlying ambivalence in regards to what was being debated in the first place. Thus this essay strives to address how a specific dispute within academia could, in Mathews and Steele’s words, evolve into a “struggle for the very existence of Canada as a self-respecting and independent community” [1a]. Moreover, it contributes to a deeper understanding of Canadian-American relations and the recent debate on Canadian universities’ hiring practices, which continues to be an issue nearly forty years later. In doing so it presents a fascinating case study of national identity within postcolonial frameworks.