Professor Rick Mehta Faces Investigation for His Political Views — Update

Professor Rick Mehta Faces Investigation for His Political Views — Update

I won’t be spending much time on social media today because I’ll be preparing for my long meeting (9:30 am to 4 pm) with the university’s lawyer tomorrow. As I reflect on the events that led to this investigation and tomorrow’s meeting, I’ve noted that a tweet I sent to Andrew Scheer (federal opposition leader in Canadian politics) in January is what led to me being in the public spotlight due to the media coverage that my tweet received.

But I first became outspoken on July 25, 2017, when I spoke out against my union – in part because I was opposed to getting a raise on the back of the support staff. At around November, I then started to use public postings on FB to continue speak out against my union as an impending strike seemed to be looming.

In December, I sent a campus-wide email message to counter the claims made in an article in the student newspaper about women’s participation in academia that were based almost exclusively on a perspective that seemed to be provided by WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Acadia.

In early January, I sent a campus-wide email to express my concerns about the university’s decolonization initiatives, with one of my key concerns being that they would worsen race relations. The responses I got (both public and private) were rather telling.

As I prepare for tomorrow, I see the situation as me having the truth on my side while the other side has an agenda that appears to be well-funded. In other words, from my perspective, this meeting is about truth versus money & power. — Prof. Rick Mehta