^[1]

This week, Neal and I hit the streets with several on-location clips from things happening around campus. We catch a macabre protest organized by 4th year English student Gretta Dattan – a funeral for our school mascot Thunder. We also stopped by a campus and community planning open house and chatted with Andrew Parr (the head of Student Housing and Hospitality) about the new residence plans for Gage South (ie the bus loop). On our way to the studio we caught Gord Hopper from UBC athletics who was hanging around the Vanier Cup celebration in the new SUB. To round out the news, we talk to Justin McElroy, the awesome former Ubyssey editor, about what this win means for football and UBC’s varsity program. We then hovered outside Thursday’s board meeting and caught up with Veronica Knott on her way to lunch. Finally, we discuss Stuart Belkin, the new multi-million dollar provincial appointee to UBC’s Board of Governors.

For our interview today, we speak with Jennifer Berdahl, the Professor of Gender and Diversity Leadership studies at the Sauder School of Business. Jennifer Berdahl became a household name around campus this fall when she wrote a controversial blog post speculating about whether Arvind Gupta “lost the masculinity contest” at UBC, after which the Board of Governors Chair contacted her directly to express his concerns with the post. The fallout from that affair eventually led to the resignation of John Montalbano, the chair of UBC’s Board of Governors. We speak to her about academic freedom, diversity in the academy and the search for a new president.

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Episode links:

• A protest that appropriately captures our sense of the absurd ^[2]
• Board of Governors votes in favor of international tuition increases – which have been reduced a smidge. This is not yet reflected in the public Board documents posted ^[3]
• Campus and Community Planning is moving forward on plans for the Gage South development (aka bus loop with student residences on top) ^[4]
• The UBC Thunderbirds football team wins the Vanier Cup ^[5]
• UBC Board of Governors has a new multi-millionnaire, BC-liberal-donating appointee, Stuart Belkin ^[6]
• Jennifer Berdahl’s famous first ^[7] blog post on Gupta’s resignation and her second ^[8] blog post detailing her side of the academic freedom boondoggle that followed.
• A summary of the academic freedom investigation and the resignation that followed ^[9]
• The UBC Faculty Association is still not pleased ^[10]