Political studies in flux

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/02/2011 (5582 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The University of Manitoba’s political studies department recently launched a series of panel discussions called Are Manitobans Lazy, Ignorant or Politically Irresponsible? The goal is to trudge throughout the province in an effort to boost the level of political knowledge among Manitobans.

What is notable about the series, at least for the university, is it would have been unlikely to happen even five years ago. There has been a shift in what aspects of government are studied at the university.

The political studies department has always had a foot in the study of Manitoba and Canadian politics, but for years it was dominated by international relations research and teaching and, in particular, defence and strategic studies.

But after a series of recent retirements, the department has been almost completely renewed, and fully half of regular full-time faculty are specialists in Canadian politics, with only about a quarter in international relations, weakening what was once a great strength, or at least perceived to be, for the university.

This inward focus on local politics could be driven further by what might happen when the federal government releases its budget. Last June, Defence Minister Peter MacKay warned universities funding might be cut for the Security and Defence Forum as part of his department’s strategic review.

Since the late 1960s, the SDF has funded research centres across the country. Currently, there are 12 institutes, including the U of M’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies, receiving $2.5 million in federal funding. If the centres lose their federal support, programs at larger schools, like the University of British Columbia, will likely survive, while smaller centres, like that at the University of Manitoba, could close.

“If the SDF program is cancelled, defence studies will disappear from most of the 12 universities,” Terry Copp, director of Wilfrid Laurier’s centre told Embassy Magazine last August.

Information on the strategic review that has been made public still doesn’t indicate one way or the other what the future of the centres will be. Some programs made the decision months ago to put a hold on planning for the upcoming fiscal year.

Defence studies, particularly when funded by the government, has always been controversial. Critics, usually on the left, dismiss experts in the field as apologists for war who produce nothing but propaganda for the government.

The caricature is unfair. Plenty of SDF scholars are critical of government defence policy. Five years ago, the University of New Brunswick Centre opposed Canadian involvement in Afghanistan.

A recent paper out of the York Centre for International and Security Studies argued “Indoctrinated in the discourse of the (Canadian Armed Forces) is a structure of patriarchy, misogyny, and contempt for the female body.” Not exactly military boosting.

In fact, such criticism of the military could be one motivation for axing the SDF. Why would the government want to fund academics to blast their policies? Another reason for ending the program could simply be there is no constituency involved. That is, SDF centres are not groups that represent any particular voting block. The money could go away and the only griping would be from the professors themselves.

For the U of M, if the SDF is cut, it could mean that when combined with an already conscious effort to de-emphasize defence studies, and international relations more broadly, the field could all but disappear, while local and national politics continue to be given more attention.

Certainly, courses will continue to be offered in international relations but the intellectual focus of the political studies department will be unrecognizable to those who graduated even in the past few years.

In some respects, this is no great tragedy. Despite a flourish of books published in recent years, Manitoba politics remains very much under-studied. That the U of M is finally paying more attention should hopefully mean it will take longer than a weekend to read everything ever published in the field. I am only exaggerating slightly. The newly formed Manitoba Institute for Policy Research is promising in this regard.

To the extent the rise of one field is coming at the expense of another, there is little sense in having a sophisticated understanding of the politics of war, if we don’t also have a solid grasp about the politics closest to us.

 

Carson Jerema is editor

of Maclean’s On Campus.